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He moves the first email to SPAM without reading it. When the second one comes, he wonders if people still reply to those. Then, when his phone rings and a strange man repeats everything in a slightly annoyed voice, he has to believe.
There’s a house, a house by the sea.
He vaguely remembers it, like a long forgotten dream - a house and a garden, a white bench near the fence and another one under the willow tree, so old and big he used to hide under its branches. There were roses too, the scent of them sweet in the evening. And a man, with a face he can no longer recall. Please mind the roses, the man used to say.
When he finally gets there, there are no roses. There’s only a stray cat the man used to feed and the guitar he used to play. He can’t play the guitar, but he feeds the cat and it wags its tail.
“Aren’t dogs supposed to do that?” He asks, but the cat is already gone.
It’s raining outside and there’s not much to do other than watch the stormy sea from the kitchen window.
He wonders why him and if there was nobody else. Please mind the roses, he hears the man say again, but this memory is fading too, brought back only for a minute, like a last wish, a will more detailed than the one the man wrote.
The tea in his cup is growing cold. Outside, the wind keeps howling.
...
At night, he dreams. He dreams about the garden and a summer a long time ago, one he shouldn’t remember, he thinks after waking up, a summer of a life past. On a warm night, he walks through the garden and the moon shines over the roses. The grass is soft underneath his feet.
…
The first time Harry sees the man, he thinks he’s seen him before.
It’s Sunday and when he looks at the clock, it seems too early to wake up. Then, he hears an odd sound outside and it starts making sense. Someone’s in the garden. Someone woke him up.
He wonders if he should call someone or maybe grab something heavy. The idea of someone hiding out there is both scary and ridiculous. Do things like this really happen, he wonders.
The distance between his bed and the window seems longer than the day before. Careful not to make any noise, he breathes slowly and his steps match. Sunlight is playing on the floor.
He looks out carefully. In the morning light, the grass is a perfect shade of fresh green and the man looks almost like a ghost. And like a ghost, he disappears.
…
He comes in the morning and talks to the roses.
Watching from his window, Harry wonders why. Did he know the man? The cat seems to know the stranger and follows him into the rose alley almost every day, only sometimes choosing the bench under the willow tree.
There’s something familiar about the shape of him, Harry thinks, something in the way his hands move above the leaves, barely touching. There’s something about him that feels like wind, Harry thinks, and something that feels like water. He makes Harry think about winter and a stormy sea.
He wishes he could hear the man. He sees his lips move, but the sound never reaches his ears.
The stranger in his garden smiles. The roses haven’t bloomed yet.
…
When he's tired, his dreams are vivid like fresh memories. The distant sound of music reaches his ears, just like the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. He’s waiting for someone. The garden is quiet and his feet feel cold. The moon hides behind heavy clouds. A Kingdom Hidden In Clouds, he thinks for some reason. Surely, clouds could never carry an entire kingdom.
Something moves in the dark. He smiles.
...
Harry knows he can’t stay here forever. There’s a job out there and there’s school. There are trains and puddles or grey rain. There is noise, city noise, but none of it sounds as loud as that first thing that woke him up in the house by the sea. What was it? He’s not sure. A dry twig breaking under a shoe, he thinks.
…
He comes back in May.
There are no roses, but the cat is still there and the cherry trees start blooming so suddenly it may as well be magic, not time, that’s behind it all.
He follows the stranger’s footsteps and the cat follows him, under the arch and onto the path leading to the sea. He takes off his shoes. In the dying light waves crash against the shore. It’s still too cold to swim.
Looking around he realizes the cat left him alone somewhere on the way down the cliff, but it doesn’t feel lonely. It feels safe. Safe and calm.
He lets go of his thoughts. The air is growing colder with every breath he takes.
…
There are two things bothering him.
He wants to know where he knows that man from. Was it a party he forgot? Did they play together when they were kids? It’s possible and yet untrue, he knows it. There’s something he’s missing, something he forgot.
He wonders what will happen when the roses bloom too. He doesn’t know why it’s making him nervous. Maybe he knows but doesn’t want to admit it.
“Going away again?” His friend asks on a Friday and he nods. There are things he has to know.
...
He wakes up out of breath. The sheets are clinging to his back. There was a kiss, lips pressed against his own, and a body, soft and sweet and right. There were roses too, above his head like a crown, their scent covering him. And a promise, he thinks, a promise he couldn’t keep.
…
“Who are you?”
His voice sounds odd when he asks at last. He's curious but the question fires between them like a bullet, tearing the air.
There’s a short moment - a blink of an eye, half a heartbeat - when he thinks he dreamed it all. The roses, the light, the man. Up close, his eyes seem cold.
Then, the moment passes.
“I live nearby,” the man says, but that’s not the answer he was waiting for.
“Do I know you?” he tries again, and the man smiles.
“Do you?” He says. He’s still smiling. The left corner of his lips is a bit higher than the right.
“It’s my house now,” he says and it sounds like a warning.
The man frowns. The leaves he’s never really touching tremble in the wind.
“Do you know their names? He knew them well.”
He wants to say it doesn’t matter and that he’s sick of not knowing. But it matters. Please mind the roses, the man used to say and he wonders why.
“Felicity,” the man says, turning. His steps don’t make a sound. “Fernand. Rothschild.”
Harry thinks they all look the same.
“They’re not the same,” the man says. They’re at the end of the alley. “Tom,” he says. The shrub is hidden in shade.
…
The Tom of Harry's dreams talks in riddles too. He tells Harry about a Kingdom Hidden In Clouds and the prince who lives there, about the curse and the lover who promised to wait. He talks about castles of glass and golden birds and Harry laughs. Tom laughs too and touches his face. His hands are cold but soft, like rose petals.
…
Tom knows things.
He knows the roses and he knows how to read clouds.
"It'll rain," Tom says one day, looking up. The sun is high.
But it rains that day and they hide under the willow tree, hands in pockets. He complains about the weekend ending too quickly and Tom talks about the roses - which will bloom first, which will be last. Which he likes the most.
Tom knows how to tell them apart from each other and how to care for them. He knows the soil they grow on and the hands that brought them into the garden.
Tom knows stories Harry never heard. About the man and people before him. About the village and about the sea. When he talks, he looks somewhere in the distance, as if there is something out there only he can see. His eyes don't seem so cold then.
"If there's no rain, there are no flowers," he says one day. It's raining again.
…
Some days, Tom doesn’t show up in the garden.
For some reason, it seems empty without him.
…
His bed feels lonely at night. It shouldn't, he thinks. It wasn't always like that. There was someone next to him, someone who disappeared with the last rays of sun, the last roses of the year.
Someone he was supposed to wait for. Someone he left behind.
…
Tom never stays for tea.
He lives nearby, but never says where.
He talks. He smiles. He keeps secrets.
His family, gone. His job, at home. His friends, always out of town.
It's Thursday and the air hasn't started getting chilly yet. The cat is trying to catch a mosquito in the grass.
"Tea?” Harry asks again. Tom is looking at the roses. Harry doesn’t want to think Tom’s avoiding him but that’s how it feels.
“How about the beach?” Tom says and there’s something new in his voice. Fear. Or maybe a dare. It’s hard to tell. “Wanna walk with me?”
To your place, Harry wants to ask, but he’s pretty sure he knows the answer. Maybe that place doesn’t exist at all.
They go down the same path he remembers from that first day. The sand is warmer though. And on the grassy side of the cliff, he sees tiny yellow flowers. He wonders if they have names too and if there is a name for every thing in the world. Probably not, he thinks. There is no name for the cold of Tom’s eyes and the sound of his voice when he talks with his roses. There is no word for how all the things about Tom make him feel.
He thinks he doesn’t need that word anyway.
Tom walks half a step ahead. Harry wonders if it’ll always be like this. Not close enough. Running after him.
Then, Tom stops.
“You don’t have to run.”
It happens to his voice again. Fear. Dare. One next to the other.
Harry thinks about the first time he saw the sea. He thinks about the man and a boat. A sparkling stone at the bottom. A world hidden underneath. A rose in his hair. He cut her finger on a thorn.
He thinks about a shadow in the garden.
From half a step ahead, Tom looks at him. There’s something of a panther in him, he thinks. Or a bird ready to fly.
“Maybe I want to run,” he says.
They’re standing next to each other now. Tom looks like he’s cold and Harry knows his eyes are getting teary from the wind. When their lips meet, he can feel Tom tremble and so his hands find Tom’s arms, keeping him close.The sea is quiet.
Maybe Harry wants to run. Maybe Tom doesn’t have to.
…
In the realm of dreams, he doesn’t have to run. There’s the moon, the roses silent in the night, the face of someone he could look at until the world around them fades and dies, like a flower wilting after a long summer. They’re together and yet apart. There’s the garden and there’s the Kingdom Hidden In Clouds.
He makes a promise he intends to keep. But he’s only human.
…
Something changes between them. As if a veil has been lifted. They sit outside in the sun and he thinks it has all happened before. Another time, different clouds above them, the same feeling of belonging. To each other and the endless summer nights.
Tom kisses his cheeks, his eyes, his brow, as if he’s making a map or maybe discovering him anew, checking if everything is where it should be. And Harry kisses him too. His ears, his nose, his chin. There’s a birthmark on his neck, red like a rose, and Harry kisses it too. He’s warm all over and not from the sun.
Tom’s stomach is soft, but his arms are pointy and uncomfortable whenever Harry tries to lean on them. His hair smells of flowers and sea and earth. It makes him think of a storm. It hasn’t rained in a while.
He wants to tell Tom so many things. But there are no words for what he’s feeling. If there are, he doesn’t know them. Something about them remaining unspoken calms him down. As if he’s postponing the inevitable end. If he doesn’t say anything, things will stay the same. The house by the sea, the cat, the roses and Tom.
“Once upon a time,” he hears Tom say, “in a land behind the seventh sea, there was a Kingdom Hidden In Clouds.”
They’re lying on the grass under the willow tree, the two of them and the cat right next to Tom’s legs.
For some reason, Harry doesn’t dare to move.
“On windy days, if one had luck,” Tom says, voice distant, “he would see the glittering towers made of glass and the golden birds circling them. And if one was walking through the dark forest growing around the kingdom’s border, he could hear music and voices and laughter. But if one tried to find the secret passage to the Kingdom Hidden In Clouds, he would return changed. For the people of the kingdom were an odd kind, skilled in witchcraft and mysterious arts. They did not dwell in the affairs of common men, separate from the world they knew.
“People said their old king had one son. Many had tried to win the prince’s heart, but the old king came up with countless trials, one more dangerous than the other. And even though knights from lands so distant no one had ever heard of them arrived in the Kingdom Hidden In Clouds, they all had to leave forlorn.
“The king had fallen ill. The forest around the kingdom grew taller and darker. The prince became a man and the old king grew restless. Some people said he didn’t want his only child to rule alone, for he knew the burden it would become. But some people thought it was jealousy and madness, not care, and that death had claimed so many lives in the prince’s name, he would be alone until the end of days. Some said the prince was cursed, others said he was a demon who ate people’s hearts.
“One day, a lonely knight stood before the king and his son. He had an air of storm around him and there was a mark on his forehead. The old king asked only one thing of him to prove his bravery and worth - he was to ride a horse around the high castle walls for three days once the sun came up. The prince’s heart grew worried, for the walls of glass were a dangerous path, and he didn’t want to see yet another man die. But the knight did not say a word and disappeared into the night.
“In the morning, the old king and his son watched the knight ride a horse silver as moonlight. His steps were steady and calm. On the second day, the horse was white like a cloud, moving lightly like the air. On the third day, the knight brought a horse golden like the crown on the old king’s head, and the prince held his breath watching him move along the wall, heart beating fast. No one had ever come this far. At last, his father would have to accept defeat. At last, he would be free of him.
“When the knight stood before them again, the golden horse was nowhere to be seen. The sky above their heads grew dark, as if before a storm.
“You are a cruel man,” the knight said to the king, “and for the many lives you had foolishly wasted you too will lose everything you love. Your kingdom will perish like the clouds surrounding it. And your son,” the knight said, turning to the prince, “will be born and die until he evens his debt with Death.”
“As soon as the words were said, the ground under their feet trembled and a great noise rose from within it. Birds cried and people ran in chaos as the Kingdom Hidden In Clouds collapsed, its glass towers shattering around them.
“But the king was not powerless yet, and so, with his last breath, he cursed the knight too. He was to suffer alongside his son, until the debt was paid.
“And so the Kingdom hidden In Clouds disappeared, falling down, its mountains and hills creating new lands, a high, unwelcoming shore by a cold sea. Wherever its soil fell, odd flowers would bloom in the years to come, flowers people had no names for.
“The prince fell too, and the curse turned him into a rose, to be reborn and die every spring, withering too soon like the knights his father had killed in his name.
“And the knight, the one who brought the storm, fell into the sea, his soul bound to the prince forever.
“They would meet many times, the cursed prince and the knight who cursed him. And because they were tied by fate, they fell in love. The prince beautiful like a rose, the fearless knight who dared to defy his father. The prince would die many times and the knight would wait for him. They have promised each other to wait. Sooner or later, the debt would be paid.
“But the knight was only human,” Tom says, his voice distant.
He’s not sure what to say. He cannot make a promise he won’t be able to keep.
Tom’s breathing slowly next to him. He finds his hand and holds it. The sky above them is growing darker, night falling.
...
The first rose blooms on a Sunday.
Like with all magic, it happens overnight.
“When everything else sleeps,” Tom says, looking at the white flower, “magic reigns.”
He thinks it’s not true. There’s no need for sleep. Not always.
“When the last one blooms,” he says. “Will you disappear?”
At first, Tom doesn’t say anything. His hands hover above the green leaves. He looks uncertain. Maybe it wasn’t the right time to ask. Maybe there isn’t a right time. Any time at all. There’s only the thing he has no name for and it makes him say the words.
“It will be a long, long summer,” Tom says.
“And after the summer?”
“A long, warm autumn,” Tom says. The sun is dancing on his skin.
“And then?” he says. He has to know.
“Winter,” Tom says. He’s half a step away. “And Marie Anne.”
“Do I know her?” He asks. He could count all the freckles on Tom’s face.
“Not yet.”
Tom smiles. His hands are cold to touch.