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The elders are grateful when the forest is silent. When the moon wanes, they say, the forest becomes loud. And when you walk near the loud forest—they say with rhythmic pause and lilt, so careful so as to force you to listen—you must always have a black flower. Never red, they add, the flower must not bear even a hint of red. It must be purest black.
For this reason my father tends to the black rose garden at the edge of town. Everybody knows where it is, a tall tower marks its location. You could see the tower from any part of town, even after a storm blew off its roof.
With the elders' superstition, many folk pass by the garden and take a flower before leaving town. I suggested to my father a few summers ago to charge the townspeople for his work. After all, his craft was intricate and unique, unlike anything I had seen or heard of. But when I insisted, I was only met with reprimand to not defile his sacred duty.
Sacred to who, I did not know. There was no god of the black roses, I thought, and if there was, it would not point its gaze to our quaint town by the shore. My father did not don robes like the priestess of Athena, no regal medallion or shrine to mark that duty. But the elders did pay him well. Perhaps that was the extent of the sacredness.
I remember then the first night I heard the noise of the forest. My father was away from home, and in the headstrong courage of teenage years I decided to bring a friend to the top of the old tower late at night. I was stupid, but not fearless. I had chosen a night the moon was near-full, out of the smallest respect for the superstition. One could have called that respect fear.
My friend and I ran to the outskirts of town, uncaught despite our lanterns. We knew the byways.
The door at the base of the tower was thick, built from heavy wood. But the lock that fastened it in place was rusted and old, perhaps older than me, or even my father. I paused for a moment, then, wondering if we were encroaching on some ancient place. I looked into the eyes of my friend, who simply smiled back in excitement. Well, I thought, here goes nothing.
The lock crumbled into dust, and I pushed the heavy, rotting door aside. With a nervous laugh we both peered in. I expected to smell perhaps dust, or a dead rat inside, but as my friend brought her lantern to light the room, there was only darkness: the dark of profusely growing black roses.
The roses were unlike the ones my father grew, however. Their petals warped and coiled into themselves, lacking the perfect beauty I was used to seeing. Their vines grew crooked and malformed. They seemed to be in pain.
I pushed the bush aside, but immediately regretted it as thorns pricked into my skin. I quickly pulled my hand back and nursed my wounds. My friend left quick to go find some implement to cut and push the roses away. I only stood there in confusion. These black roses *never* had thorns. This variety, I knew from my father's stories, had been destroyed a hundred years ago.
Had time brought the thorned black roses of Ithaca back?
A hundred years was long, after all. Long enough, perhaps, for the mourning roses to remember that they once needed to defend against animals like us from plucking them.
Or perhaps they had always been sitting here, protected from war and extinction. What other secrets did they hold?
Unfortunately for the roses, my friend had returned with the shepherd's crook. We took to pulling at the ones blocking our path, hoisting them out of their roots, idly chattering about whether or not the shepherd would notice if we scratched his precious crook. Well, all young people were probably the same person to his old eyes, we'd joke.
Some moments later, when the moon was closer to the peak of the sky, we'd cleared the doorway and the few vines that had managed to crawl up the stairwell. A pile of black roses and thorned vines was scattered about. I kept one of the stranger roses to myself, a black rose whose petals doubled on themselves.
My friend and I began the climb.
Step by step, we were careful not to slip on the old stone brick. It was marble, I recognized from the smoothness. This must have been some important tower long ago.
We were not halfway up when my friend told me to speak up. However, I had been silent the whole walk up. I stopped dead in my tracks then, noticing the steps were darker than they were some moments ago. I looked up at my friend, who, with similar confusion on her face, ran up the steps towards one of the small windows.
*What was the phase of the moon, again?* she asked out loud.
I recalled the harvest festival was to be within the next few days. *It is near full-moon.*
Where was the light of the moon, then, I thought? I could barely see my feet on the steps in the dim light. I looked to the bottom of the tower from the height we were at. I could not see the flowers we had cleared out anymore below us. I wiped my eyes in an attempt to gain more clarity.
My friend asked again. *I also thought the same. But the moon right now... I almost can't see it.*
It was strange. I could see the floor of the tower. Was it my vision tricking me, or did we not leave all the black roses scattered about down there?
I thumbed the black rose in my own pocket. It was still there. It bore ten petals, each petal with two tips. I faintly remembered, then, the superstition of the elders. I noticed, at the same time, that the wind was howling far too loudly within this tower. There was no breeze.
The elders words were exact. *If you are to be caught in the dread night,*
I ran to my friend, whose face was contorted in fear, staring at a distant object from the window.
*Then the rose will be taken by a hand blacker than its petals.*
I did not look to confirm what it was.
*You must not look it in the eye. You must never look.*
The sound of screams, strengthening, strengthening, strengthening, served to confirm it for me.
*The old King who dwells in these forests cannot bear the shame.*
I wrapped my arms around her head, my veins rushing with adrenaline. My eyes were shut tight, refusing to look outside. The chorus of voices screamed melodies I did not know.
*Simply offer the flower, unlooking, and you may return home.*
I felt the stiffness of my friend's body. Through my arm I could feel the vibration of her throat. She too was screaming. But I could not pick her individual voice out of the chorus. Instead, I noticed that the screams emanated from a source right above my head.
I scrambled to look for the flower.
*If you do not have a flower, then well, no one has returned to tell us their story.*
I couldn't find the flower in my pocket. In my panic to save my friend I must've dropped it on the steps somewhere. I wanted to cry. I definitely did.
The being above my head moved past me. I felt its every movement. It was as if the world was breaking around it in some unexplainable sense. An infinite cold wrapped it, dragging along where it moved, like the robes of a king of the void.
I felt its presence move towards the floor, casting a frigid breeze. The cold cut against my skin. My heart threatened to jump out of my chest. I held my friend tighter.
There was a pause, then, in the being's actions. Mere moments, possibly, but to us it felt like eons. The cold grew a fraction warmer, the screams surrounding us seemed to suddenly quiet, and then as suddenly as everything came, it disappeared.
We stayed there for a long time, unable to move or open our eyes. Only when I could see the light of the moon brightly against my eyelids did I dare to even open them. And once our eyes were open, we both ran like hell back to our homes. I did not bother to pick up the lanterns we dropped. They were unlit.
It was then I learned never to go near the forest at night.
I never brought up the topic to anyone, and my friend did not either. We were resolute in deciding we would not be caught having broken the old superstition. But as I struggled to sleep many nights, I questioned what happened to the moon. Where all the flowers went, and what the presence was.
I would later find out what that old tower really was. Or moreso, what it really meant to the mythical king Odysseus.