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FROZEN FLOWERS
He was so cold.
The warmth had long since left his bones, and the cold had replaced it.
He felt like he was dying.
Maybe hell would be warmer.
He deserved it anyway.
He saw a bright light; it looked like warmth.
He kept crawling.
When he reached it, the light blinded him and he slumped, then collapsed.
H e w a s s o c o l d .
He saw light, so much light. Is this death? “Hello?” called an unfamiliar voice.
As he opened his eyes, he saw brightness, gold and white.
“Oh! You’re awake!”
He struggled to a sitting position, then realizing he had been lying on something soft.
A bed.
“What’s your name? I’m Alexis.”
The voice, Alexis, was leaning over him and tilting her head.
“Leon”
His voice sounded croaky and dry.
Alexis smiled.
“Hello Leon!”
He was in a temple and had been for some days before he woke up.
Apparently, he had been found by Alexis, barely alive on the steps leading up to the temple’s back door.
He was given a room, fed some soup and left alone.
He realized for the first time, for a long, long time he was warm, so warm.
After he gained some more consciousness, he looked around at his new room.
It was small, lightly decorated and a pleasant, simply coloured.
It was more then he deserved, as the traitor he was.
Over many weeks he got better and less cold. He did notice, however, that there was a rot slowly creeping up his arms, a bruised, deep, rotted patch of skin that was getting bigger and bigger. If he pressed at it, he could feel all the way to his bones.
Climbing up and up like a punishment.
Alexis took good care of him, she lived at this temple and worshipped its goddess, a feared and loved wife of shadow and bringer of light.
When Leon started walking around more, he and Alexis walked around the temple more, Alexis had curly brown hair, kind, sage green eyes and was a little taller than him,
The temple was ever splendid, a rippling ocean of gold and green and white.
When he was well enough to wonder around on his own, he noticed that there was a gloom surrounding the temple. It didn’t fit, the temple was warm, loving like a mother’s hug.
So why did it seem so cold?
Leon asked Alexis why and she hesitantly replied
“Some of the temple girls have been going missing…”
Alexis took a sharp intake of breath,
“Only to be found a few days later… with all their veins and arteries missing. Even with faces mutilated.”
Alexis looked close to tears, refusing to meet Leon’s eyes.
Leon was shocked, how could someone do something like this to those young girls.
Maybe he could help, maybe he could give back to the temple, maybe he could repent, and find who did this.
He could help.
When Leon asked if he could try and solve the murders, Alexis seemed shocked, but supportive. She told him that the girls had been disappearing and being found in the woods surrounding the temple. “Maybe you were even brought by the Goddess to help solve these murders!”
Alexis seemed very exited about the prospect of that idea.
She told him that some priestesses in the temple had thought that the veins and arteries were taken to create a symbol for a ritual to give unimaginable powers.
According to them, Alexis said, for maximum potency, the veins had to be dried and crushed up then poured on the ground in shape of the symbol.
That sounded… morbid.
It took longer than he would have liked to mostly heal, but it happened, the rot had slowed, and he could walk much better. Alexis said that the woods was the scene of the crime.
So that’s where he was.
The woods.
The same ones who had clawed at his rotting bones and drank his happiness like nectar.
He steps in.
It was so cold.
Leon had almost forgotten the cold.
He remembered it now.
He choked out a sob.
He had to do this.
He had to repent.
Shaky, tentative steps disturbed the peace of the forest.
He kept going.
It was dark and quiet and cold and cold and cold and cold and cold.
Something smelled like rotten flowers.
It was a body.
At the funeral a soft blanket was wrapped around him.
The body was burned, and the ashes were buried.
A girl with crow-black hair collected the ashes.
The dead girls name was Chloé Galanis, a young member of the temple.
There were a few people there, him, Alexis, the crow-haired girl, Chloé’s uncle nicknamed kin-slayer, a strange woman, and a few of her friends. Leon saw a bouquet of chrysanthemums, lotus flowers, monkey orchids and wormwood flowers.
Chloé had been dead for two days, when he found her.
If Leon wanted to solve this murder, then he needed suspects.
He asked Alexis if she knew any people that had known the victim.
“Uh, you mean Chloé? Well, her best friend was at the funeral, Eiko, the black haired one?”
Alexis seemed to hesitate.
Leon wondered why.
He was going to find the crow-haired, Eiko, girl he better get looking.
Most people would be at the markets at this time of day.
So that’s where he went, the markets.
It was a busy center of the small town that was mainly taken up by temple grounds.
And there was the crow haired girl, taking refuge from the sun behind the local tavern.
She looked in her mid to late teens, very pale skin, onyx eyes and the darkest hair he had ever seen. “Hello, I’m Leon, you where Chloe’s friend, Eiko right?”
The girl visibly flinched at the name and whirled around.
“Was. We weren’t friends when she died.”
She sounded so angry, like she could burst into tears or rage at any moment, then a flicker of recognition on her face. “Oh, you’re the one Alexis told me about, she thinks you where ‘chosen’”
When had Alexis told her about him?
Leon nodded then asked if Chloé had any enemies.
A darkened look crossed her face, onyx eyes fading to obsidian.
“Yeah, me.”
Well, there’s suspect one.
At dinner, Alexis made him bread and stew.
Why was she so kind to him?
He didn’t deserve it.
He was a traitor.
After he had eaten, Leon snuck into Chloé’s room Alexis showed it to him after the funeral.
It was wrong; to be doing this, he knew that, but he had to find more clues.
The room was like a grave.
Dead flowers, items so loved they were worn to shreds.
The room was silent, it had been well looked after before.
The curtains drawn, the bed made, and on the bed, was a book, as he got closer Leon realized it was a diary. Leon opened it.
On the smooth paper, the words grew increasingly frantic as he read, getting harder to read.
As the words kept coming, he learnt more and more.
From Chloé’s words a story was told, Leon learnt many things from this.
Eiko and Chloé where more than friends.
Eiko told Chloé that she didn’t like Chloé throwing her life away for others.
Eiko and Chloé had a bad fight.
Chloé thinks that Eiko hates her.
As he wondered back to his room, Leon saw a mirror.
His honey copper curls and grey eyes stared back at him, his freckles like constellations encircling his eyes and scattering his cheeks. His traitorous face stared emptily back at him, the same one who had betrayed the people who trusted him.
The rot had spread up his neck.
When did that happen?
Maybe he should find Alexis.
When he did find Alexis, she told him that a sacrificial dagger was found in the victim, a similar one had been found in all the bodies. Alexis showed him the dagger; she seemed hesitant but showed him anyway. “I really shouldn’t do this…”
Alexis seemed nervous, she was the one who had convinced the priestesses to let him stay, and he would feel bad if she got in trouble because of him but he needed to know. The box had been locked and sealed inside a vault deep into the temple, Leon didn’t know much about the hierarchy of this place, but he didn’t think Alexis should have the key to this box. Inside the box was a dagger.
It looked like a crystal shard, still bloodied from its latest victim.
He went back to his room, it was late, but he still had work to do.
Alexis was so kind to him, she had given him paper, out of her own wages and cared for him, like a mother soothing an ill child.
Leon noticed a lot of things that he noted down.
He noticed that the victim was missing a shoe,
he noticed that no matter how rude people where Alexis was always polite,
he noticed that Eiko was never included or trusted with anything,
he noticed that everyone was quiet when the strange woman who was at the funeral was around.
Speaking of the strange woman, she was at the temple again, she made everyone so uncomfortable, with her cruel words and wolfish smile.
Leon left the temple to walk in the forest.
He was scared of the forest, every time he was near, he could feel the cold seeping through the layers of warmth he horded like a lifeline, and whenever he strayed to close, he could still hear the winds scratching at his rot riddled soul, as he crawled to the light. But he had to find clues, so he went back to where Chloé died, followed the familiar path and saw a murder of crows. Then tripped.
Over a box.
He looked down, it was small and made of cypress, an expensive wood, and had a carving of a gardenia flower on the top. What was a box like that doing here?
Leon opened it, it was full of letters signed “to my dearest Alexis”
it was a letter exchange between Alexis and a well-known enemy general-ess. Alexis was having an affair with an enemy general.
The victim knew about it.
The latest letter exchange was about Chloé having found out about the affair from the letters, whist walking in the forest.
Did Alexis kill Chloé to keep her silent?
Alexis?
The one who made him soup and nursed him back to health?
Surely not, right?
When he got home Alexis was as smiley and kind as ever.
Leon told her what he had learnt so far (except for the letters) and she told him that if he wanted to know something the strange woman knew many things but to be wary. He asked her where she was on the night Chloé was killed, she smiled in an amused way and said that she had been with him, telling him stories.
Oh, right.
He remembered that.
Alexis told him that the strange woman’s name was Kleio.
She had been an enigma since she moved there years ago.
Leon wondered why Kleio had been at the funeral.
Kleio was dangerous.
Someone had seen her kill a dog with her bare hands.
He kept this in mind as he walked into the forest again.
It had been two days since he had found the letters.
Kleio lived far away from the temple.
In the woods.
The house breached the trees like an axe splitting a body.
Everything was green and brown and green and brown, except… a flash of colour, a shoe.
The same one missing from the victim.
He took the shoe and left.
He walked and walked, then ended up running into Eiko.
“Hey! Watch where- oh it’s you.”
Perfect, Eiko could confirm if this was the victim’s shoe or not.
So, Leon showed her the shoe and asked if it was Chloe’s.
“That’s not her’s, its two sizes too small.”
He wondered why she had memorized that.
And why she didn’t look sad.
It would make sense to be sad after your best friend died.
“Why aren’t you sad?”
Leon’s voice still croaked even after hundreds of cups of honeyed tea.
Eiko looked up at his voice, an expression of surprise turning to one of annoyance.
“Why would I be? After giving up on all her dreams and potential to appease others? Then accusing me of using her? Why should I morn her?”
Anger and pain bubbled up, mixing into Eiko’s frustrated words, like the first crack of thunder before a storm. Eiko sounded so hateful.
She looked like she could keep going but a temple goer tapped her on the shoulder.
“E-excuse me miss Eiko, um but Chloé left a letter for you when she died, i-I was told to uh give this to you…”
Eiko took the letter, sighed and turned to Leon.
“Just mind your business kid.”
Kid?
He was older than her.
Alexis seemed happy.
“How was your day today?”
She had cooked him dinner and was eating with him.
“It was okay, how was yours?”
Leon realized when Alexis stopped smiling, just how unhappy he sounded.
“My day has been good… have, I done something wrong?”
She was having an affair with an enemy general-ess, the one who was killing their people.
“No.”
Leon didn’t sound very convincing; Alexis’s face fell further.
“I’m going to sleep.”
He was, in fact, not going to sleep.
He was going to Kleio’s house.
As he walked the rot, he had been covering with bandages, made his head dizzy.
Kleio’s home was like a rotten corpse, with bones of wood jutting out from the body, and the smell of decay oozing from the flesh. She was waiting in the doorway.
“Did you need something?”
She knew what he wanted.
“Where were you when Chloé was killed?”
Kleio looked like a hawk whose mouse was trying in vain to escape.
She grinned.
“Don’t know.”
As she said this she shrugged.
“But what I do know is that little pest, was a nosy little mouse who couldn’t mind her business. She was practically asking for it.”
The shadows stretched on and on as Kleio’s smile did to.
“I didn’t kill her though, if I did that little girlfriend of hers would have found her.”
Leon left after that.
When he got back to the temple, he saw that Alexis was asleep. He felt bad for being cruel to her at dinner, he wasn’t much better.
Leon remembered the betrayed look on his allies and friends faces, the same people he had fought with through the wars.
The same ones who had trusted him.
And he had betrayed them; he had sold off their information like bread.
When he had been found out, he was abandoned in the cold.
It was so cold.
The next morning, it was quiet, no chatter from the temple goers, usually ever-present like beating lambs at the slaughterhouse. As he passed a mirror, he saw that the rot had climbed like poison ivy up the side of his face.
That would be hard to hide.
When he wondered outside, it was still dark, the sky an endless expanse of fading stars, it was early, that was why no one was out. As he kept walking, he noticed that the marketplace was quiet to, no one to hear, no one to see, no one to smell.
What was that smell?
It smelled like a rotten lily.
Said smell was coming from a very familiar corpse.
Eiko was dead.
Her head ripped from her body, lying a little bit away, blood pooling out beneath her like spilled tears, and a stab wound in her stomach.
Eiko was holding a piece of paper, she was clutching it like it could save her from the world. It was the letter she was handed yesterday, from Chloé.
Leon read it.
Chloé had written it because she knew she was going to die.
It told Eiko that Chloé still loved her, even after the fight, and about the secrets Chloé held. Chloé had gone to Kleio’s house after the fight to prove herself and found a diary entry that Kleio had written when she was young.
Eiko had told Chloé that something was wrong with Kleio.
Something like a wolf circling a group of young lambs.
The diary entry told of something.
Something wrong.
Something evil.
Kleio had killed her baby brother.
Not out of rage or jealousy.
Just to see if she could get away with it.
Leon needed to tell Alexis about this.
He needed to repent.
Leon ran as fast as he could.
But when he got to the temple, there was yet another letter.
Alexis had run away with that enemy general.
He wished he had been able to say goodbye.
Tears rolled down his rot-riddled face.
He was alone.
It was so cold.
With Eiko and Alexis gone, only one person could have slaughtered those girls.
Kleio’s home was cold.
Leon opened the door.
And there, sitting on a chair, smiling like she was a god, was Kleio.
Wiping blood off the same type of sacrificial dagger that had killed so many innocents.
She saw him, she smiled.
The chase began.
Leon ran and ran and ran and ran run run Run RuN RUN RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN
The trees where like prison guards hindering his escape.
The monster behind him walked.
Then broke into a run.
A murder of crows, a slaughter of lambs.
Young girls killed.
Mutilated.
Harvested.
Like crushed flowers, stripped of petals.
Faster, FASTER. RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN
A lose twig.
A trip.
A stumble.
A laugh from behind.
The slash of a dagger.
The trees like bones.
The stones like the ones who broke them.
It was so cold.
He was so cold.
The rot blurred his vision and poisoned his mind.
Then, like a blade sliced through silk.
A damp crunch.
A thud.
Leon turned and saw Kleio’s lifeless body.
With a knife through the back of her neck.
Nothing moved.
Alexis, Eiko, Kleio.
All gone.
If none of them were here.
Then what was?
Kleio had only been dead for a few seconds.
iT WAs StiLL cLosE.
The birds crawled over the sky like flies over a lifeless corpse.
Deep in the forest, a field of flowers had bloomed.
Like grieving children, yearning for warmth.
There is something rotten in me