Page 118 of The Alchemists

“You may persuade me to help you. By moonrise, bring me something truly unique, unlike anything else in this world, and I will lead you to my father’s chambers.”

The moon, of course, pouring silver light into the tower, had already fully risen. The assassin pointed out this fact.

“Then—” she smiled. “I suggest you choose either the first option or come back tomorrow.”

He realized that this maiden, with no protection but her wits, possessed more bravery than any man—be they soldier, assassin, or Magician—that he had ever met. The choice was, of course, no choice at all.

Drinking in the sight of her once more, he vaulted out the window and climbed down the tower, already planning possible treasures to bestow upon her.

The next night, he returned bearing a flower that would never lose its bloom, but the maiden was unimpressed, having an entire such garden within the castle grounds. Over the next month, the assassin brought her trinkets and treasures, searching for them further and further afield—slippers that would allow her to dance without tiring (her response: “But I have no partner with whom to dance), a bird whose song was so beautiful it caused all listeners to weep (her response: “I have had enough of tears”)—and each night the moon rose earlier and earlier.

The assassin knew, as he climbed the side of the tower in broad daylight, the outline of his body a shimmering patch in the air, that the tables had turned, and now he was the one playing a dangerous game for which he might pay with his life.

Finally, as the moon waned and became a dark spot against a darker sky, he climbed the tower empty-handed, ready to admit his defeat. The maiden looked surprised to see him as he landed softly on the stone floor.

“But there is no moonrise tonight,” she said. “The sky is empty.”

He hung his head. “I have come to say goodbye. I cannot kill you, and I cannot give you anything truly unique.”

To his embarrassment, she laughed.

“Men are all so silly. You think you must give me tokens and trifles, but the whole time you have had what I want. Each night I wait for you to bestow it, and each night you leave without doing so.”

The assassin was confused. “Then what do you want?”

“You have already brought it. You have it with you now.”

He looked around the room, now piled with rarities. The slippers lay discarded in the corner; the songbird perched, sleeping on the headboard. The maiden sighed haughtily.

“Must I do everything myself?” she said, taking his face in her hands and kissing him gently.

“A kiss?” He pulled away, bewildered. “What is unique about a kiss?”

“What isn’t unique?” she replied. His heart had already known it secretly, before his mind, that he loved her. “Every kiss is unique, and this one more so, because it is between us, and because it is the first.”

“The first?” he asked.

“You are not very bright,” she said, but she said it with a smile, and pulled him to her bed to show him what she meant.

Of course, like all beautiful things that spring from delicate roots, their love could not last the winter. One night, as the assassin climbed the tower and the moon carved a silver path over the frosted land, he was seen. By that time, desire was not the only seed that had grown from their love.

The king’s Magicians hurled him down from the tower with spells that shook the castle’s foundations. The maiden could only watch, horrified, as they fished him from the freezing water and bound him in iron.

The king brought both of them before his throne, kneeling in chains of enchanted silver. Neither of them begged forgiveness, as he so desired.

He thought it would be a simple matter, dispatching the former assassin, but his daughter hurled herself in front of the rogue, claiming that the king could not kill the father of her child. Since death would not do, he ordered his strongest Magicians to find something better—worse—to punish them.

His Magicians were clever and determined men, and they knew the cost of failure. For months they tried many things as the seed inside the maiden grew. It was that seed that gave the High Magician the idea for another. He traveled to a remote moor containing the ruins of another castle. The war that had felled this kingdom had been long and cruel. None had prevailed, and the earth below the castle had gorged itself on the blood of many lives. Where blood had spilled grew a blue flower—lovely, and strange, and wrong. The moor around the castle and the ruins were carpeted in such blooms.

The Magician harvested many of these flowers. In his laboratory he pulped the flowers and made paper speckled with the seeds. He spoke the king’s intention to it day and night as he watered it with the blood of the princess and her lover until a shoot—black-stalked with vividly red leaves—twisted up through the dirt.

He

“Where’s the rest of it?”

Seb looked up from the book, its last pages messily torn from the spine, in dismay.

“I suspect it’s been ash for some time.”