The Seven Gifts (13 page)

Life for George was certainly not what he
would have wished for himself. The Queen paid him little; his house
leaked; and his wife, a slatternly woman who did no more than she
had to, was the sort who only stopped nagging in order to voice a
genuine grievance. There was little comfort for him there.

The only joy in George's life lay in tending
gardens. He loved plants. There was a natural harmony to their
lives, a balanced flow of patterns, that he had never found in his.
He cherished his plants, talked to them, encouraged them. He was,
an extremely good gardener.

But he did not like this new palace garden.
There was something wrong, something he could not get to grips
with. However tenderly he cared for them, his plants just would not
grow properly. They barely managed to stagger out of the soil, and
were even then stunted, sickly and threadbare. Leaves would die and
fall off for no apparent reason. Vegetables were small and
tasteless, while flowers often did not bloom at all. If it had not
been for the weeds, he would have known there was something wrong
with the soil. He could have treated it, or even changed it.

But the weeds - and they were plants after
all - grew like wildfire, with no encouragement from him
whatsoever. If the weeds grew, so should the plants. But they did
not.

Perhaps he just did not spend enough time
with them. He seemed to spend so much of each day chopping out
weeds, there was little time left for the flowers and vegetables.
The weeds grew everywhere, and the faster he raked them out the
faster they seemed to grow.

He tried digging them up. He tried burning
them. He tried poisoning them. But they just seemed to pop up again
as though nothing had happened.

Finally, in desperation, with his garden
looking more like a jungle, he went to seek the advice of the Old
Wise Woman who lived in the forest. He had known her for many
years, and on past occasions when he had consulted her with
problems she had never been wrong. Devious sometimes; obscure
frequently; but never wrong. On the other hand she would not always
give advice on the problem proffered. Sometimes she would discuss
an entirely different matter, apparently unrelated. He always
discovered eventually that the advice given was closer to the real
heart of the problem than had been the question asked. At other
times she would simply refuse to say anything at all. On these
occasions the apparent trouble simply sorted itself out.

George often had the uncomfortable feeling
that the old woman knew and understood far more than she ever let
on. But whatever else happened, she was always sympathetic, so he
went to see her. He told neither the Queen nor his wife, for both
disapproved most strongly of Old Wise Women and the like. To his
wife she was a witch; to the Queen, a senile old fool.

She had expected him, as she always did.
George could never fathom out how she knew when he was coming, but
she never failed to. It sometimes seemed that she knew before he
did. She gestured him to a chair opposite hers by the fire and
poured him out a cup of tea, home-made from various herbs gathered
in the forest.

Her little cottage was cosy, but simple. She
had no possessions to speak of. She would point to her head when
asked what she owned, and the sky when asked what she needed. She
spoke little. Her age was anyone's guess.

The two of them sat quietly by the fire
supping their tea. The old lady smoked, filling her pipe with the
gift of tobacco brought by the gardener. After a while she looked
at George and shook her head slowly.

“You can do nothing, old man," she said. He
had not asked her anything as yet, but she knew, somehow, why he
was there. If she had not had such kind, gentle eyes, it would have
been most unnerving. But her deep, grey, gentle eyes spoke of an
inner goodness. If she knew something, it was right that she
should. As was the way she came about it. George just sat and
listened, and the old lady continued:

“There is a lack of harmony in your garden,
but there is nothing anyone can do. The garden reflects the city,
which is full of sickness. The sickness in the city spreads to your
garden, and the flowers do not grow straight and strong. The
vegetables are not healthy. The leaves die. Only the weeds prosper,
as they do in the city.

“It is a natural cycle, a small part of the
overall pattern. Its end will come when it is due. Only time will
cure your garden, as only time will cure the city." The old lady
leaned back in her chair and drew slowly on her pipe.

George was worried.

“Is there nothing I can do?" he pleaded.
“The Queen will surely sack me if the garden does not improve soon,
and I have a wife and three idle sons to feed. I will never get
another job after being sacked by the Queen. Have you nothing that
will kill the weeds?" he asked.

The old lady seemed to think for a moment.
Then, without any trace of arrogance, she said simply: “I, of
course, can cure your garden, just as I could cure the sickness in
the city. But interfering with the natural order of things can
produce terrible troubles, far worse perhaps than the ones you have
cured. However, I may be able to do something here. You must let me
think for a while. It will need to be done very carefully. Come
back and see me again tomorrow."

That night George was called before the Snow
Queen to explain the state of the garden.

“An absolute disgrace," she had thundered.
“I do not pay you inflated wages to grow a field full of weeds. I
cannot eat weeds. I cannot decorate my chambers with weeds. What is
the good of my paying a gardener to grow weeds? The woods are full
of weeds. I do not want them in my garden, do you understand?" The
Queen had that delightful habit, so beloved of those in power, of
reiterating the obvious; and the paranoiac tendency to assume that
any error or misfortune is a deliberate plot by underlings to stab
her in the back. For underlings it can be very tiresome, and
timewasting. The time spent listening to such diatribes can usually
be spent more profitably attending to the problem. In this
particular case, of course, it could not, but at least George could
have been doing something constructive, like watching a quiz show
on the television.

But there was little solace for him at home
when his wife found out he was on the verge of losing his job. By
the time George reached the old lady's cottage the next afternoon,
after yet another browbeating from his sons, he was ready to sell
his soul to the devil if it meant ridding his garden of weeds.

Fortunately that did not prove necessary.
The old lady had devised a plan.

“Now listen carefully," she said, when he
had seated himself and handed over some more tobacco. She gave him
a small sack filled with a fine powder. “Sprinkle this over the
weeds when you get home," she went on, “and by tomorrow morning
they will all have died, except one. That one cannot be killed, and
under no circumstances must you attempt to do so. It is there to
maintain the continuation of the natural cycle, and thus prevent a
complete rupturing of the fabric of events. You are to look after
it as you do your flowers - water it and nourish it. Cherish it
even, for it will bear tiny white flowers. If it strangles the
vegetables nearby, you must allow it to do so. I repeat: under no
circumstances must you ever attempt to kill it. If you do, I will
not be able to help you. Now go home, but remember what I have told
you."

George went home clutching the sack of
powder, a very relieved man. An end to the weeds at last, he
thought. His job was safe. Perhaps, now, his wife might even stop
her incessant complaining. He lived in hopes. He even smiled.

Immediately on arriving at the garden he set
to work with the powder, sprinkling it carefully and thoroughly
over every single weed. Then he went home, contented and hopeful,
and left the powder to do its work.

The next day George was down at the garden
early, full of anticipation. And sure enough - he could hardly
believe his eyes - it had worked. Not only had the weeds died, but
they had disappeared completely. There was not a sign of a weed,
dead or alive, anywhere. It was as though a gang of ten men had
gone through with hoes during the night, then gathered up the weeds
and burnt them. The garden was immaculate.

It was only when he went on a close
inspection that he saw it, and remembered the old lady's warning.
Right outside the Queen's garden door stood a single weed, on the
very edge of the broccoli. It was about two feet tall, with long
tendrils spreading across the soil towards the nearest of the
vegetables. At the very top of its stem was a delicate crown of
tiny white flowers. It was actually quite pretty. George decided he
could live with that.

The garden blossomed. George's once-puny
vegetables thickened out and grew and grew. His flowers bloomed as
never before, filling the air with the fragrance of a thousand
scents. And he was never troubled with weeds. Even the slugs and
destructive insects seemed to avoid the garden. Only the
exquisitely-patterned butterflies flitted around the plants on
sunny days, the delicate hues of their fragile wings glinting and
flickering in the sunlight. Wild bees purred from flower to flower,
picking up and spreading the pollen to fertilise and rejuvenate a
garden of which George was now justly proud.

Even the Queen was pleased. Not that she
ever stepped into the garden, but the vegetables were the sweetest
and finest she had ever tasted, the flowers the admiration of all
her visitors. They seemed to fill her chambers with a very special
beauty, an indefinable sense of tranquillity. But when she asked
George how he had done it, he just smiled and said it was the
soil.

Nonetheless, she increased his wages; and
even his wife seemed to grumble a little less than usual. They were
happy times for George, but he never forgot his promise to the old
lady. The weed with the tiny white flowers was treated as well as
the rest, and he ignored the fact that the vegetables immediately
surrounding it were no better than they had been before. It was a
small price to pay. And although he could not understand why one
little weed should be so important, he had sufficient faith in the
old lady's wisdom to accept the fact.

But one day the Queen did come into the
garden. So overwhelmed was she by the quality of the produce and
the amazement of her friends, none of whose gardens could produce
the like, she decided that she had to see this extraordinary place
for herself. She also had the sneaking suspicion that more lay
behind the transformation than met the eye. All the gardener would
ever say, no matter how much she pressed him, was that the soil was
especially good. Why it had suddenly become so good, he would never
say. But she was certain he knew. And she wanted to know. She was
the Queen, and the people could have no secrets from her. So she
arranged a tour of inspection.

She brought with her the Minister of
Agriculture (who could produce no theories whatever to explain the
sudden and miraculous fertility of this garden), the Minister of
Technology (who was quite convinced that some amazing technological
discovery was at the root of it), and the Chief of the State Police
(who was certain that with a little persuasion the gardener would
explain all). And George, clearly very reluctant, showed them
around his garden.

Up and down the rows they walked, George
pointing out particular items of interest, and trying to sound
enthusiastic. The two ministers babbled excitedly, while the Queen
simply looked around and made the occasional comment. The Chief of
Police followed along behind, watching George carefully. The old
gardener could feel those eyes piercing the back of his neck.

But, despite George's forebodings, nothing
untoward happened, until they finished the tour outside the back
door of the palace. The Queen stopped abruptly, then pointed.

“What is that?" she uttered in a tone of
distaste. George's heart sank as his eyes followed the pointing
fingers down towards the weed with its crown of tiny white flowers.
His brain raced.

“Er ... um ... it's a new type of flower
we're trying out, Your Majesty," he stammered, most unconvincingly.
The Police Chief's eyebrows shot up in suspicion and he stepped
closer.

But the Queen's brain worked on more direct
lines.

“Flower?" she snorted. “That's a weed; in my
garden. What is that weed doing here, gardener, right outside my
back door? I thought you had got rid of them all. You assured me
they were all gone." She glared accusingly at poor George, who was
not feeling happy at all.

“Er ... we ..ll," he stuttered, “it's only a
little one, Your Majesty. And it's not doing any harm tucked away
over here."

“Harm?!" the Queen yelled, turning decidedly
angry. She waved her arm about her. “Look at those broccoli: dying,
all of them. Next thing the whole garden will be overrun again."
She turned to George and pointed at the weed. “Get rid of it," she
commanded.

George had turned white. “I ... I ... I ....
I c-c-can't d-d-do that," he said finally, desperately trying to
get the words out. He looked ill.

“Dammit man," the Queen snarled. “What's the
matter with you? Do as I say."

George looked as though he was about to
faint. He was swaying on his feet, mouth wide open, but he could
produce no words. All he could think of was the old lady's warning.
She had been very serious, and quite adamant that he never damage
the weed. Nothing, but nothing would induce him to so much as touch
it. The old lady was not one to jest.

But the Queen was now beside herself with
rage, her face suffused with pink blotches. She was not used to
being disobeyed. The Minister of Agriculture stepped forward past
the white and trembling gardener, and indicated the weed. “Shall I
dispose of it, Ma'am?" he offered. “This man," pointing to George,
“is clearly not well." He was not an unkind man.