Folding rose petals goes like this: one, two, inside, outside, twist. On this side is the world Beatrice knows–houses spaced at cozy intervals, eggs that fry into blobby shapes, water that is made from those two common elements (hydrogen and oxygen). On this side, there is walking to work on sidewalks with makers’ markings stamped into the cement (which no one ever notices), so many feet in their normal shoes. Card tables, dog-eared books, laundry with lace shawls for fancy occasions, shawls so delicate they are more air than fabric, patterned with a single motif.
On this side, Beatrice is a librarian who can bake the most delicious strawberry tarts. She has a degree in mathematics and a penchant for books that never explain themselves. Every Sunday, Beatrice finds versions of herself in other worlds. She peers into their lives through the openings she can make, but no matter what she does, those other Beatrices never look back at her. She wishes that, just once, they would see her, too. But wouldn’t it be worse for them to look at her, in her wool shawl and sensible shoes, with her timid smile, and turn away again? She’s the sort of person who everyone forgets to invite to parties. She reads too late into the night; she never knows the right thing to say when someone has a minor pain; she actually enjoys unloading the dishwasher, putting each spoon in its proper place. What if, out of all the Beatrices in all possible worlds, she is the only one who is too dull to be worth watching?
Beatrice takes a rose petal and goes: one, two, inside, outside, twist. She pricks her finger and falls into a deep meditation, only a little blood rolling down her skin until everything wobbles and joins up and finds her.
On the other side of the rose petal, there is another Beatrice whose eyes glow golden. She hates her given name and insists that everyone call her Feetrice. Her arms are furred like a bear’s and her toenails are three inches long, a modest length. When a bird made of playing cards lands on the windowsill asking for pie with its beak all made of stars (for the suits here are stars, crowns, hands, and ravens), she shoos him away with a flick of her wrist. When the bird doesn’t leave, she pries off her hand and throws it at him, then immediately regrets it. It will take hours to grow a new one.
On this side, where Beatrice meditates with blood dried on her finger, she hears the cry of a robin. If she opens her eyes, everything will fold together. One, two, inside, outside, twist.
On the other side of the rose petal, Feetrice prepares for a party, which is difficult to do with one hand. She fluffs the fur on her arms, drapes herself in a shawl sewn from bark, and paints her lips with the Duke’s blood until they glimmer glitter-bright. The Duke is coming to kill her; he wants to stab his tainted claw into her heart until she turns to glass. The other guests will be better mannered, and if they sing too loudly or eat too many cakes or submerge themselves in the pond she has made of her tears and fingernails and water composed of those two typical elements (frisson and mint), she won’t mind.
The bird of cards opens his mouth of stars and calls out that the guests are arriving.
On this side, Beatrice shifts, careful not to lean against the rosebush. The wind on her face is cool, the sun like the touch of a daisy. The robin cries out, but she cannot understand what he is saying because here, on this side, she does not speak the language of birds.
On the other side, Feetrice welcomes her guests, even the Duke, the tines of his claw coated in silver. He has dressed up for her party, has even painted a sharp grin across his features with purple sap, and he’s used her blood to slick back his hair.
Feetrice takes his hand (the left hand, the one that’s not a claw), motions to the frogs to start croaking, and whirls him into a waltz. The other guests give them room to dance. Some pick up the cakes, made from sweet lemon and cream, that have been left on upturned stumps.
“I believe we waltzed to this song when you last killed me,” says the Duke.
“I’d hoped you had forgotten,” says Feetrice. The Duke had grown back, all but his right hand.
“A hand for a hand,” says the Duke. “A heart for a heart.”
The frogs croak in measured beats. They are arranged in a line from largest to smallest, their slick skin glinting in all varieties of green, their sticky legs resting comfortably on damp moss.
On this side, Beatrice leans too far into the rosebush, which pricks her cheek. In shock, she opens her eyes.
She opens her eyes, and everything goes: one, two, inside, outside, twist.
The Duke looks at Beatrice on this side, sees Beatrice on this side, and even though her arms are without fur and her toenails are unreasonably short, he recognizes her.
“That’s fine,” he says. “I only need to kill one of you. Either one will do.”
He reaches out and through, and the silver-tinted tines plunge into Beatrice’s heart, the heart that rests on this side, the side of eggs frying and cement sidewalks, the side with a robin who is red as blood.
With care, he moves the tines. He goes: one, two, inside, outside, twist.
On the other side of Beatrice’s heart, a woman throws up her arms to receive the crown that is coming down upon her head, another Beatrice in another world. Both Beatrice and Feetrice gasp as this new woman, this third woman, this other version of themselves, smiles at them with her delicate teeth. She is surrounded by the blackness of space and the bright glow of celestial wonders.
Her eyes are twin green fires and her skin is smooth as a ruby. She wears a shawl that stretches out to forever, scooping up galaxies and the space between.
A crowd has gathered to witness her coronation. The Queen of Stars, they chant.
The Queen of Stars had never wanted to be queen. Queens cannot forget themselves in the vast caverns of the Slithering Silence or make the wandering pilgrimage to the place of crooked stones. They are not allowed to dance for centuries with the foxes of Bathorn or devote their lives to the growth of one perfect flower. Still, a position of royalty does have its benefits.
For example, the Queen of Stars can see into the other side. All of those other sides.
She gently places the crown upon her head (for she must take it herself, no one can give it to her), and the power that glides through her is like a cool descent into twilight, then everything in her body turns to delicious fire. Yes, perhaps she will like being queen, after all.
The crowd around her folds into pleasing shapes. From among them, she will choose one to be her royal gardener, a position higher than even the king (no one cares what a king does, if he immerses himself in the sugar-walls of his palace or throws himself upon a chessboard). She will pick the person who can fold themselves into the most perfect rose.
On this side, near the rosebushes, Beatrice’s blood drips into puddles in the dirt, sinking to the roots of the roses, submerging them in her iron-rich red. She wills Feetrice and the Queen of Stars to look at her, to finally look at her, but they are both preoccupied. Even now, when her blood stains the ground a vivid red, she is not interesting enough to draw their attention.
On the other side of the rose petal, Feetrice ruffles her arm-fur and says to the Duke, “Why did you do that?” If she had both hands, she would grab him by his coat lapels. Her right hand is slowly forming, skin appearing in whorls like lace, but her fingers are still missing.
The Duke bows to her, smiling with wolf teeth.
“I find it very offensive that you think I am so interchangeable,” says Feetrice.
“Perhaps, next time, you will invite me to your party,” says the Duke.
“I invited you,” says Feetrice. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“You did not,” says the Duke. “The bird with the beak of stars had to tell me.”
In the corner, the bird made of playing cards chirps. His beak is full of pie, silly thing.
Had she really forgotten to invite the Duke? The whole party was on his account. How else was she supposed to impress him with her new pond? How else was she supposed to get close enough to steal a flake of silver from his claw? How else would he see her lip paint made of his blood?
On the other side of the heart, the Queen of Stars lets her gaze wander across the other places, the other sides. She sees worlds of emerald and gauze; great pinnacles of obsidian; she sees an island where secrets are tucked into fish that dart through purple oceans. In each world, she finds those other versions of herself–an explorer with hair tied up in sensible braids, a bookish hedgehog, a volcano whose core is filled with fireflies, an archivist, a schoolteacher who is scared of the letter “w,” a cozy house tucked into a little wood.
She sees the version of herself with fur on her arms and long toenails, the one standing next to a man with a sliver-tipped claw, who is glaring at her and saying, “Not another one, just what I need,” and the Queen of Stars wants to give her some advice, which is that in this life, there is no other one but you.
Between all three worlds, the croaking of frogs echoes, perfectly in tune. The frogs aren’t going to stop because of a little disagreement, a little blood; they’ve practiced too hard to leave off in the middle of a song.
On this side, Beatrice cannot speak. Her chest feels like a small fire, well lit, full of desiccated kindling and broken sticks. And still, no one will look at her.
Beatrice gathers her will. She is a librarian, a cataloger, excellent at sorting things into their proper places. She is not ashamed of her wool shawl. Of her sensible shoes. The only thing that scares her about death is all the unread books she will be leaving behind. She has never met a hedgehog she didn’t like. If this is all she has to show to the world, it will have to be enough.
She will make the others look at her. They will finally see.
Beatrice gathers her words around the silence stuck in her throat and sends them outward. There are words she cannot say, so she throws each one into the beak of the bird made of cards (of stars, of crowns, of hands, of ravens).
The bird made of cards speaks for Beatrice, regurgitating the words she gave him and enunciating each syllable with his beak of stars. “I have seen you so often,” says the bird in Beatrice’s voice, “but you have never seen me.”
Finally, they look at Beatrice, all of them–the Duke and the frogs, the woman with rainbow eyes, all the coronation guests, Feetrice and the Queen of Stars. She absorbs the weight of their stares and stores this moment in the place in her heart the Duke did not destroy. Beatrice stares back at them and does not blink, chin jutting proudly, ready at last to reveal whatever their scrutiny shows, whatever truth sits within her, on this side.
The Queen of Stars examines Beatrice, all of her vast power and intellect momentarily focused in one place. She sees Beatrice as she truly is–a woman who has never been afraid to know anything, everything. The Queen of Stars makes a plan. Now that she knows who Beatrice is, where she is, she will continue to watch her, looking through the opening of her heart.
When Feetrice casts her gaze over Beatrice, her eyes narrow. “This is my story,” says Feetrice, all fur and toenails and fury. “Mine. You stole my death.”
Beatrice wants to respond, but she feels faint from blood loss and instead crumples into an undignified slump.
“Oh, here,” says the Queen of Stars. She reaches out and refolds Beatrice’s heart so that it is no longer rifted: one, two, inside, outside, twist. But the Queen of Stars leaves a peephole so she can peer through.
The fiery feeling in Beatrice’s chest goes out, and only when the pain is gone does she realize how intense it had been; its absence is like silence after the constant clanging of a carillon, a total hush. Her chest is sticky and warm with blood, but she is unharmed.
Feetrice says, “Don’t you touch me, too.” She is speaking to the Queen of Stars, but it is the Duke who releases her.
“I have pierced your heart because you have pierced mine,” he says.
“It was not even my heart you pierced. It was hers.”
On the other side of the heart, through a peephole as small as the breath of a sparrow, the Queen of Stars flicks Beatrice’s blood from her hands. She rolls up the blood and crystalizes it, carving it into a perfect rose. Scanning the contorted crowd, she finds a woman with rainbow eyes and hands her the rose. The royal gardener is chosen!
The rainbow-eyed woman accepts her power gracefully. She will rule over the gardens with kindness and only a dash of terror. Her roses will reach up to the sky, singing for the queen. Her marigolds will whisper secrets, and the blue, frizzed cups of her morning glories will produce a truth serum so powerful that even the bears will fear it. When an assassin comes on the twelfth night of the celebration of doors, hunting for the head of the royal gardener for his collection of living trophies, the rainbow-eyed woman will–
“It is not her story,” says Feetrice, her fierce teeth bared. “It is mine.”
“I am sorry that I did not kill you,” says the Duke, his eyes softening in that annoying way of his. Feetrice does not need apology eyes on top of everything else. This party has been a disaster. At least her hand has finally grown back. Her thumb is longer than it used to be, but otherwise, her right hand is the same as it always was.
“I did not want you to kill me, anyway,” says Feetrice.
“It’s only that my hand never grew back. Revenge, you know. A hand for a hand.”
The frogs croak knowingly. They understand too much of revenge. They have seen it all.
“Are you asking for my hand?” says Feetrice. She pries off her right hand and gives it to the Duke. “Here, take it.”
He removes his claw and replaces it with her hand, flexing the fingers. “It moves nicely, indeed.”
“And since I’m giving things out.” Feetrice breaks off a bit of her toenail, reaches out, reaches through Beatrice’s chest as if reaching into a can of paint, and sticks the toenail over the hole in Beatrice’s heart.
Of course, the Queen of Stars can still see through the toenail. The Queen of Stars can see through anything.
Feetrice kneels near the discarded claw and scrapes off a lick of silver. She will use it to decorate the bridge of her nose, and every time the Duke sees her, he will remember how she once bested him.
“I am having a party next Meadow-day,” says the Duke.
“Are you telling me because you plan to invite me or because you want me to wallow outside your window in ostracized agony?” asks Feetrice.
“I am inviting all of you,” he says, producing invitations for Feetrice, and Beatrice, and the Queen of Stars.
“All of us?” says Feetrice, dismayed.
The scrawl on the invitation is indecipherable to Beatrice, but she can’t tell if it’s written in a different language or if it’s just that the Duke’s handwriting is really that bad. The paper is the color of a purple carrot, all bordered in silver filigree.
“Should I bring anything?” asks Beatrice, and her voice ringing through all of these worlds breaks something, fragments something, so that soon she is alone, a woman covered in blood, sitting by a rosebush. It is nightfall, shadows everywhere, and when the robin chirps, his open beak looks like it’s full of stars.
On this side, Beatrice goes home and wraps herself in her lace shawl, wondering if it is appropriate for a party. She imagines it stretching out to forever, and if it scratches her with bark-like softness, she will only sigh. Her heart is a window with shutters made of toenails, but no one on this side can see that this is so.
On this side, she will wake up tomorrow and fry her blobby eggs, drink her water made of hydrogen and oxygen, walk to work on the sidewalks with their makers’ markings, and if the Queen of Stars looks out through the peephole in Beatrice’s heart (for the Queen of Stars has learned the art of multitasking, and thus can look through hearts while ruling a universe and eating a breakfast of strawberry tarts and deciphering an invitation from a Duke who it appears really does want her to bring an entire swamp to his party), she will whisper to Beatrice to fold her lace shawl.
Because, on the other side of the lace shawl, there is another Beatrice who is a cozy house tucked into a little wood, and if you ask her, she might tell you (in the language of doors and boards and thatch roofs) that there is no this side, or that side, or other side. There is only one side, and to get there, you only need to go: one, two, inside, outside, twist.
Beth Goder’s stories have appeared in venues such as Escape Pod, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Flash Fiction Online, Apex, Strange Horizons, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. She loves chocolate, hiking, and checking out too many books from the library. You can find her online at http://www.bethgoder.com
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