Author’s Note: Written for CABB’s Septempber 25th, 2024 Anniversary Challenge
~ Say It With Flowers ~

* * * * *

In Eastern lands they talk in flow’rs
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowr’s
On its leaves a mystic language bears.

        ~ James Gates Percival

Voices rumbled from the classroom archives chamber. Samantha’s … Kipper’s … Eric’s … Familiar, easygoing chatter. But then …

“It’s dumb, and I’m not gonna do it.”

The boy growled his declaration, but underneath … misery quivered.

Everything – the words, the desperate, defiant tone, the seep of fear – rushed him back in time.

He’d heard those words before.

He stepped from the dimmer corridor into the light spilling from the wide-arched doorway. Stacks of old and battered suitcases lined the chamber’s chiseled walls, each with a tag tethered to a handle. Samantha roamed from one leather tower to another while her companions … two of them … sat at a library table, scissors at hand, combing through crackling magazines and age-softened pages loosed from books with broken bindings.

Only Evan stood alone in the center of the chamber, his arms more wrapped around himself than crossed. He scuffed at the stone floor with the toe of his boot.

“Come on! It’s fun!” Samantha encouraged without turning from her quest. “Now what year am I looking for?”

“May I help you find something?” Vincent offered and everyone looked up and around, everyone, save Evan, with a grin on their faces.

“Vincent!” Samantha crowed. “Yes! I’m looking for Flower Day, Year One. All the material Marguerite saved when she started the tradition. Jude said since it was his first year teaching Below and his first Flower Day celebration, he’d like to learn the history. There are so many suitcases in here, so much stuff! Help me look?”

“I remember the very first Flower Day,” he said. “That would have been … in the fall of … 1967.”

His hesitation felt awkward, though likely only he noticed his stumble of recollection. The fall of 1967. Only months before Devin’s leaving. Devin … who’d shared Evan’s unwillingness to participate, word for word.

Samantha waved her hand in acknowledgement, honed in on a far and crowded niche.

He put his hand on Evan’s shoulder, kept it lightly there even though the boy shrugged under it at first, though a second later he leaned into him. His arm went around the child’s shoulder.

“Tell me what’s bothering you?”

He posed not a demand, but the softest question, one that gave Evan, so new to the tunnels, so new to safety, the power to decline. The child’s lips twisted, but not in surliness.

“Who am I supposed to send a message to anyway?” he whispered. “I don’t even know anybody down here. And I can’t … I can’t …”

“Get in touch with anyone from your old life above,” Vincent finished.

“My old life stunk,” Evan admitted.

“But … it was your life, the one you knew. And finding your home now, here with us …”

“It’s just so hard,” Evan mumbled, his face turned into Vincent’s vest.

Laughter erupted from one side of the room – Kipper and Eric ribbing each other about the mystery recipients of their flower messages, about the romantic sentiments neither were likely to express … this year. He thought to guide Evan from the too-festive chamber, perhaps back to his own where they might, together, find a way for the boy to participate in the holiday. But before he could manage a quiet exit, Samantha squealed and came trotting.

“Look at this!”

Eric and Kipper pushed away from the table, leaving the paper flowers they’d cut out behind, joining them in the center of the chamber, jostling for viewing position.

“It’s yours, Vincent!” Samantha cried. “Yours to Marguerite! She was your person? Your first Flower Day person?”

“You sent a flower-gram to your teacher?!” Eric’s eyes were wide with surprise.

“Flower-gram! That’s a good one,” Kipper chimed in.

“It’s floriography!” Samantha corrected. “We’re sending posies!”

“Paper posies,” Eric pointed out. “So …”

“Harummph. Anyway, Vincent. Marguerite kept your message. Do you remember what you were trying to say? You cut out a daffodil – that means regard.  And this is honeysuckle, so devoted affection. But what’s this a picture of?” She pointed to a coral-colored flower.

“That’s Kennidia Coccinea, the coral vine,” he replied without having to look. “It means mental beauty. And the last one is yellow jasmine, meaning grace and elegance.”

“Did you have a crush on your teacher, Vincent?” Eric giggled and elbowed Kipper. “How old were you?”

“I was … young, and I most certainly did. She was an extraordi–”

Samantha rushed on. “And look at this! This one’s from Devin!”

“Devin?” But he said he wouldn’t … I’d have known …

“Who’s Devin?” Evan ventured.

“My brother. A brother like you will come to have here below. He was older than I. He left the tunnels when I was your age and was gone a long time. He’s back now … well, he visits now and then. You’ll meet him soon, I hope.”

“Yeah! So neat,” Samantha said. “He sent it to himself! He was his person!”

“Show me.”

Samantha handed him her find … first the envelope that bore Devin’s scrawled note …

Marguerite, no need to deliver this one. It’s to me. Me, myself, and I, and I’ve seen it already. Hahaha.

~ Devin
P.S. Sorry it’s late. Sorry I griped about it, too. It’s a neat idea.

… and then the card she’d removed and studied.

The paper backing was yellowed and unevenly folded, the collage of botanical images faded, the cut-outs wrinkled from impatient gluing. But its meaning was evident …

“He chose thyme … which means courage. Valerian … readiness. Holly … for hope. Oak … strength. And rosemary … is for remembrance.”

As he interpreted Devin’s message, the children nodded with understanding of the sentiment, all of them, even Evan, whose eyes brightened, whose chin lifted …

Comforted, Vincent sensed. And by Devin inspired.

The boy scurried to the library table in Kipper’s and Eric’s wake, pulled a few pages of flower drawings close, drew a pair of scissors from the coffee can of tools. Chatter resumed, a chordal trio now. Evan’s voice … had melody. He’d found his person.

Vincent handed Devin’s Flower Day card and envelope back to Samantha who then asked for his help carrying the two suitcases Marguerite had packed long ago up to the schoolroom. She’d go through them with Jude herself, she told him, with only the hint of a blush rising to her cheeks.

On his way to grab the heavy bags, Samantha in the lead, a scrap of paper fluttered from her clutch. He stooped to retrieve it.

It hadn’t fallen from the card he’d long ago created for Marguerite … but from Devin’s to himself. A roughly cut-out picture. Not chosen for his final flowered message, but not dismissed, not thrown away.

A carnation …I’ll never forget you.

Did he mean us, his family? Vincent mused. Did he mean himself, the boy he was then?

The question needed no answer.

What we have now is all that matters. His own flower message this year would be addressed to everyone Below.

Bluebell … for constancy.
Celendine … for joys to come.
Myrtle… for love.

_________________

Title and opening quotation: James Gates Percival. The Language of Flowers. 1823.