Flowercrash by Stephen Palmer

Green Man meant it needed protection. Perhaps he could offer himself as a guard.
    He walked up to the bridge. Hearing rustling amongst the papyrus stems he looked down, to see a green trumpet emerge, attached to a large sphere. Suddenly, gravel exploded out of the trumpet, hitting him in the face and arms. He leaped back. Another fired at him as his shadow crossed the bole of its body, and he was hit again. Laughter from the walls made him look up, to see two men pointing at him. They shouted at him in some guttural dialect and one laughed again. Nuïy fixed this man’s face in his memory.
    He walked around the external road until he reached the southern entrance, where he saw three guards sitting at the half open gate. He approached the bridge and called out, “I want to join the Shrine. Can I enter through your gate?”
    They glanced at one another, before one guard strolled to the bridge and looked down into the moat. He waved Nuïy toward him with one finger. “Hurry it on, twig.”
    Nuïy sprinted across the bridge, but none of the moat creatures fired gravel at him. He caught the guard’s gaze and said, “Can I join the Shrine?”
    “You talk a little flowery, twig. Where you from?”
    Nuïy immediately knew that if he mentioned the word Veneris he would be laughed at again, or even thrown out. He said, “I will tell the master of this place, not you.”
    “All right, twig. I’ll show you him.”
    The other two guards muttered as Nuïy was taken through the gate. What he saw next made him gasp. The Shrine was a vast circle, to the east and north hundreds of trees, to the west and before him buildings of stone, linked by paths upon which cloaked men and boys walked. Centrally lay the tower he had seen, protected by an abyss over which arched bridges leaped. Nuïy’s knees almost buckled with the intensity of his desire to live and work here.
    “I must see the master,” he said. “Where is he?”
    “Shut up, twig. We’re getting there.”
    Immediately to the right stood a small house of stone, into which Nuïy was led. It consisted of a single large room with floor-to-ceiling windows at the rear, the walls set with glass-fronted cupboards and pot plants containing more papyrus, while in the centre stood a great desk of oak at which sat a single man. Nuïy stared at him. This man had a broken nose and a much-scarred face. He touched his own broken nose. They even looked like him here!
    “Twig for you,” said the guard, before leaving.
    Nuïy approached. “Are you the master here? I want to join.”
    The man looked up. His eyes seemed misted by age and his thinning hair was white, but his gaze was that of a weasel, and the mouth set amidst his clipped beard was a straight line. He said nothing. His movements were slow, as if he was loth to be disturbed from the papers before him.
    “What did you say?”
    The voice was thick, but Nuïy understood the simple words. “I want to join the Shrine," he said, “so I need to speak to the master. Are you him?”
    The man stood. He was short, but he looked tough. “I am but the Leafmaster,” he replied. “My name is Raïtasha. So, you want to become an initiate of the Green Man?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Why?”
    Nuïy had not expected such a question. Quickly he collected in his mind the facts he knew. “There is a tale of the Green Man, that he has so much honour there is enough to share amongst all his clerics, and so—”
    “Don’t speak flowery, twig. Where you from?”
    Nuïy faced his dilemma. If he lied, he would be found out, but if he told the truth he might be thrown out. Slowly he said, “From a house on the very edge of the filthy crone urb. Not in it, but on the edge.”
    “Hmmmm.”
    Nuïy tried to save the situation. “I see you have papyrus here, one of the plants of the Green Man. Did you know it has no flowers, and reproduces by vegetative means?”
    Raïtasha scowled. “Yes, twig, I did know that.”
    “I really want to join in with