The World More Full of Weeping by Robert J. Wiersema Page B

in the world.
    â€œWe’re almost there,” she called.
    â€œWhere?” he called back, steadying himself with a thin
tree trunk.
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    He thought these were the most wonderful words
someone had ever said to him, and Carly said them all
the time. You’ll see. Spending time with her was a world of
surprises through every copse of trees, through every stand
of brush, in every clearing. It was a world of wonders that
she revealed to him in every moment.
    And she herself was one of those wonders.
    You’ll see .
    She was waiting for him in a small clearing. The sound
of waves was louder here, the smell of salt and spray sharp
and intoxicating.
    She looked at him coyly, but didn’t say anything.
    He stepped toward her slowly.
    â€œLook,” she said, stepping to one side to reveal the most
beautiful plant he had ever seen.
    It was pure white, shimmering and almost translucent,
so bright it almost hurt his eyes. It had no leaves, only a
thick white stem and a number of small white flowers. I
was clearly a plant, but just barely.
    It looked like something out of a dream.
    Brian stepped forward, crouched in the loamy softness
as he bent to examine the plant.
    â€œWhat is this?” He leaned in close to study the texture
of the stem, the flower, afraid to touch it.
    â€œIt has a lot of different names,” she said, leaning in with
him. “Some people call it the coast orchid, or the albino
orchid.” Her voice was a whisper. “I call it the death rose.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause it lives off the dead.” When he looked at her,
she was looking at the plant, but he knew she had been
looking at him a moment before. “It has no leaves because
it never sees the sun. It grows in the shadows, and takes its
strength from the rot and decay of the earth around it. It
grows from the dead.”
    â€œLike a fungus,” he whispered.
    â€œSort of.”
    Without looking away from the plant, Brian pulled off
his pack and unzipped it.
    â€œIt won’t be in your guide,” she said, just as he curled his
fingers around the book’s spine to pull it out.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œTo most of the world, the death rose doesn’t exist. It
grows in only three places, three of these tiny valleys just
off the coast where it can drink the moisture out of the air,
where it can consume the past through its roots.”
    â€œBut people must know about it.”
    She nodded. “People do. But those few who have seen
it know they have been in the presence of something
extraordinary,
something
profound.
Something
that
transcends classification. Something that just is .”
    She looked at him as she spoke.
    He released his grip on the book and let the bag fall to
the cool, damp earth.
    She smiled.
    â€œProbably no more than a hundred people have seen this
flower in the last century,” she said.
    â€œIt’s amazing.”
    â€œThere are others,” she started, and he looked at her.
“Other secret places like this. Plants and animals you won’t
find in any book. Places you won’t find on any map.”
    Their eyes met, and he didn’t look away.
    â€œThere’s a flower, an African orchid, that only blooms
one night every seven years. It is believed that if you pick
this flower and give it to your heart’s true love before the
sun rises, it will never die, and your love will be the stuff
of legends.”
    Her eyes stayed on his, rich and green and bottomless.
    â€œAnd there’s a forest of trees so tall” — she stopped, as if
she couldn’t believe it herself — “that they make the tallest
trees near your house seem like twigs.”
    He watched her mouth as she formed the words, her
eyes as she seemed to drift into the stories she told.
    â€œYou
could
spend
a
lifetime — many
lifetimes —
discovering the wonders of this world all around you.”
    Yes , he admitted to