Hilary and the Beasts, Part 23

April 1930

Hilary sighed, basking in the sunlight as she walked down the path. It was one of those rare spring days when the sun warmed your neck, breeze smelled of daffodils and tulips, and the air was heavy with new promise. Easter had been this past Sunday. She missed Father’s terrible jokes and C.J eating half the food on the table, but she had to admit, Mrs. Fox’s ham studded with cloves and pineapple had been a work of art. Bear certainly ate enough of it! Maple had even gotten Eagle to emerge from his den and share his smoked fish with them. 

She chuckled. Just watching Betty and Bear trying to beat Puppy and Maple finding colored eggs among the new flowers in the garden had left her laughing all afternoon. She swore even Troll, who judged the contest, cracked a smile. Eagle had watched from his perch on a blossoming apple tree, and she suspected his squawking was probably the closest thing he could come to laughter. 

It was a few days later. She’d just gotten off the phone with the Pittsburgh Public Library. Mrs. Mellon was an old friend of hers. No, Scott hadn’t been at the golf game he usually played with her husband. Jeff was a friend of Mrs. Mellon’s son, and he hadn’t been seen, either. Their impertinent blonde maid Ceila missed flirting with him. Nor had Victor been spending whole afternoons pouring over dusty books and more recent maps on Europe, jotting down information for hours. 

She was growing more and more worried. Her husband and his “Lost Boys” seemed to have vanished off the face of the planet…and she suspected Pavla had everything to do with it. C.J said not only was Hunnicut becoming more and more listless, but two producers who had already offered her roles were growing more docile as well. Hilary knew that producers were many things, but they were not docile.

It hadn’t even occurred to her until she looked up that she’d wandered on the path to the hot house on the edge of the property. The very place where the roses that her father found grew, where he took one perfect scarlet rose for her. She wasn’t a guest here, now. She and her sisters were more-or-less living here. They’d sent for most of their clothes the month before. Their father begged them to come home, but Hilary insisted that they had to solve this. Not to mention, her sisters were completely enamored of two of the residents. They couldn’t run out now.

Surely, he wouldn’t mind if she took one look. She opened the door…and gasped. The entire glass house was overflowing with nothing but the most beautiful roses she’d ever seen. The bushes stretched from one end of the long house to the other. She’d never seen so many different roses. Scarlet, pink, yellow, white, lavender, blood red, coral, even some blueish. It was like walking into a rainbow, or one of those new pink and green two-strip Technicolor movies. 

She stood for a few moments, drinking in the heady fragrance of thousands of blossoms, before slowly, reverently strolling down the rows. Every flower was more perfect than the one before it. She’d never seen anything like them, not since she’d been forced to abandon the rooftop rose garden she shared with Jeff in New York. Shelves and pegboards were hung with gloves, scissors, bags of plant food, pruning shears, everything one would need to care for roses. The entire area was steamy, at least in the 70’s despite the cooler day outside.

“Surely,” she whispered to herself, “he wouldn’t mind it if I clipped just one. One that reminded me of…of him.” She was about to take the gloves and the pruning shears when she heard the sounds of breathing. Something shuffled among the roses in the last row, clipping them, murmuring to them as if they were children.

To her shock, as she peered around the corner, she saw Troll, bent over a scarlet rose bush like it was his child. He murmured to it lovingly, clipping roses as gently as he could with his claws. He hadn’t shown this much kindness to anything since she arrived. There wasn’t a growl in him. The claws touched the roses with pure reverence. It was almost…holy, she decided. The sunlight flashing over his shoulders though the sparkling windows almost made the matted curls and warty skin look human.

She tried to keep her footprints quiet, but his sensitive Troll ears still picked up her foot falls. “Hello?” He growled a bit. “Who’s there?”

“Troll, it’s me.” Her voice, so soft, seemed to echo amid the flowers. “I was out for a walk, and I thought I’d come see them. Father…spoke a lot about them, when he told us about this place.”

His almond eyes returned to the roses, snorting. “They’re mine. He shouldn’t have taken them. He tore it off! It’ll take forever for that to heal.”

“It’s one rose!” She knelt beside him. “You have so many. He just wanted to make me happy. My own garden wasn’t exactly growing in January, and we can’t afford roses anyway.” She ran her finger over one particularly large blossom. “They’re so beautiful. I just wanted something pretty like this. It’s been so long since I had anything truly beautiful in my life.” Her voice choked. “He…my ex-husband grew roses like this with me. He swore he’d give me a whole garden of them, but then…well, then he ended up throwing me over for another woman.”

They worked in silence for a moment, him clipping them, handing them to her as she put them in a basket. “Maybe…he didn’t want to. Maybe he had a good reason.”

“What reason could he have,” Hilary snarled, “for hurting me? She came to me and…oh, she practically bragged about how our marriage in Mexico wasn’t legal, and he swept her off her feet when he was in Europe!”

Those almond-shaped eyes narrowed angrily. “Who was she, and why would she tell you something ridiculous like that?”

“She was my husband’s current wife, an overstuffed Czech tart he picked up in Europe.” She threw the rose he handed her so hard, it almost bounced her out of the basket. “Pavla Nemcova. And now, she has my role, my husband…my life…”

He frowned, rubbing her back as her eyes filled with tears. “My lawyer says I should let it go.” She wiped an eye threatening to spill over furiously. “I suppose I’m not ready yet. I’m not sure I ever will. I thought…well, I foolishly thought Jeff loved me.”

“Maybe he did,” Troll whispers, looking away from her. “Maybe he didn’t want to leave you, but was forced to. Maybe he…” He coughed hard, almost knocking the basket over. “Maybe he didn’t want people to get hurt.”

Hilary stood up too quickly. “What do you know?” She grumbled. “You’re just a Troll.”

Those almond-shaped eyes narrowed, furious. “I have been married before. Did that ever occur to you? She walked out. Left because I made a mistake I couldn’t get out of.” 

“Who on earth,” Hilary snapped viciously, “would want to marry a slimy, warty Troll?”

Troll snarled, shooting up to his full, towering height.  “I’m not sure anyone would want to marry you either. You’re petty, spoiled, and judgmental, and I want you out of my hot house!” 

Hilary glared at him, refusing to be intimidated by his near-seven feet. “Fine. I’ll leave, but because I’m done with your bad manners. Not because you told me to.” She stormed out, knocking the basket of roses over as she stomped out. 

It wasn’t until she’d gotten out of the hot house and back into the main garden that she broke down in tears. “Oh Jeff,” she sobbed, collapsing onto a bench. “You’re nothing like that….that thing! How could you be? Where are you?” She continued sobbing after that, knowing no one would hear her but an angry Troll who cared more about his flowers than her.