From the cycle
The king received a letter: "Because this year you didn't take a single leaf of our blood, because you haven't even touched us, only marked us for yourself by the glances of your eyes - for this we shall surround you with the shimmer of fading colours of each leaf's life, and the warmth that it has drunk. You will not fear even the frosts. You become our blood brother. You will be almost us. In place of us, if needed.
- A tree."
This was the only letter that Polis didn't answer. He was unable to.
On the planet Aora a scientist created a strange and interesting being, and gave her the name Aome. Her predestined place was that of the scientist's assistant, for experiments that demanded the exactness and perception that was beyond the limits of humans. But at some point the scientist made a slight fault in the design and created a creature that was not quite as his model foresaw. Her appearance, though, was as expected: she had the shape of a flame, with a multitude of colourful, long and thin tentacles that moved and intertwined among themselves. But Aome turned out to be too independent. Later the scientist came to like her as she was, even more than what she would have been, according to his original conception. She used to help him in every way, but she was capricious too.
After several years had passed, Aome demanded to travel to five points in the Cosmos that she had chosen. Necessarily. She claimed she had a right. After that, until she grew old, she asked for nothing more. Since she often used to work with space maps of various universes, those points had caught her eye long ago. The scientist warned her about possible perils and told her what she should beware of in particular, because she had many very vulnerable points: after all, she wasn't created for cosmic odysseys. Aome promised to be careful. Then, after turning the hands of the space-time-clock, and after winding it up with a tiny key, she found herself on the first of her desired planets. She was satisfied with it. Then, the second and third heavenly bodies followed, and then a star. The last route led to Earth.
She had never seen, or heard, or been aware of such an abundance of everything. An avalanche of perceptions, thousandfold, millionfold, not stopping even for an eyeblink, tumbled onto her. She ran out of perceptionary antennae, so she grew additional bunches of them. She would have sprouted even more, but she had no more fibres. All of them were already switched on, taut. This was kind of the biggest risk, this was what the scientist had warned her about (in her thoughts, she called him Daddy). However, keeping even one fiber for herself, to leave it sleeping in such a world, she couldn't do: it would have been an offence against herself and maybe against her home planet, and against Daddy too. It would have been an even bigger offence than breaking one of his prohibitions.
Myriads of wonders. It was such an aching pity she could not catch all of them and let them in into her inner cavities, tunnels, dungeons and labyrinths. Furthermore, something small, white and light descended onto her. Before she could look intently at its intricate beauty, this white thing melted, turning into a mere drop of water. After that, there came a continuous plenty of them. Some of them disappeared when they touched her and she figured it was shy who made them perish, and she grieved greatly.
Finally, being deathly tired and deciding to spare herself, and because of Daddy's request, Aome curled up under a thorny bush covered in a white blanket, just like everything else around.
When she woke up, every single white dot shone in the Sun, or maybe the Sun shone in them: there was a star in each of them. This hadn't occurred on any other world. Perhaps not all of her antennae were working, some of them still trapped in sweet, long-yearned-for sleep, and Aome felt a dizziness rising. But perhaps it would pass. She'd do some good stretching and soon would find her way around in this incredible environment. She lay down. It was only now that she saw dark red buds, each of them unfolding, on the bush. And she could feel this slow unfolding. The power of its wondrousness. And the power wasn't alone. There were several more of them, each one at its beginning. Aome was overcome by vertigo. Instinctively she surged upward with all her body, and stretched into a shiny filament: up, only up, with a mad desire as if to break through, as if to cling to something there, above... And quivering she fell down and flattened into a grey sliver under the bush.
She would have perished, but the place that Aome had found was the garden of King Polis. It so happened that during the last two days Polis had toiled at raising winter roses. They were meant to be a gift for the Princess of the Rocks, for her Feast of Rarity (that's how it was written in the invitation card: what could that mean?). It was the first time he was creating. And he succeeded. Now he was picking the buds, a-minute-before-becoming-a-blossom ones: into each of them he had put a frozen minute in the snowflake hidden between the petals. Suddenly he felt something hard under his shoe. In the snow? He stared for a long time, still he couldn't see it. He fluffed the snow with his hand and dug out a white sliver, a peculiar thing, the like of which he hadn't seen before. He brought it home, together with the bouquet. He put the little object under the flaxen bird that was hanging low, suspended, swinging above a small table. The sun shone straight on them.
Polis received several guests, one after another.
Then he started to get ready to leave.
While he walked over to a chest to get his felt boots (because only this kind of footwear was really comfortable for a trip to the Princess of the Rocks), his eyes touched both the bird and the little table. It seemed his white find had grown larger. Polis took it into his hands to examine it better. Both of its sides were curved outward, though some little hollows were in them. Its former smooth flatness has disappeared. The piece gradually expanded and shifted, showing signs of inner movements.
Suddenly Polis was pierced by a realisation of what it was that he held in his palm. He tried to transmit his powers to it. He felt moments when his hand hindered it. He put it on a net-vine. He beheld all the shapes of recovery. When her form finally became steady, she was still half-dead, and implorement seeped out of her every dim dot, an unsprouted antenna. Polis couldn't help shivering, because the waves rose in her, they surged, they grew stronger until it seemed one of the two would burst asunder: he or this creature. Then he saw something like a strip on one of her indentations getting more and more visible, and on it was a tiny, enigmetic apparatus with some symbols and even a dial. A recognition of the space-time-clock dawned upon him, and already his cosmic experience was whispering to him. An initial point flashed brightly, signifying her native home.
Polis brought the hand to that point. A slot appeared. It was for the key, he knew. The creature no longer had it. Her prayer was rending them both. Polis ran off to bring the keys from all of his chests and pyxes. None of them fit. He remembered his wall clock. He hurried over to it, reched up, returned. The key fit the slot. He turned and turned it for a long time. Several antennae sprang up. The being started to twitch, lifting herself barely above the floor and flopping back down. Polis could almost see the creature's tears of despair, though he didn't know what they would look like. What more could he do? He just caressed this piece of unknown that had found herself in his home. He kept on caressing. A bunch of antennae arose, then another one. The creature rose above the floor and vanished.
Polis arrived at the feast when it was half underway. However, because of his gift he was forgiven.
It took long for Aome to get well. The scientist sacrificed many months to nurse her and take perfect care of her. And Aome was completely healed. She didn't go one step away from the scientist. Now she exceeded herself; she was able to do absolutely everything, things that nobody in the neighbouring worlds could do. She became enormously famous, making the scientist famous as well, of course. She became the biggest, strongest and most needed valuable everywhere under their Sun, for many years.
While returning from the feast, Polis lost one of his rugged, high boots in a snow bank.
Some days later he found a pair of felt boots, adorned with silver, gold and diamonds, tied together with a shiny thread, on which a small key was hanging. Polis hurried to wind up the clock that had gone silent, the clock whose ticking was so sorely missed by him and his palace.
At the cross-roads a horrible seven-headed reptile with its mouths dripping stood in the king's way. It didn't threaten him. Instead it begged and implored him to guess the names of flowers. The king lifted a black, ragged cloth that covered a vessel. He lifted its lid. Seven blossoms were revealed to his eyes. Polis could recognise some of them, the others he had to guess.
"The one that smells like melting drifts of snow."
One of reptile's heads broke away.
"This one is from the top of a fir tree laden with cones."
Another terrible snout split apart.
"It's for a bouquet of gratitude."
The monster's body was being freed.
"The eye of silence."
He was right.
"From the bottom of a quagmire."
True.
Polis dwelt for a long time upon the next one.
"The one that moves away into a cosmos of cherry tea in the vortex of foam."
Sticky green goo spurted from the last remaining mouth.
The last blossom defied all his guessing abilities. He tried:
"It's from your dream."
The head was still there.
"From your first birthday."
Nothing changed.
"Grown on a wizard's staff."
Just as before.
It was getting dark.
"It's for the wind's lady."
Not exactly.
"Raised to be offered as an apology."
The darkness swallowed everything. It was very uneasy at the cross-roads, even under the dim light of a roadside lantern.
The king admitted he couldn't give any more help.
After he had ridden more than half the way, he hastily turned back. He found the reptile with its six necks almost grown back to their full size. Polis opened the vessel and picked the one flower remaining.
"It's a mesmerising surprise of the after-waiting."
The remaining head broke into pieces. The slimy body was shrinking and shrinking until it turned into a minuscule silver pebble, which in turn immediately exploded.
A beautiful maiden was standing in front of Polis, with a silvery, shining adornment in her hair.
"How did you find yourself in this? What had happened to you?" Polis asked her.
"I don't know. Indeed, I don't know anything." She took all the flowers with her. "I have to go. This is for you."
She extended her hand with one blossom to the king and went away in haste.
The flower that lay in Polis' hands was the very first flower from the bouquet of guessing.
As he approached his home he was almost sure that he had seen this girl some time ago, very long ago, before his kingship. Only, he couldn't recall where and how it was.