Among the Roses

Written for TN Kerr’s Writing Prompts
and Practice; the prompts are shown
below. Here’s where the prompts took me.

The roses shouldn’t have been blooming. Not here in the frozen February soil of Zoya’s gardens. But there they were …. perfect blood red blooms against her garden wall.

She was old now, her hands gnarled as the apple trees she’d planted sixty years ago, but happy. Genuinely happy, which surprised her sometimes. After Pavel died, she thought happiness was over for her. Instead, it had simply changed shape, becoming something quieter, found in morning tea and the chickens’ soft clucking and the satisfaction of a day’s work completed.

The stranger appeared on the fourth morning of the impossible roses.

He was younger than her … fifty, perhaps …. with ink-stained fingers and a threadbare scholar’s cloak. A poet, she guessed, from the way he looked at her garden with naked longing.

“Forgive the intrusion,” he said. “I’ve come about the roses.”

“They’re just flowers,” Zoya said, though she knew this wasn’t quite true.

“No.” His voice was gentle but firm. “They’re covenant roses. They grow only where the old promises are kept …. where the boundary magic still holds.” He stepped closer, and she saw the desperation in his eyes. “The wizards are coming. The ones who’ve forgotten everything but hunger. They consume magic now like black holes consume light …. indiscriminate, insatiable. They’ll tear through here in three days’ time, searching for any remaining wells of power.”

Zoya felt cold. “And the roses?”

“Will call to them like a beacon.” He swallowed hard. “I know how to hide them. There’s a working* …. an old one …. that requires a poet’s blood and a willing gift. It will cost me my life, but the roses will survive and the boundary will hold.”

She studied him. “You’d die for flowers?”

“I’d die for what they represent. For the old world that knew beauty was worth protecting. For the idea that some things shouldn’t be devoured.” He smiled sadly. “A poet will die for a rose, Zoya.”

They worked through the night, him speaking the old words while she made tea and listened to his poetry and the soft, menacing sound of wind rising in the east …. the first whisper of the wizards’ approach, like a vibration in the earth itself, like the air being slowly crushed.

At dawn, he finished and collapsed among the roses. Zoya buried him in her garden and sang the songs of her ancestors.

The wizards passed through three days later, a dark procession on the road below. They paused, sensing something, but couldn’t find what they sought. The cottage looked ordinary. The roses had disappeared, woven into the fabric of the garden.

Zoya lived seven more years …. old and happy, tending a garden that bloomed with impossible beauty each spring, kept alive by a poet’s love and a vow to never let wonder die.

NAR©2026

The prompts: 1. Old and happy; 2. Black hole wizards; 3. A poet will die for a rose; 4. The soft menacing sound of….

*Nancy’ Notes:  In wizardry, a “working” generally refers to how mechanics operate, particularly regarding spell-casting. 

This is “The Wizard” by Uriah Heep

A Loose and Fragmented Organization of Sorcerers and Witches

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