The cellar of a thousand skies

The Botanist

I waited for Astri late into the night. One by one the lights of the plaza winked out and the last guests departed the square of the small Spanish town. I was alone, accompanied only by the evening insects, those invisible creatures who from their hidden realm plied a symphony without name. As the distant stars crept across the sky, I waited beneath a blanket of clouds, thinking only of Astri’s words—those spoken not through her mouth but via some other means—wondering on whether they were nothing but a trick, one born of a singular desire that had materialised within my mind: Come with me, she had said. Come with me tonight. I wanted those words. I wanted to hear them again. And so I did nothing but wait, feeling time dissolve from my body, to crumble like ancient stone, and each moment felt so long that I was certain the night should have extinguished itself, yet the sky remained dark and intact and the wind touched my skin, seeking something I could not comprehend. I waited, content but restless, not knowing for how long or if it was long at all, until in her suddenness Astri was there, emerging from her restaurant and wiping her hands on a small, white towel, smiling as she approached my side.

“You are ready,” she said, not as a question but a statement as firm as the ground.

“Yes,” I said, standing, and as she turned I found I could do nothing but follow, entering into the restaurant and though the kitchen to where, despite the hour, I expected to find her daughter, the one who cooked tirelessly each night, yet I saw only plates, washed and stacked in piles of a glistening white, and the only sound was that of the tall refrigerator, humming and gurgling whilst beside it a chest freezer lay squat and silent as though too embarrassed of the noise its sibling made.

Fom the kitchen, we slid away through a slim door, Astri’s hand at my back, pressing to guide me forward. We descended a flight of steps so vast in number that when the steps seemed they could go on no longer, I realised I had no recollection of the distance we had travelled, the outside world—that place where moments ago I had been sat beneath an enormous, rotating sky—seeming so suddenly vague that I felt it may not have existed at all. Eventually, after some unknown amount of time, for time lost all meaning as we moved deeper underground, we emerged into what at first I took to be a wine cellar, the high walls adorned with huge, ancient racks, their metal frames dull and grey and laced with the fine threadwork of spiders. There were no bottles in the racks; instead, they overflowed with leaves and flowers, the same kinds that spilt from the tables of the Moon Garden, Astri’s restaurant up there in the outside world, a place in whose existence I no longer held any confidence. The leaves seemed to glow, imparting a shade of green that made me think only of the word cyclamen, and I would have remained there, transfixed by the glow of the leaves, had not Astri’s fingers—soft and threaded with a trio of silver rings—guided my hand to the brass handle of a door set into the wall. The metal was cool, and as my hand clasped the handle I felt a thrum, as if an electric current were running between the alloy of the brass and the membrane of my skin. She released her hand, and for a moment I did nothing, merely attuning to the thrum and awaiting something, some moment, not knowing how but sensing that to turn the handle too soon would reveal nothing, only a wall behind the door, a false portal bricked over that would lead nowhere, but even as these thoughts emerged and departed of their own accord, I felt the thrum stop, and without hesitation I turned the handle and the door opened and the air rushed into the room and my breath was whisked from my lungs. I sank to my knees, too staggered to comprehend what I saw.

“This is the true moon garden”, I heard Astri say, from somewhere far behind. “My Jardín de Luna.”

To be continued…

---

Thank you for reading. I know it’s been a while. I’ve been distracted and caught up in work these last few weeks. But I’m back, and there’s a fresh excitement within me at getting to write and pull at the threads of this little tale. This is Part 3 (links to Part 1 and Part 2). Probably one more part. Probably.

Thanks for being here and taking a moment to read. If you’re a writer here on Substack then thank you for your patience in the time it’s taking me to get to your posts. I look forward to reading them.

N—.

Photo by Rishabh Sharma on Unsplash