Throwback Thursday: ‘Hothouse Flower’ by Stephanie Charrette

Rare Harvest

We’re continuing with a botanical theme for our throwback Thursday posts. This week, take a step back and sideways in time to a steampunk garden with ‘Hothouse Flower’ by Stephanie Charette, from Issue 9, Winter 2016. This rare print edition is on sale for only $8 (a $12 saving!) till the end of March.

Hothouse Flower

by Stephanie Charette

“I haven’t shown you the prize of my collection.”  Westbury swirled his crystal tumbler, sloshing the amber whisky against the ice.  He added, in gleeful albeit hushed tones, “I haven’t shown anyone.”

Ah, Adam thought, here it comes.  He shifted, feeling the tightness in the shoulders of his borrowed suit.  Westbury — no, wait, Lord Westbury now — hadn’t just invited him over to crow about his recognition by the Queen and the Royal Horticultural Society.  Oh, no.  Not just to gloat, but to grind Adam’s nose in it and send him packing with the knowledge that once again Lord Westbury had triumphed and always would.  Now they sat in a cold parlour amidst a host of botanical treasures, each worth a ransom.

 Adam looked at the remains of his own whisky and wondered why he’d agreed to come early.  He could have just arrived with all the other party guests tonight, but even after everything, he found Westbury’s private summons irresistible.  Adam settled into the leather chair, hating  himself.  “Do tell,” he said at last.

Westbury flicked a glance towards his butler.  The liveried man left, shutting the door behind him.  “I wish to tell the whole world,” he said.  “A lordship isn’t enough.”

Adam bit the inside of his cheek.  Westbury had received every accolade in their field.  His seemingly inexhaustible funds, both his own and other investors’, were more than enough to support expeditions to any corner of the globe, and still pay scraps to the botanists labouring hard at the study and taxonomy that Westbury wasn’t capable of undertaking.  Men like Adam, who saw their work published under Westbury’s name.  A knighthood, not enough?  Adam swallowed the blood on his tongue and waited.

“I must ask you to swear secrecy.  On your honour.”

“Oh, come now,” Adam replied.  Still, he could hear it in Westbury’s smug voice:  the man was serious.  Westbury poured himself another shot of whisky.  Adam had never seen Westbury drink so much before, nor so early in the day.  Nor looking so old as he did now, considering they were of an age.  “You’ve already bought my honour,” Adam said.  “Go on, then, before you lose your nerve.”   

“What I have transcends human rivalries.”  Westbury hauled his heavy body out of the chair and moved to the back of the room, taking the whisky with him.  

Adam followed.  Westbury trailed a finger along what looked like smooth panelling.  Rewarded with a faint click, Westbury shifted the wood, revealing a door.  The secret passage piqued Adam’s deadened interest.  He took a nip of his own whisky, making note of where Westbury had touched the wall.

The door swung open, revealing a steep, curving set of servant stairs.  A solitary porthole window, set high above them where no window had any business being, offered an orb of golden light like a misplaced harvest moon.  After descending one flight of stairs, the staircase turned towards the innards of the manor proper and the light grew dim.  

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” Adam said.  At the edge of perception he felt a sourceless thrumming he could not identify.  He loosened his collar, suddenly warm.

Westbury glanced over his shoulder, “You’ve no idea.  I brought in two crews of workmen, one Swedish, one German.  They each worked on only half of the design, and shipped home separately when they were done.”

The stairs ended at a short corridor.  Adam heard the click of a mechanism, the source hidden behind Westbury’s plump frame.  The panel slid, but not so silently; hot, wet air hissed out.  Steam curled over and past Westbury’s shoulders, enveloping Adam as Westbury’s shrouded form disappeared into the room beyond.  Adam’s glasses fogged instantly, forcing him to remove them and go slowly.

The air inside the room was almost too thick to breathe.  It tasted of rich loam and the perfumes from a thousand different plants alien to England’s shores.  The air hung with a sweetness heavier than honey.  He let the taste sit on his tongue, savouring it, trying to identify every strain.  Veils of fog parted as he stepped forward.  He replaced his glasses once the fog had cleared.  The humidity smothered, like a person standing too close to bear.  The ceiling, untouched by the groping tendrils of fog, was constructed of curved bronze and thick plates of greenhouse glass and let in shafts of bright noon sunlight.  Underneath was a botanist’s paradise of uncountable tropical species.  Some Adam could name, had even held, and some he had only wished to see before he died.  In the centre of the room, fed by a series of humming hydraulics and gleaming pipes, sat a giant dome made of bronze-framed pentagons of high-quality, distortion-free greenhouse glass.  Inside, there grew even more delicate species:  Hymenocallis littoralis, less a lily than a six-legged, white-bodied floating octopus, Heliamphora pulchella, with its deep red flutes like curled tongues, Aristolochia gigantea, looking like a white lace collar laid over dried blood, and dozens of other species, besides.  But none stood so rare or exotic as the tree that stood in the centre, a specimen the likes of which Adam had never seen in either flesh or ink.

Read the full story in Pulp Literature Issue 9, Winter 2016, on sale till the end of March.

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