Rootbound — The White Rose of Number Fourteen, Page 11
By Suha · Published
Log in to see this page
Page 11 of The White Rose of Number Fourteen is for signed-in readers. Logging in brings you straight back here — and an account is free if you do not have one.
Transcript
Bed 14, night. The white rose opens fully, impossible and luminous in the frost. Two panels. Fern: Oh. Fern cups the open bloom in both hands. Fern: There you are. There you are.
Image description
The white rose bursts into full luminous bloom in the cold night; Fern cups it in both hands.
About this chapter
Fern follows the rusted chain Joss showed her to a low iron door set into the foundation of the Rose Bed. Beyond it lies the Spine Corridor, a cold service tunnel under the garden, lined with numbered doors. Door 14 opens onto a dead-end keeper's storeroom abandoned since 1968: a ledger signed Arthur Thorpe, with a folded note that reads 'for Mother - the white rose of Number Fourteen, by rose season.' Fern carries the ledger to Ida, who recognizes her late son's hand, the keeper who died that spring before his rose ever bloomed. Fern returns to Bed 14 and coaxes one impossible white rosebud open in the frozen night; Arthur's translucent ghost appears in the arch, finally able to rest, and Fern bids him go home. Cliffhanger: as Fern carries the single white rose toward the lamplit cottage, a door deep in the Spine Corridor beyond 14 swings open by itself into a rectangle of warm amber light where no room should be.