The king’s agent moved to the doors, tried them, and found them to be secured. He rapped on the portal with the head of his cane.

No response.

Swinburne hammered his knuckles against the window. “Hallo! Hallo! Anyone at home?” A narrow wedge of glass toppled from the pane and clinked onto the ground by his feet.

They waited. Nothing.

Burton bent and examined the door’s keyhole. “It’s a basic deadlock. I’ll have it open in a jiffy.”

He retrieved a set of picks from his pocket and got to work. It took him less than a minute. There came two clicks, a clunk, and a loud creak as he pulled the doors open.

His breath hissed out through his teeth in a little cloud.

Swinburne gave a squawk of surprise.

The doors opened onto a tunnel through dense vermilion vegetation. Very little light filtered in through the factory’s dirty windows, but among the crowded leaves and tangled branches, strange fruits hung, glowing like little lanterns.

“A fairy grotto!” Swinburne exclaimed.

“A fiery grotto,” Burton corrected. He took a cautious step forward. “This tunnel hasn’t been cut or even cultivated. The plant appears to have grown into an arched pathway quite naturally. How thoroughly odd.” He moved a little farther into the building. “Shall we see where it goes?”

He closed the door behind them and tied the end of his dog’s lead to its latch. “Wait here, Fidget.”

Very slowly, listening for any sound, they proceeded through the closely packed verdure.

The jungle’s leaves showed enormous variety, some being smooth-edged, others crinkly. Its flowers ranged from tightly bunched petals to splayed blooms, some as small as daisies, others wider than Burton’s arm span. Branches went from bulky limbs to spindly twigs. All were contorted and twisted, curling this way and that, corkscrewing, bending and dividing in every direction, ending in buds and fruits and big gourd-like growths.

The scent was delicious, heady, and intoxicating. Burton started to feel—albeit faintly—the same euphoria that Saltzmann’s gave him, and, as they moved forward into the factory, he noted that Swinburne appeared to be fast slipping into a state of reverie.

They rounded one tight bend after another.

“A labyrinth?” Swinburne whispered. His voice was slurred.

“A single path,” Burton noted, “folding back and forth but gradually guiding us to the centre.”

“What Minotaur awaits us, I wonder?”

They kept going.

Burton noted that the floor was carpeted with a springy layer of fibrous roots, all matted together, and that the plant was somehow generating heat, for the atmosphere felt warm and humid.

“I feel very peculiar,” Swinburne mumbled.

“The aroma,” the king’s agent responded.

“It’s affecting you the same way, Richard? You feel a sense of—of—?”

Burton glanced at his colleague. “Endless possibilities?”

“Yes, that’s it. I find myself so relaxed that poetry is positively flooding from me. By golly! Such inspiration!”

Throwing his head back, he sleepily declaimed:

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,

Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;

In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,

Under the roses I hid my heart.

He stopped and gave a dopey grin, then his eyes widened and he emitted a gasp as a voice whispered:

Why would it sleep not? Why should it start,

When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?

What made sleep flutter his wings and part?

Only the song of a secret bird.

“My hat! Who said that?”

Burton pointed up into the branches to their right. “There’s someone there. A child, I think.”

The voice, susurrating like leaves in a breeze, said, “Please. Don’t look at me. Walk on. The path is nearly ended. You are expected and welcome.”

“I can’t make him out in the—in the—” Swinburne said. He suddenly yawned, before finishing, “in the gloom.”

“Hey, lad!” Burton called. “Come out of there. We mean no harm.”

“How did you finish my verse?” Swinburne added, speaking very slowly. “I only just thought of it.”

“It is the song of the rose,” came the reply. “Follow the path.”

The king’s agent looked at his companion, shrugged, and continued on. They walked, aware that the small figure was scrambling from branch to branch and keeping pace with them. Burton tried to catch sight of the boy, but the leaves were so densely packed, and the red light so deep and shadow-filled, that he could discern little of him.

Rounding a bend, they stepped out into a clearing; a domed space completely enclosed by foliage from which hundreds of glowing fruits dangled in clusters, like fat grapes. In its middle, a bush humped up from the floor, and at its top a single flower blossomed, a red rose of phenomenal proportions, almost three feet in circumference, with fat bees and colourful butterflies and bright motes drifting lazily in the air around it.

The perfume was thick and cloying. Burton staggered and sank to his knees.

Leaves rustled as their escort moved around the edge of the glade.

“Are you the Beetle?” Burton murmured.

“Yes,” came the whispered reply.

“You manufacture Saltzmann’s Tincture?”

“It comes from the gourds.”

“Then this vegetation has been here for some considerable time?” Like Swinburne, Burton had to stop to yawn. “Long before the seeds fell?”

“It began to grow up through the planks of the floor a little more than five years ago. This Wednesday past, it produced the seeds and sent them out of the factory’s chimneys to summon you here.”

“To summon me?”

“To summon your companion. The poet is the key.”

“Hallo? Excuse me? What? What?” Swinburne drawled.

From the amid the crowded leaves, and with much creaking and squeaking, two slim branches extended, heavy gourds drooping from each.

“Moving?” Swinburne slurred. “Is the jungle moving?”

The gourds dropped and cracked at Burton’s and Swinburne’s feet. Thick honey-coloured liquid oozed from them.

“Drink, Mr. Swinburne,” the Beetle whispered. “You too, Sir Richard.”

Swinburne sat cross-legged on the carpet of roots, between Burton and the rose, with the gourd in front of him. Burton, with his unswollen eye blurring, tried to focus on his friend. For a brief moment, he saw him clearly. Swinburne’s green eyes were wide. His pupils were distended. He appeared to be in a trance. Pink butterflies were fluttering around him and settling on his shoulders. Burton thought he might be hallucinating. He looked up and felt sure that, in the small gaps between the vegetation above, he could glimpse a night sky milky with stars.

Impossible.

Swinburne closed his eyes, a slight smile on his face, raised the gourd, and drank from it.

Burton fought to make sense of what he was seeing. The poet resembled a dreaming Buddha, the red of his hair merging with the red of the rose behind him, until the poet and the blossom appeared to merge into one.

Though he didn’t will them to do so, Burton’s hands grasped the gourd and raised it to his mouth. He swallowed sweet viscous liquid.

A voice, like Swinburne’s but reverberating as if spoken into an echoing cavern, sounded in his mind:

Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken

Heart of life, laid waste with wasting flame

Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken,

Time, thy name.

“Algy, get out of my damned head!” Burton moaned.

From the vegetation, the Beetle urged, “Don’t resist it. The weight of ages is upon you.”

What the hell does that mean?

The voice continued:

Girt about with shadow, blind and lame,