4
bags, venture into the distant town, and make a new start humid breeze breathed life into the animals and they

issue
there. So after filling a basket with some food and a flask swayed gently with each gust. Enchanted, she stepped
of water, checking to make sure that she had money and a through the vines and into the clearing. There, seated



Fluxion
map, and making the excuse that she required extra sup- upon a topiary throne, she found a handsome man in a
ART
plies to help the villagers with their surge in problems, she dapper white top hat and tails smiling slyly as he puffed
started down the road. on an elaborately carved bone pipe.
The sorceress had much on her mind, and as her “Hello,” he said, and rose to greet her with a
thoughts wandered, so did her feet and before long she bow. “Welcome to Circus Botanicum. I’ve been expecting
had lost her way in you.”
a strange overgrown “You have?” she
forest. It was getting replied, pleasantly
to be afternoon and startled.
she was mildly wor- “Why, yes,”
ried and very hun- he answered. “I
gry, so she decided am warden of this
to stop and consult wood, and I know of
the map while eat- all who wander in
ing her lunch. She it. Come with me.”
found a clearing just He gestured to a gap
off the road and set- in the topiary circle
tled down under a and led her between
huge oak tree. After a hulking bear ris-
eating, she studied ing up on its back
the map and quickly legs and an ostrich
discovered where with its wings out-
she had veered off stretched.
course. Making The circus was
ready to return to comprised of a series
the road, she noticed of clearings, each
a small stream screened by trees
trickling nearby and and brush so that it
decided to refill her was impossible to see
flask before resum- beyond the immedi-
ing her trek. As she ate space. Occupying
bent to reach the them were the most
water, a strange
Figure 1 Whip Aloe (Aloe flagellaris)
wondrous plants
vision caught her that the sorceress
eye. Through a gap in the trees she was certain that she had ever seen. The first was easily twice as tall as she and
had glimpsed a large green elephant. She blinked a few looked like a tree fern, only instead of delicate, feathery
times and looked again. Sure enough there it was, frozen fronds, it had thick, leathery arms that tapered slightly
in mid trumpet with its trunk held high in the air. from base to barbed tip. They curled gently, creating the
As she got nearer, she saw that the elephant was in impression of an enormous spiky octopus resting atop a
fact an immense topiary, and it was only one animal in large column. She reached out to touch it, but the warden
an entire menagerie surrounding a small clearing. Next stopped her with a gesture.
to it was a giraffe, on the other side of an entrance veiled “It’s not wise to get too close to the whip aloe,” he
by trailing vines with dusky purple flowers. The warm, said ominously.
204
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