Home | Stories | The Garden Without Thorns
The Garden Without Thorns
(Pdf can be found below.)
here was once a land
where every burden had been lifted.
It was called
the Garden Without Thorns.
The fruit fell ripe.
The sun was warm,
but never hot.
No one ached.
No one aged.
The people were kind,
but
not close;
content,
but not alive.
Joy was expected.
Grief was unknown.
Growth was unknown.
Change
was unknown.
Every day was like the last —
the same bland indolence
drifting on
forever,
as far as anyone knew —
If they troubled
themselves
to think about
it.
Which they didn't.
However, one young woman did think about it.
Her
name was Maelin.
Everyone else
reclined in meadows of forgetfulness,
lulled by
the lullaby wind.
But Maelin paced the edge,
night after night,
barefoot in the
grass,
listening for a sound
that was never sung.
Something in her longed —
not for comfort,
but for
the real.
Then one dusk,
beneath a vine
she had never seen,
she
found a thorn.
A single one.
Blackand curved like a question.
It pricked her finger,
and for the first time,
she
bled.
And for the first time,
she felt awake.
She hid the thorn.
The Elders told her to discard it:
“It carries the poison of the Old World.
Struggle leads to nothing but sorrow.
Best to stay away.”
But the wound stayed.
And it itched with memory —
not
hers,
but something deeper.
Some ancestral ache.
A
whisper of a story
the Garden could not hold.
Soon, the vine with the thorn split open,
revealing a narrow
tunnel
beyond the Garden’s edge.
No one else saw it.
Or chose not to.
She stepped through.
Outside.
The world beyond was vast,
jagged and raw.
Thorns were everywhere.
She stumbled on stones,
tore her
hands on bark,
shivered beneath storm clouds.
She nearly turned back
a dozen times.
But something kept her moving —
a firethat had never been
lit
in the Garden.
She built her first shelter
from branches
with frostbitten
fingers.
Learned to shape fire from friction.
Foraged roots.
Her skin grew rough.
Her muscles sore.
She cried
sometimes.
Laughed too —
but now the laughter had
texture,
like breadwith crust.
She met others.
People who had never heard of the Garden.
Scarredand
singing.
They welcomed her awkwardly,
unsure what to make
of a girl
with soft hands
and haunted eyes.
She watched them argue and embrace,
failand rise again.
And she learned
the sacredness
of the
attempt.
Once, in a bitter winter,
she lost everything
to a fire
sparked by her own carelessness.
She sobbed in the snow.
But when she rose the next morning,
hungry and ash-covered,
she caught
her reflection
in a pool of ice.
There was grief in her face.
And strength.
And
life.
Much later, in the Garden,
someone found another thorn.
The vine was spreading.
The Elders gathered.
“What is happening?” they asked.
And far beyond the wall,
Maelin sat beside a fire,
telling a
story
to children gathered close.
Not a sermon,
not a warning —
just a tale.
Of a place where nothing ever hurt.
And how,
without
hurt,
nothing could ever matter.
She held up a thorn,
now polished and silver,
worn on a
cord
around her neck.
“Ease,” she said,
“has a cost —
a price I won't pay.”
—William Zeitler
2025 July 18
You’re reading GrailHeart — devoted to what is best about being human.
⸭ Other Media
⸭ Share
⸭ Book
“The Garden Without Thorns” is found in Stories from GrailHeart, Vol. 1, available for purchase here.