Oh… was the first thing I thought when I found this. I need your help, fellow art aficionados…
I am not entirely sure if the title should be “A Wicked Garden” or “A Sacred Garden” (I find the latter more likely because of the symbolism, plus a gallery also has it listed as that), because it is listed as both.
But what on earth are we looking at here?!
Because Death is tied up. I immediately had to think of Jesus on the cross here (not least because Delight’s positioning reminds me of many paintings of the crucifixion and both Maries, but naturally also because of how Death is positioned).
And the flower floating above Delight’s hand is a rose, like in so many of Zulli’s paintings (they often stand for love and passion, but especially with Death, he often uses them for grief and mourning. They don’t have a specific colour here—if they were blue or red, it would be easier to figure out what they stand for. Also, I have to think of swirling things the way the rose is floating 🍥).
But what is going on here? Who tied Death to the tree? And what with all the skulls? Are they symbolic for Delight dying/changing to Delirium?
And is this some sort of altar (the thing Delight is holding on to with her right, with the jug on the left and the ram’s skull on the right)? Who’s the sacrificial lamb here? Is she bargaining for more time as Delight?
Another connotation is that of St. Sebastian, in many depictions tied to a tree, although that’s less straightforward. People used to pray to St. Sebastian for protection against the plague, which could also make sense in this context (mental plague rather than bubonic—again, is there some bargaining going on here?). I’m honestly so confused…
Or could we actually turn this on its head, and it’s not about Delight turning into Delirium at all—at least not at this point. What if it’s actually about Death, and how she relates to her function, and her own struggles? I’ll just leave that question sitting there...
Zulli painted a Triptych of Death and Delight roundabout the same time which makes me think that could be also be an option, or at least that they are both affecting each other:
The individual paintings are called “She rides a pale horse”, “Sisters” and “Eternal Spring.” Here, the roses are actually coming out of Delight’s hair, and they’re red. And her hair is beginning to dissolve in the last one.
Edit to quickly remind everyone of this reference to the falling blossoms in her domain in Brief Lives:
This takes me in all different directions, and it’s immensely confusing.
Death as the saviour makes sense (well, sometimes I guess). But is Delight looking for salvation? Did she want to die? Is that what turned her into Delirium? Is it symbolic for the loss of innocence and understanding that this is what comes for all of us? Or is it also about Death?
“Oh” indeed…
Tagging @tickldpnk8 @windsweptinred without pressure—and everyone else who’d like to have a go at this one.
The only information Hob gets from Destiny is that whoever is accompanying him to the event will be waiting in the passenger seat of his car. There’s a certain petulant tone to Destiny’s voice that suggests it is not going to be him.
Delirium is waiting when he climbs in the driver’s side, dressed appropriately in a pretty pink dress and with the colours in her hair faded to a more respectable level – i.e., they won’t burn out anyone’s retinas. She beams when she sees him.
“Hi Hob!”
He laughs, “Hey Del, you were destined to accompany me?”
She leans in, close, like she’s imparting a secret. “There was a fight.” She tells him. “’twas funny, everyone was stood in their galleries and yelling at the other sigils.”
That does sound funny, actually, Hob can imagine them all getting increasingly irate at each other over something as simple as who gets to come with him to an admittedly boring faculty party.
She giggles suddenly and leans in even closer, pressing their noses together. “Even Death and Destiny.”
“And you?”
She scrunches her nose up. “I would have if I had had an opp… opp…”
“Opportunity?”
“Yes! Opportunity. Destiny kept speaking when I wanted to.”
Hob laughs again. “Didn’t he already know it was going to be you?”
“He wanted to change it.” She settles back in her seat and lets him start the car. “He only said it was me when he lost.”
It warms something in him to know that they were all so determined to be with him, even to the point of trying to change the Book.
“Good to know.”
They pull into the carpark and Hob is not surprised to see that there is already a reasonable number of cars present. The event did technically start almost half an hour ago.
“Alright.” He turns the engine off and turns to face Delirium. “You ready to schmooze?”
Her face screws up. “Schmooze.”
“Yeah. Don’t repeat that in front of anyone, yeah?”
She nods, incredibly serious, and Hob just has enough time to think that he might want to rephrase that to explain that while it was a joke, he also doesn’t want her referring to it as schmoozing in front of anyone, when her face breaks out in a brilliant and mischievous smile.
He grins back, holds up a fist. “Let’s do this?”
Del hits it with her own. “Do this.”
The Dean sweeps over as soon as the two of them enter, taking in Delirium – undeniably a child – with not a small amount of trepidation.
“Rob!” She says, somehow managing to incorporate both an exclamation mark and an ellipsis into her voice. “Who is this?”
He wraps an arm around Delirium’s shoulders. “Uh, this is Del, my partners’ sibling.”
“They’re busy.” Del offers, polite and reasonable. Hob wonders who gave her instructions on how to act.
The Dean’s face clears slightly, not completely, because Hob loves to keep people guessing on how many partners he actually has, and this does not at all clear anything up for her. ‘They’ could be one, or two, or in this case actually seven, but she doesn’t know that. “Oh, well it was so nice of you to join us instead.”
Del nods, seriously. “We could not let him face you alone.”
Hob manages to restrain the shocked laugh down to a snort. That is almost certainly something he said to Dream, about not wanting to face the faculty alone when everyone else would be with their partners. “She means because no one else will be.”
“Oh!” The Dean laughs as well. “I’ll introduce you to my husband at some point,” she waves a hand vaguely across the room, “unfortunately he has been drawn into a different conversation.”
“Ah, well, there’s no rush, right? We’ve got all evening.”
Del nods again, serious. “And if that falls through there is always the rest of your lives.”
The Dean cups a hand over her mouth, apparently already getting used to Del’s particular chain of thought. “Very true. It was nice to meet you.”
“You also.”
She wanders off again, probably to greet someone else, leaving the two of them hovering by the doorway and looking out across the room. Hob wonders if Delirium is going to whisper the weird hallucinations and beliefs of the people present, the same way Dream tells him their night time fantasies and Desire lets him know their waking ones.
Instead, she tugs on his arm excitedly. “Look, Hob, canapes!”
He lets her pull him over to the ‘buffet’ an admittedly poor selection of tiny foods, and watches her try one of each, accepting every time she pushes one, she particularly likes on him. It’s a new way to experience these sorts of events and he thinks that maybe that’s the point, maybe that’s why the Book decided she would be the one to accompany him.
Del bops him on the nose, pulling him out of his musings. “Thinking?”
“Yup. ‘bout you.”
She beams at him and holds up a tiny eclair. He opens his mouth and lets her stick it in, chewing obediently when she pulls her fingers back and stares expectantly.
“’s good.”
“Death says ones from France are better.”
“We’ll have to go to France sometime then.” Hob replies without really thinking about it.
The hopeful way she looks up at him in response almost breaks his heart. “Really?”
“Of course.”
He thinks she might be about to say something else, but his office neighbour appears beside them before she can.
“Rob! And who might this be?”
Del wipes her hand on her dress before offering it to Ally and Hob winces internally. Money he might have, but the dress she (or someone else) has conjured up looks incredibly expensive.
“I am Del.”
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Del, I’m Ally.” Ally shoots him an amused look out the corner of her eye.
“Yes,” Del says very seriously, “of medieval literature.”
The amused look becomes impressed, “Yup, you heard about me?”
Hob is very certain that he doesn’t talk about work when he hangs out with Del, which means that she must have gained this information from one of her siblings, and she’d confirmed earlier that they had literally argued over who got to accompany him, but this means that they talk about him when he’s not there. It settles something in his chest that worries sometimes they are all just humouring him.
“Lots.” Del agrees. “Hob is very fond of you.”
She softens visibly, “Well, I’m quite fond of him also.”
At the other end of the table, a waiter lays down a tray of new things and, rather than responding, Del lights up excitedly and scurries off to try one, leaving Hob to face Ally.
“Thought you were bringing one of the undefined number of partners. That’s a child.”
“I know.” Hob replies, because he does. And, sure, Del might technically be eons older than him, but she has the mind of a child – Destiny had described her as ‘not quite broken, almost shattered’ once. “She’s their sibling.”
“Which one’s?”
“Uh, all of them?”
Ally visibly processes this information. “I’m sorry.” She says in a voice that is anything but. “The undefined number of mysterious partners are… all siblings?”
“I think they have a shared calendar.”
She looks like she wants to say more in response to that, but Del reappears with two of the new canapes and holds one out to each of them. Whatever bone Ally has to pick with this weird arrangement of his apparently has nothing to do with Del because her face softens immediately, and she takes the offered food. Hob does as well.
“There are people over there who want to talk to you,” Del adds, helpfully, “I heard them talking.”
Hob follows her gaze to some more members of the faculty. “Alright, might wanna grab some more snacks, I don’t know how long this is gonna take.”
She nods and bounces off down the table, grabbing a paper plate because they might be in a fancy establishment, but G-d forbid anyone has to do any washing up.
Ally presses a hand to his arm, concern gently written in her eyes. “Rob, I’m not gonna tell you what to do with your life, but… are you sure about this?”
He looks down to where Delirium is weighing up how many of something to put on the plate and can almost imagine Dream peering over her shoulder, nose scrunched up in distaste, Death at his side laughing, the twins whispering about the people present, Destiny watching over them and Destruction watching Hob himself. He blinks and the images vanish.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly [Chapter 5]
Also on AO3
Hob gasps, thrown out of the most vivid dream he had experienced in over a hundred years. The feeling stayed with him, even as he put on the light – everything being too much and not enough and the first time he had ever felt that way. The odd panic that set in was confusingly close to coming down from a drug high.
“Delirium?” He scrambled out of bed, ignoring the way the duvet pooled on the floor. “Delirium? Is that you?”
A faint memory came back to him as he rushed through the apartment, the necklace she always wore, no matter what else changed. Swirls of colour.
He found a loose sheet of paper and several coloured pens before he paused and actually asked himself what he was doing. It probably wouldn’t even work. He put all the pens on the paper together and attempted to draw a swirl.
“Delirium?”
“That isn’t going to work.”
He looked up to see her sitting opposite him, except, there was something different; her normally coloured hair was a pale blonde, her mismatched eyes were both blue this time and her funky, psychedelic clothing had been replaced by a pink dress.
“Why not?”
She wrinkled her nose up. “I’m not close enough to being Delirium right now.”
Hob nodded slowly, taking in the changes to her person. “So who are you?”
“Delight.” She sighed. “Like I used to be. Why did you call me?”
“I had a dream.” Hob replied, and then paused, realising how menial that sounded in comparison to whatever had happened to Delir- Del.
But she frowned, tilting her head in an invitation for him to go on.
“I haven’t dreamed for years, not properly anyway, they were just faded, like watered down memories mostly if I even dreamed at all, and then today – tonight – I just had a dream and it was like I was experiencing everything all at the same time. I don’t know, like I got all the dreams I should have had in the past hundred years all in one go.”
“Dream is back.” She said, a little surprised, a little wistful. “I wasn’t 100 percent certain, but he must be.”
“Dream?”
“My brother. He’s been missing or something for… well probably as long as you have been missing dreams."
"What happened to him?”
She sighed again, her expression down turning. “I don’t know. I think the others are trying to keep it from me.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t think I can handle anything anymore. Not after changing to Delirium.” She paused, her eyes filling with tears slightly. “They’re scared of me, of what I could become and what they could become so they think the best solution is to keep me in the dark and tell me nothing.”
“I’m sorry.” Hob said, because that was all he could say.
She smiled at him. “It’s ok.” And then, “your dreams should settle down again once he gets a handle on everything.”
Hob nodded. “Thank you.”
“I have to go.” She told him. “I can’t stay like this for much longer.”
“Wait,”
She raised her eyes to meet his.
“Delight?”
“Yes?”
“What is that word for when being around someone makes you warm and happy?”
She smiled at the floor, obviously seeing straight through what he was doing. “Love?”
“Ah, yes. Delight?”
“Yes?”
He reached out a hand to squeeze her own. “I love you.”
She was at his side in an instant, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his shoulder. From that vantage point, he could see the colours seeping back into her hair, starting at the roots. “I love you too.”
And then she was gone, leaving the faint smell of bubble-gum and a sorrow Hob hadn’t known he could feel.
