King Laurin and the Rose Garden

The story

Up high, among the rocks of the Catinaccio, there was a garden that no man had ever tended.

It was a garden of roses. Red roses, big and thick, covering the stone like a carpet. And below, in the belly of the mountain, lived a people of dwarfs who dug day and night in search of crystals, of silver and of gold. Their king was called Laurin.

Laurin was no ordinary king. He had two treasures that nobody else owned. The first was a belt, and whoever wore it had the strength of twelve men. The second was a cloak, and whoever put it on became invisible. With those two things and with his garden, the king of the dwarfs felt safe, like a child with hands full of toys.

But one thing Laurin lacked. And it was in May that he discovered it.

The King of the Adige, that year, wanted to hold a great spring outing. He was to announce the marriage of his daughter Similde, and he invited all the nobles of the kingdom. All, except one.

Laurin found out. From up there, from his mountain, he saw the knights ride by, with flags and coloured cloaks, and felt a small, stinging envy. Then he drew his cloak over his shoulders, and disappeared.

He went to the festival anyway. Nobody saw him. He walked among the tents, among the horses and the laden tables, listening to the laughter of those who had not invited him. The tournament had just begun when Laurin, leaning on a post, raised his eyes.

Similde was on a platform, among the other ladies. She was laughing at something, and the sun turned her hair to copper.

Laurin stopped breathing.

That evening, as the sun went down, a shadow with no body passed through the crowd. A moment later the princess was gone, and for a long moment nobody understood where she had gone. Then someone began to shout her name.

The king of the dwarfs took her to his kingdom, among the roses.

Nobody knows what Similde thought, that night, when she opened her eyes in a garden she did not know. But we do know what the one who had lost her thought. Her betrothed, a knight named Hartwig, wasted no time. He went to the king of the Goths, asked for help, and together they gathered their warriors.

They climbed the Catinaccio.

Laurin saw them coming from the windows of rock, with shining weapons and flags. He was not afraid. He fastened his belt and went out to wait for them, and for a while the battle was all his: every blow was worth that of twelve men, and the knights fell back.

But they were many, and weariness weighed on him. At a certain point the king of the dwarfs understood he would not make it.

He drew his cloak over his shoulders and vanished.

He thought: they cannot take me if they cannot see me. He began to hop among the bushes of the garden, looking for somewhere to hide, and threw himself under a rose bush. Inside the bush he stood still, his heart in his throat. He felt safe.

But the roses, when he moved, moved with him.

The knights noticed at once. "Look," said one, "that bush is trembling without any wind." And one after another they looked. The roses trembled, parted, bent, tracing in the air the shape of someone who was not there.

They stretched out their hands. They seized the invisible king, dragged him out and cut the belt that gave him strength.

Laurin was carried away, a prisoner.

In the cell, in the dark, the king of the dwarfs stayed for a long time with his head in his hands. He thought of his kingdom, his garden, his treasures, of Similde, of whom he knew nothing. He felt a slow bitterness growing inside, and at a certain point he blamed what he held dearest: the garden.

"You betrayed me," he said. "If you had not been so beautiful, if you had not moved with me, they would not have found me."

And he pronounced a curse.

"No human eye shall ever see you again. Neither by day, nor by night."

The roses vanished. In their place remained bare rock, grey and hard, climbing towards the sky.

But Laurin, in his anger, had forgotten one thing. There is not only day, and there is not only night. There is also a moment when the sun is about to rise or about to vanish, and the sky is neither the one nor the other.

That is why, even today, on clear evenings, when the sun sinks over the Dolomites, the rock of the Catinaccio begins to turn pink. Then red. Then, for a few minutes, it burns like a great rose garden. At dawn the same thing happens.

That phenomenon has a name, a Ladin word: enrosadira. This part of the story, the curse and the sunset, is not in the medieval poem: it took shape between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gathering Ladin and German traditions.

They say that at that moment Laurin's garden shows itself again, for an instant only, to those who know how to look.

Then the light goes away, and only the mountain remains, grey, still, and a little more alone than before.