In the Night Garden

“What have you done now, you silly old cripple?” The voice came from nowhere; the wood wound ahead of him in its patches of gray and white, empty and still. But he knew the voice—oh, how he knew it.

“Oubliette, where are you?” he whispered.

One of the trees, an old twisted ash, turned around, and it was his Oubliette, her hair brown and fog-plastered to her neck, her eyes wide and sad, her dress, what was left of it, pale and clinging. He ran to her—who would not have run? He ran to her and she put her arms around his neck, her brow on his mangled shoulder.

“Why did you come after me? How will you get back, you stupid boy?” she said ruefully, shaking her head against him.

“I came to save you,” he said, surprised and confused. “It’s what we do, isn’t it? We save each other.”

Oubliette pushed him away. “I didn’t need you to save me! Do you know what it cost me to get here?”

“Do you know what it cost me to follow you?” Seven exploded.

She turned again on her heels, and her tree-side whipped around, pitted and petrified—and smooth, not tail at all. He had not seen her because she was all tree now, her sweet tufted tail gone. “I paid him in flesh, the ferryman and his awful lizards. I assume you did, too? You spent the last of our dhheiba to get here? To save me?”

“Not the last.”

Oubliette’s eyes blazed, her skin suddenly less than gray, flushed with anger. She threw herself against him, almost knocking him to the forest floor, and kissed him with such ferocity and brutal strength that he could not breathe. Her mouth was hot in the freeze and the fog, her teeth cracking against his. She drew blood from his lip and tore away, her mouth still stained with his, scarlet in the gray.

“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? The grateful kiss of a rescued maiden? Her pretty hand in yours? Doe eyes batting stupidly at you? Just like a miller’s son!”

“No! No! Oubliette, I never wanted you like that, you know that!”

“Well, why not?” She laughed, desperate and shrill. Seven looked at her, his eyes full of tears, his back bent and broken, his sleeve dangling.

“There are some things you never get over,” he whispered. “What do you see when you look at me? Tell me what you see; tell me you see a man. Tell me.”

Oubliette cringed, her mouth twisting into an ugly grimace. She was so much older now, he saw. Her jaw was hard and sharp, her face her own, entirely, without the smallest hint of a child haunting it.

“Bone,” she hissed. “I look at you and I see bones. Bones and coins.”

“I know.” Seven reached for her again, and she let herself be held, shaking like a caught deer. “You saved me, my friend, my only friend. I had to save you. I had to.”

“I chose to come here. I wanted to come. I went to the lake—”

“I know! I went, too! Did you see her?”

“Yes! She was beautiful, so beautiful, and her face was so dark—”

“Were you scared?”

“No, well, yes—were you?”

“Of course! Did you do it?”

“I had to! Did you—”

“Yes—did you throw up?”

“No, but I wanted to, when she cut me to fill her bowl—”

“All that red! It was like—”

“Before. Yes.”

The two looked at each other, half smiling.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Seven said against her wild-smelling hair.