Girl of the Night Garden

And blinks.

And blinks again, as if he’s waiting for one of the blinks to take me away.

“This isn’t a dream.” I pull my hand from his skin, feeling...strange inside. Stranger.

“You’re sure?” he asks, his breath rushing softly out. “I’ve had this dream before.”

“You dream about me?” I’m so intrigued that I forget the peculiar moment. Maybe I’m not as powerless on this island as I’ve thought. If Declan dreams of me… “What sorts of dreams?”

He shoves his hair from his forehead with a drowsy hand. “I’d rather not say.”

“Why?”

“Well, if you’re a dream, then you know why.” His hand drifts my way, catching a lock of hair that’s fallen over my shoulder and twining it around his finger. I glance down, see that part of me wrapped around a part of him, and feel something trip and tumble inside me. “And,” says Declan, “if you’re not a dream, then I’d be embarrassed.”

My tongue slips out to wet my lips, but they’re so hot they burn the moisture away in a beat of my heart. “Why? Are they terrifying? The dreams? The nightmares?”

He smiles and whispers, “They’re not nightmares,” while his hand goes wandering again, this time to my face.

He cups my cheek gently, carefully. Still, I’m keenly aware of every inch of his rough hand pressed against my flesh, from the delicate hollow below my ear, past the stubborn curve of my jaw, down to the trembling point of my chin, the last line of defense between his skin and my mouth.

If I tipped my head down, I could press my lips to the place where his blood rushes at his wrist and feel his pulse race.

A kiss. That’s what it would be.

A…kiss.

Nightmares don’t kiss. They don’t give human boys sweet dreams, either.

“I have to go.” I jerk away, rubbing the memory of his touch from my cheek with my knuckles. “But I need your help.”

“Go where?” He sits up, his blanket slipping down.

“To the ocean.” I look away. I don’t need to dwell on the secrets of a mortal boy’s skin; I need to find a way back to myself before I lose Foxglove forever. Before I’m nothing but Clara and her raven hair and sad eyes, with only the gray humming between her ears and not even a memory of magic left inside. “If I go tonight, while the moon is dark, I might…”

I might be able to rejoin my dear ones.

If Wig and Poke avoided the wards surrounding Amaria and survived, they would have been pulled away from the island come the first crescent sliver in the sky. They’re loyal friends, but they are as driven to perform their nightly duties as any other planting. But they’ll come back at the darkening of the moon. Come back for me.

If I can get out to sea, beyond the wards, I might find them there, waiting.

Or my magic might return to me and I could start searching for them. I survived crossing the wards once. Surely, I can survive it again.

But I can’t tell Declan even a scrap of the truth.

“Come outside,” I say, motioning toward the door. “I’ll explain.”

“Let me get dressed. I’ll meet you out there,” he says without hesitation.

I nod and creep to the door, slipping gratefully out into the chill autumn wind sweeping in off the water. I move a few steps down the sandy path to the beach and then a few more, pulling in deep breaths and blowing them out until my heartbeat slows.

I look up at the sky, at the stars and stars and stars—so many more than on a moony night, but never as many here on earth as in the sky above the night garden—and I am seized with a powerful ache for the land of my birth. It burns in my lungs and clutches at my throat. I hunch my shoulders and press my fists against my chest, riding out the wave of longing for my sisters, for the safety of our bed, for the shelter of their arms looped through mine as we curl together in sleep, for the simplicity and completeness and rightness of the time before I was ripped away.

Before I understood what it was to long for something. Before the confusion and isolation and too much time in the human world.

“Clara?” Declan’s whisper makes me turn.

I see his lean, broad-shouldered shadow step from the doorway, and for a moment I want nothing more than to turn and run from him. Run as fast and as far as I can, run right into the sea and keep running along the ocean floor until I’m spit up on some distant shore.

But could I ever run far enough to forget that for a moment I wanted to give a kiss? Run fast enough to banish the memory of being something so close to a human girl?