Girl of the Night Garden

“You can free her?” I ask, my heart leaping with hope.

“She’s already free,” Da says softly, nodding back toward the house. “The harpy was the Night Witch, Sigrid—Clara’s mother, in her true form. In that body, she could kill without losing her magic, but she could also be killed. I nearly destroyed her that way once before, the night a harpy attacked your mother in the woods early in her pregnancy. Elizabeth stayed inside the cottage after that, but Sigrid eventually found a way to reach her. And you. As you know, only one of you survived.”

My eyes widen and my thoughts race, more of the dream coming back to me now. “Because Sigrid was jealous. That’s why she murdered Mother. Because you were the witch’s lover.”

Da nods but doesn’t look ashamed the way I’d assumed he would be. But then I suppose he’s worked through all this with his God and his conscience a long time ago.

“Your mother knew,” he says, astounding me again. “She encouraged me to get close to Sigrid any way I could. I had a natural gift for healing magic, but only real magic, witch magic, could give your mother what she wanted most. What we both wanted most.”

“Me,” I supply. “So, you…what? Stole me from the witch’s garden? From that wretched little pond?”

“No. I used the magic I learned from Sigrid to help us conceive.” Now Da looks ashamed, and surprised. His red and gray eyebrows do a startled, twitchy dance on his forehead. “I didn’t think… I was sure you’d forgotten all that.”

“Sigrid helped me remember. Last night. I was in the garden with her in a dream. Or something.”

The color drains from his face. “That wasn’t a dream. It was memory. And thank God I reached you in time tonight or…” He trails off, closing his eyes and bowing his head, murmuring a soft prayer of thanks for my deliverance.

“Or what?” I demand after a moment, not wanting to share Da with his faith right now. I still have too many questions and I need to return to Clara as soon as possible.

“Your mind would have been lost,” he says. “And maybe your life as well. Sigrid pretended to care for you for a time, but even when you were small, I sensed she was looking for an excuse to finish what she started the night she poisoned your mother.”

Da goes on to explain how I was born too early when Sigrid’s potion killed my mother. How the witch planted and nurtured me in the night garden, the only place a baby so small might survive. Sigrid had no gift for growing human boys, Da said, and he hated seeing me suffer. He took me away as soon as I was strong enough to survive the journey to the human world and devoted himself to protecting me and as many other boys as he could from the woman he’d betrayed.

“Even with grace, it’s been a heavy burden,” he says. “If I hadn’t angered Sigrid, she might never have sent Clara out on such a terrible mission. So many innocent minds might have been spared.”

“About that.” I glance back at the house. “How was Adrina’s father healed? Was that you?”

“No, I imagine it was Clara, though she may not have realized what she was doing. She’s always had more magic than she realized, I suspect, but now that her mother is dead, the full power of Sigrid’s garden will pass to Clara and her sisters. Clara will need training to control it, or she could prove even more dangerous than Sigrid.”

I shake my head. “Clara would never hurt anyone. Ever.”

“Not on purpose, perhaps,” Da says. “But people often wish for things they shouldn’t. Think of all the people you might have accidentally harmed if wishing someone ill was enough to set bad things in motion.”

Before I can restate my defense of Clara’s good heart, I catch a flash of raven’s wings at the edge of the orange grove and suddenly remember the hawks from last night.

Pretending I haven’t seen the creatures, I murmur beneath my breath, “Clara has friends here. Creatures from the garden that change shape at will. They’re watching us from the orange trees.”

Da stiffens slightly but doesn’t look that way. “Do they seem…friendly? To humans?”

“Well, they tried to help me last night and may have spared me another bad knock on the head. But I think they also nearly killed me.” I explain about the bats that attacked me in the cave with Timon and what I overheard the night I spied on Clara. I finish with the last question I need answered before I return to her bedside. “Should we try to do something about them? Capture them or contain them or just give them a good firm talking to and explain we’re taking care of Clara as best we can?”