Girl of the Night Garden

I laugh at the little clown, thinking he’d be better suited to the stage than to life as a farmer or blacksmith. I’m about to suggest he fix up the old amphitheater up the hill so he could put on plays with his friends, when Adrina’s head appears at the kitchen window. “Timon stop!”

“I’m pretending to be French,” he calls back. “Les poisson macaron croissant!”

“You’re ridiculous. Please, stop,” Adrina insists, her brow furrowed. “Clara’s upset. Can you come, Declan? Maybe you can help? She won’t speak to me, and I’m not sure what’s wrong. We took father a plate for his supper and suddenly she just…ran away. She’s over the hill on the other side of the house. By the well.”

“I will show you where.” Timon drops his goose act and waves an urgent hand my way. “Come.”

Chapter Eleven

Foxglove

Poke bounces back and forth across the grass on strong raven’s legs. “Nonsense. Stuff and fluff and nonsense!”

Wig snuggles closer, his tiny mouse hands petting the hollow of my throat, but his touch offers no comfort.

“It’s not nonsense. I saw him,” I insist, my pulse still unsteady. “I saw what our magic did, what my magic did.” I huddle closer to the cold stones of the well at my back. “He’s broken, Poke. He can’t look his own daughter in the eye. Can’t go to work. Can’t even sit for a meal with his—”

“Should have thought about that before he was a bully and brute,” Poke cuts in, scratching his claws through the dirt, sending up puffs of dust the evening breeze carries down the hill toward the shore.

I want to follow it. To become it. To disperse in the wind and come back together somewhere far, far away from this place.

But no matter how far I float, I’ll never be able to forget what I saw in the shed behind the Barolo family’s cottage. The only way to escape that would be to travel through time, go back and back and back to the night I was cast from the garden and refuse the magic’s call.

Even if it would likely have killed me.

That’s the nature of Mother’s magic—obey it or be destroyed by it. We’ve all heard the stories of night creatures who decided to take an evening off and ended up as stardust scattered into the beds of their fellow plantings.

“Adrina said he was kind,” I say, my throat tight. “She said he was firm, but kind. A wonderful father. He never struck her or her sisters or brother or mother. Never made them feel afraid. When I asked about it, she looked at me like I was…mad.”

I feel mad. Feel like the entire world has flipped upside down and I’m walking around with my feet in the sky and my hair dragging in the dirt.

“Not mad, not, not,” Wig whispers. “Sweet Glove, love, Glove.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I’m not sweet, Wig. If even half the men I touched were innocent, then I—”

“Poppycock.” Poke pulls himself up to his full raven height, his feathers sticking out like spines on a cactus made of shadow. “Men are never innocent. No human is innocent. All have darkness in their hearts. If they didn’t, we nightmares couldn’t find our way home to our gardens through their dreams. You know that, Glove. That’s truth. As old as stone and starlight.”

“But that doesn’t mean they deserve to be broken.” I swipe the damp from my cheeks and fight to pull myself together. If I don’t, I won’t have a chance at making Poke understand.

Skritches don’t appreciate emotional displays. They crave logic.

Or silence.

“Can’t you see?” I continue. “No creature is completely innocent, but most aren’t purely evil, either. You’ve seen that. I’ve seen that. What’s right or wrong can be complicated. But the work Mother gave me isn’t complicated. It’s…brutish.”

“But we’ve seen the pain, pain, pain,” Wig whispers, uncertainty in his small voice. “We have, have.”

“Yes, we have.” I brush a gentle fingertip over the top of his head. “But not all the women were in pain. Only some. And we never returned to those lands, those women, to see if what I’d done to their men improved their lives. I should have done that, Wig. I should have thought to check. I’m so ashamed that I didn’t.”

Wig’s small mouth trembles at the edges. “But Mother said, said, said.”

“I know she did,” I whisper, throat tight. “But I think…Mother lies.”

“Clara!” Declan calls from the other side of the well. Poke grouses, “Stupid boy. Like a stray dog. Slobbering and wagging and showing up where he isn’t wanted.”

“Hush,” I chide. For a moment, I consider sinking behind the stones, hiding from Declan until I can make sense of the storm raging inside of me, but I dismiss the thought with my next breath.

Adrina must have told him I was here, even though I begged her for a few moments alone. But I’m not angry. Considering what I’ve done to her family, I owe her more than tolerance. I owe her years of selfless service, though I realize no amount of penance can replace what I’ve broken and stolen.