In the Night Garden

Zmeya’s face softened, shades of green playing over her cheeks. “Oh, I don’t blame you, poor thing. You are so lost, too. Can I help but tease you for those great hungry eyes, for all those things you said when you came here squeezing your little leaf? But why would you not eat at my table?” The Snake-Star moved forward to hold the huldra’s head in her hands.

Oubliette laughed and wiped at her tears. “Anyone who has read a book in her life knows not to eat the food of the dead,” she answered. The two women embraced briefly, as though they did not want to embarrass their visitor. Seven felt the weight of how much she had seen and done without him pulling at his sleeve.

“Why do they love you like this?” he demanded. They started back, away from his frayed voice. “Why does everyone fling themselves at you, just praying you’ll catch them? Immacolata, Oubliette—they gave up everything just for you!”

Zmeya looked at him over Oubliette

’s bent head. “I don’t know!” she hissed. “Who knows why you do anything? You look at us and call us gods and sacrifice your seventh sons on altars we know nothing about! You build up towers we never asked you to build, and with your other hands you slaughter us and tell us that wood is too fine for the likes of us, and rape us until our legs crack! How should I know why some few of you fail to mutilate us? But if those few fling themselves at me, what can I do but catch them? Who will do it, if I do not? If I turn them away like bad children who ought not to trouble their betters?”

“They are not your children to catch!”

“Tell them that. And then tell me to turn away a girl who cuts into her body for my sake, tell her that she is not welcome, there are already too many sisters here, we have no room for more.”

The one-armed boy turned to his friend with eyes that pleaded and prostrated. “Was I not brother enough?”

Oubliette glared at him. “There are some things you never get over,” she spat. “You left Taglio and Grotteschi without a word. Were they not family enough? Have you thought at all of them, how they might miss you, how they might wish you had stayed, if they are closer to Ajanabh, within its gates, if Grotteschi is even now singing at shuttered windows?”

Seven said nothing.

“That is how often I have thought of you,” she finished.

In the Garden

THE TWILIGHT WAS THIN AND WISPY OVER THE LAKE. THE GIRL’S SKIN was warm under her cloak, but the boy trembled.

“When you finish the tales,” he said, “when your eyelids have poured out all their ink between us and the Garden is black with them, will you leave me as Oubliette left Seven? As Seven left the Gaselli and the Manticore? Will you go off into a place I cannot touch and never think of me again?” He swallowed hard. “Or will you remember that there was once a nice boy who was not afraid of you, and walked in the Garden with you, and listened to you, and did not interrupt more often than is polite? Will you sit at a table of blue crystal with parrot wings for legs with fabulous monsters all around, eating lunches of leek and rose and think to yourself: I wonder whatever happened to that boy, where he is now, if he is married, if he is fat, if he has kept the Garden well trimmed?”

He could hardly look at her; his hands shook like brown cattails.

The girl scowled at him. “When I finish the tales, when my eyelids have poured out all their ink into your hands and I have nothing left for myself, will you run back to the Palace like a good prince and leave me to my fate, just as Hind left the beast who loved her? Will you go into rooms at whose doors I am not even allowed to knock and never think of me again? Or will you remember that there was once a nice girl who did not ask too much of you, and walked in the Garden with you, and told you stories that made your head swim with all manner of strange fishes, and thought so much for your safety that she taught you all the secret places that were once hers alone? Will you sit with a Sultan’s turban and crown on your head, a Sultan’s bangle at your wrist, at a golden table borne up by the backs of perfumed slaves and think to yourself: I wonder whatever happened to that girl, where she is now, if she is married, if she is fat, if she has made friends among the demons?”

Neither of them spoke for a long while, the air between them heavy and sad as old rain. The girl clenched her teeth against the reassurances that yearned to come. They were soft and sweet and untrue. She did not know—how could she know?—what would happen.

“I think,” the boy said, “that I would bring supper out to these stones, out to this lake, for fifty years, for all of my reign, in hopes that you would come back, with fresh ink on your eyes, and new marvels to tell. I would take down all the Garden gates, and someday there would be an old, white-haired man with green apples and roast dove in his napkin, sitting by the water and asking himself whatever happened to that girl.”

She smiled, and touched his hand. The bird of pearl sat between them, unconcerned.

“We have the whole night,” she said. “The moon is not even up. Shall I finish the tale of that awful, lonely Isle?”

“Yes,” the boy breathed.

THE TALE

OF THE CROSSING,

CONTINUED

THE CHILD WAS LONG IN COMING.

Seven joined Oubliette in one of the long, empty gray houses. There were two windows, and two long beds, and a low, rough table, but she would not let him eat the apples and plantains and pomegranates that were laid out there.

“Who left us this?” Seven asked.

The huldra shrugged. “They tend to credit Idyll for anything strange and bright that does not come from them. But who can say? The second bed is new, as well. Maybe no one. Maybe it grows from the table like a spring of holly from a holly bush. Maybe this is a house-bush, and it blossomed up a new bed for you, and supper.” She crooked a smile, and things went easier between them then, though they both wondered how long they could last without eating the rich red meal that each evening sat shining on the table.

They slept separately for half of a single night before Oubliette crawled in beside her friend like a wary cat.

In what passed for mornings on the Isle, one of the Itto twins might come and take them to see how the wispy lights of Zmeya’s children wheeled along the forest floor, playing like butterflies or finches. Diamond might come with one of her sisters to bring sticks of fire to each of the houses’ hearths, should the houses have hearths that day. They were odd, intractable shacks who might offer a fire grate once, and, if rebuffed, withhold them from everyone for weeks. So when hearths appeared, the Stars hastened to please them with sparks and crackling logs. Yet no matter how often Seven and Oubliette politely told their house they were not hungry, or did not care for fruit, there it was the next evening, fresh and new and sparkling.