I was thinking of my sister. I thought of her often, but especially when I was in the presence of others. I tried to look at them through her eyes, to pinpoint what she’d think of them, how’d she act, what she would say. But often I was too shy or gentle to say or do what she would. Then I would typically start to compare my company to her. It wasn’t fair-- I held my sister in the highest regard (far higher than the gods, whom I had been taught to mistrust) and no one could ever match her-- so of course I kept my thoughts private where they would not offend.
Charlie was a lot like Avesta, but she was also like me. Mostly she was her own person, which I appreciated.
As soon as Charlie was out of sight, I became irrationally anxious. What if I had sent her into danger? What if behind those doors slept a monster that would put the entire court in danger? But this anxiety was counterbalanced by that ease with which I moved through life. I had never really ever been worried for my safety, or the safety of the ones I loved. I just felt like everything would be okay in the end, all while realizing I had no logical reason to feel this. In fact, I had a lot of evidence that suggested the opposite.
But I had sent Charlie over the wall. I had chosen my actions. I could worry about it, but what was the point? Worrying wouldn’t change the outcome of what would happen.
And, as I had (a bit anxiously) expected, there was no disaster. After a minute of silence came the creak of the heavy wooden door dragging across the stone walkway, and I Charlie on the other side with her wide grin. “Thank you, Charlie,” I grinned right back at her. And then I stepped in slowly, eyes carefully scanning the secret place.
It was clearly a garden. There was such a dense diversity of plants, many of them exotic (or so I assumed, for I had never seen them before in all my Denoctian wanderings) and all interspersed in such a way I could not imagine how they had come to be there, if not deliberately placed. But whoever had once tended to the garden clearly did so no longer. There hung in the air the slow, heavy ease of a place forgotten. That was when I realized there was a freedom to it-- to being forgotten.
We began to walk down the cobbled path, which was thick with plants jostling for precious space and light. Butterflies and hummingbirds flapped (one lazily, the other frenetic) in the filtered rays of sun. I noticed the outline of statues, but they were so thickly covered by moss and ivy that I could not tell what they were of. The scents were varied and too numerous to list. Suffice to say it was spring, and the natural world was putting on a brilliant show of color and smell.
Toward the center of the walled off space there was a heavy-limbed wisteria tree and a shallow pool built of hammered bronze. Decorative lines of copper and gold extended from the pool, suggestive of rays of sun. The water was very still and very-- what I would call dirty, although it was not dirt but algae and moss, decomposing leaves and the roots of lilly pads. And probably a lot of fish poo, for there was a very large, very vibrantly orange-gold-white fish who drifted aimlessly like a fat little king with no one to lord over.
“Who made this place?” I wondered out loud. I found that my heart was beating quickly and my magic was itching. It pooled out beneath me and spread invisible fingers over the rocks, the roots, the leaves. I wanted very dearly to be alone there. I was sensitive to Charlie not enjoying it as much as I did, and it distracted me from my own pleasure. I wanted to share the magic of it with her, but I also feared that it would not leave the same impression it did on me.
I immediately thought of the garden a sacred, reverent space. Reverent to what or whom, I was not sure of yet. “And where do you think they went?” I puzzled over a statue, nosing aside the leaves that covered it. I could have used my telekinesis but it seemed important to touch it with the flesh. My question, played back in my head, struck me as quite stupid. Whoever made this place had most certainly died.
And if the door had been locked from the inside, it was very possible they had never left.
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