The Garden

I see her once a year.

I am young the first time. The flowering age where responsibility is strangled by optimism. Some people say I am lost that evening, but I decide that slumped against this tree in this field is exactly where I am supposed to be. 

I hear her first - a wordless but soothing voice dancing on the wind. The wildflowers are so tall my neck hurts trying to see over them. Mum and Dad were only teasing about farmers, I remind myself. But toothless scarecrows with dogs and guns who kidnap runaway children still claw their way into my head.

I yelp as a delightful giggle appears next to me. She isn’t scary at all, but bright and playful.

“Are you trying to kidnap me?” I chew my lip and stare at her.

“Why would I do something like that!” She laughs.

“I thought you might be a farmer,” I explain, making doubly sure she has no dogs or guns hiding behind her.

“I wouldn’t say so, no.” She frowns, then adds: “But I do look after this place,”

“The field?”

“And all the others you can see!” She nods proudly and my eyes gape forward.

“Amazing,” I breathe. “It must be a lot of work,”

“Mostly it takes care of itself,”

“Can you show me?” I shuffle towards her.

The ground opens gently beneath her hand and shoots lace their way through her fingers, weaving themselves into delicate arches above. Flowers yawn and stretch into colours I have never seen before to decorate the roof of the tiny architecture.

“Here,” 

She reaches for my hand and I let her lay it carefully on the ground. I fight the urge to pull it away when something tickles my palm. She’s the one making it happen, but my chest swells just the same as my own flower slips through my fingers like silk.

She lets go and I imagine myself dancing and shouting and flinging my arms around her in thanks. But I just sit still and silent, listening to my heart shudder and knowing I should breathe out again.

A shrill voice cracks my name in the distance. I have to go.

It’s the summer holidays now, and I’m itching with boredom yet dread the return of school. She’s expecting me. The year after we first met, I was taken aback that she’d remembered me, and she that I had returned. Neither of us know exactly how long ago that was but it doesn’t matter, we eventually decide.

“It will be dark soon,” I say.

The sky mirrors her meadows, which this year are a sea of gold awaiting harvest. She hasn't kept flowers for years, but still she makes some grow for the day I come.

“Soon,” She props herself up. “But it’s still light now,”

She will disappear with the light. I have never seen it happen, but she always insists we say goodbye before it does.

“You don’t want me to go?” My breath catches a little.

“No. It’s okay,”

The last segment of sun rests on a distant haze I call home. From here the city is barely a puddle of concrete on the horizon. When I return though it will be an ocean with thrashing grey waves tearing into the sky.

She rests a hand on the back of mine and I coax a green archway from the ground, just like the first one she ever made me.

“You’re getting better,” Her smile shimmers as the sun is clipped from the sky. The field does too and it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two of them. I go to squeeze her hand but clasp only the waxy stems of unripe crops.

I’m there before sunrise this year, but the wait is therapeutic. The city looks closer than ever and the smoke pouring into clouds marks my factory like a pin on a map. The field has no flowers and no crops but grass alone, pure and rugged. Tiny ravines in the hard clay which grip the green carpet mimic the foundations of our new build which will soon join the skyline. My mind drifts to the paperwork on my desk, answers and arguments play out in my imagination.

I am interrupted by her arms pouncing on me from behind. Her chin presses lightly on my shoulder and I let her embrace me for as long as she likes.

“I wanted as long as we can have together,” I explain my premature arrival and proudly show her my factory in the distance.

“That’s you?”

“We’re expanding soon,” I say, noticing too late how her face falls. It’s tired and dirty as well, I realise; as if she has finished a hard day’s work even though it’s barely dawn.

We listen to the wind for a moment.

“Here,” She turns to me and lifts my hand. “You were here so soon, I didn’t get a chance to grow anything!”

“It’s okay,” I stop her. “You don’t have to,”

The flowers are beautiful and nostalgic, but the magic trick really isn’t necessary any more.

She’s not very good at scowling but tries now, and the ground starts to crawl around my feet anyway. Walls of green explode from it around us and its tendrils knot themselves in symmetry above.

“Point taken,” I laugh as she slumps to the ground in the awesome structure, smiling. “You know you’d probably need planning permission for this!”

My joke falls over a blank stare.

“Oh. It’s something you need to be allowed to build. An agreement that everyone’s happy,” I explain.

“You mean everyone agreed to build everything in the city?”

“Exactly,”

“Can you disagree?”

“Sure you can,”

“No, I mean you. Will you stop them?”

I'm caught.

“Stop what?”

“The city’s too close,” 

“It won’t ever reach here,” I laugh. She points her eyes at me and my spine ripples. “Okay. Yes, I’ll try. But it’s not just up to me,”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

Everyone knew the new business would fail. Since I left the factory it was a matter of when, not if. It’s the reason I’m late today, and I chant in my head to remain civil with her while a storm of phone call fragments rattles my skull. The monument of flowers makes my smile a little more convincing, but her skin is cold and lips dry as we kiss. Before now, I would turn blind eye and she says nothing even though she knows I worry. But today I can bear it no more.

“You need to see a doctor,” I plead. The grass runs thin and pale, even more than last year and the energy spent to grow my welcome throbs sharp across her face despite her best efforts to hide it.

“It’s nice to see you too!” She jests. 

Meaningful words dance and taunt me when I grope for them, so I swallow and bow my head instead.

“I’m fine, I promise. Just tired. I’ve been working hard,” She laces her fingers through mine. “A doctor couldn’t help me anyway,”

It’s a lie shrouded in comfort which makes my chest relax and tighten at the same time. We walk a while in silence, and soon she has burned away the swirling clouds in my mind like the sun through morning fog.

“How long can you leave for?” I want her to come to the city, just once, to see my world too. And to make her see a doctor.

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t try, especially not now. Even my own fields are too distant sometimes,”

She has told me before, of when she tried to leave. She doesn’t remember much, but it was only thanks to the kindness of a stranger that she made it back at all. Perhaps it is best not to try.

I have not tried to return to the city. Our field is infested and I fend off a swarm of high-vis clones drilling into my ear to leave. Eventually they give up and I am left alone to watch the falling sun cast hard edged silhouettes against the bloodstained sky. I am sure I hear her playing with the wind above the drumming screech of metal fighting itself. And with each screech, a fresh wound gouged from us by iron claws. I find a place to lay out the flowers I picked before coming and begin to weave them by hand. Their stems are limp and threaten to drop their colour altogether each time I touch them. Still, the corpses bow into a precarious arch in her honour. A steel caterpillar hunts me and I realise I am helpless, perhaps too late to save even myself. I am accustomed to black air in a way she was not. But it still takes its toll. There are places now, even within our fields, I cannot venture without feeling my own life wander from me. The caterpillar drums impatiently, so I leave the monument and return to the tree where we met. The skyline threatens to engulf the sun and I shimmer translucent just as she used to. When the light is finally swallowed I feel myself shatter gently into the wind.