Seraphina(15)

With the Loud Lad avatar, however, motion just seemed to be characteristic; I had no sense that a real-world Samsamese piper was gazing back at me. Gazebos and pergolas sprouted all over the garden, gifts from His Loudness, and it pleased me to see them.

“Loud Lad!” I cried at the edge of his ravine. “I need a bridge!”

A gray-eyed, round-cheeked head popped up, followed by an oversized body clad in Samsamese black. He sat upon the lip of the cliff, took three fish and a lady’s nightdress from his bag—caterwauling all the while—and unfolded them into a bridge for me to cross.

It was very like dreaming, this garden. I tried not to question the logic of things.

“How are you? You’re not upset?” I asked, patting his bristly blond head. He hooted and disappeared into his crevasse. That was normal; he was usually calmer than the rest, maybe because he kept so busy.

I hurried toward Fruit Bat’s grove, worry beginning to catch up with me now. Fruit Bat was my very favorite grotesque, and the only orange tree in the garden grew in his stand of figs, dates, lemons, and other Porphyrian fruits. I reached the grove and looked up, but he wasn’t among the leaves. I looked down; he’d stacked fallen fruit into tidy pyramids, but he was nowhere to be seen.

He had never left his designated space before, not once. I stood a long time, staring at the empty trees, trying to rationalize his absence.

Trying to slow my panicked heart.

If Fruit Bat was loose in the garden, that explained the orange peel on Pelican Man’s lawn, and it might very well explain the intensity of my headache. If some little Porphyrian boy had found the way to peer back up the spyglass like Jannoula … I went cold all over. It was inconceivable. There must be another explanation. It would break my heart to have to cut off my connection to one I was so inexplicably fond of.

I pushed on, settling the remaining denizens, but my heart wasn’t in it. I found more orange peel in Muttering Creek and upon Three Dunes.

The last piece of the garden tonight was the Rose Garden, prissy domain of Miss Fusspots. She was a short, stout old woman in a gabled cap and thick spectacles, homely but not overtly grotesque. I’d seen her too during that first barrage of visions, fussing about her stew. That was the origin of her name.

It took me a moment to spot her—a moment during which I had panicked palpitations—but she was merely on her hands and knees in the dirt behind an unusually large albiflora. She was pulling up weeds before they had a chance to sprout. It was efficient, if baffling. She did not seem particularly perturbed; she ignored me completely.

I looked across the sundial lawn toward the egression gate; I longed for bed and rest, but right now I didn’t dare. I had to locate Fruit Bat.

There upon the sundial’s face lay an entire orange rind, peeled off as one piece.

And there was the boy himself, up the ancient yew tree beside the border wall. He looked pleased that I had spotted him; he waved, leaped down, and skipped across the sundial lawn toward me. I gaped, alarmed by his bright eyes and smile, afraid of what they might mean.

He held out a slice of orange. It curled like a prawn on his brown hand.

I stared at it in perplexity. I could deliberately induce a vision by holding a grotesque’s hands; I had done so once for each of them, seizing control of the visions and ending their control over me. That was the only time I’d done it. It felt wrong, like I was spying on people.

Was Fruit Bat merely offering me an orange, or did he wish me to take his hand? The latter notion gave me chills. I said, “Thank you, Bat, but I’m not hungry now. Let’s go find your trees.”


He followed me like a puppy, past Pandowdy’s swamp, through the butterfly garden, all the way back to his home grove. I’d expected him to leap right back up into the trees, but he looked at me with wide black eyes and held the orange slice up again. “You need to stay here and not go wandering around,” I admonished. “It’s bad enough that Loud Lad does it. Do you understand?”

He gave no indication that he understood; he ate the piece of orange, gazing into the distance. I patted his fluffy cloud of hair and waited until he was up a tree before I left.

I made my way to the gate, bowed to the sundial lawn, and said the designated words of parting: “This is my garden, all in ard. I tend it faithfully; let it keep faith with me.”

I opened my eyes in my own room and stretched my stiff limbs. I poured myself some water from the ewer on the table and tossed the bolster back onto the bed. My headache had evaporated; apparently I’d solved the problem, even if I hadn’t understood it.

Orma would have some idea about this. I determined to ask him tomorrow, and that prospect soothed my worry into sleep.





My morning routine was elaborate and time-consuming, so Orma had given me a timepiece that emitted blasphemy-inducing chirps at whatever early hour I specified. I kept it on top of the bookcase in the parlor, in a basket with a few other trinkets, so that I was forced to trudge all the way in there and dig around to switch it off.

It was a good system, except when I was too exhausted to remember to set the alarm. I awoke in a blaze of panic half an hour before I was due to lead choir practice.

I yanked my arms out of the sleeves of my chemise and shoved them up through the neck hole, lowering the linen garment until it rested around my hips like a skirt. I emptied the ewer into the basin and added the contents of the kettle, which were only slightly warmed from sitting on the hearth all night. I scrubbed the scales on my arm and around my middle with a soft cloth. The scales themselves registered no temperature; the trickle-down was far too cold to be comfortable today.