Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(39)

I visualized Otter as I had done with each of the others. Her image materialized before me in the garden. I looked it over to see that I’d gotten the details right, but her strange clothing bothered me. That fur suit could not be of her choosing, surely. I changed it, envisioning her in a sturdy green gown, like a young wife from a good house in town, and with blond hair, like my stepmother’s. I hoped real-world Otter would have approved, but of course she would never know. These grotesques in my head were symbols; they were not self-aware. I spoke ritual words, preparing the ground of my mind, and took Otter’s hands in mine.

I whirled out into a vision, and again saw the fur-suited woman on the low bed of her cell, hugging her knees. My presence caught her attention; she leaped to her feet. This time, however, the vision was under my control. I pulled back to my mind’s garden—taking something with me, but I could not have said what—and affixed this last connection so that unruly visions would ambush me no more.

“All in ard,” I said to Otter, and released her hands. Or tried to.

She gripped me tightly. “All in ard,” she repeated, her vocal inflections strangely flat but her sharp face alert. “Who are you? What is this place?”

“Saints’ bones!” I cried. What was this? How was she able to talk to me?

She released my hands and stared at me with eyes as green as her gown. “How did you bring me here?” she asked. “Why did you?”

“I—I didn’t,” I stammered stupidly. She was mentally present. None of the others were. “I mean, I didn’t try to … it shouldn’t have worked this way—”

“You tried something,” she said, her eyes narrowing. She glanced around at the hollyhocks and foxgloves, the bench and table. Her expression softened; she reached out to touch a flower. “It’s beautiful here,” she said, her voice hushed and awed. She took a few tentative steps up the flagstone path, noticed the unaccustomed hang of clothing on her body, and twirled, watching her skirt flare. “You gave me an elegant gown!” She looked back at me, almost in tears. “What have I done to deserve your kindness?”

“You seemed miserable where you were,” I said, still trying to understand. Her consciousness had followed me back into my mind somehow. “I wanted to make things a little easier for you.”

She looked about ten years my senior, but she didn’t act it. She tiptoed up the path like a child, sniffing flowers, fingering the serrated edges of leaves, exclaiming at the shadows under plants. “I love it here!” she announced. “I want to stay here forever. But where are we?”

She’d already asked once; I was being a bad host. I said, “I’m Seraphina, and this is my … my garden. Um, what’s your name?”

“My name?” She spread her hand upon her heart, looking deeply moved that I had asked. “That’s so important. Everyone should have a name, and mine is, of course …” She bunched her lips, thinking. “Jannoula. Is that a poetic name?”

I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “It’s beautiful,” I assured her.

“We shall be sisters,” she declared. “Oh, how I have longed for a place like this!”

She hugged me. I stood stiffly at first, the way Orma might have, but then she said, “You’ve saved me from despair. Thank you, Seraphina,” and I pitied her again. Strange as this was, maybe it wasn’t so terrible. I really seemed to have helped her. Cautiously I hugged her back.



I left her twirling her new skirt among the flowers while I circled the greater garden’s perimeter, chanting, This is my garden, complete and contained, and establishing the final boundary. At last, I returned to myself on the floor of Orma’s office. Night had fallen; it had taken six hours to create the whole thing.

“The connections all feel stable and secure?” Orma asked as he walked me home through rain-slick streets. “Nothing’s chafing you, or likely to jar you into a vision? You’re still going to have to tend them every night to make sure nothing’s come loose.”

He had given me so much time and support that I didn’t like to voice any doubts, but he had to know: “One of them was different. She spoke to me.”

He stopped walking. “Tell me all,” he demanded, folding his arms and looming so ominously that I feared I’d done something wrong. I reminded myself it was his way to be serious. When I had finished, he shook his head and said, “I never know enough to help you, Seraphina. I don’t know how Jannoula talks to you, if the others don’t. Be cautious. Watch her. If she frightens or harms you, tell me at once. Promise you will.”

“Of course,” I said, my alarm rising again. I didn’t know what he could do if something went wrong, but his vehemence was a measure of his caring. That meant a lot.

Over the next days and weeks, I paid particular attention to Jannoula’s part of the garden, but in fact she wasn’t always mentally present when I put my grotesques to bed. Sometimes her avatar sat quietly among the poppies, as vacant as the rest. When she was present, she chased butterflies or sipped tea at her little table. I would stop and ask, “How are you?”

Usually she smiled and nodded and went back to what she was doing, but one day she sighed and said, “My real life is all sorrow. I feel so lucky to have a respite from it. I only wish I understood where we are.”