The Garden

by Emily Shore

  He plants the heel of one shoe against the elevator wall, folding his hands behind him as he continues. “I’ll be the team leader of this mission. Luc can be the strategist. Kyle the muscle-bound protector. You’ll get the fun job—you’re the beauty and the bait. The one everyone will be staring at.”

  “His name is Sky,” I correct, shifting two steps to my right to press the button. “And you can get us all out,” I confirm just as Neil sweeps aside to permit me the use of the elevator.

  “Beyond any doubt. But you’ll just have to be patient.”

  “Not one of my strong suits,” I admit. The elevator shakes again, descending lower.

  “I’ve noticed.”

  24

  A C h o I c e

  On Saturday when the sun prowls the horizon, demanding the sky to bleed, Neil finally knocks on my door—just after Magnolia arrived to prepare me for my weekend exhibit. At least he knocked. Most of the time, Luc never does. Sky just used to pound and threaten to break down the door. My lips curl at the stray thought as I bid him enter while Magnolia gathers my curls into a clump to give her unfettered access to my face. Not a novelty like my first time, I know what to expect. Her fingers fashion minor changes, but overall, the presentation is the same. Same white eyelashes. Same shimmery eye makeup. Nothing but a white shift to cover me—one that will turn translucent from the punishing rain.

  Distracted by Magnolia’s artistry, Neil lingers in the mirror behind me, one curious eye quirked as he views the preparation. Before I can interrupt his musings, Neil voices them. “You know most men are so simple. But as a graphicker, I can appreciate this. People often underestimate how much effort goes into a single picture.”

  “Or an exhibit,” I add.

  “Indeed.” He winds to the left side of my body opposite Magnolia, raising a fist to his chin. “I look forward to capturing your angles, Serenity. Your lines will make for a lovely addition to my Museum.”

  Lifting at the statement, I flick my head to the left and upset Magnolia’s progress. “You spoke to Jade?”

  “We have reached an arrangement, though there is little choice for her after I used my connections. You see, most of Jade’s Garden sponsors happen to be business associates of mine. Despite how much Jade wants to keep you, she will not jeopardize the well-being of her full flowerbed for the sake of one. She is far too intelligent for that.” Unlike Luc.

  “Yes, she is,” Magnolia agrees before brushing more shimmer across my face.

  I glance to the girl I can now call my friend. “Do you think she will ever—”

  “Don’t concern yourself,” Neil interrupts before he advances to his half-sister’s side. He places his hands on her shoulders. “When our dear mumsy is gone, Magnolia will run the Garden in her place. I will simply own it.”

  Jade sweeps into the room without bothering to knock. She’s dressed professionally in high-waisted, billowy black pants with a long-sleeved shirt crisscrossing beneath her bust while sweeping the sides of her body to the floor in a weeping-willow style. Jade carries herself like an empress. Her hair accomplishes this even more with its high-ranking position on top of her skull, twined with oriental-designed chopsticks holding the ashen strands. She’s wearing another set of digitized flower earrings that fan in and out. Except these blossoms actually shrivel and come back to life. They are hypnotic.

  Folding her fingers along the white skin of her exposed midriff, she voices her approval at my costume. In the next breath, she barks an order at her children. “Leave now.”

  Magnolia obeys, footsteps trailing into quiet servitude. More casual than his sister, Neil taps my nose before winking and exiting the room.

  Just as she had the first day, Jade coils my curls one at a time around my head, spouting expectations. “Your four exhibits will conclude this weekend and the next. After which, my son will escort you out of the Garden with Luc Aldaine and Kyle Trinity. It’s one of the reasons I agreed to my son’s proposition. We both know that young man will trail your heels like the dog he is. Even if I can’t be secure in you taking control of my flowerbed here, it’s a small comfort to know you have taken my lessons to heart. Perhaps you will take it all the way to Luc Aldaine. I just wish I could see your progress on Kyle. I’ve enjoyed the fire in your eyes and how my training has progressed.”

  Jade misunderstands my intentions. That is a good thing. She knows nothing of mine and Sky’s true relationship. She has never once assumed affection on my part. Why should she? I have my father’s eyes. If Jade suspects the touchstone between us, then she will kill Sky out of jealous revenge and misguided disappointment over the real relationship. Jade requires cold detachment. Like a dragon protecting its golden keep. Lust and fever. No room for devotion or love. To her, both read as weaknesses. Jade will never allow for weak spots. Shaped and molded by her hand, I am her craftsmanship and she is unleashing me back to the world. She’d sooner slit Sky’s throat than let that weakness slip through her fingers to corrupt her prize, because Sky is my opposite. Away from Jade, Sky will quell the violence in my blood. Luc would invite me onto the scaffold before handing me the executioner’s axe.

  “Meanwhile, I will have you there every night for the next two weeks. We will not waste a moment’s worth of time.”

  More pain for Sky then. Most likely from my hand.

  “Luc Aldaine will watch your exhibit just as Neil will. But my son has not arranged for an after-visit. Of course, you are free to invite him for meals, but there is little doubt as to the nature of your relationship.”

  “Why did you want us—”

  “Blood means little to me, Serenity. Magnolia comes from blood mixing with blood. Despite the crude and malevolent means, I do not repulse its ends.”

  I consider her words, try to scrub away the permanent stain in my memory from imagining Jade’s father raping her, of him robbing her of what means most to a girl and then parading her around as his Jade Flower to whatever men he chose. In the end, Jade must feel she had the last laugh, but I can still recognize the bruised eyes, the shadows sucking life and love there, leaving nothing but nightmares and coping mechanisms. They are the same eyes in the Unicorn photograph I’ve carried with me all throughout my childhood. My father—Kerrick resurrected my mother’s eyes with his love. Who does Jade have? Magnolia is the one she depends on, but Jade bears only a muted love for her. A love of reliance with no bond. Neil’s chilly indifference to his mother also reveals a lack of emotion and intimacy. So, Jade limps on—a seed that grew despite the thorns choking it. Inside, though, she withers, struggling to breathe on the stale air of the Shed that will never fully satisfy her. That is the Jade I see.

  “Will any other clients—”

  Jade interrupts, suspecting my question before it loosens its threads, “A visitation perhaps. But we both know you’re not ready for seduction. You see…my clients expect a certain measure of seduction. Their expectations are high. And you are not ready to meet them yet. Practice makes perfect. Perhaps by next week, after some time the Shed, you’ll be ready to form an appropriate vessel for your strength.”

  “Magnolia says shutting down is your only form of control.”

  Jade seizes hold of my chin, burrows her eyes into mine, and hisses, “Exactly, they turn their bodies off. It’s how they survive.”

  How they survive. To do anything else would be to reckon with the pain and the horror of their existence. Even if their bodies reckon with it on other levels…I think of Cosmos. But I don’t want to turn my body off. I don’t want to just survive.

  “It’s the way of the world,” Jade continues, raising her own chin. “Many girls are born with life, but they are reared for this world from an early age. Forged smiles and counterfeit come-hither gazes…are what all clients want. But you are like me. Wild, unbreakable, untamable. So, I must teach you to enjoy it. Not to pretend you want it, but to actually crave it. To turn it on its head. Because you and I—we can’t go numb.”

  She pauses, eyes alm
ost vacant, voice hollow. “I came so close one night. The same night I discovered I was pregnant. I almost took my life then. Every night for months after, I took the knife to my skin to keep from going numb. Every time he pressed his withered lips to my growing belly. After she was born, I didn’t need the knife for a time. But then, I caught him opening the door to her room when she was only three.”

  I close my eyes, but Jade digs her nails into my neck, prompting me to open them. “No, Serenity, I didn’t retreat to my knife that night. It was the first night I decided to seduce him instead. I adopted that pretend smile, that mock seduction. It was the first time I was aware of my own power—those moments I stripped off my clothes and went skinny-dipping in the pool in order for him to see. When I saw him on the grounds, I led him to the Shed. For the first time, I gave myself willingly there because as soon as I did, he let down his guard. And when he did, I plunged the knife right into his chest. Just an inch from his heart so he would bleed slowly. So he would be aware of the pain I inflicted. All the blood thrilled me.”

  The image opens its door to me, and I can imagine a younger version of Jade kneeling in the pool of blood, her glittering eyes reflecting off the knife.

  “I felt such fire that night.” She closes her eyes as if she’s reveling, breathing in the memory’s pleasure like a candle’s sweet fragrance. “For the first time, I took back what he stole from me. I made him feel it with my whip. Every blow a reminder to him of the hell I endured at his hands—a punishment—until he bled even more of his miserable life on the ground. After he gasped his last breath, I kept his bones in my Shed as a trophy. Inherited the Garden because I was his last seed after my weak mother died. He’d tamed her into submission long before my birth.”

  Jade’s eyes appraise mine, shifting back and forth. “We can’t survive numb, Serenity. It’s not in our nature.”

  Jade is wrong.

  No girl can.

  No girl should.

  This exhibit doesn’t leave me cold like the first time. Even with the rain spray leaving my skin more exposed than a hooked wriggly fish, I accept every drop. I don’t dissociate, not even when the music carouses its melody into the air. For once, I don’t escape into the music like the underwater solace in the Swan lake. No, I feel every plump drop—all sharp as shattered smithereens from a thousand blades.

  This delicate thing called the past that we use as an excuse to define us. Tonight, I don’t withdraw into it. Kissing it goodbye, I leave my past behind to skip into the wind, but I also don’t lose myself in the tempting glow of the future. Thoughts of Force flee. I accept the skin of the present as it stitches three masks right onto my face. Serenity, Swan, and Skeleton Flower all coming together.

  Shedding my old self like a cicada shell, I stand in the rainstorm and recognize my new entity. More than just Serenity, more than lightning and fairy tales and magic dreams and water in her veins. I don’t know exactly what she is made of yet, but I will learn in time.

  The client has arranged a visitation—at the subterranean pool. Good things never happen there, but third time’s a charm?

  No, it’s too quiet. No movement from the pool. No one to greet me when I arrive. And then I see the body in the corner of the grotto. Biting my tongue to keep from screaming, I approach the body to see if he’s still alive. The pool of blood blooming around him puts any wondering thoughts to bed. As soon as I get close, I recognize him from the lobby—the same man who’d confronted Magnolia regarding my forbidden entrance. The hooded eyes from oozing soft seduction are now vacant as dried flowers. No more rogue mouth curving into a grin. Why I should feel so much pity for a sex buyer is beyond me. But I do.

  Pity caves to shock when a girl rises from the grotto pool with a dagger clutched in her hand.

  “Chrysanthemum,” I hiss her name, treat it like a sore, a lesion I must scratch.

  “Mermaids are faster than swans.” She tosses the insult my way, crouching in the water before placing the hairpin back in her coiled bun. No intent to attack me.

  “Why?”

  “You took my client from me. I’m just returning the favor.”

  Recollection summons me—that day in the pool when I interrupted Chrysanthemum with her client.

  “He doesn’t call me his little mermaid anymore. He just calls me Swan. Asks me if I can turn my hair white. It’s all your fault!”

  Chrysanthemum’s voice breaks, and I catch the difference between pool drops and tears. “He doesn’t see me anymore!” She whimpers, arms trembling. Her hand reaches up to tear the strap of her dress. “Just sees white skin and hair, beautiful breasts that aren’t mine. If I steal your hair, will he love me again? Will he?” Between sobs and whimpers, Chrysanthemum babbles on and on. “I wear paint for him. I wear scales and fins. I can wear your white skin, too. I’ll wear your hair. I’ll wear you…” Intent to carve, Chrysanthemum lifts a hand, reaching for her hairpin again.

  That’s when I lunge for her. Amidst the splashing of the water, I hear the knifelike pin clatter to the pool’s base. I hold her down in the water like she’d done to me in the fountain, but I release her sooner.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Chryssie.” I hope speaking her nickname will be enough, but it isn’t. Just a fire spark in her wide eyes before they narrow again, painting targets on my eyes, on my skin, on my breasts.

  Something glints in the water, rising to the surface, and I’m not going to be fast enough. Somehow, she’s discovered the hairpin, clutched it between her toes. She transfers it to her hand within seconds.

  “Mermaid against sylph. Chrysanthemum to Skeleton Flower. Who will win?”

  Chrysanthemum licks her lips, swiftly bringing the hairpin down just as I grab her wrist to block her. Her muscles, developed from all her time swimming with her client, overpower my more subtle ones.

  “Amnesia Rose!”

  The new voice wrecks me with its reminder. Someday, I know I will look back at the irony of this moment. I should have known some things would remain the same. She’d explored every passage, every nook and cranny of the Aviary. Why did I think it would be any different after her blank slate? Predispositions, behaviors—they linger like distant echoes in her brain, though I never could’ve imagined her jumping onto Chrysanthemum’s back. Mockingbird’s nails rake into Chrysanthemum’s skull. She always loved drama.

  Too stunned to do anything, I feel the thrashing of the water around me as the two girls fight—a frantic tumble of hair and hormones, arms and emotions, shrieks and savageness until Jade’s voice disrupts everything. It is her whip that brings both girls to a standstill. Electrifying skin without breaking it when the director cracks it—once, twice—in lashes against first one, then the other’s, backs. Chrysanthemum bows into submission, returning to the little Flower she is. Mockingbird winces, latching onto the pool’s edge for support.

  “Amnesia Rose, Chrysanthemum…go to your rooms now. I will deal with you later. Skeleton Flower…” Her voice is a snap. “Come with me now.”

  In a rush to get out of the bloody water, I scramble out of the pool, soaked shift cleaving to every curve, tighter than a dragon’s scales. Fitting since there’s probably more venom in my veins than blood. All I can see is Shane’s face doubled over in the water, his Irish smolder deader than a flower turned to dry dust. Maybe if he was anything like the others, my hands wouldn’t be trembling right now. This wouldn’t feel like loss. When I glance behind just before we leave, Seedkeepers are hoisting his body out of the water. Jade prepares for everything.

  With lightning in my belly, I follow Jade to the Shed, imagining crackles tingling out of my fingers.

  Jade raises the iron gate. The sight of Sky hanging like a limp doll only propped up by the chains does nothing to stem the electricity. It feels raw, set ablaze. Sky doesn’t deserve it, but he’s the only one who can handle it—the only one who ever can. Luc always shoves against it, tries to bury it, to freeze it, but it always catches up to him somehow, whether from my nail
s on his face or my punishing words. Some things he just can’t prepare for. My routine with Sky is far different because he channels my rage, lassoes it. Now, he’s swallowing it.

  Sky’s head snaps to attention at the sight of my near nakedness, but he turns after one glimpse. Slams his eyes shut. In three long strides, Jade closes the distance and grabs him by the throat, thrusts his jaw forward so he faces me.

  “Look at your fantasy,” she coos delicately in his ear. “This is as close as you’ll ever get to her. She’ll take you from here, and you will be her first. How does that strike you? So close. Your life force just out of reach.”

  When Jade steps away from him and hands me the flogger, I see Sky’s eyes crumple like burnt leaves, but I know his heart is stockier. Stronger than me, Sky sucks in each crack, each blow, each snap. He drinks my anger with every whip strike. Anger at Force for what he did to my mother. Anger at my mother for lying to me for years. Anger at Luc for introducing me to the Swan over and over until she became a part of me. Anger at Jade for stripping me until I am nothing but skin and Skeleton. Anger at her father for what he did to her and Magnolia. Anger at Neil for recognizing the bad blood inside me— the blood we share. Anger at Chrysanthemum for killing Shane. And finally— Anger at Sky for coming after me because he knew damn well what would happen. At the end of it all, Sky’s back isn’t recognizable. Too much flesh and not enough skin with wounds reopened because the whip has pried them apart like fingers opening a precious scroll.

  I drop it. Adrenaline deflating like a bubble expands too much. It bursts. I want to sink into the ground. Proper place for me. I don’t feel like just a Skeleton Flower. More like Stag’s Horn Fungus. Dead Man’s Fingers growing from rotted wood. All my insides are decayed. The lightning is gone. Now…now I see myself for what I am. Cinders and soot and ash. The temporary rush is never worth this. All I feel is rank mold growing on top of my butterflies. Sky doesn’t deserve this.