The Girl and the Witch's Garden

by Erin Bowman

  Piper glanced up at the statue. It fit the theme, in a way. She didn’t believe it—this riddle the Fate presented as law, that a person could move past grief only by accepting it—but it was the only thing that fit.

  “Grief,” Piper announced, standing.

  Teddy looked at her. “Do you want to discuss it first?”

  “Trust me, Teddy. The answer is grief.”

  The Fate smiled weakly. “Unfortunately, yes. Grief can drown a person. You don’t beat grief, you learn to live with it. By letting yourself feel it, it becomes a bridge to a new normal.” She pocketed her balls of thread and clasped her shears tightly. “Mine is the hardest of the riddles. You’ve done well, and I hope this means that you will know how to handle what awaits you.”

  The statue shifted, and Piper turned away from the reflected brilliance. When she looked back, silver threads dangled from the Fate’s pocket, contrasting with her golden robe.

  “Where’s the next key?” Piper blurted out, but the Fate was solid. “Turn the key again, Teddy. Bring her back to life.”

  Teddy glanced up from the foot of the pedestal. “It’s gone. The key is gone.” He moved to the second Fate, the first. “And the keyholes are all sealed over.”

  “They can’t be. We’re supposed to get the next key.”

  “Maybe there’s another portal somewhere? Something else we have to do first?” Teddy glanced toward the oak alley.

  They jumped from the pool and wrestled on their socks and sneakers—a challenge, given their wet feet. Then they sprinted for the oak alley. It was unchanged.

  “I don’t understand.” Piper fiddled with her locket, pacing beneath the oak leaves. “Solving the riddles was supposed to unlock the next trial. And if we can’t animate the Fates again, we’re just … stuck.”

  “The Fates!” Teddy exclaimed, and began running back the way they’d come. “That’s the problem.”

  “What are you talking about?” Piper sprinted after him.

  When the path forked, Teddy didn’t head for the fountain where they’d just solved the riddles, but to the right—toward the set of Fates on the eastern side of the garden.

  “We didn’t beat these Fates,” he said, panting as they reached the other fountain. “I bet they have more riddles for us.” He pulled off his shoes and socks again and waded into the water. Teddy’s shoulders slumped as he examined the statues. “Keyholes, but no key.” He climbed up the pedestal of the first Fate and waved his arms before her eyes. “Hello? What do we do now? Wake up, you hunk of metal!” He elbowed the statue and then howled in pain, clinging to the gold threads in the Fate’s loom to keep from toppling into the water below.

  “They’re gold,” Piper said, staring at the statues.

  “Of course they’re gold.” Teddy scrambled down into the water, cradling his arm. “They’ve been gold this whole time.”

  “Not the Fates, their threads. When we solved a riddle and the Fate turned solid again, her thread changed from gold to silver.”

  “So?” Teddy was now trying to examine the point of his elbow, which had him contorting his arm into odd positions.

  “The garden is laid out like a butterfly, right? And butterflies are symmetrical. So if the western fountain of Fates has silver threads and sealed keyholes, then the eastern fountain of Fates—”

  “Needs silver threads and sealed keyholes,” Teddy finished. “How in the hallows are we supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Piper admitted. “But we better figure it out.”

  Chapter Nineteen Melena’s Office

  That evening, as the children prepared dinner, Piper wrapped her invisibility around her.

  “You sure you can do this?” Julius asked, chopping garlic while Camilla hissed, “I said minced, not chopped. If I wanted giant pieces of garlic, I’d just use whole cloves.”

  Julius rolled his eyes and looked at Piper. “You’re flickering a little.”

  “I know.” Instead of being shrouded in a thick cloak, Piper felt wrapped in cheesecloth. And it wasn’t because she was drained. She felt completely rejuvenated after her morning use of her affinity. The truth was that she just couldn’t concentrate. She and Teddy had parted ways promising to think about the Fates and how to match the two fountains, and it was taking up all her brainpower.

  “Kenji, what are you doing? Use a paring knife,” Camilla snapped. Piper watched as Camilla grabbed the steak knife from Kenji and turned it over in her hand. When she passed it back to the boy, the blade was shorter and smooth, a much better fit for the potatoes he was peeling.

  “Piper?” Julius said, pulling her attention back to him.

  “I’ve got this,” she assured him. “I just have to focus. There’s a lot of distraction in here.”

  “You can do it another night if you need to. No one will judge you.”

  “Camilla, not judging? Are we even talking about the same person?”

  “She’d come around in a few days.”

  Piper banished the fountain of Fates from her mind and homed in on her amplifier, filling it to the brim. Her affinity strengthened around her, a warm, thick cocoon. “Better?”

  Julius peered in her direction. “Better. Be careful, though. Stay focused.”

  Even though he couldn’t see her, she nodded.

  * * *

  The main entrance to Melena’s office via the east wing on the first floor was, unsurprisingly, locked.

  Piper had to take to the stairs to her bedroom, climb the ivy to the turret, and then take the turret’s winding staircase down from there.

  The turret’s third floor was much like the attic: covered in dust and filled with storage boxes. But when Piper descended to the second level, everything changed. Here, the turret opened into a sitting area, the room no longer a perfect circle. Only the exterior wall (facing the gardens and the grounds) was rounded.

  Beyond a settee, on one of the flat walls, a solid oak door led to what Piper assumed was her grandmother’s chambers. And sitting right before the door and meowing sadly was the Persian.

  Piper drew a quick breath, nearly losing control of her affinity. The animal glanced her way briefly, then continued to cry at the door. Piper frowned. The Persian always ate dinner with her mother. What on earth was it doing here, in what might be her grandmother’s sitting room?

  Focusing all her attention on her invisibility, Piper tightened it around herself and descended another flight of the spiral staircase with painstaking care, then entered Melena’s office.

  The room’s perimeter was lined with waist-high bookshelves, an interesting feat given that half the office was circular, like the sitting room above, and nothing could truly be flush against the rounded wall. Books were shelved in every which direction, crammed to maximum capacity. Maps of Blackburn and blueprints of Mallory Estate hung on the wall. In the middle of the room, a mahogany desk was positioned atop a circular area rug, and two chairs were separated by the desk, one for Melena and one for visitors. A framed picture of Melena accepting some type of award on the steps of the Blackburn Historical Society sat on the desk. Her white hair was piled on her head, and the choker she always wore—black with an emerald gemstone—encircled her throat. Beside the photo was a briefcase, its lid open.

  Piper stepped forward for a closer look and something crunched beneath her heel. Startled, she dropped her invisibility. Her eyes went immediately to the spiral staircase, expecting to see the Persian there, but she was alone.

  She crouched to the carpet and touched the pebble-like rubble that she’d disturbed. It disintegrated in her hand, leaving a smear of black. Ash.

  Piper stood up. There was a ring of it around Melena’s chair, as though something had burned there, although nothing in the office appeared damaged. There wasn’t even a lingering smell of smoke in the upholstered seat.

  Strange, Piper thought, and she tucked the oddity away for later.

  Consulting a large calendar hanging on the wall, she found Melena’s wo
rk schedule at the Blackburn Historical Society. She worked Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from twelve to four, and Tuesdays and Thursdays from nine to four. There wasn’t a single note about a research trip—not for this month or last.

  Piper turned to the briefcase and sifted through the papers. The first sheet was a blueprint of Mallory Estate’s garden. The butterfly-shaped path was more apparent than ever in this drawn form, and various garden beds were labeled with the flora and fauna they held. The plan was dated 1753.

  Beneath it was a letter so brittle that Piper was afraid it might disintegrate if handled roughly. She held it gingerly as she read:

  February 13, 1861

  Dear Frederick,

  I received your letter and am entirely on board with the plans to protect our Order’s most valuable possessions. Even now, the newly formed Confederacy does not seem to be yielding, and I fear we are on the brink of civil war. Who knows what the coming months will hold, but one thing is irrefutable: we cannot risk these items being lost, stolen, or destroyed.

  I have contacted the others. If they are in agreement, we will all arrive at Blackburn by the end of the month and begin the concealment on your property with the elixir. Thereafter we can all travel together, concealing the other items in turn.

  If the HOM ever needs to access the artifacts in the future, a unanimous vote can break the concealment. I also propose we create a back door for each item, so that reaching any item is possible, if only we possess the right affinities.

  Your dear friend and faithful member of the High Order,

  Clarence Miller III

  So the HOM had agreed to hide certain magical artifacts before the start of the Civil War, beginning with the elixir at Mallory Estate. And if Frederick had been living at Mallory Estate, it was possible he was one of Piper’s ancestors. A several times great-grandfather or great-uncle or great-something-or-other.

  She’d likely have known all this already if her mother let her attend classes. Surely it was covered in Magi History. Maybe Piper could ask Julius for a crash course one evening.

  The rest of the items in the briefcase were mainly building and land deeds, which proved that the estate had belonged to Frederick Mallory, most certainly one of Piper’s distant relatives given the shared last name. If he’d been among the original members of the High Order of Magi, he’d likely been present when the elixir was concealed in the garden. Teddy might have seen him when he bent time back to that fateful day.

  There was also an ancient newspaper clipping profiling the man. Piper scanned the story, surprised to learn that Frederick had left Mallory Estate to his children shortly after the end of the Civil War and moved to Washington, DC, where he went into business with “an old friend, Clarence Miller.” The article didn’t explain what type of business, only that Frederick kept it running long after Clarence’s death, and even after the death of his own children, some years later. He never returned to Connecticut, except for funerals, and was reported as being in great health when he went suddenly missing from his Washington home in his mid-nineties. A few years later, he was presumed dead.

  Piper did a double take at the photograph accompanying the piece—the handlebar mustache, the wire-frame glasses. It was the man from one of the portraits in the sitting room where Julius taught Practical Application of Affinities. He didn’t look ninetysomething. More like seventy, tops. The reporter must have used a very old photo.

  Beneath all these papers, at the very bottom of the briefcase, was a teal envelope addressed to Melena. A red wax seal imprinted with an elaborate monogramed HOM was already broken.

  Curious, Piper lifted the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper. It was wrinkled, as though it had once been clenched in someone’s fist.

  Melena M. Mallory,

  The High Order of Magi has reviewed your request to break the concealment on the garden at Mallory Estate and extract the elixir of immortality. Artifact hunters do indeed pose a threat to our most valued magi items, and we understand and appreciate your concern regarding the safety of the elixir hidden on your property.

  However, given the fact that it is hidden at a private residence where you are certainly privy to the coming and going of visitors, and because of the manner by which the elixir was concealed (quite thoroughly), and because there have been no developments since your first request to break the concealment several years ago, the HOM has voted against your request 4–1.

  We are sorry not to be writing with better news. Surely this is not the response you hoped for. Please rest assured that we considered the matter thoroughly and are convinced that the elixir remains well protected. Should anything change on your premise concerning its safety, please do write to us again.

  Sincerely,

  Edgar C. Miller

  President

  High Order of Magi

  P.S. Our beloved Agatha is retiring from the HOM at the end of the year, and I know you’ve long wanted to sit on the Order. I’ll put in a good word for you and nominate you when the time comes; the rest is out of my hands.

  Piper lowered herself shakily into her grandmother’s chair. Everything the kids had told her was wrong. The HOM wasn’t worried about the safety of the elixir. They’d voted against breaking the concealment—Piper checked the postmark—nearly five years ago.

  Grandma could have written to the HOM since then, she told herself. They could have voted differently, started placing kids at Mallory Estate to help.

  But even as she worked through this logic, it felt wrong. Where was the letter confirming the HOM’s unanimous vote to break the concealment? Why keep the notice where they rejected Melena’s request but not the one confirming that she could remove the elixir?

  Melena and Sophia must have moved forward without the HOM’s blessing, Piper concluded. Why, she wasn’t certain. But they clearly didn’t have the unanimous approval of the current High Order of Magi, nor the affinities to access the garden. Which explained why they’d turned to finding magi children, training them in the art of affinities, and encouraging them to discover a way to the elixir.

  Piper paused, remembering something she’d read in Frederick Mallory’s letter.

  Reaching any item is possible, if only we possess the right affinities.

  The room seemed to still. Piper’s heart beat faster.

  She knew how to complete the second trial.

  It wasn’t that the fountain of Fates was a dead end, it was that Piper and Teddy didn’t have the necessary affinities to finish the trial. But Camilla … Piper thought of the girl in the kitchen just earlier, turning a steak knife into a paring knife. Her affinity allowed her to manipulate anything inanimate, like a gold thread that needed to become silver.

  This was it.

  The solution was Camilla.

  Piper had to bring Camilla into the garden.

  Chapter Twenty Sophia’s Paper

  Piper returned everything to the briefcase, making sure the documents were in the proper order and positioned as she’d found them. Then she combed over the desk’s surface and through the various drawers, looking for a datebook or planner or anything that might explain where her grandmother had gone.

  There wasn’t one.

  But there was a large manila envelope that held a bound document in the desk’s bottom drawer. Piper peeked inside, reading off the title page: Fringe Physics, Metaphysical Anomalies, and the Multiverse: A Scientific Examination of the Possibility of Parallel Dimensions. It was authored by Sophia Peavey and dated the year that her divorce with Atticus had been finalized, when Piper had been four.

  This was the paper that had disgraced her among her colleagues and lost Sophia her family; the end result of years of obsession with Mallory Estate. Piper owed it to herself to read this paper, to understand what had been more pressing to Sophia than her own daughter. If the woman wouldn’t give Piper answers, maybe the paper would.

  Piper glanced around the room. She’d told the others she’d look for an updated te
xt on magi—to see if affinities could truly be transferred through killing—but there were too many books. It would take hours to sift through all the copies, and she wanted to make it back to the kitchen before dinner ended. She tucked the manila envelope under her arm and pulled her invisibility into place. She could read through her mother’s paper tonight, and on a different evening, when she returned the envelope to the office, then she could search the bookshelves.

  She tiptoed upstairs and past the Persian—still mewling sadly at the door. It was a bit tiring to keep the envelope invisible as well, but soon she was in the attic, dropping her affinity with a gasp of relief. She paused at the window, frowning. Climbing down the ivy to her room would be impossible without two free hands. Piper reluctantly stowed her mother’s paper in the desk. She’d have to return for it later.

  * * *

  When Piper made it back to the kitchen, dinner was nearly over. The kids were getting ready to serve the final course, and when Piper peered into the dining room, she discovered that the Persian was lounging at the base of Sophia’s chair. How had it gotten out of the turret? Had it followed Piper somehow?

  You didn’t search the sitting room very thoroughly, she told herself. There was probably an open window, a way for the Persian to leap down to the patio. Or maybe there was a cat door, so it can move between rooms.

  Yes, that explained it.

  She turned to Camilla, who was working at the counter, a heat gun held over a ramekin. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Can it wait? I’m kinda in the middle of perfecting this crème brûlée.” She moved the torch deliberately, turning the top of the dessert into a golden crisp.

  “Sure, how about tonight?” Piper offered.