Garden Princess (8 page)

What she could not afford to doubt — at least, not at the moment, when it was dark and she was alone and the gate was locked — was what she had seen earlier: a beautiful witch, a daisy that wasn’t a daisy, and a talking magpie.

Best to keep an open mind,
Dr. Sophus had said.

I’ll hide, Adela told herself. I’ll hide somewhere, and in the morning, I’ll know if it was all a dream. I can decide what to do then.

There were no good hiding places on the lawn — only a few trees with branches too high to reach. No shrubs or beds of flowers. Adela’s only choice was to head back into the garden, where she chose the first hiding place she could find: a rhododendron with white flowers that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Putting aside the thought that it might not be a rhododendron at all, she pushed her way into its branches. She crept along the wall behind the bush until she found a space large enough to curl up in. She pushed her shoes together and wadded up her stockings for a pillow. I’ll never sleep, she thought as she lay down.

But she did. And her very last thought before she dropped off was of the magpie: Thieving scoundrel! She hoped its conscience — if it even had one — would keep it awake all night long.

Someone was singing a song Adela knew well. The singer’s voice, tuneless and flat, was also well known to her. She smiled at the song’s familiar refrain:

Adela stirred, rolled forward slightly, and smelled damp earth. Startled, she opened her eyes. For a moment, the green light around her was confusing. Then she remembered where she was. She sat up and hit her head on a branch. “Ouch!”

The singing stopped abruptly. “Hello?”

“Garth?”

“Miss Adela? Where are you?”

She tried to see through the branches. “Are you alone?”

“I’m alone.”

Adela crawled out of her hiding place, and Garth helped her to her feet. “What are you doing in there?” he asked.

She saw that he was still dressed in his finery from the day before, though everything looked a little worse for the wear. There was a stain on his jacket.

“I’m so glad you’re all right!” she exclaimed. “Where’s Marguerite?”

“Marguerite?” Garth looked puzzled.

“Marguerite! And the other guests! What happened last night? Did everyone go inside?”

“Oh, right! Last night! You should have been there, Miss Adela!”

“The front door was locked.”

“Too bad for you! I had the best time of my life!”

Adela frowned.

Garth continued. “Here I was so worried about not getting along in fine society, but it wasn’t like that at all. She’s so wonderful, Miss Adela. I sat beside her during supper. She even let me hold her hand!”

So she had been right about Garth and Marguerite. They had forgotten about her! Adela put her hand to her head; it was aching. “Was there food?” she asked.

“Food? Well, I guess maybe there was — ham and beef and pies and cakes and such . . .” Garth laughed again. “Would you believe I was having such a good time I barely noticed?”

“I haven’t eaten since our picnic yesterday.”

“You should have come to the party.”

“Well, I — I was worried.” Adela was too embarrassed to explain why. “I’m glad Marguerite is all right,” she said.

“Who?”

“Marguerite. When I couldn’t find her yesterday, I worried something had happened to her.” Adela forced out a small laugh. “I nearly convinced myself she’d been turned into —”

“Marguerite . . .” Garth interrupted, scratching his head. “Oh,
her
!”

“What do you mean . . .
her
? You said you sat with Marguerite at supper.”

“No, I didn’t! I sat with Lady Hortensia.”

“But what about Marguerite?”

Garth shrugged. “How should I know?”

“Wasn’t she with you at the party?”

“No. I was with Lady Hortensia. I held her hand.”

To Adela’s surprise, she saw that Garth was blushing. He ducked his head, then looked up. “I guess I can tell you, Miss Adela. I — I’m in love with her!”

“With Marguerite,” Adela clarified.

“No, Miss Adela!” Garth sounded shocked. “It’s Lady Hortensia I love!”

“But you must have seen Marguerite!”

Garth shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“If she wasn’t with you, then”— Adela felt as if her legs had turned to sand —“that means she’s missing!”

“Is she, then?” said Garth without sounding as if he cared one way or the other.

“Oh, Garth! This is going to sound ridiculous, but I — I saw something yesterday. At least I think I saw something. It was Lady Hortensia, and —”

“Lady Hortensia!” Garth interrupted. “Oh, Miss Adela, did I tell you about her? How she let me hold her hand at supper?”

“Marguerite was in the garden with her,” Adela continued. “I was there; they didn’t see me. And Hortensia — well, she did something to Marguerite. She . . .” How, Adela wondered, could this
not
sound ridiculous? “Well, I thought I saw her turn Marguerite into a daisy!”

She waited for Garth’s reaction.

Which was a grin. “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?” said Garth.

“What?”

“Lady Hortensia! She’s so beautiful and kind and —”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“What?”

“I said that I think I saw Hortensia change Marguerite into a daisy — using
magic
or . . . or something like that.”

Garth chuckled. “You must’ve been imagining things, Miss Adela.”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “At least I hope I was. Only, I saw other things, too. There was a magpie, and it talked to me.”

Garth’s chuckle erupted into full laughter. “A talking magpie!”

“Well, I know it sounds idiotic! But I can’t help but wonder if . . . Garth, what if Hortensia is some kind of witch?”

“A witch!”

“I might have imagined what I saw — maybe I’m going crazy — but what if I’m not?”

Garth shook his head. “Lady Hortensia is not a witch, Miss Adela. She’s kind and beautiful and . . .” He paused, as if searching for the perfect word. “Did I tell you that she let me hold her hand?”

Only about a hundred times, thought Adela.

“She put her hand on my elbow, and I thought I would die, Miss Adela, right then and there. Then I got to lead her into the banquet hall, and I got to sit next to her the whole time. She let me hold her hand all through supper!”

For a moment, Garth looked blissful. Then his face fell, and he gave a groan.

“What is it?” asked Adela. Was Garth remembering something Hortensia had done? Something not right? Something . . . magic?

“The thing is — I don’t know if she loves me! She wants me to be her gardener. That’s good, isn’t it?”

She felt like shaking the sense back into him. Instead, she said, “Her gardener?”

Garth pointed down the path, and Adela saw a painted white wheelbarrow. It looked more picturesque than practical, but it was filled with tools. “There’s a rake and a shovel and a hoe — even a pruning saw!” said Garth. “She wouldn’t ask me to be her gardener if she didn’t care for me. Right?”

“You’re already a gardener for the king,” said Adela.

“I love her so much, Miss Adela. I’d do anything to make her happy.”

She couldn’t believe it: there were tears in Garth’s eyes!

“Did I tell you she let me hold her hand?” he said.

A word came into Adela’s mind then:
lovesick.
It was a word from the story she had thought of yesterday — the one about King Ival and the beautiful witch. The witch had enchanted Ival, turning him into a lovesick fool.

“I will love Lady Hortensia until the day I die!” Garth declared, and with a prickling of dread, Adela thought of another word from the same story:
bewitched.

On the day after the party, Krazo was up with the sun, eager to arrange his new treasures. In his mind’s eye, he could see exactly what he wanted: the coral-bead necklace coiled up at the bottom of his nest like a carpet, the diamond earrings and the necklace with the blue stone dangling from the domed ceiling like chandeliers, the emerald brooch, the turquoise-and-silver bracelet, the pearl ring, and the belt buckle propped up around the edges like paintings on a wall.

And yet, after working for more than an hour, after pushing this trinket here, that one there, Krazo found himself growing frustrated. Somehow, try as he might, he wasn’t any closer to achieving his vision than when he had started. He stood in the middle of his nest and contemplated the problem.

Was it that his nest was too crowded? There were so many treasures now that Krazo couldn’t turn around without bumping into one of them. But he didn’t mind that. In fact, he liked being surrounded by so much wealth.

The problem, Krazo realized at last, was that he simply could not see his treasures — at least not well enough to appreciate them. The domed roof of sticks and twigs that arched over his nest was keeping out the light.

Why, he wondered, had this never bothered him before? Probably, he decided, because he had never been so rich before. Until today, when he had wanted to admire one of his treasures, he had dragged it into the light from an entrance. But now there were simply too many treasures for this to be practical.

The solution to the problem was obvious: he must remove the roof from his nest. In fact, when Krazo thought about it, he really had no need for a roof. It was designed to keep out rain and wind and predators. But it never rained on top of Flower Mountain; Hortensia’s magic garden didn’t
need
rain. Nor were there ever more than the gentlest of breezes here. As for predators, Krazo had never seen a single one. Yes, he decided, he must remove the roof.

Strangely, however, he made no move to do so. Instead he sat there in the dim light, clutching the coral beads with his claws. His mind was telling him something that he could not ignore.

All magpies have roofs over their nests, said his mind.

“Other birds have got nests without roofs,” Krazo muttered in response.

But they aren’t magpies, his mind argued.

“I want to see my treasures,” Krazo insisted.

You’re a magpie!

“I’m not!” Krazo croaked.

This absurd pronouncement shocked him, and the argument he was having with himself came to a halt, leaving Krazo free to follow a line of thinking he had never followed before. Was he not, he wondered, somehow different from other magpies?

Occasionally in his travels away from Hortensia’s mountain, he had come across others of his kind — bold, black-and-white birds, almost always a group of them together.
Hello,
he would say. Depending on their mood, they would squawk back
Hello!
or
Go away!
If they seemed friendly, Krazo would try to start a conversation. He might ask if they knew of a good place to get food. Or, because he was usually on a scouting expedition for Hortensia, he might ask if they had ever heard of such-and-such a girl, and was she as pretty as was rumored? It didn’t matter what he said.
Hello,
the other magpies would say, or
Go away,
as if they were incapable of saying anything else.

I’m not like them, Krazo realized.

But surely that didn’t mean he wasn’t one of them. He had the same plumage, the same long tail, the same black beak. He could understand their language, limited though it was. And this nest he had built — wasn’t it just like theirs? Wasn’t it a true magpie nest?

A nest that was too dark. Darker even than that room with the woman in it.

Krazo shuddered, ruffling his feathers. He had dreamed about the woman last night. “Oh, Neddy! Neddy, what are we to do?” she had cried, looking right at him, and Krazo had woken with a start, his heart pounding.

Who was Neddy, and what did Neddy have to do with him?

Krazo shook his head. He didn’t want to think about the woman. He looked around his nest again. If I pull off the roof, he told himself, it will be light in here. I’ll be able to see.

And so he started in. He tugged at the diamond earrings and the necklace with the blue stone, loosening them from the underside of the roof. After laying them carefully on the floor, he began pulling at the twigs above the entrance on the east side of his nest. First one, then another — Krazo pushed the twigs out of the nest. He yanked at a large twig, and a chunk of roof caved in on his head. He shook himself free of debris, pulled the belt buckle aside, moved the pearl earring to a safer location, and set to work in earnest.
Yank! Crash!
Out went chunks of roof. Krazo hopped from side to side, yanking and tossing. In his enthusiasm, he nearly threw the emerald brooch out with the rubbish. He snatched it back just in time and dropped it onto his pile of treasure.