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I can, in fact, hate her for it.
And I do. My hate is a coal that warms me through the cold nights here on earth.
I don’t care if my work is worthy—I should have been asked. I should, at the very least, have been warned. I shouldn’t have been allowed to grow, innocent and un-fearing, then ripped away from everything I loved and cursed to roam the world alone for all eternity.
Or however long it takes for humans to destroy themselves.
Mother would take Wig and Poke from me, too, I think—now that she knows the splinters of my heart are knives I would hurl at her if I could get my fingers on them—but my friends never return to the garden. They steer clear of the portals at the backs of sleeping minds, resisting the urge to rest their weary bones in the beds of their birth.
If they dared, it’s likely Mother would kill them, just for spite.
I didn’t know when I took them that they would be outcasts, too.
I’ve told them I’m sorry a hundred times. Wig says, “not a worry, not a worry,” and seems content with our wandering life. Poke swears he “doesn’t care for dirt in his cracks,” but I can feel the melancholy that rises in him from time to time. I know he secretly longs for the discomforting company of other Skritches. The prickles in the night, and the stabs in the eye come morning.
So, when he says, “I’d like to see if it’s true. See if Glove and her two aren’t tougher than the rest of them,” I take his musing for what it is—a request.
“Do you know the way?” I ask, my feathers ruffling and my clawed feet beginning to itch. The call of the sleeping will soon be a summons I can’t deny.
“South by southeast and on until morning, south by southeast and—”
“On until morning,” Poke caws, drowning out Wig’s lighter song, stealing the end of his earworm simply to irritate the poor thing.
I sigh. They could use a distraction from the business of tormenting each other, and I could use a break from the winter chill.
This island could be just the thing.
“Four- or five-days’ flight,” Poke continues. “We could reach the island’s shore by the dark moon. It would give us three days… To see…”
While the moon is shuttered, all garden creatures cease our work. During the dark moon, the shadow side of the human mind rises, and their personal demons take hold, leaving no room for nightmares or sweet dreams.
Wig, Poke, and I spend those three days lying about, sleeping at odd hours, playing cards, sneaking into theaters to watch the humans sing and dance, gorging on treats that Poke steals from street vendors, and recovering from the other twenty-six days of the lunar cycle.
Nightmaring isn’t easy work.
Especially a deep, transformational haunt like mine.
There are nights when I can barely make it back to our camp, when Wig and Poke must carry me between their wings and tuck me into my blanket roll unconscious. I’ll sleep all day after such a night and awake at sunset still feeling hollow. Our three days of rest are vital. Without it, I might fade into the shadows and never find solid form again.
But rest—no matter how healing—isn’t always the best thing for a weary soul.
Sometimes even a planting needs an escape, an adventure…
“All right, then.” I stretch my wings out, out, until my feathers smudge to smoke at the tips. “We’ll go. See this island for ourselves.”
“Excellent! We can do it. I know we can. We’ll break those enchantments like china cups! Show the others how real night creatures rule the darkness!” Poke hops up and down a few times before leaping into the air to fly in a giddy circle.
I haven’t seen him this excited since the day he tricked Wig into flying into a closed window a few months ago. Even though I know he’ll be disappointed—the island’s enchantments will prove as powerless as the sigils and salt rubbed into the doors of the city below—I’m glad we’re going.
Anticipation is an enjoyable thing, even when the anticipated fails to materialize.
“We’ll leave tomorrow night.” I lift my beak to scent the air and find it muzzy with snores and snuffs. “We’ll go quickly and get as far as we can before.”
We all know before what. Before the need is too strong, before we’re pulled back to earth, to the shadows where nightmares gather before we unleash our power on the weary. I realize we plantings are a blessing to mortals—before the horticultural witches and their night gardens, humanity was wild and feral, lacking the fear necessary to evolve and keep their fragile bodies safe from harm—but still, I feel for them. Humans allegedly have sweet dreams, too, but I would not be a human for anything in the world.
