The Night Garden Read Online Free

themselves and some room to think, there’s nothing better than a stay in the barn. We Pennyworts have been doing this since before I was born.”
    “So how much do you charge a night?” Mei asked as Olivia walked them closer to the garden maze, as slowly as she could stand.
    “It’s free,” Olivia said.
    “No way.”
    “Well, you don’t have to pay any money to stay.”
    Mei narrowed her eyes. “What’s the catch? You might as well spill it now.”
    “You have to work while you’re here.”
    “What exactly do you mean by work? This isn’t some sex trafficking place …?”
    “God no,” Olivia said. “Anyone who stays works on the gardens in return for room and board.”
    “I’m not sure how much work I could do.” Olivia watched Mei’s big eyes begin to water. “I just … I can’t do much of anything right now. I’m pregnant, see?” She gestured awkwardly toward her belly. “And everybody wants me to give up the baby. But I’m not sure if I should.”
    Now Olivia looked blatantly at her belly; she wasn’t past the six-month mark, if Olivia had to guess. “You don’t have to doany work you’re not comfortable doing. And … maybe there’s a way I can help you.”
    Mei wiped her face and blinked rather prettily. “How?”
    “Our garden maze has these … I don’t know … properties. If you walk through it alone, and you hold your question or your problem lightly in your mind, you might just get your answer by the time you find your way out.”
    Mei looked at her incredulously. “Your garden maze is supposed to bring me a magical answer to my … my question. That’s what you’re seriously telling me right now.”
    “You haven’t been in Green Valley very long,” Olivia said. “But things are different here. Lots of things.”
    Mei made a noise between a snort and a laugh. “And what if I don’t get an answer?”
    “Then you’re welcome to stay here until you do.”
    Mei glanced at the barn as they neared it. “So … like, all the women in the barn …”
    “They’re waiting on answers,” Olivia said. “When they’re ready to go, they’ll go.”
    “Hmm,” Mei said. And now, instead of looking at the barn, or the tall hedges that marked the maze, she was looking at Olivia. Olivia didn’t flinch; she’d been looked at this way before, with speculation, distrust, and even disbelief. She’d been looked at this way her entire life—by people who called Green Valley home and by strangers passing through. The fact that she allowed outsiders to sleep in her barn didn’t help her popularity in town: Some people supported her, some people felt bad for her boarders, and some—like her neighbor Gloria—seemed to hate her guts. Inevitably, the crowd that lived in the barn was ragtag, scattered, sundry, and mismatched. Most of the women were quiet minders-of-their-own-business; a few were occasionally rowdy and had to be escorted from local watering holes by annoyed policemen. Somewhere along the line, people got theidea that the women who stayed on the Pennywort farm were moochers, freeloaders, and delinquents—lazy and unwilling to get real jobs. The town had given the Pennywort tenants a nickname: the Penny Loafers.
    But Olivia knew better than the people of Green Valley; she knew the Penny Loafers intimately. They were as close to her as the sisters she didn’t have. Green Valley, and all of the Bethel communities, simply had trouble knowing what to make of them: They were women who couldn’t be defined by the people they took care of (husbands, daughters) or the people who took care of them (mothers, sisters, aunts). They came from hard lives of every kind and were never the same group of women twice. In another century, they might have had something in common with vestals, or handmaidens to a goddess, or sacred oracles—they dedicated their waking hours to cultivating the Pennyworts’ garden maze as they waited to discover what they meant to do with