The Night Garden Read Online Free Page B

she said, the lie coming off her lips so easily that it almost felt true. “It’s important that you don’t—not even by accident. Not under any circumstances. No matter what.”
    “So …” Mei tipped her head. “So, say you were drowning …”
    “No,” Olivia said.
    “Say you were hanging by your fingertips from the top of a cliff, and I was bending over the edge holding out a hand …”
    “Not even then.”
    “But what if—”
    “Never,” Olivia said sharply, feeling her muscles go rigid with tension. Mei apparently liked to instigate. But she wasn’t the first woman to arrive at the barn with a chip on her shoulder and she wouldn’t be the last.
    “You must not have much of a sex life,” Mei said.
    “Do you always have to say everything you’re thinking out loud?”
    “Generally, yes.”
    They came to the entrance to the garden maze. It was the kind of entryway that teetered between impressive and gaudy, between awe-inspiring and way-too-much. It was in the shape of an enormous yellow flower with glittery purple tendrils corkscrewing away from the center. A crosshatch of deep purple lines drew the eye into the center of the petals, where a tall opening had been cut to allow humans to climb through. The flower was called henbane, a beautiful but deadly plant when ingested. A sensitive person could faint from standing too close to henbane on a hot day. Henbane was also a key ingredient, supposedly, in the potions that made medieval witches fly. Olivia loved henbane: its gorgeous, gaudy bloom, its wicked green tongues of leaves, its centuries of folklore. When faced with the task of replacing the old, crumbling wooden entrance with a new one, she thought henbane was the perfect choice.
    Mei eyed the gigantic, not exactly friendly-looking flower with suspicion. “Why aren’t you getting me arrested right now?”
    “I’d rather help you.”
    “But why ?”
    Olivia was quiet. One thing she’d learned from having kept herself so isolated was that the less she could say about herself, the better. Once, a woman named Editha had come to the barn, and Olivia had the strangest sense upon meeting her that theywere intensely connected. It was the pull of innate understanding and friendship; in five minutes, they’d talked as if they’d been friends for a lifetime. Editha had told Olivia about every detail of her impending divorce—which was not unusual, since the boarders talked about their problems all the time. But Olivia had shared something of herself with Editha too; she’d talked about her mother’s death, her father’s retreat from the world, the rewarding agony of being so closely tied to the land, and she’d almost confessed the truth about her condition, how she’d become the woman she was and what cruel Green Valley magic was behind it.
    But one day, she and Editha had been gathering eggs inside the musty shadows of the old coop, and Editha had put an arm around her in happy camaraderie faster than Olivia had been able to dart away in the small space. For one moment Editha had forgotten the “no touching” rule, and Olivia had been too horrified and upset to make an excuse for herself or explain; she told Editha to go shower, immediately, and as far as she knew the woman did. But whether she got her answer from the maze or not, Olivia never knew. The next morning, the other boarders had told Olivia that Editha had gotten a case of poison ivy all down her right side, and she’d left in the night for treatment. Olivia waited, hopeful, but Editha never returned. Whether Editha had left because she’d realized Olivia’s secret was unclear, but the result was undeniable: She would not, after all, be Olivia’s friend.
    It had been an extremely painful summer, and the winter that followed was especially lonely and cold. But it had served as a good reminder that the only way Olivia could safely love the world was from a distance. There was too much danger—to her and to others—when