Violet

12

When the air grew warmer in May, Lily and I spent more time outside. We hadn’t been in the woods yet, even though they grew thick around the garden. Dina said they were “inhospitable,” but they looked just fine to me. I hoped that we could go out there soon, since I didn’t like the garden much because of the man who walked there.

Lily loved the garden, though, and wanted to go there all the time, saying that the sunshine was good for us, and the fresh air, too, and all the green. She only said that because she didn’t see what I saw; Lily only ever saw colors. I thought about telling her about the man many times, but I knew she would just pretend not to believe me, or even get mad at me for seeing him. It was impossible not to see him, though, every time we went out there—his angry plodding and silent shouting; the way that he waved with his arms to make me look.

I couldn’t forget that he was there, no matter how much I tried, but the pavilion felt safe because of the angle; I couldn’t see him at all from inside the thorny thicket that covered the walls. I made up a game where I ran an apothecary, and while gathering different twigs and leaves and sorting them into piles on the built-in bench, I could almost forget him for a while. I gave all the plants new names and pretended that they could help with different things. Lily had to be the customers, and her pockets were full of gravel, which was what we used as money.

“Hello, Miss Apothecary. I have a terrible back pain today,” she would say as she came into the pavilion.

“Oh, well, I am sorry to hear that, Mrs. Baker. It sounds like you need some afroksiala to ease that,” I replied. “Steep it in hot water and drink it every night. Don’t take too much, though, because then you’ll die.”

I think Lily thought the game was childish, but she liked it anyway. Maybe she, too, needed to forget about all the things that made her angry or afraid. She even helped me smuggle out some empty wine bottles from the kitchen, so I could make tonics of rainwater and leaves. Sometimes, she got so into the game that she, too, started making things up. We even argued about what the plants could do.

“These leaves can help with headaches but also make your eyes bleed,” I would say. “If you eat too much of it, you will lose all your blood.”

“No.” Lily shook her head. “They will make your eyesight stronger, not weaker, and it’s good for the blood.”

Or I would say, “These flowers will make your liver fail if you aren’t careful.”

And she would say, “They don’t work like that at all. They can make fever go away.”

Even though I didn’t like the garden as much as Lily, I did like to see how spring changed it. Though all the flower beds were very overgrown, some new, green things still came up through the dirt, and flower buds appeared on the rose vines. Lily said that the plants, too, had flames sometimes, but that they were mostly white, so I guess they didn’t feel much, since white meant peace and calm. There were birds in the garden as well, filling the air with happy songs. It should have been the best place to be on Crescent Hill—but because of him, it wasn’t. I almost told Lily about him once, when I caught her staring down at where he was. When I asked her about it, she said that there was something on the ground down there, something red that moved around like tiny fish. I thought that maybe it was him she saw—or his colors, anyway—but by the time I had opened my mouth to say something, Lily had already walked off. She didn’t like to see the colors, while I wished that I could see them, too, since it seemed like a very good trick to be able to see what people felt.

I suppose I hadn’t thought that things would change, though. I suppose I had thought we would just continue on like that—him walking and hollering, and me pretending not to see him—but that isn’t what happened.

The day had started out better than most. Aunt Clara had been busy with two of her friends, who had arrived that same morning in a large, bulky car and parked it in front of the house. Dina had carried tea and sandwiches into the winter garden and then sent us in there to “say hello,” as we always did when Aunt Clara had guests. I could never tell the ladies apart. They all looked the same to me, with stiff hair lacquered in place, rayon dresses with funny patterns, and brightly painted lips. Some of them were nurses—or used to be nurses—and they wore a little less jewelry than the other friends. All of them seemed to think Aunt Clara was the nicest person alive for letting us live at Crescent Hill.

I didn’t know exactly why we had to “say hello,” but everything always happened in the same way. First, we would come in and say our names to the ladies while taking their soft, dry hands. Then they would coo and sigh for a bit—perhaps ask us a few questions, or tell us how sorry they were about K2—before we were let out again. Aunt Clara would sometimes ask Lily to play for the guests, which I don’t think she minded much, but she always chose an easy piece that wasn’t very long.

We could see them from the garden that day, or at least flashes of their moving heads, through the web of thorny branches that covered the winter garden walls. We saw the dead parrot in there, too: a glimpse of bright red feathers. I knew that the parrot was free now; all of it was gone from Crescent Hill, which made me feel happy and warm all over. It was what I thought about while we walked around and picked old oak leaves off the ground to use in the apothecary.

“They will make the blood run thicker; sometimes it clogs everything up,” I said, just as something happened—or not—down at the bottom of the garden. I had looked up to see him standing there—not walking or shouting, just standing and staring with wild eyes. A sudden breeze moved through the woods, making a rustling sound.

“What is it?” Lily said beside me. “What are you looking at, Violet?”

“The man down there.” It just came tumbling out of me. I suppose I was too worried by his change in behavior to be careful. He had never stopped like that before—never stared at me like that.

“I don’t see any—”

“Hush, be quiet!” Something was going on in my head. It was like when Irpa spoke to me, but different. Maybe more like the animals—but, no, not that either. It was as if someone was poking at my brain, as if there was something inside there that wasn’t me.

“Okay,” Lily muttered, and shifted on the ground. “Where is he?”

I lifted a finger and pointed to the middle of the crescent, even though I knew she couldn’t see him.

“No.” She shook her head. “There’s no one there, Violet. You’re imagining again.” She sighed loudly and shifted on the ground again, but this time I couldn’t pretend like he wasn’t there, because he was in my head now, pushing and poking.

“But he is,” I insisted. “He has ruined clothes and a wound on his face.” I showed her with my hand, trailing it down her cheek. “He is always down there, Lily, walking around in black glue, only this time he is standing still, just looking at me.”

“You’re making it up,” she said. “You’re only saying it because I saw the red tadpoles down there.”

“I’m not,” I replied, feeling angry—almost as angry as the man was. “I would never make up someone like that! I would only make up nice people who didn’t have any wounds at all. I even think his clothes are burned.”

“Stop lying,” Lily said again, but her voice was shivering now, so I knew she didn’t really think I was. Inside my head, something was building. It felt as if something was about to explode. I fell to my knees and heaved for breath while Lily cried out beside me.

And then, in my head, he asked.