They angled downward, catching a slower current that carried them in a gentler arc and the island rose to meet them.
The creatures slowed. The chariot settled. The current released them back into stillness.
Marici stepped down before they had fully stopped.
Her feet met the ground and two thoughts arrived simultaneously.
This was a garden. And it was hers. She didn't need to be told. The garden had been telling her since the moment her feet touched the ground — in the soil that yielded, in the leaves that turned, in the way the whole living place had oriented toward her without being asked. She was only now catching up to what it already knew.
She stood still for a moment.
Then she walked forward.The ground beneath her feet was soil, and yielded slightly with each step.
As she walked forward, the garden extended before her in every direction — plantings of many kinds, some low and spreading, others reaching upward in slow spirals, others trailing along the ground in long curving lines.
She did not yet know what any of them were, so she moved through them slowly, letting her attention drift from one to another.
Then something moved.
A cluster of broad-leafed plants to her left turned — imperceptibly, but she caught it — orienting slightly toward her as she passed.
She stopped and looked at them, then looked back the way she had come, then to where she had not yet been. She moved forward again.
The leaves turned as if to follow her.
She continued walking.The plant remained where it was, but the leaves were still pointed in her direction.
Marici smiled a little and became more watchful of her surroundings.
The more she watched the more she saw — the slight lean of a vine as she passed beneath it, the barely-perceptible shift of a low-growing plant that had adjusted its orientation without any wind to justify it.
She was still watching this when her arm caught something.
A stem, thinner than she had expected, bending rather than breaking at the contact. She looked at where her arm had brushed it.
At the point of contact, something was forming.It began as a small clarity — a thinning of the air around the stem's tip where she had touched it. Then it gathered, slowly, with enormous patience — a sphere, translucent, swelling outward from the point of contact. It caught the court's light as it grew and refracted it in small shifting colors across its surface: amber, gold, the edge of violet.
The sphere swelled. Shifted. And then — with the calm inevitability of something that has been building toward exactly this — it bloomed and released itself into the air. The sphere drifted upward on the slight warm current, turning slowly, throwing its small rainbows across the ground below.
Marici watched it go.It drifted slowly and a little ways ahead of it, Marici caught sight of another flash of movement.
A small figure, no taller than her knee, was moving with the unhurried purpose of something engaged in a task it considered important.
Marici's first thought when she saw it was that it looked adorable.
It was upright, with a torso, stubby legs, and thin pale arms. Its green and creamy white coloring carried small shoots growing at various points on its body, and a cluster of tiny blossoms at its head bobbed slightly with each step.
Then the bubble sphere caught up to the adorable plant creature, and the result was immediate and comprehensive.
Bubble fluid — which turned out to be considerable in volume for a sphere of that size — covered the small figure from its blossomed head to its mushroom-like feet in a single generous burst.
A moment of absolute stillness followed.
Then the plant creature turned on the bubble plant with the energy of someone who has been wronged and intends to express their dissatisfaction with extreme specificity.
What came out was not a language Marici had any understanding of — clicks and sharp leaf-snaps and a particular sound that had an unmistakably accusatory quality — delivered at considerable speed and volume.
The bubble plant received every word of it in what appeared to be a posture of complete botanical innocence.
Marici covered her mouth with her hand to hide her amusement.
The motion must have caught the plant creature's attention, for it turned toward her.
The tirade stopped.
The small figure stood absolutely still — bubble fluid still dripping steadily from its blossoms — and looked up at her with an expression she could not fully read but that she understood nonetheless. Recognition moving through it like light through glass.
It made a noise that Marici could only guess to be a plant creature squeal of excitement and bobbled quickly toward her on its short legs.
The noise attracted the attention of other similar creatures that had been previously unnoticed.
From the nearest plantings, to the ones further back in the garden that could not possibly have seen what had just happened but seemed to feel the shift regardless. One by one, then in groups, the garden's inhabitants stopped what they were doing, turned, and began hurrying over.
Not in ceremony. Not with any of the formal deference but with pure joy and excitement.
The first to reach her was Bubba — the name she had fondly begun to attribute to the plant creature who'd had the unfortunate bubble juice incident.
Bubba clung to her skirts excitedly and looked up at her chittering, clacking and rustling away in his plant language.
She had no idea what he was saying, but the feeling behind it needed no translation. She was loved. And Bubba was extremely excited to tell her just how much that was so, immediately and comprehensively.
He hugged her legs, still serenading her with tidings of his affection, and she rested her hand lightly on his blossomed head as others of his kind hurried over to her on their own short chubby plant legs.
They came in ones and twos and then all at once — small arms wrapping around her legs and her hands and her skirts, small voices chittering and clacking in overlapping chorus, the whole warm press of them surrounding her until she was entirely encircled. One of them seized her hand and pulled. Another seized the hand of the one next to it. A third began moving — a bobbling, enthusiastic motion that was not quite walking and not quite skipping but was clearly meant to be both — and within moments the circle had become a ring of them moving around her, pulling at her hands, their blossoms bouncing with each step.
She laughed.
It came out of her before she had decided to laugh — full and genuine and slightly helpless — and the sound of it sent the ring into fresh heights of excitement, the chittering rising, the bobbling quickening, one of the smallest ones losing its footing entirely and tumbling sideways before righting itself and rejoining the circle with undiminished enthusiasm.
She stood in the middle of it and felt something she had no name for yet.
Something that was not quite the weight of the thrones, and not quite the warmth of her brother's laugh, but somewhere between the two — and wider than either.
Then Bubba — still slightly damp — tugged at her hand.
She looked down.
He tugged again, more insistently, and gestured further into the garden.
The others stilled, one by one, as though the gesture had been a word they all understood.
"All right," she said.
What followed was less a tour than a whirlpool current — Bubba pulling her forward with enthusiasm, others trailing alongside and behind.
Their destination was a low wide area where the soil had been worked into careful mounds, each one tended with the particular attention of creatures who understood the difference between helping things grow and helping things thrive.
At the center of the nearest mound something round, green, and deeply layered sat blinking at her with pale unhurried eyes. Even as she watched, one of the plant creatures approached it with careful hands and began separating an outer leafy layer. It moved gently, with the practiced motion of something done regularly and done well — and the round green creature on the mound bore this with complete patience. As the plant creature worked, the outer leafy layer was removed cleanly, revealing a brighter colored layer beneath.
Then the plant creature gathered up the removed leaf, crossed the short distance to Marici, and held it up toward her with both hands.
An offering.
Marici took it.
The plant creature watched her with its eager and expectant eyes. Then, as though demonstrating, it broke off a small piece of its own and ate it — and looked back up at her with an expression of innocent desire to connect with her.Marici looked at what she was holding.
Then she took a small bite.It was warm and slightly sweet.
She looked at the plant creature that had given her its offered harvest. It was watching her with great interest.
"It's good," she said. "Thank you."
The plant creature made a sound she was beginning to recognize as satisfaction and turned back to its work.
Marici stood holding the leaf for a moment longer. She hadn't been hungry, but the leaf had filled her and left her satisfied.
So this was how it would work in their realm.
She watched the newly tended creature as it stood from its mound on four legs and used its back legs to spring forward — once, twice — and continued its slow unhurried way further into the garden. Once it was gone from the mound, another of the same type of creature took its place and Bubba's kinsmen started in on removing the outer shell of that one as well.
Still, Marici watched the newly tended creature as it continued its slow jump jump jump further into the garden.
So she did.
It led her around a cluster of tall trailing growth and through a narrow gap between two wide-spreading plants — and on the other side, the garden opened into something different.
A pool.Shallow and warm, its surface catching the court's light and holding it in a slow shimmer that moved between green and gold depending on the angle. Wide and still, ringed with soft growth at its edges, it had the quality of a place that had been here long before anything else on the island and intended to remain long after.
The hopping creature she had been following found a patch of warm light at the pool's near edge — a place where the court's radiance fell directly and unobstructed on the soft ground.It folded its legs beneath it, closed its eyes, and stilled.
As it did, its leaves began to change.
The green of them deepened — slowly, the way color deepens when light moves through water — rippling outward from the innermost leaves at the center, green shifting through stages of itself until it arrived at something close to deep purple.
Marici watched it happen.
She didn't know enough yet to be certain, but the color looked like a happy contentment.
She left it to its rest and turned to the pool.Its surface was covered in what appeared to be lily pads — flat, green, perfectly circular, distributed across the water.
She looked at the pool for a moment.
Then she stepped in.
The water was warm. Immediately, thoroughly warm, and came to just above her ankles. The bottom was soft beneath her feet, and where she stepped the shimmer brightened and spread outward in a slow quiet wave.
The lily pads moved in response.
All of them at once orienting toward her from wherever they had been resting on the surface. And as they moved it became apparent that what she had taken for flat circular leaves were not leaves at all but wide flat bodies, smooth and green, with small bright eyes at their leading edge and a tail tucked neatly behind. They had been perfectly still. Perfectly flat. Perfectly indistinguishable from the surface they floated on.
Until her radiance had reached them.
The nearest one reached her first and circled her ankles in a wide confident arc, its tail trailing a small wake behind it. Then another joined. Then three more in quick succession, circling in the same direction, their small bright eyes catching the light as they turned. Within moments she was the center of a small enthusiastic orbit — the creatures making a sound that was less a call than a vibration, felt through the water against her feet.
She stood very still in the middle of it and watched them circle.
Then she giggled — soft, delighted — and they seemed to take this as encouragement, the orbit tightening, the pace quickening, until the water around her ankles was alive with small purposeful wakes crossing and recrossing each other in every direction.
She could have stayed there.
But then she heard something low and resonant and felt the vibration through the soft floor of the pool beneath her feet.
The lily pad creatures felt it too and continued their happy circling elsewhere in the pond.
Marici turned.
Across the garden, where the current pooled into a wide circle of warm light, something large lay.
Its mane was a deep green with many layers of dense growth and its four legs were folded beneath it. Its tail lay curled around its body, long and lion-like, and at its tip bloomed a single golden flower, round and full as a small sun.
It raised its head and its eyes found Marici.
They were amber — warm and deep.
They regarded each other across the garden.
Then it rose.
It did not hurry, rather each movement was deliberate and complete before the next began.
Then it walked — unhurried, with enormous dignity — across the garden toward her. The plant creatures parted for it, chittering at the large creature's passing, and the shimmering carpet brightened slightly where its paws pressed it.
It was only when it reached the water's edge and stopped that Marici understood how large it actually was.
From across the garden it had read as large. Up close, it was something else entirely — its head alone level with her own as it stood at the bank, its green mane moving in the current with the slow weight of old growth, its paws broader than both her hands together.
It lowered its head. Slowly, with the same unhurried deliberateness it brought to everything — down and forward, until its great green mane nearly brushed the surface of the pool.
It waited.
Marici looked at it — at the amber eyes, patient and deep, at the golden flower at the tip of its curled tail catching the light — and then she reached up.
Her hand found the dense green of its mane.
It exhaled a long slow release that Marici could feel on her legs where the pond water had splashed up on them — and its eyes closed briefly before opening again.
Then it raised its head, turned, and settled at the pool's edge beside her — close enough that its warmth reached her.Marici stood in the water for a moment longer.
Then she stepped out and sat beside it on the pool's bank, and the garden continued around them — tending, shimmering, drifting — and the warm current moved through it all, and the creature beside her breathed in its long slow rhythm.
She turned.
Ilios stood a few paces back with his arms folded, watching.
She looked at the bubbles from the bubble plants drifting above, their spheres catching the light. At the small creatures continuing their work without any apparent concern for another stranger in their midst. At the large creature beside her, who had begun washing its mane with slow deliberate strokes.
Ilios came and sat beside her.
For a moment neither spoke.
A new sphere bloomed above them — translucent, iridescent — and drifted upward on the current. As it drifted past them, the light through it threw a brief shifting rainbow across the pond's surface.
"I'm glad you're here," Ilios said.
Marici looked at him.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't think I would have much patience for gardening."
"I don't think you would," Marici agreed with a laugh.
Above them, the blue sky stretched — uncomplicated and complete — in every direction.
Ilios looked at it for a long moment. Then in the direction of the chariot.
Marici did not look up.
"No," she said.
He looked at her.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
A pause.
"The realm isn't going anywhere," she said.
"I know."
"It will still be there."
"I know."
She sighed.
"Give me five more minutes."
"Five minutes," he agreed. Then added, "We do have a court coming soon."
"Crap."
Five minutes lasted exactly eight words.