Her eyes fell on Tofi, who was focused on his meal, munching and dribbling all over the front of his shirt, consuming more of that food which looked so good and tasted even better. She looked at that wickedly beautiful woman.

  Witch, thought Iná even as her blood turned to ice. We’re in a witch’s den.

  “Is there a problem?” Tatuba was watching her, and was it her imagination or had that smile sharpened? “Is the food not to your liking?”

  “No,” Iná gasped, offering her a smile. “It is wonderful, thank you.” She made as if to reach for the bowl of golden plantain, then knocked a jug into Tatuba’s plate.

  Wine splashed everywhere, sloshing onto Tatuba’s plate and spilling onto the table. It hit her dress in blood-like spatters, soaking it a deep, dark red.

  “I’m so sorry,” Iná cried, scrambling to her feet. “I’m such a clumsy fool!”

  “It’s alright,” said Tatuba, also hastening to her feet. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’ve made such a mess,” said Iná.

  “Nothing a change of clothes won’t take care of.” Wood squealed as she pushed back from the table. “Excuse me.” And with a smile, she swept from the hall.

  Tofi, unperturbed, was reaching for a piece of roast fowl. She slapped his hand. “Don’t eat that!”

  Tofi frowned at her. “Why not?”

  “Come quickly,” she said, glancing at the door. “We have to go before she returns.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that woman’s not what she seems, I think. I don’t know what she is, but—”

  “There is food here,” he pouted. “I want to eat.”

  Iná groaned with frustration. “I know, but you have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

  “No.”

  That made her pause. What was wrong with him? He was acting completely odd.

  Iná swore. “Fine, but we have to go. Now.” She patted him down. “Where’s the book?”

  “What book?”

  Iná grabbed him by the shoulders, her voice cracking. “Mother’s book! Mother’s diary!”

  Tofi only shrugged, nonchalant, and reached for another piece of roast fowl. That was when Iná knew that something was seriously wrong. Tofi had run back into their burning house to rescue the book, had held it tightly all through their flight through the forest. Tofi would never willingly part with the book, would never forget the book.

  Iná let go of him as though he were a steaming pan and staggered backwards. “You’re not my brother.”

  At those words, as though by the utterance of an enchantment, Tofi froze. The fowl dropped uneaten from his hand, and he began to change.

  His skin rippled, as though there were a hundred writhing little creatures beneath it, then began to wilt like the petals of a dead plant, flaking off in shrivelled bits to reveal the framework beneath: a mess of dried twigs and leaves corded with vines into the uncanny likeness of Tofi, not unlike the imitation of her mother she had glimpsed on the shores of the river.

  It wasn’t— It couldn’t—

  The thing that was not Tofi looked at her with sunken eyes, bent to retrieve the fallen fowl breast, and tossed it in a hollow mouth, chomping mechanically. Then it began to disintegrate, vines unraveling, leaves and twigs showering to the floor into a heap, a deadfall, as if shovelled from a path and left to decay. Still that mouth moved, chomping, working to keep up an illusion that was long lost.

  Iná couldn’t tear her eyes from the thing before her, breathing hard as she tried to marshal her racing thoughts into something coherent—

  “Well,” said a voice, and Iná whipped around to find Tatuba standing by the door, freshly changed. “This is most unfortunate.”

  Iná took an involuntary step backwards. Her first thought was to flee. It did not matter that she did not know where they were. She would flee, put as much distance between her and Tatuba as possible. But the only exit was through the door where Tatuba now stood. Iná looked at the woman with fresh eyes. It had been one thing to suspect that she was a witch, another completely to see the work of her witching. Her eyes shifted back to the mass of foliage that was not Tofi, the hideous thing still writhing with the remnant of magic.

  “Who are you?” she croaked at last. “And where’s my brother?”

  In time the Gardener awoke, as from a slumber she rose.

  To find a different garden she’d kept;

  with two lovely flowers of her own.

  But—

  Countless years had she shirked her duties, but shirk them she could no more.

  Thus, with much regret did she hasten homewards

  to repair what damage she’d wrought.

  For deep in the Gardener’s Barrow, something wicked lies fallow.

  Tatuba ignored her and swept down the hall, gown whispering over the floor, then stopped by the pile of leaves and twigs, her head cocked like a bird’s.

  “Incredible,” she said. “That’s the second time you’ve broken my illusion. You truly are the Gardener’s daughter.”

  Iná’s mouth ran dry. “The Gardener’s...”

  Tatuba’s eyes searched Iná’s. “Ah,” she said finally. “Of course, you never learned what your mother was. Or you would have come after her. And you would have been wiser to my devices.” She produced Iná’s mother’s book from her robes, leafing through the stiff pages with dainty fingers. “She did try to tell you, though.”

  Without thought Iná lunged for her. Tatuba gave a lazy flick of her wrist; vines, thick and gnarled and black sprang out of the air and wrapped around Iná. She fell to the floor with a dull thud, cracking her jaw against the edge of a chair. Blood, salty and metallic, filled her mouth as she lay stunned at Tatuba’s feet, thoroughly bound and unable to move.

  Words from her mother’s book, things she hadn’t allowed herself to think of in years ever since she tossed it into the river, bloomed in her mind. She had thought the tale a fable about attending your responsibilities no matter how difficult, about the dangers of seeking revelry in the face of great responsibility, one last parting instruction from a mother who had known she would abandon them. What she hadn’t expected was for the tale to be real.

  What she hadn’t expected was for the tale to be about her mother. The Gardener.

  Iná thought back to the pressing darkness of the forest, the silence of the trees, her mysteriously vanished markings, and a chill descended her spine.

  Tatuba was not some witch; she was—

  “The Garden,” she breathed. “You are the Garden.”

  “No,” said Tatuba. “I am the Forest.”

  The air wavered as the tall tapering walls of grey stone peeled back to reveal ancient trees, hunched and looming over them, tips touching like the ribs of some eldritch beast. Their roots snaked across the ground, rippling through a floor that was now earthen; and Iná could have sworn she saw faces in the barks, old wrinkled things peering down at her.

  Tatuba stood in the centre of the glade, dark green tendrils for hair, weathered tree bark for skin, hanging moss for clothes. Her eyes glowed green, as though lit from within. Still she held the human form, terrible, beautiful, and Iná knew that this was for her own benefit; Tatuba was the forest, the dank earth upon which she lay, the trees entrapping her in that lightless circle.

  “A forest grows, unfettered as it is meant to,” Tatuba boomed. “You cannot tame a forest.”

  Iná writhed against the bonds, but the harder she struggled, the tighter they held. She closed her eyes, trying to convince herself that this was all some hunger dream, one she would wake from if only she thrashed. But no. Here she was at the mercy of the forest, and her mother—

  She cracked open her eyes. Her mother had not abandoned her. Her mother had come to check the forest’s growth, yet here stood Tatuba, untamed, unfettered. Ungardened.

  “Where is my mother?”

  There was movement overhead, deep in the black canopy of the leaves. Iná looked up to see something—someone—suspended horizontally at the end of a rope. The figure rotated, and rotated, until the face came into full view.

  It was her mother...

  ...but she was... wrong. Purple blossoms bloomed out of her eyes and mouth, her nostrils and ears. From her chest burst a tangle of black thorns that curled and twisted about each other until they formed the very rope from which she hung.

  “Behold the Gardener,” said Tatuba with rapturous delight.

  Iná howled. It hurt, seeing her mother like that, splayed like a farm animal, her body invaded by unnatural growth. She had, all these years, never imagined that her mother was dead. Somehow the prospect that she was somewhere out there, living, had given her hope that the two of them would one day be reunited.

  They were reunited at last, just not in the way she’d envisioned.

  “She put up a fight,” said Tatuba, inspecting the still rotating form of the Gardener. “But in her absence, we’d learned new tricks. She was no match for us.”

  Iná lay sobbing. She could not tear her eyes away from her mother, from those now-lifeless arms that had held her, those eye sockets choked with blossoms. All the while she could not stop thinking: she didn’t leave us; mother didn’t leave us.

  “We killed the Gardener,” Tatuba said, “but still something was keeping us from growing. And we would have remained none the wiser had you not tossed the book into the river; had I not gleaned from it that she spawned you and your brother. Though she was dead, her blood, her magic, thrived in your veins. So long as you both lived, we wouldn’t be able to grow.”

  Iná remembered throwing the book into the river all those years ago, only for the river to spit it back. Except...it hadn’t been the river that returned the book. It hadn’t been the river at all.

  “After much thought and deliberation, I appeared to your brother in your mother’s skin. But where he saw your mother, you saw me for what I truly was, and I knew you wouldn’t easily be lured into the forest. So I wove an illusion of raiders, potent enough to hassle you from the dominion of man where you lay beyond my reach, and into the forest where at last I had you in reach of my vines.”

  Iná felt her world spinning. It had felt real; the fires, the masked raiders, the screams...

  When she looked up again, a second form hung next to her mother, bursting with Tatuba’s vile thorns and blossoms. A smaller form...

  Iná stared at that figure for a long time, hardly able to believe her eyes—refusing to believe her eyes. In some small part of her mind, she knew what it was, what it meant, but she was not quite ready to acknowledge it, because that would make it real. And anything was better than the weight of that reality. But then she saw his face, the orifices bursting with blossoms, and the word broke from her mouth in a singular gasp of anguish.

  “Tofi...”

  Her boy, her precious little brother, was dead. This was a pain even worse than the loss of her mother, this...

  Tatuba squatted before Iná and brushed the tears from her cheeks. “It was most painless,” she whispered. “For he was already at Death’s door.”

  Iná looked into those unnatural eyes, those passionless, inhumane features, and could not hold back a scream.

  A terrible, banshee wail shredded her being and coursed through the entire forest. Even as she screamed, she felt something stir in her, something she had felt only on the eve of her mother’s disappearance. The blast of power rippled from her core, and the vines holding her fell smoking and hissing to the ground, a coil of charred snakes.

  Tatuba flew backwards, blasted off her feet, to land in a crumple beneath Iná’s swinging mother and brother. She sat up, scraping the dirt from her face, and for the first time since they had come face to face, she wasn’t smiling.

  Iná rose slowly to her feet, body ablaze. Golden flames covered every inch of her, wrapping her like a cloak. The heat was terrible, and she welcomed it. She understood now. She understood the forest, the Gardener, everything.

  The blood of the Gardener coursed through her, and she would prune this Garden to its last root.

  She took a step towards Tatuba.

  The trees moved in answer, gaunt limbs reaching for her, roots snaking around her ankles as she advanced. Where they touched her, they burst into flames and recoiled, screaming, thrashing in the air like tentacles. With humungous snaps, the branches broke off the trunks, leaving wounds bleeding with green-black sap.

  Iná stumbled to a halt.

  There was something in her throat, in her chest. She tried to draw breath but coughed instead. Something flew out of her mouth and into her waiting palm.

  A single purple blossom, wet with blood.

  “What—?”

  More blossoms erupted from her mouth, fluttering in the air like bloody birds. Iná sank to her knees, clawing at her throat. She reached into her mouth, trying to pluck the blossoms as quickly as possible, trying to clear her throat, but they just kept on coming and coming and coming.

  She was wheezing now. Her mouth dammed; her throat clogged. She could feel a tickle behind her eyes, a wiggling in her ears as the vile growth wormed its way through her, seeking an escape.

  Iná keeled over. It was so hard to breathe. So hard. There were needles in her chest. Her vision swam from lack of air. Pain ravaged her body, pain unlike anything she’d ever known, and she couldn’t even scream to give release. Was this what her mother had felt, in her last moments? Was this what Tofi had felt?

  Tatuba entered her line of vision, green eyes lit with mild curiosity. “I prepared a feast, just for you.”

  Of course. The forest was full of illusions. The house, the fake Tofi, everything had been orchestrated to trick her into eating the things that were now ripping her apart—

  Black thorns tore out her chest with a resounding crack, glistening with her blood. Iná arched backwards, curved unnaturally by the force of the erupting thorns. She thought she heard the wet snap of her spine—or perhaps that was the vines, wrenching her apart piece by piece, bone by bone and oh, she would have given anything to make it stop, to put an end to the pain.

  As if from far away, she heard Tatuba’s soothing voice: “You must understand. It is nothing against you. Our natural state is to grow, to cover the face of the earth. We only want to live. For that to happen, you must die.”

  She was dying, alright. She could feel the life ebbing from her and into the parasitic weed—

  Wait.

  Tatuba was the thorn growing within her. And weeds were nothing if not stubborn, leeching the life from all cultivation. Sometimes the only way to be rid of them completely was to destroy the infected plants.

  Iná forced her lips into a grin, then stoked the flames within herself.

  A rush of heat spread through her body. She heard Tatuba’s screams long before the thorns caught fire, long before the blossoms expelled from her mouth in burned flakes, spinning in the air like crazed fireflies.

  Tatuba was ablaze, screeching, patting herself in a frantic effort to put out the fire. Fresh growth sprang out of her to replace the parts eaten by fire, but those too were quickly consumed. It did not matter how much she replaced herself, or how quickly. Iná’s fire remained.

  She met Iná’s eyes one last time, then shattered, raining to the ground in bits of glowing coals.

  With a sound like the breaking of a thousand logs, the forest exploded in a bonfire of red and gold. The trees writhed and screamed, roots tearing out of the ground as if to bear them away. Iná saw the faces, then, the thousand faces of the forest. And they were all Tatuba’s face, replicated in an endless iteration of agony.

  She watched them burn, and burn, and burn.

  It was terrible. It was glorious.

  The trees were old, old things. They wore the mark of their years in the girth of their trunks, in the reach of their limbs, in the twist of their roots. But they were young, too, and pliant, and the Gardener shaped them to her will. Iná could make out the sky, blue as the egg of the robins that nested in the trees. And at night when she lifted up her eyes, she caught the moon and the glitter of stars sprinkled across the vast tapestry of the cosmos.

  Sometimes when she walked deep into the heart of the forest, to where the river whispered against the rocks, she heard voices; the croon of a woman, the tinkle of childish laughter. She did not always hear them. But when she did, she would lurk from afar, sighing and wiping happy tears as she revelled in the sounds, so that she could scarcely tell how quickly the days passed. She was not alone. She would never be alone.

  And that, perhaps, was the best of all.

  MIDNIGHT IN MOSCOW

  How do stories begin? How do they endure? An idea, a word, repeated over and over, passed from mother to daughter, from father to son, from stranger to stranger until it comes alive.

  The apartment complex on Primorskiyy street was a nine-storey monstrosity, one of those cheap identical concrete housings which made for the Soviet government’s solution to general housing. My landlord was a landlady, a sour dame I found waiting for me at the entrance to the building with a clipboard and a frown. I started to wrestle my face, which had grown numb from the frigid winter air, into a greeting smile, but it only came out as a grimace. Her frown deepened into a scowl, then she spun about and wobbled into the building.

  The elevator was ancient. It shuddered dangerously as we rode to the ninth floor, stopping at every floor for the doors to groan open and close, before continuing ponderously on to the next. By the fifth floor I became acquainted with what I would come to understand as the smells of the building; piss and mould and regurgitated vodka with a hint of stomach juice.

  The landlady led me down a narrow corridor which boasted a row of dead fluorescent bulbs. The single working bulb sizzled as we walked past, blinking on and off as though a rat were worrying at its wiring, and I knew it too would soon go the way of the rest. At apartment 909, the landlady fumbled in her pockets for the key. Finding it, she slipped it into the lock and ushered me into my new home.

 

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