Chapter 17 kilig
kilig
The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. At least it was soft, so gravity didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. And the sky was pretty, at least, the dusk-colored fingers of light having faded to a lovely purple.
Something underneath me groaned. Or rather, someone.
Someone with blond hair, brown eyes, and a dazed look on his face. His arms were still half wrapped around me, which was why the fall hadn’t hurt so much—he’d caught me. Or, at least, he’d tried to. The boxwoods had done the rest.
I quickly rolled off Oliver and pushed myself to my knees.
“I am so sorry,” I said, helping him sit up, picking a leaf off his shirt, another one off his cheek.
Oliver rubbed the back of his neck sorely. “Don’t mention it.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he assured me. “More surprised than anything, I think. I heard you scream, rounded the corner, and suddenly you were falling. I didn’t really think after that. What were you doing climbing over the Hedges anyway?” he asked, perplexed.
“The Hedges?” I looked around. We were in the Hedges, near a William Shakespeare bust. I didn’t know how to tell him that I’d just climbed over a different wall. “Oh.”
“I’m surprised you could climb over these bushes. They’re not very sturdy.” He stretched his shoulders out, wincing. “Who were you talking to? It sounded like . . .” But then his mouth twisted, like the name tasted sour, and he decided against voicing it.
Cyrus?
Suddenly remembering, I popped to my feet, spinning toward the wall. “Hey! Can you hear me?”
There was no answer.
Oliver looked at me in confusion. “Who are you shouting at?”
But I was already leaving the Hedges, through the Central Garden and toward the Wildflowers, walking at first, but by the time the sun disappeared below the tree line I was running.
It took only a minute. The door should still be against the wall, and I could tell Cyrus that it didn’t work.
That I, in fact, fell into another part of the gardens.
By the time I made it to the Wildflower Garden again, my lungs burned.
I slowed to a stop, staring at the empty stone wall.
The door was gone.
I remembered the dizzying, disorienting moment atop the wall. Then his hand passing through mine. I looked down at my own hand, the one that should have caught him. It was real and solid. His should have been, too.
I didn’t understand.
A moment later, Oliver caught up to me. “Hey! Hey, are you okay?” he asked, grabbing my shoulders. “Is something wrong?”
I couldn’t actually explain that his aunt’s other nephew was seemingly trapped in a magical secret garden. I imagined how that would go, and after watching him tear up Eula’s letter to Cyrus, and then his bitter words at Pinch … I decided against it.
“Yeah, I just … thought I left something over here,” I lied. “I guess I was wrong. Sorry. Thank you for catching m—”
He gently took my chin and angled my face to the left. “You’re bleeding,” he said.
I swiped at the burning sensation on my cheek, and my fingertips came away with blood. I winced.
He scolded, “Don’t touch it. Come on.” He took my wrist. “I think there’s a first-aid kit in the kitchen.”
“Oh no, it’s fine. I don’t think it’s that bad—”
“I insist,” he interrupted, tugging me along, and I help-lessly let him lead me to the kitchen in the main house. He sat me down at the table and went to fish out the kit from under the sink.
When he came back over, he sat down in the chair beside me and started to clean the scrape.
“It’s really nothing,” I tried to protest.
“And if it gets infected?”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That’s not a reason to ignore this now,” he replied patiently.
“Just be still. I’ll be done in a minute.
” So I sat there quietly and let him clean up my cheek, feeling every bit as silly.
I’d had worse cuts from roses, but being doted on felt …
nice wasn’t the word, not really. Flattering?
I never really let anyone care for me, not like this. It was too intimate.
But his fingers were gentle, and I reasoned—what could it hurt to let him treat me?
I sort of liked the closeness between us, the way I could count the wrinkles between his eyebrows, which he furrowed when he concentrated.
The way the faded freckle on his lip deepened whenever he pursed his mouth.
There were so many hallmarks of Eula in Oliver’s face, the angular cheekbones and the long lashes and the caramel eyes, so I wondered how her love for Lilymoor could get lost in a heart as big as Oliver’s.
“Do you normally go climbing over hedges?” he asked, applying antiseptic to my scratch. The sting made me wince, but he held my chin gently to keep me still. “Or is this a new hobby?”
“Ha,” I muttered.
He placed the Band-Aid over my scratch and then went about putting everything back into the first-aid kit, waiting for me to answer, but when it was clear I wouldn’t, he shook his head and muttered, “Then keep your elusive secrets, Miss Head Gardener.”
I would, if only because Oliver wouldn’t believe me.
As he put the first-aid kit away, I ran my fingers over the bandage, thinking back to Cyrus in the garden, and wondered if anyone was missing him. Surely someone was, right?
“You’ve got a look on your face. What’re you thinking about?” Oliver asked, taking two Diet Cokes out of the refrigerator, and came to sit down with me again.
“I guess . . . do you know of any secret gardens?”
“What, like the book?” he asked, dropping back into his chair. He looked amused. “You think Lilymoor has one?”
“Couldn’t it?”
He shrugged and popped open the tab on his soda.
It fizzed up, and he sipped the liquid that escaped onto the top.
“I never really paid much attention to the gardens. You’d have to ask the other nephew about that, since he spent more time with Uncle Henry than I did, but good luck getting him to talk. ”
“Cyrus?” I asked, hesitant. “Why?”
“He hates Lilymoor.” He shrugged. “Hasn’t been back in years.”
And yet somehow he was stuck in a garden here that he magically couldn’t escape from. “Ah.”
Oliver reached over to the bowl in the center of the table and took an apple, tossing it into his other hand. “You can ask Lala to call him if you want. Maybe he’ll pencil you into his schedule in two years.”
“That’s …”
“By design. I think he’d marry his job if he could. I wouldn’t be surprised if he sleeps in six-minute intervals.”
“Six minutes … ?” Maybe that had something to do with the garden and why he was trapped? What if he could only escape on the six-minute mark on the hour, or only at six o’clock or— “Six is odd.”
“It’s something about billing hours. He’s obsessed with it. It drives Lala crazy. Anyway, don’t go climbing hedges anymore, okay? That’s why we have ladders. And Wykofski.” He winked at that, and bit into the apple.
“Wykofski won’t get on a ladder.”
“Afraid of heights?” Oliver guessed.
“Lightning,” I corrected.
“Huh.”
My mind wandered back to the strange garden, because if the only other person who would know anything about a secret garden was the one currently trapped in said garden . . .
That struck me as strange, suddenly. “Are you sure he’s working? And he’s not—um—missing?”
“Pretty sure,” Oliver replied. “I mean, Lala talks to him all the time.”
But then, if Cyrus wasn’t missing out here, how could he also be in the garden? Maybe Oliver was mistaken. He didn’t seem like he cared very much about Eula’s other nephew, anyway. I should have Eula call Cyrus, just to make sure, but how would I do that without it sounding odd?
I was so caught up in my own head, I didn’t realize Oliver had followed me out of the kitchen until he called my name. “Sophie?”
I spun around to him, distracted. “Yeah?”
“Are you hungry?” he asked the ground. “Would you want to go to dinner?”
“Oh no, I have a TV dinner in the freezer. Thank you, though,” I replied absently, and bid him good night.
I took my Diet Coke with me as I left the house, my mind wandering as I traveled back down the garden path and over the Moon Bridge to my cottage.
Maybe I could gently broach the subject of Cyrus with Eula, and then guide the conversation to calling him?
I was so caught up in planning that Oliver’s question didn’t sink in until I chose a TV dinner out of my freezer and immediately groaned. “Oh no. Did Oliver just ask me out? Like, dinner dinner?”
I asked the Magic 8 Ball. The die tumbled and tumbled and tumbled and finally landed on an answer.
WITHOUT A DOUBT, the die read, but it might as well have been laughing at me.