The Twilight Garden

Prologue

Flora’s garden had always been there, or so it seemed.

And sometimes, there were people there too.

Some came every day, diligent in their care, but for others the garden held little to charm or fascinate.

The two little boys who came didn’t care a jot if their energetic play removed the rose heads from the bushes, or if the thundering of their toy trucks spat gravel into the borders as they raced them up and down the paths.

For the young woman who came to sit there once upon a time, the garden was a refuge, a place far away from the weight of her quarrelsome and ill-advised marriage, but even though she scarcely noticed the ebullient blooms or the scent of honeysuckle and lavender which drifted on the evening air, the garden kept her secrets, and told no one of her whispered desires.

In more recent times the garden was tended by an earnest young man who seemed to understand far more than others the ebb and flow of the seasons and the cyclical nature of all things.

He was, apart from Flora, the person the garden liked best of all.

It liked the way he sat, quiet as a mouse and still as the owl which might have hunted it.

The way he cocked his head, listening, as if he could hear the swelling of the buds and the rising of the sap within their stems. But most of all the garden liked the way it could make him feel. Not many of the others even noticed it.

But the people had been gone for a long while now, and the garden had become lost. Almost, but not quite.

Because the garden was not concerned with that which happened in minutes or hours, days or even months.

Time had a different meaning there. So it would let the wind scour its paths and the rain soak its soil, the sun warm its blooms and the moon bathe its leaves.

And it would wait, for the garden had always been there and, one day, it would be again.