Chapter 28 #2
Not sure how I managed to not laugh, not scream, not make a single sound when he pulled me up, but the cart was full of wooden crates, and we landed together in the narrow space between them, pressed close, both of us grinning like idiots.
Had the driver noticed? My hood had definitely moved—had he seen my face?
I doubted it—his whistling continued. We couldn’t see him from here, but we could hear the senseless melody just fine.
Holy Hour, we were on the cart for real—and it was rolling on.
March then fell down in the narrow space, sat on the dirty, wooden floor of the cart, and I did the same.
It was narrow, so our shoulders were squeezed together, and the wind was in our hair, and soon the houses ended, and the bigger buildings began, the Court of Hearts passing us by on either side.
It was beautiful, more so than it had seemed before.
The red rooftops. The flower boxes spilling crimson and white from every window.
The wide streets narrowing into lanes as the cart continued wherever it was going, the buildings growing older, the gardens wilder.
People saw us sitting there—a woman hanging laundry on a line strung between two trees, and a man painting the wooden fence in front of his house red.
They saw us, but they couldn’t see our faces.
We made sure to cover ourselves all the way.
They still smiled and shook their heads, but nobody called out to the driver to warn him.
I absorbed everything I could, and March did, too. He watched it all with an expression that looked both like surprise and recognition. His breathing had slowed down and his body had softened. Even the grip around my hand was a little looser—but in a good way.
Why wouldn’t he be more relaxed—he was home.
And I felt dangerously close to my home, too, sitting there beside him.
We jumped off the back of the cart while it was still moving, stumbling, catching each other, laughing—it was impossible to stop the sound from exploding out of me.
The driver continued on, whistling his tune, never even turning his head back.
We were on a smaller road now, unpaved, winding through a grove of trees with leaves so dark they were almost purple. The light that filtered through them was warm and red-tinted, and the air smelled of roses and soil and something sweeter underneath that I couldn’t place.
“Almost there,” March said as we walked ahead.
“You’ve been to this part of the quadrant before, right?” Just to make sure.
He nodded. “This is technically the middle of the second quadrant. I was hoping the cart would take us closer, but this will do.”
“Where exactly are we going?” I wondered.
“It’s a place,” March told me, turning to look at me, eyes zeroing in on my smile. “It’s my favorite place in the court.”
Just like that, I was now dying to see it, whatever it was.
“Don’t worry—nobody’s going to spot us. And if they do, they can’t see our faces—and if they do, we’ll run. Soldiers don’t usually hang out around these parts.”
He must have confused my curiosity for fear—and in fact, I should have been afraid. We were out here in the Court of Hearts all by ourselves, and if someone actually saw us…
“Ora, I know where to go. Where to run. Don’t worry—we’ll be safe.” Again, he mistook my silence.
“It’s not that,” I told him. “I’m actually not worried at all, and that’s the problem.” I hadn’t even thought about the queens or soldiers or anything at all while we’d been on that cart. We’d traveled a good ten minutes if I had to guess, so there had been time.
A grin. “It isn’t. You don’t need to worry. I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think we could escape safely.”
And I believed that with my whole heart, too.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay.” He nodded.
Then we were on our way again.
We walked only for a few more minutes. The trees thickened and the light deepened, and I didn’t have the slightest guess where he could be taking me, but I resisted the urge to ask again. I wanted it to be a surprise, too.
Then the path opened up, and I stopped breathing.
I stopped walking, too.
At the end of the cobbled path was the most unusual gateway I’d ever seen.
Thick white pillars on the sides, so tall, taller than most buildings, at their tips a single gigantic rose.
Hedges just as tall somehow stood perfectly upright and continued on the sides so far I couldn’t see where they ended.
There were roses, red and white on the leaves everywhere, as if the hedges thought they were rosebushes instead.
“This is it,” March whispered, pulling at my hand to get me to walk again. “Welcome to the Garden of Memories, Ora.”
My mouth opened, but no word came out. There was no thought in my head, either, no feeling inside me other than awe.
A garden unlike any garden I’d ever seen.
The trees came first, right off the pillars—enormous, old, with trunks wide enough to live in and branches that reached for each other overhead, forming a canopy so dense the light that filtered through was stained rose and gold.
White cobblestones made a winding path beneath them, and red benches were tucked between the roots, each one facing a different direction.
On every branch, hanging from thin silver chains, were hearts.
Glass hearts. Thousands of them, maybe more.
They caught the light and scattered it in fragments of red and pink and amber, and they swayed in the breeze, sometimes clinking against each other with a sound so delicate it was barely there.
Some were bigger, the size of two fists pressed together, but some were small enough to fit in my palm.
Some were clear as water. Some were clouded with age, their surfaces frosted by time.
“Wow,” I breathed because wow. What other word could there be for this? “March, this is…this is…”
No word. I shook my head and held his hand and drank in every detail my eyes could see.
“Do you like it?” he whispered, and I nodded so fast I got vertigo.
“I love it,” I whispered. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything more beautiful in my life.”
A chuckle. “Me, neither,” he said—only he was looking at me.
Heat on my cheeks.
“What is this place?” I breathed, a little overwhelmed by the scent of roses hanging in the air, by the silence, by the intensity of his eyes on me.
Oh, this Heart boy really was more trouble than I could even imagine.
“It’s where we store our memories,” he said.
“Before a Heart dies, they choose their most precious memory and seal it in a glass heart to hang it in one of these trees forever. Each quadrant has one.” He stepped onto the white cobblestones, his hand still in mine.
“But the best part is that, whoever comes here to visit, whoever touches them, they feel what the people felt. They live the people’s best moments for a few seconds. It’s like their memories are yours.”
Those words put together like that.
The very idea of something so beautiful, so heartbreaking existing in the realm…
It was a well-known fact that Hearts were emotional, but I’d never considered that to be a good thing until I saw this. In our court, Spades were ice cold, and what we did when our people died was write their names on a wall.
Those who died before their time? A separate wall. So, they could be separated from their own people forever.
Cruel, I’d thought, though everyone insisted it was balance. But it wasn’t—and this wasn’t emotional. It was everything. It was immortality in the flesh.
And Jinx would have absolutely adored it here.
I walked forward as if pulled by strings.
My hand slipped from March’s, and I moved between the trees, looking up, turning slowly, my mouth open and my eyes everywhere at once.
Every branch held more hearts. Every heart held a memory.
The whole place hummed against my skin—warmth and love and a particular ache that was as devastating as it was beautiful.
We walked and walked for a minute or two, but the view didn’t change. So many trees. So many hearts. So many memories…
“May I?” I whispered eventually, when my eyes caught on one of the smaller hearts on a low branch just there, like it was asking me to reach for it.
“Of course,” March said, and I didn’t hesitate.
I wrapped both hands around the heart, and it fit my palms perfectly. It was warm—not from the sun, but from within. The glass was smooth and heavy, but at the same time it felt like holding onto a living thing, and the moment my palms closed around it, a flash took my vision away.
It was bright, vivid, so real it knocked the air from my lungs.
The picture revealed itself to me in the center of my mind, like it had always been there, waiting for the right moment to show itself to me.
A woman in a kitchen, her hands white with flour.
A child on the counter, legs swinging, laughing, the sound of it crystal clear.
Sunlight pouring through a window, catching the flour dust and turning it to gold.
The smell of bread hung in the air, filling my nostrils.
That laugh. The feelings—a love so all-consuming and simple it made my heart ache.
I moved back on instinct and heard my own gasp, as if I’d been suspended in time for at least a few minutes. I’d let go of the heart and it now swung lightly on its chain, same as before.
“That was…that…” I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.
“That was someone’s best moment, saved inside that glass.” March reached in and touched his finger to the same heart—and he inhaled deeply.
Just a second. He sucked in a breath, then stepped back, and he was smiling. Like he’d seen that same memory I saw.
Except to me it had felt like I’d lived hours, if not a whole day in that kitchen. I looked at my own hands, swallowed hard, felt my lips stretching into a smile.
Time’s Teeth, this was amazing. This was incredible. I wanted to live in this garden forever.
“Can I touch more?” Because I wanted to see more. I wanted to see everything and feel all these feelings and just…breathe. Relish someone else’s memories, not have to wonder about my own.