Page 6 of One Last Whisper

“That’s a question for babies.”

He grins as he says it, though. I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Color is important to people of all ages, including ancient adults like me.”

He giggles, “You’re not ancient, Miss Mary.”

“Well, thank you very much,” I say. “And you’re not ancient either. We have that in common.”

He giggles again. “Um, my favorite color is blue.”

“Blue like the ocean or blue like the sky?”

“Blue like the ocean. I used to visit a lot when I was younger. I can’t visit anymore because I’m ill.”

“Well,” I purse my lips. “I’m sure we can find a way to squeeze in a visit when the weather warms. Fresh air and sunshine never did anyone harm. What do you like about the ocean?”

He shrugs. “It’s a whole other world, I guess. Somewhere magical that doesn’t suffer from the same things that this world suffers from.”

Children have a remarkable ability to say the most revealing things in the most casual tones. They haven’t yet learned that not all of what they consider normal is actually normal. “What does this world suffer from?” I ask.

He shrugs and looks away. I can tell he’s growing uncomfortable, so I steer the conversation away. Pushing him will only succeed in pushing him into his shell. I need to coax him out, not pull him out. “My favorite color is green,” I tell him.

“Green like grass or green like the forest?”

The forest that comes to my mind when he says that is dark and hostile and most definitely not green. I stop the visionbefore the old nightmare image of my sister’s ghost arrives and say, “Green like grass. Like the grass outside in the fields.”

“We have grass in our garden that grows green as an emerald,” he tells me.

"Green as an emerald." Well, I'll have to see that."

He reaches forward and takes my hand. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

I smile down at him as he leads me outside. The trust of a child is such a beautiful thing, so pure and wholesome and precious. And yet so many people manipulate that trust and turn it into something evil. May they all rot in the hell they deserve.

I push that thought away too. I’m determined to enjoy my time here and not to let the ghosts of my past interfere with my future.

We step through a back door into a paradise. I suppose objectively speaking, it’s no more impressive than any other garden in any other wealthy home, and less impressive even than that of some other families I’ve worked for. But it’s beautiful, and compared to the austerity of the castle, it might as well be a landscape from Heaven.

There are carefully manicured trees, perfectly round and perhaps ten to fifteen feet tall. There is a flower garden with orderly rows of tulips, chrysanthemums, marigolds and poppies surrounded by rosebushes whose blooms shine blood red. There is a fountain in the center of the garden—thankfully a perfectly ordinary cherub and not some Gothic representation of a wrathful Moses striking a rock (that’s a whole other story).

But the crown jewel is, as Oliver said, a two-acre field on which grows the brightest green grass I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s as though the color was concentrated and intensified so that each individual blade shines with the verdure of an entire field. The contrast to the pale green outside of the estate is as sharp asthe contrast between the blue of Monterey and the nearly-gray pale of the sky here.

“Do you like it?” Oliver asks.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “Thank you so much for showing me.”

He hesitates, looking around as though he's about to tell me a secret but must make sure there's no one around to hear it. Then he asks, "Would you like me to show you my hide-and-seek spot? No one ever finds me there."

I smile. “I would love to.”

“Oliver!”

We both jump at the sound of Lord Edmund’s voice. The light dies in Oliver’s eyes almost immediately, and it takes all of my strength not to snap at Lord Edmund for it.

“Oliver, come inside,” Lord Edmund commands. “It’s too cold for you to be frolicking today. Show Miss Mary your video game collection if you must occupy her with nonsense.”

I turn to him, and though I say nothing, I allow my disapproval to show in my glance. He returns a frosty stare of his own and says, “As I said, Miss Mary, it is better for him to remainindoors. Perhaps when the weather warms, we’ll allow him some gentle outings into the garden.”

I want to argue with him, but what would be the point? This is his house, and I am only a servant. “As you wish, Lord Blackwood.”

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