Page 45 of This Vicious Hunger
I haven’t seen him in two days—or is it three? And I’ve barely thought of him either. I wonder if this is how his Clara was, captured, enraptured by Olea’s private Eden, haunted by the garden’s scent and dreams of Olea’s lips. I wonder, with a laugh, if Leo is wrong, and if Clara isn’t still here on the campus, hiding somewhere, biding her time, waiting for Olea or to steal from her again.
The memory of Clara is bitter and my thoughts are jumbled and nonsensical. I don’t like that Olea lied to me about her. More than that, though, I don’t like that Clara claimed to be Olea’s friend before betraying her.
Olea is fragile, too gentle to be at the mercy of people like Leo’s wife. A thief no less. I wonder if Leo has any idea what Clara was up to, if that explains the fervour of his mistrust more than justfear. Perhaps he is frightened of Olea because Clara told him her plans to rob her; perhaps they were in on it together.
No, that’s a ridiculous notion. Leo is too kind to support even his wife in such an act. Perhaps she told him and he disagreed, though? That would be reason enough for Clara to abandon him. If I was caught trying to steal something so precious—for there’s no denying that half of the specimens in Olea’s garden would be worth a small fortune in some academic circles—I’d want to disappear too.
I blink. The sun has nearly set and the light is that hazy in-between, blue and purple with shadows that stretch uncannily, but I could swear there’s somebody in the garden. It isn’t Olea; the figure moves too fast and furtively, dressed in black or brown so they virtually blend in with the tangle of thorny plants that grow near the garden wall.
My stomach lurches. Olea has left the gate open. She must have. Or I did when I left this morning. How else could somebody gain access to her secret place? Freezing panic drips down my spine. I want to shout, to wave my hands, or to run down and shoo the intruder away. Yet something holds me in place. I remain, fixated, as I watch the figure hurry towards the boggart’s posy—orMercurialis perennis—a patch of weeds that grow close to the wall with toothed leaves shaped like spears. The weeds grow thick in places, but not there.
It’s impossible for me to tell whether the figure is male or female, only that they are tall and fast; they wear a hood over their head, some sort of travel cloak, and long dark sleeves that stretch down over their hands, maybe gloves too. I angle closer to my window, careful to keep to one side. I’m not sure what I am planning to do aside from watch, but if there is a thief targetingthe garden, I’m determined to be able to tell Olea exactly what they came for.
But the figure doesn’t grab and run. If they’re familiar with the risk these plants pose, then they’re confident in the safety provided by their conservative clothes. Once they’ve reached the shadow of the wall, the figure pauses, glancing around. I catch a flash of pale skin, but then the hood is in the way again and they’re kneeling down amongst the weeds.
I narrow my eyes, waiting for the snap of stems. My mind flits between fear of arson and fear of some kind of poison that might kill the plants, but the figure bends lower over the earth and they seem to bedigging? They brush the plants away with little tenderness, scooping aside handfuls of what I assume is dirt.
There is a flash of metal as the stranger removes something from inside their robe, whatever it is large enough to catch the last rays of the setting sun, and then the stranger rolls their shoulders, climbs to their feet, and begins to dig in earnest.
I don’t know what to make of this. I’m still torn, hovering with indecision, when the intruder in the garden stops and drops something in the hole they have made. I can’t see what it was, only that it was small—no larger than a silver coin. They cover the hole quickly with the shovel and then with their hands, laying the shovel down and bending low over the weeds once more.
A sneaking, trembling feeling starts deep inside me. Not quite a suspicion, but closer by the second. I hold my breath, waiting, waiting, until the figure in the garden reaches up to brush their forehead. The deed done—whatever the deed may have been—they have grown careless, and the hood slips back. Dark curling hair slides across their forehead. An inky-clad hand reaches up to pull the hood back.
Not gloved, I realise, but stained.
Olea.
It feels like deceit. The sun has nearly set, but I know I’m not mistaken. I would recognise her hair, the frame of her beautiful narrow face, anywhere. She was a stranger in shades of pink and gold, but now, in the early moonlight on this clear, cloudless evening, she is Olea again.
Olea, digging in the garden. More: Olea digging in the garden by the light of the setting sun, so out of character for her when the sun seems to cause her such displeasure, on an evening when she has explicitly asked for me to stay away.
My heart thuds and the stale bread and cheese threaten to make another appearance. I’m hot and dizzy, gripping at the frame of the window for support. She doesn’t glance up here again, nor does she resume her usual garden duties. She looks lost, bewildered, but also strangely satisfied—her body language, the gentle slope of her shoulders and casual dangling arms, that of relief.
Am I chasing rabbits?Is this a foolish scene to try to pick apart and understand? I’ve learned before that more harm than good can come of such questions when answers are too far away. I could go insane trying to understand this girl. Maybe I should return to my bed and gaze instead at the ceiling and its cracks, imagine the crawl ofMandragora officinarumroots. It will do me as much good as standing here.
Yet I can’t tear myself away from the window. Olea stands, frozen. I half imagine I can see the rapid rise and fall and rise and fall of her chest. She looks as if she could be laughing, or crying, and a violent little niggle at the back of my mind whispers:What if she is laughing at you?
What was she digging for? What was she burying? I grasp at straws, my sluggish mind churning and turning over possibility after possibility. She wasn’t planting seeds, nor would such behaviour align with the checking of her soil or the gentle snipping of blooms for her catalogue. But why would she keep secrets from me?
I wilfully ignore the secrets that have always been between us, her silence around Petaccia’s mentorship and her request that I keep my admittance to the garden a secret. And Clara, too.
Clara.
Is it a coincidence that Olea has asked me to stay away tonight—so soon after I raised my questions about Leonardo’s wife and the garden? Olea was cagey in her response. Sheliedto me. I recall, too, the way she grew nervous when I asked, the fiddling of her fingers, the gold ring spinning and spinning. And even then I had wanted her to touch me.
The ring—it is about the size of the object she buried. Why would she bury it? Is there more to her friendship with Clara than she admitted, some closeness she is too ashamed to reveal? I squirm in place, embarrassed by the heat that still coils between my thighs, unsated and out of control. Did she bury the ring for me, as a gesture of moving on, or did she bury it because of what I asked? Because of my friendship with Leo? I pull at my hair, scratching my scalp mercilessly, as though I might pull the answers from my skull with the right amount of force.
I am so deep in my thoughts that I almost miss what happens next. It is nothing, a nothing thing, an event that happens a hundred times a day—and yet, in this garden it does not. Only I’m not sure I’ve ever noticed before.
Olea lowers the hood of her cloak fully. She has resumed herusual casual air, though perhaps only I can tell how forced it is. She has hidden the shovel amongst the weeds and begins snipping small green flowers, her nose turned away from the boggarts’ rotten scent and buried in her shoulder as she snips bloom after bloom. I’m almost certain that she doesn’t need these flowers for her catalogue, but she works with a fervour that borders on religious.
Whether it is because of her distraction or simply that she doesn’t expect it I don’t know, but when the little sparrow swoops into the garden Olea doesn’t see it. I don’t either, not until it’s too late, but even as I watch what unfolds I marvel at the tiny bird, realising with curiosity and faint, unfurling horror, that I have never seen a bird in the garden before. No, not a bird, not a bee, not a fly—not during the day, and definitely not at night. I’m sure they must exist, for the garden ecosystem to function, but I have never seen one. Why?
This bird flies straight for the boggart’s posy and its unleashed rotting-flesh scent—or swoops directly for Olea, perhaps, a nonsensical attack. I don’t hear anything from my vantage, but I see Olea flinch and pull back from the bird as it dives. She covers her exposed face with her hands as she throws herself out of its way, knees skidding in the dirt. The bird continues its flight.
A frantic flap of her hand. The bird connects with the exposed inky flesh of her palm.
The bird drops like a stone.
