Page 12 of This Vicious Hunger
“I’m sorry,” I say with finality. “I really do have to go.”
Chapter Eight
That night there is a girl in the garden.
If this were any other night I would have believed it a mistake, but the moon is bright and whole tonight, the garden outside my window bathed in ethereal light so bright it might as well be day. Silver beams illuminate the strangled greenery, and at the heart of the overgrown tangle of vines where the tower grows from its grassy mound is the girl.
My breath catches in my throat. It’s impossible to tell exactly from my window her age, but she’s definitely young—maybe younger than me, although only by a little. Her hair is long and thick and dark, falling in unbound waves nearly to her hips. She floats between the vines and flowers in a gown as pale as the moonlight.
My first thought, as foolish as it might be, is that she is a ghost. An apparition conjured by my tiredness, maybe, or by too much squinting at my rows of cramped lecture notes. I have spent hours reading and memorising the names and properties of plants, their families and their cousins. In my weeks at St. Elianto, evenings and mornings studying at this desk, I have yet to see anybody inthe garden. Twice I have attempted to gain access through the gate, and twice I’ve found it locked and rusted. Yet this woman moves through the plants as though she was born to them and they belong to her, her fingers trailing across the silky petals of blooms bigger than her fist, one the size of her head.
She stops seemingly at random, bending her head to inhale the fragrance from one of the black-blue flowers. A trick of the moonlight makes the dark colour dance across her cheeks like a swirl of ink in water.
When she raises her head, her eyes rise towards me. Although there is no way she can see me, and I have no reason to feel guilty for the dim lamp on my desk and my shutters thrown open to the balmy night, I hurry to extinguish the flame with a swoop of panic.
The girl’s face remains upturned for a long moment as she basks in the light of the moon, revelling in it as most people relish warm spring sunlight on their skin. It isn’t cold tonight and the crickets chirp beneath my window, but there’s something about her behaviour that seems strange.
I press my palms against the hard wood of my desk, my heart hammering. Without the lamp to blind me, her features are sharper, her cheekbones highlighted in silver below large dark eyes. Her gown bears more form than most nightgowns but is cut scandalously low for a day dress, allowing her to swing her arms from side to side as she resumes her aimless wandering. My gaze is drawn to her collarbones as she loops nearer the garden wall, and my cheeks heat with shame.
The girl turns away from my window, finally, picking at the petal of another dark-bloomed plant. She has a basket, I realise, and she’s filling it with flowers snipped just below the head using ashining, sharp tool. She glances upwards before culling each one, as if whispering a prayer—or asking for permission—her eyes firmly on the moon.
I press my hands to my flaming cheeks and inhale breath after shaky breath. I track the girl until she wanders into the shadow of the wall beyond, to my left, waiting until she is no longer visible before hurriedly packing away my pen and inks. I feel strangely shaken; I have come to think of the garden as my own private Eden, and this girl is an unwelcome intruder in the space.
Of course, this is ridiculous. The garden isn’t mine. She obviously has more claim to it than I do—I picture the way she caressed the blooms, almost lovingly—but the heat in my cheeks is more than me simply bristling at the intrusion.
I’m jealous, I realise. But whether of the girl and her free-swinging arms and exposed collarbones, or of the plants beneath her gentle touch, I cannot decide.
Chapter Nine
Isleep little and wake long after the start of my first lecture, my mouth parched and throat rasping. My forehead is feverish to the touch and I wonder, briefly, if I’m coming down with something. I lie still for a moment, tensing my fingers and toes, but once I roll out of bed the feeling is gone as fast as it came. I fight the panic at missing the lecture; it’s poetry, the second lecture I’ve had with this professor, and he speaks too quietly for my liking anyway.
I make tea and drink it while it is near scalding, relishing the burn. My dreams last night were muddled—but unsettling. I don’t remember much except silver moonlight and vines as thick as my wrist rising through the floorboards to wrap me in my bed like shackles.
I can’t stop thinking about the girl I saw in the garden. I sat by the window for a long time after she’d disappeared, and when I couldn’t sleep, I’d donned my walking jacket and slipped out of my rooms and down to the garden. There is another path I’ve discovered if I turn left out of the building that takes me to the gate much quicker, and I chose that one without thinking.
When I got to the gate the garden was silent—eerily so, in fact. It must have been the wee hours, but I was wide awake and could hear nothing, not the chatter of distant students, not the call of a bird or even the gentle hum of a fly. I stood by the gate for minutes, perhaps longer, the time passing as liquid through my fingers. Up close I noticed how well tended the blooms were, the scent of the ones closest reminding me faintly of something at once familiar and somehow entirely foreign.
In the end I didn’t dare to break the silence; I crept back to my rooms as softly as I’d come and slipped into bed still wearing my stockings. After that I remember only the dreams, the vines, and a premonition of some strange icy heat surging through my veins. And then morning.
Perhaps I dreamt the whole thing. I touch my hand to my forehead again—it’s warm but no longer strikingly hot—and then clamp my palms over my face and heave a sigh. I don’t have time for this. Today alone I have three more lectures and the tutorial with Petaccia, and I’ve still no idea what the latter will involve.
I dress in my least flouncy dress for the occasion, white button sleeves and plain grey kirtle. It’s as close to mourning black as I will willingly get, and even then I stare at my reflection with reservations. It makes the brown-gold of my hair seem duller, the hazel of my eyes muddier—but perhaps that is what Petaccia wants. A serious scholar, not a silly girl. Part of me is happy to slough away Aurelio’s bride and play the role of his widow; part of me wonders what might be left underneath them both if I scratch the surface hard enough.
Leonardo is conspicuously absent from my last lecture, even though it’s a botany lecture on plant procreation. I’ve read all the science before, stamens and stigma and nectar, so I’m gratefulfor the opportunity to relax my writing hand and listen only for new information. There is a blister the size of a raisin forming on the first knuckle of my middle finger, and I pick at it absently. It reminds me of the strange pustules on Petaccia’s vine and of my dreams last night. I wonder if any of the plants in the garden have a similar illness—or whatever it is—and if that’s why the gates are locked. But then what about the girl?
I snap back to attention when the scrape of chairs across the uneven wooden floor signals the end of the lecture. My notebook is bare before me with the exception of a few jotted words—and many, many drawings. I hadn’t even been aware of my pen moving; the ink is blotchy and irregular, brown here and black there, concentrated in several spots where my mind has obviously wandered. They’re vines, I think. Rambling, crawling plants. If I squint, I can make out flowers amidst the scribbles.
Hurriedly I sweep the notebook closed, tucking it tight to my chest. My palms are slick with sweat, my spine and armpits too. I glance around, but fortunately nobody seems to have noticed my inattention. Even the professor is long gone.
I lean back in my chair and let my head rest against the wall behind me, my eyes drifting to the domed glass roof over the central podium. A sharp pang of grief takes me off guard at the reminder of my sepulchre. I miss its predictable, quiet darkness more than I thought I ever would. When it was mine it felt like a prison, the only walls I would ever see, but now that it’s gone I realise how little I know of the world. I miss my father too, the comfortable discomfort of all his rules—and, worse, I miss Aurelio, the stability of my planned future, as much as it was a future I hated. Here I feel all at sea.
I don’t move until the next round of scholars begins to trickleinto the room, and even then I wait until the last possible moment before slinking away. My legs ache something rotten. What’s wrong with me? It must be tiredness, lack of sleep after so many days studying. I ought to be more careful.
I stumble out into the daylight and almost run straight into Leonardo. He catches me about the shoulders with surprising strength and I blurt a curse—followed by a swift apology.
“Thora!” he exclaims. He steps back, clearly remembering my coldness yesterday—we haven’t spoken since then—and shoves both hands into the pockets of his robes, as if to sayDon’t worry, I won’t touch you again. I don’t want to offend you.I shift awkwardly, regretful at this new distance. “Are… you all right?”
“Sorry,” I repeat. I resist the urge to dab my forehead with the back of my hand. I feel dazed and quite warm. I can’t shake the feeling that my dreams, so vivid and serpentine, are partially to blame.
