Page 13 of This Vicious Hunger

Chapter Eight

T hat 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 in the 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 a shining, 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.