Page 23 of This Vicious Hunger

Olea smiles coyly and snips a stunning peony-like bloom from one of the flowering shrubs against the wall, its petals the colour of river water.

I can smell it from here, fruity and dusky, its scent like grapes growing right out of river silt.

She carries it tentatively to the gate, hovering nearby until I draw back, when she gently threads it through the bars.

“A token, then,” she says, her voice smooth as glass.

“For I will need to know it is you, when you come in silver armour to rescue me from my tower. And then we will ride into the sunset on mounts of pure white and leave this hidden place behind.” She pauses, the colour high on her cheeks, before adding, “Please don’t actually touch the flower. ”

It is a joke, of course, to imagine Olea somehow trapped in this private paradise, she its sole protector. I get the sense that wherever else she goes during the day, Olea doesn’t have much contact with anybody, but I’m not sure if this is by accident or her own design.

Still, the thrill of the flower token is, despite my best attempts to convince myself, not a joke, and when I leave the gate for my bed, I wrap the bloom in my skirt, careful not to let it touch my skin.

In my rooms I set it to dry near the window on my desk and I’m scrupulous not to jostle it as I work, watching with interest how the petals take days upon days to dry.

And sometimes, when I lie in my bed after hours by the garden, I swear I can still smell its riverbed perfume and imagine it paired with the salt of Olea’s skin on my tongue.

If Petaccia notices the dreaminess in my eyes when we meet for our tutorials, she doesn’t comment; she’s far too interested in tracking humidity levels and the effects on her current seedlings in the lab.

Some grow weedy and thin, stretching their stems dangerously to draw as much moisture as possible from the air or claw for nutrients from the sun; most simply waste to nothing, blackened stubs in bone-dry soil.

Two months after our first tutorial I suggest to Petaccia that we try black-leaved plants next. She raises an eyebrow and waits for my explanation, though I hardly thought before I spoke so I don’t really know what to say next. The words slipped out as if delivered by a spirit.

“You wrote yourself about the possibility of darker pigment being utilised to create a reduction in environmental stressors,” I say.

I think of how Olea’s blooms, most some type of dangerous to the touch, have their fair share of black leaves and stems. “I’m paraphrasing a bit, but isn’t it possible that the darker pigment could help to retain the heat—”

“And therefore aid in water absorption in a wetter clime,” the doctor finishes, her lips pursing.

I have no idea if my suggestion is sensible, but Petaccia rests her chin on her knuckles and spends much of the next hour deep in thought. And a week later there is a new batch of seeds growing in the lab.

I tell myself that my time with Olea is just as much study as it is flirtation.

She relays her catalogue, both scientific and Latin names, and I read snippets to her from whatever book Petaccia has me studying.

I’ve never brought the doctor’s notebook down here—it is, in fact, returned safely to its table in the laboratory—but I try to turn the conversation towards rainfall and drought whenever I can, hoping that Olea, or her garden—my secret weapons—will somehow provide the missing piece to Petaccia’s puzzle.

I imagine the acclaim, Petaccia’s pride.

Perhaps then I’ll feel worthy of her mentorship.

Most nights I ask if Olea will allow me into the garden.

Every night she either avoids answering or declines politely with a smile that is half coy and half genuinely distrustful.

In the beginning I take it personally, leaving like a whipped dog with my tail between my legs.

Within a month I realise it isn’t something to be ashamed of, and I start viewing it as a challenge.

It goes on this way until the next new moon, when Olea says she will not be cataloguing for a few days over the weekend due to the darkness.

Last month I wasn’t visiting the garden every night, and I didn’t really notice if she was missing during these nights of the moon’s darkness—but now the thought of three nights without a visit fills me with abrupt, overwhelming panic.

“What do you mean you won’t be here?” I blurt. She’s left it until late in the night to tell me. The panic begins to bubble under my skin, as if the threat of it might expand until it explodes. I grab the bars of the gate with both hands. “Why not?”

“The plants don’t like it.” Olea’s face is shadowed; her cheekbones are sharp as knives. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back the following night, or perhaps Sunday. You should get some rest, Thora, you must be exhausted with me keeping you up yapping every night.”

Her face is so earnest, each night a little less silvered by the moon and shadowed instead by its growing darkness. It isn’t me who’s tired, I realise. She’s the weary one. Won’t you miss me? I want to beg. There is a brief gleam in her eyes as though she can see right into my thoughts.

I gaze upon the hollows in her cheeks and at the curve of her dark lips, at the way her collarbones look deep enough that they might catch garden dust in them, and I long to draw the neck of her nightdress together with a piece of twine to cover them—that, or tear it off and drink the darkness from them.

I don’t argue, though the feeling deep within me is an ache I can’t describe. I feel adrift, not willingly lost in my dreams any more but controlled by them.

In the end it doesn’t matter. For some reason it is easy to do as Olea asks of me.