The Given Garden

by S. K Munt

  I snapped after that, not because of his latter point (which was actually a rather rational one) but because of the way he’d pulled rank on me. I did what Maryah had warned me never to do then- I shrieked that if it wasn’t for him and his caste and his Nephilim blood, I’d be at home free to choose whatever life I wanted to so long as it was within my means, and who cared if his boat was available now? I was stuck in the castle with him until I was twenty-one anyway and didn’t even know if I had a future to choose once that day arrived- so how dare he begrudge me the dream of taking a train far away, when there was a chance that it could only ever be a dream? Then I hollered that if he forbid Kohl from sending me any more books, I would thump him good.

  Yes, Maryah had cautioned me against shrieking at boys, for it would scare them off, and Kohén proved her right by turning a sickly colour and stomping off- taking care to stomp on my book on his way.

  ‘You wouldn’t even know about that life if it weren’t for me and my caste showing you how to dream of more than being joined one day!’ Kohén called, pivoting to point at the book as I hurried to cradle it in my arms and check it for damage. It was already so old that the cloth spine was shredded so that the pages were more pushed in then bound.

  ‘So because you helped teach me to believe to dream, you’re more entitled to them now, than I am?’ I shot back, hugging the book to my chest.

  He came to a halt, facing me with yards of grass between us. He squinted, and then shielded his eyes. ‘Do you not believe that I’m entitled to ask you for a favour, after the way I have cared for you all of these years?’

  My skin writhed in offence. ‘No- I know that I owe you a favour,’ I said coldly. ‘But the decision you made about my future in a few minutes all of those years ago does not entitle you to my future, Kohén Barachiel! I have been there for you as much as you have been there for me, and you know it!’

  ‘I know that I am the only person who has allowed you to care for them, before this Kelia girl came along!’ he retorted. ‘But I could have favoured any of those girls and I stuck with you even though-’

  ‘Even though WHAT?’ I demanded hotly, tears stinging my eyes for the first time in months. ‘Even though I’m the ugliest one?’

  Kohén frowned. ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You didn’t get to. And if you must now, you can say it to my back!’ I bent and picked up my picnic blanket and draped it over my head before I hurried past him. He reached for my arms, but I jerked free of his grip. ‘Make way! Charity case coming through! Wouldn’t want to take up one more second of your time when there are so many other girls here who needn’t hide their ugly heads in shame in your company!’

  ‘Larkin I did not call you ugly!’ he called after me. ‘I never have! I never would!’

  I turned back to him, keeping the blanket hooded over my head. ‘And yet you just made me feel hideous, so congratulations- you’re going to be the best diplomat that Pacifica has ever seen!’ I ran inside before he could see me cry and hid better than I’d ever hid before- so well that if he bothered to look for me, well, he didn’t find me.

  But Maryah found me as I was attempting to sneak back into the east wing from Miguel Barachiel’s cottage. She took my wrist and pulled me down into one of the bathrooms, closing the door behind us before she said a word.

  ‘Is it true, Larkin, that you’ve argued with the prince today?’

  I stared at her, certain that my red nose, ears and eyes answered her question better than my words could. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Emmerly was talking about it. Apparently, she came out for some fresh air and saw you cuss at Kohén, and then storm away from him! According to her, Kohén is very angry and upset.’

  I turned away from her, for the mirrors were behind her and my reflection was ghastly. I usually kept my white hair twisted up into a bun, but it had come unfastened while I’d been hiding in the ancient cottage, and was hanging to my waist in snarls and shards. I’d had another growth spurt so my dress was sitting oddly on me, making my legs and arms look scrawnier than usual, and my smock was covered with dust and smudges of actual dirt from the cottage floor. My eyes were puffy, and there were dark bruises under them from all of the late nights reading. I looked sickly- like I was underfed, which wasn’t true, and it only made my gaunt face look skeletal.

  I was ugly- as thin and pale an unremarkable as driftwood. If I was going to keep running around with Kohén while I was shooting up, I had to start eating more and going to bed earlier. I had to start taking care of myself the way Scarlet had.

  ‘I didn’t cuss at him, and he will say so.’ I said carefully. ‘In fact, I have never cussed at anyone in my life. And he and I arguing is none of Emmerly’s business!’

  ‘I’m relieved to know that you didn’t curse, dear, but you cannot pick fights with the royal family and then scuttle off without making peace first!’

  I whirled on her. ‘Why should I make peace? He insinuated that-’

  ‘I don’t care what he said,’ Maryah held up her hand and fixed her red pout into a thin line before speaking again, the way she did when she was waiting for us to stop talking in class. ‘He is your superior in every way, and you are here to keep him happy! Boys do not like to apologize, and they love to hear apologies, so as a girl, his friend and his father’s subject- you WILL find him and smooth things out, understood?’

  ‘That is not fair!’ I cried. ‘He was cruel to me!’

  ‘But it is your job to be his friend!’ she repeated heatedly. ‘Not your right, Larkin, but your JOB, and your only job and you are paid for it well! You are provided for in every way by his parents, only to ascertain that you put a smile on his face! Perhaps it is not always going to be easy, but neither is working in a factory- and if factory workers get into a foul mood and decide not to do their duties for a day- they are reprimanded, as I am reprimanding you, and fired if they don’t atone!’ She stepped into me. ‘I am sorry if Prince Kohén wounded your pride, but I see you turning the other cheek on the other girls when they do the same thing to you on a daily basis. Why do you let them off the hook eternally, but hold him accountable for ONE heated moment?’

  ‘If you see them torturing me, Maryah, why do you allow them to get away with it?’ I asked hotly.

  ‘Because part of your lot here in the castle is learning to stand up for yourself!’ she retorted. ‘But NOT to Kohén! If his mother finds out that you screamed at her son, well, you’ll soon learn what having a real boss is actually like!’

  ‘Boss?’ I asked snarkily. ‘I thought we were all equals.’

  ‘And I thought you were brighter than that,’ she shot back, her tone cold, her eyes mocking. ‘Kohén’s never been your equal and he never will be. You can’t understand that yet, but you need to try Larkin or one day…’ she sighed and shook her head, averting her eyes. ‘One day you may find yourself worse than just unequal to him.’

  I stared at her, wondering if she’d ever had a friend in her life not to comprehend how much more insults hurt when they came from loved ones or how wrong it was for the person who wasn’t in the wrong to be forced to apologize. But then everything else that she had said clicked into place and I realised what she was actually saying: Kohén was NOT my friend, he was my boss, and I was lucky to have had a boss be so kind to me for so long.

  I didn’t agree with her at all- until that afternoon, Kohén had never hinted that he held any sort of power over me, or that I was indebted to him for anything I had- but explaining that to Maryah would be a waste of time because in the end, she was right to order me to apologize. Not because I had to, but because I wanted things to be okay between Kohén and I for ME. I would lick my wounded pride, because I knew that if the situation had been reversed, he would have taken the same treatment in better humour than I, just as he had taken being called a spoiled brat in his stride on the day we had first met.

  We were equals- maybe not in her eyes or his parents’, but in one another’s. I’d been t
he one to suggest that I knew better first.

  Besides, it wasn’t even Kohén that I was angry with, but the world. If it ever came to be under his control, I’d argue every point I had to make but until then, he was just a ten-year-old boy with dreams and I a ten-year-old girl with hope. He’d been taught to dream, and I’d been forbidden from hoping and so, the error was mine.

  ‘I’ll apologize to him,’ I said stiffly, turning away from her and walking straight out the door. ‘Now.’

  ‘Thank you, Larkin. Not just for my benefit, but your own. No girl has ever screamed at one of the princes’ before, for I’ve trained them well. If this gets out, it will be a poor reflection on both of us…’

  ‘It won’t,’ I said, then shut the door behind me- and walked straight into Kohén.

  ‘Lark!’

  ‘Kohén!’ I caught myself on his shoulders then stepped back quickly, unaccustomed to touching him unless it was to snatch something, and as I regained my footing, I struggled to scrape together an apology that would sound convincing to him. Maybe I had no right to show my pride, but I still had pride and now I needed to squash it. I wasn’t sorry that I’d yelled back at him or taken offence, but I was sorry that we were at odds. Could I just say that?

  Kohén looked as awful as a Nephilim could- which meant that his eyes were clouded red around the brilliant blue and little else. For the first time in my life, I realised that he was growing to be as handsome as I was unattractive- like a tiny version of his beautiful, bright-green eyed older brother.

  But when I stepped back, Kohén stepped forward and took my hands, and I almost gasped when I felt the heat of his palms around my long cool fingers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking mournful. ‘Larkin I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean anything I said I just-’

  I threw myself at him and hugged him for the first time in my life- hugged him the way I’d wanted to when he’d returned from Pacifica, but had not because everyone had been staring. ‘I’m sorry too!’ I whispered, squeezing him- forcing him to take my affection even if it was going to contaminate him with girl germs.

  Kohén’s arms went around my waist and though the clinch felt awkward, his touch warmed me. ‘I shouldn’t have ordered you to come with me, or tried to make you feel dumb for having an idea of your own.’ He pulled back, looking pained. ‘The truth was that you were planning a future that didn’t include me, and that scared me.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘I didn’t want to go to Pacifica because I felt like I’d be useless to you once I was there and you realised that you had Kohl back.’

  ‘Kohl is my brother. But you are my sister, Larkin, and I will always have time for you both. And...’ he wrinkled his nose. ‘Has anyone ever told you that you smell like old books?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I guess that’s better than duck pond water, huh?’ and he laughed and then impulsively, hugged me again. I closed my eyes and squeezed him tightly, and when he pulled back, he pushed my hair over my shoulder and, when his fingertips sparked with warm electricity, I sucked in a breath. He blushed. ‘Sorry- that happens when I’m happy.’

  ‘It didn’t hurt,’ I assured him and stepped back. ‘Though if that’s the charge you get when you’re happy- please- never touch me in anger, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, still blushing and I had to agree that I felt awkward. Though everyone knew that the Barachiel boys possessed Nephilim powers, Kohén never really showed signs of them, and discussed them even less. I understood that he was trained- daily- on how to control and conserve them- and that he wasn’t supposed to discuss his abilities with anyone outside of his family, not even me so I didn’t even know if the way he sparked was the extent of what he could do.

  The secrecy concerning such a huge part of my best friend’s genetic make-up was as annoying as the secrecy shrouding my future was (how did I know that Kohén wasn’t looking through my cards while we were playing poker, or put a bit of extra ‘oomph’ behind his kicks when we played ball?) but it did explain why he needed so many ‘friends’ who were willing and eager and paid to keep his temperament even. Maryah had been right- if the duchess learned that I’d made the prince spark in public twice now, she’d probably want me out of the castle before I could drain him.

  That was something we did know- if overused, a Nephilim would drain and wither away quickly. After forming the foundation of our society, healing the land and his people, Miguel Barachiel had been buried as a weak, elderly and mortal man.

  ‘I won’t- but to keep our disputes to a minimum just in case, What if we start two new kingdoms, hmm? One in Pacifica, and then one in the south?’

  I smiled at him. ‘Will I get to be king of the southern one?’

  ‘If you push me forward as king of Pacifica, rather than Kohl, who I fear mother favours.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Done.’

  Kohén grinned and shook my hand. ‘If you let me suggest to my trainer that you get self-defence lessons every now and then so you at least know how to shake a sword at a pirate, it’s a deal.’ He released my hand. ‘And Larkin? You’re not ugly.’

  I smiled at him with my too-wide mouth. ‘Yes I am. But thank you for not bringing it up until now- my real brother didn’t even make it five years, but you did.’

  Kohén shook his head but smiled and walked away. I lifted my hand to my nose and sniffed it delicately realising that Kohén was right- I did smell like old books! I didn’t mind though.

  The next day, another parcel arrived from offshore and in it was another salvaged book. It was older than Gone With The Wind, and two pages fell out within minutes of me opening it, but a note had been slipped inside, and I added it to my frame with the other one.

  ‘For your friend, Lark. If she enjoyed Gone With The Wind and all of that girl power business, she will love this.’

  The book was called The Pride And The Prejudice and Kohl was right- I did love it. It spoke to me about female oppression in the time before in a way that Gone With the Wind hadn’t- from the perspective of a girl who was not the belle of the ball, but the odd one out.

  But after I’d read it for the third time, I realised that not even fantasies of roaming the emerald hills of the continent of New Rome (which had once been called Europe and was now practically a swamp in the lowlands) would cure me of my desire to own twelve oaks of my own, and the land on which they grew- so I took Kohén up on his offer and in the winter of my eleventh year, started taking self-defence classes once a week, after our Sunday meetings. If there were carpet-baggers (okay pirates or the banished) waiting to attack my plantation and me in the south, I’d be ready for them! And I’d train all of my workers too! And I’d also started thinking that perhaps sharing Kohén would be okay, with someone like Kohl. After all, he had given me hope.

  Then, on my twelfth birthday, another book arrived from Kohl and it was titled ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ I was down to reading most books in less than three days by then, but Romeo and Juliet was so complexly written that it took me two weeks.

  But by the time I was finished, I had new dreams, and they had nothing to do with what land I would buy- but who I would share my plantation house with and suddenly, my twenty-first birthday couldn’t come fast enough, because I wanted to be free to go out into the world and find it all- the land, the house and finally, a great love to share it with.

  I was becoming a woman.

  12.

  I had been born in June, right at the very end of summer, at least on the west coast anyway. Back in the beginning of OUR beginning, winters had lasted for eight months of the year and summers had burned the earth, but six hundred years had passed since and now, we had four seasons again which were only a little out of sync to how they had been during the AD period, and winter ended in December. December 30th was still New Year’s Eve, and January the 4th marked the start of spring.

  As with the time before, springs were considered new beginnings and winters a time to retreat. But because Kelia had come to us
at the end of Kohén’s fifth year, we were not to learn of our true Given purpose until the end of winter- six months after my thirteenth birthday. I was tempted to complain that it was unfair to make me wait for so long but Emmerly managed to bite her tongue after having waited almost a year so I bore the agonising curiosity in silence.

  The earth changed a lot in the years between my fifth and thirteenth birthday, and this served to distract me. In the sixth winter of my life, a newspaper was started- a national one- and it was circulated to every kingdom in order to keep us all aware of how the country was progressing with each Kingdom submitting two pages of news. I had no money of my own to purchase one, but Kohén would bring me his every month and we would read it and gaze down at the pictures together. When a story was featured on Pacifica, showing Prince Kohl working on the skeleton of some erection, Kohén was elated, and I was stunned.

  ‘He wears an eye-patch?’ I demanded, peering at the grainy photograph of a slightly smaller boy who could have been Kohén dressed up as a pirate.

  ‘He was born with a lazy eye,’ Kohén said. ‘There’s a photographic portrait in my formal lounge of us all and he’s wearing it, but in most paintings, the artists omit it and just copy the other half of my face onto his.’

  ‘Does that bother him?’ I asked, wondering how an artist would change a painting of me. Lord, did any of the local Artisan’s have enough white paint to even do one? I had only one photograph of myself as a child, because although purchasing cameras was affordable, developing images was not and finding an Artisan to paint you for a few coins was a simpler process. Many people complained about this anyway, but King Elijah had explained that he intended to switch to digital photography in the next thirty years once the technology became cost-effective enough to mass-produce, and eliminate resource-wasting film all together, just like they’d done in the late AD period. It was the same reason why we didn’t yet make films… it was hard to recreate the technology of the twenty-first century and produce endless microchips, but we were getting close to doing it and so, the crown didn’t want to waste time and effort on substitute processes for the time being when the manpower it would take to put these processes in place, could help accelerate technology if that was where we focused. The people of Calliel had used fire and oil for light for the first three hundred years, because even though they’d known how to recreate electricity or use gas as a substitute as they had in the earlier periods of the time before, the rulers then had shared King Elijah’s sentiment, and had used the Academics to skip straight to solar and water generated power instead. Now power was free for the Arcadian household, but still a little restricted and cost the crown every time new solar panels were required. By the same logic, Elijah’s greatest ambition was to see a computer in every household before he died, and if that meant we went without things like cameras and phones until then, then so be it.