The Girl and the Witch's Garden

by Erin Bowman

  When Atticus found her, she was curled up at the foot of a bookshelf, shaking uncontrollably. In the glow of his flashlight, she could see that the slick thing had only been a tarp. But she’d been terrified of the dark ever since.

  Now, with endless darkness surrounding her, Piper felt the same helplessness she had that day in the basement. Only this time, her father wouldn’t be there with a flashlight to find her. This time, she was alone.

  It’s not real, she reminded herself. The portal knows your fears. It’s just inside your head. It knows what scares you.

  But if Piper didn’t have a flashlight, if she couldn’t see anything, how was she supposed to beat this?

  Her heart jackhammered and she shifted her focus to it, exhaling with purpose, trying to calm her frenzied pulse. She imagined herself in the bungalow basement, surrounded by familiar smells. It was dark only because the power had gone out. Her father would bring a flashlight soon. Her pulse slowed, her breath came easier. Soon the darkness didn’t seem so black. It was fading. There was something up ahead—a murky brown. She moved toward it.

  A wall.

  And not just any wall, but a rock wall, pocked and uneven. She followed it with her hands as it curved overhead.

  A cave.

  Piper hated caves.

  She blinked and was suddenly surrounded by water so deep, she was treading in it.

  An underwater cave. Even worse.

  Piper took a gulp of air and dove, feeling blindly for a way out. Walls, walls, and—there. A tunnel, though she couldn’t tell how deep it went. She shot to the surface and breathed, mouth tilted toward the cave’s ceiling.

  What if the tunnel dead-ends? What if you don’t have enough air to get out?

  “This isn’t real,” she said aloud, then took a giant breath and dove again, this time entering the tunnel. Even using the walls to propel herself forward, it didn’t take long for her lungs to begin to ache. But she could see light ahead now, crystalline blue. She ignored the burning sensation in her chest and swam on. Then she was out of the tunnel, sunlight filtering through the water.

  She swam up, up, lungs screaming.

  Piper burst through the surface and the water vanished. She was completely dry, standing in a blindingly white room. After so much darkness, it stung her eyes, and she blinked rapidly. A machine beeped in the corner. A nurse stood near it, reading something.

  Then she saw the bed.

  “Dad!” She ran forward, grabbing his hand. He flinched in his sleep but didn’t wake. The beeping behind Piper grew sporadic. It was a heart monitor, she realized. She could see the lines now, spiking and falling.

  “It’s time to say good-bye,” the nurse told her.

  “What? No. The doctors said this treatment would be the one to work. They said he might get better.”

  “I’m afraid that hasn’t happened. It’s time.”

  “Dad?” Piper shook his hand, tears building in her eyes. “Dad, wake up. I have to talk to you. Dad, please don’t go.”

  Atticus Peavey did not stir.

  “Dad!”

  “You cannot keep him forever,” the nurse said.

  “You’re supposed to come home, Dad. You can’t leave.” Piper flung herself on the bed, her cheek to his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, feeble and fleeting.

  “Last chance. Say good-bye.”

  “No.” Piper’s lip trembled.

  The machine released one long, endless beep before the room collapsed inward. Piper was tossed like laundry in a dryer, no sense of up or down, before she burst into sunlight and hit the dirt.

  “Wow. You were only gone a second. What happened?” Teddy helped Piper sit. She was back in the garden, the oak branches stretching overhead. “Did you get the next key?” She could barely hear him. The long, drawn-out tone of the heart monitor still echoed in her ears, stealing her breath, making her gasp and retch. Tears streamed down her face. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Teddy touched her shoulder. “Piper?”

  “It’s not real,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “It wasn’t real.”

  But it felt like it, and she hadn’t been prepared. She couldn’t lose him. She wouldn’t. She had to get the elixir—before Sophia, before the other children, before anyone. She had to get the elixir because she had to save her father. He wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t leave her.

  “Piper, you’re scaring me,” Teddy said, voice quavering slightly.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted, even though she wasn’t. She wiped her cheeks, steeled her features. Not for Teddy’s benefit—she couldn’t care less if a girl crying in the middle of a dirt path made him uncomfortable. There was simply no way she’d beat this trial—get to the elixir—if she let her emotions take over.

  “What did you have to face?” Teddy glanced toward the portal, which was still oozing and pulsing beneath the oaks.

  “Darkness, an underwater cave, then my father in the hospital.”

  “Why’s your father in the hospital?” Teddy asked.

  For a moment she considered lying. If she told him, he’d know why she wanted the elixir. But she didn’t have the energy, and she couldn’t think of anything else that would reasonably have left her so distraught.

  “Lung cancer,” Piper explained.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “People always say they’re sorry. But you didn’t cause it. You don’t have to say that.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Teddy admitted.

  “Then just say that. Say, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ ”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Teddy echoed weakly.

  Piper nodded. “Thanks. How about you give it a try?” She jerked her head at the portal.

  “Do I have to?” Teddy whimpered.

  “Yes.” This was the only way forward. Piper would try again too, just as soon as she got her heart rate under control.

  Teddy let out a dramatic groan. “Ughhhhh, fine.” He straightened and edged toward the portal. After sizing it up for a solid minute, he finally stepped through. Before Piper could enjoy the solitude, he came flying back.

  “That was fast. Did you get the …” Piper noticed his empty hands and let the question die.

  “My foster dad, earwigs, and clowns.” Teddy shuddered. “I couldn’t beat the clowns.”

  “They’re just people dressed up in silly costumes and face paint.”

  “Exactly. Never trust someone who has to paint on a smile.”

  “I guess it just doesn’t sound so scary.”

  “Yeah, well, what scares me doesn’t scare you. Congratulations.”

  Teddy stalked off. Clearly she’d hit a nerve.

  “Wait! That’s it!” Piper shot to her feet. “What scares me doesn’t scare you. So let’s go in together.”

  “I am not going back in there,” Teddy said firmly.

  “We have to! This is the only way we get the next key. And maybe the portal won’t show us clowns at all, because I’m not scared of them. It might look at us as one person.”

  “And what if it doesn’t? What if it just gives us all our fears?”

  Piper shuddered. She didn’t want to face that hospital room again. “Then we can help each other through them.”

  Teddy chewed his bottom lip.

  “We at least have to try,” Piper insisted.

  “I hate to admit it, but you’re right.” He held out his hand uncertainly. Piper took it and they stepped through the portal together.

  * * *

  It was dark again, but something was scuttling over Piper’s feet. “Those are earwigs, aren’t they?”

  “Yep,” said Teddy. “So glad we did this.”

  “How did you beat them last time?” Piper asked. She could feel something squirming up her ankle now.

  “I just ignored them and they finally went away. It’s a lot harder to do when I can’t see them and—holy hallows, they’re crawling up my leg. AHHH!” Teddy let out the highest shriek Piper had ever heard and grabbed
her hand.

  “I can’t feel my fingers,” she complained.

  “Piper, this was a terrible idea. Remind me to never forgive you. Ugh, they’re up to my knees! How did you beat the darkness?”

  “I just let my eyes adjust.”

  “I don’t think I want to see earwigs all over me. I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”

  “There,” Piper said. The murky brown wall of the cave was coming into view again. “Move toward that wall.”

  “They’re in my shoes,” Teddy moaned.

  “Just ignore them. Keep walking.” She squeezed Teddy’s hand. The bugs were squirming all over her legs now. She just had to keep moving. If they reached the cave, the critters would drown.

  But when Piper’s hand grazed the cave wall, the water never came. Light had overtaken the darkness, at least, and when she glanced at her feet, she was relieved to see that the earwigs had vanished.

  “They’re gone,” Teddy gasped. He sounded both exhausted and relieved. “I swear I can still feel them, though.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Piper admitted. “It’s almost like—”

  “AHHHHH!” Teddy’s scream bounced off the walls. “There’s a clown in the cave, there’s a clown in the cave. PIPER, THIS WAS THE WORST IDEA EVER!” Teddy turned toward Piper, burying his face in her shoulder.

  Standing in the corner of the cave was the most disturbing clown Piper had ever seen. He was smiling, but not in the friendly way circus clowns did. This was more of an I want to eat you way, and his teeth looked very sharp. He was also holding a bunch of red balloons.

  “Okay, if that’s how I always pictured clowns, I’d be terrified of them too,” Piper confessed.

  “A friend from school made me watch this horror movie about a clown. I think it traumatized me.”

  “I can see why.”

  The clown blinked at them and took a step closer. Then another. The red balloons bounced against the cave ceiling. He was only a foot away, then inches, then so close Piper clamped her eyes shut and grabbed the locket beneath her shirt.

  There was a strange shift in the air, and a feeling of lightness passed over Piper. She cracked open an eye and found the clown turning in circles, dumbfounded, searching the cave.

  Piper was invisible. Teddy, too. She’d used her invisibility to hide them both. She jerked her head toward the cave’s tunnel, and Teddy shuffled for it, relinquishing his grip on Piper’s hand only when it became necessary to crawl.

  Then they were spilling into a foreign room with unadorned dark green walls. A bed was pushed beneath the lone window, the blinds lowered.

  The door burst open and a middle-aged man shot through. “You didn’t save her!” he roared. “It didn’t work. It never works. You’re worthless!” He threw a glass in their direction and it shattered against the wall. Piper grabbed Teddy’s hand and pulled him closer, shielding him behind her back.

  “Where are you?” the man went on, turning around, his hands fisted. He threw open the closet, looked under the bed. “Get out here, you ungrateful brat! We’re trying again. Right this instant.”

  Piper’s affinity was still hiding them, she realized. This horrible man whom Teddy had lived with for years luckily couldn’t see them. He turned in another circle, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and then stormed from the room, shouting Teddy’s name. As the door slammed in his wake, the room transformed, now white and sterile.

  The hospital.

  Piper trembled and her invisibility vanished.

  “Time to say good-bye,” the nurse said.

  Piper shook her head, over and over, in small jerking motions, unable to tear her eyes from her father.

  “You’re not afraid of cancer,” Teddy said slowly.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I mean, sure, as a result of this. But this fear”—he pointed at the bed—“you’re afraid of losing your father.” He glanced at the heart monitor, then back to the bed. “You have to make peace with it, accept that it might happen. That’s how you beat this fear.”

  “That’s stupid,” Piper said. “Accepting this isn’t going to beat it. It just means that I admit the cancer has total control over him. Over our family. Accepting this means the cancer will win, that the only outcome is losing him.”

  Teddy frowned. “Maybe it’s a way to give you back a little power. If you say good-bye, it’s a way to heal. Isn’t acceptance one of the stages in the grieving process?”

  It was. The final stage, according to Aunt Eva. But Piper didn’t want to accept any of this. How could rolling over and surrendering allow her to beat cancer?

  “It’s time,” the nurse urged.

  “I can’t.” Piper shook her head. “I won’t.”

  “I have an idea.” Teddy drew his pocket watch from his pocket, flipped open the cover, and wound the top stem, sending the hands turning. Then he clicked the cover shut and squeezed the device between his palms. The nurse began to move backward through the room, gaining speed until she was leaving streaks of color in her wake. Piper’s father sat up, shifted, rolled. IVs were removed. The number of tubes lessened. Then he was merely in a doctor’s room, getting the news. Then even the medical institutions faded and he was at home, in the bungalow, sitting at the kitchen table in his pajamas, reading the paper over a cup of coffee.

  Time ground to a halt.

  When Atticus spotted Piper, he lowered the paper and smiled. It was a real smile, the kind she remembered from before he got sick. It lit up his whole face.

  “Dad!” She raced forward, crushing her cheek to his chest. His arms wrapped around her back and she breathed in, soaking in his warmth, the smell of dish soap on his hands. “I missed you.”

  She felt Atticus shift, opening his mouth to respond, but the world tilted and the room flattened, and Piper and Teddy were thrown back into the garden.

  Lying between them in the dirt was a stubby golden key.

  Chapter Fourteen Invisibility Lessons

  We did it,” Piper breathed, watching as the fear portal collapsed in on itself and blinked from existence. She picked up the gold key. It was so small she could make a fist around it.

  “Mmm, I don’t know,” Teddy said. “I’m not sure we truly beat all those fears. More like tricked some of them.”

  “Whatever, it worked.”

  “It did.” Teddy nudged Piper with his elbow. “Thanks for helping me with the clown. Sorry I was so …”

  “Rightfully terrified?” Piper offered.

  Teddy laughed in relief. It was a beautiful sound, and for the briefest moment, the weight of her own fears from the portal lifted off her shoulders. “I thought maybe you’d make fun of me for all the screaming.”

  “No way. After seeing that clown, I think I’m afraid of them now too. So thanks for that. Also, your foster dad? He was awful.”

  “Yeah. I was really grateful when Mrs. Mallory offered him money so she could take me.”

  That didn’t sound at all legal or like any legitimate foster care operation, but Piper was starting to suspect that magi norms were very different from the rest of the world’s.

  “Did he … ?” she began, thinking of the glass he’d thrown in their direction, the way his hands had been curled into fists.

  “I time-bent to avoid him, so he never actually got his hands on me. He’d always calm down eventually and apologize, then beg me to try to save his wife again. I time-bent in the portal, too, when I had to beat him solo. Your invisibility trick was a nice change.”

  Piper passed Teddy the gold key. “I think you should hold on to this.”

  He raised a brow. “Why?”

  “Until I can trust my mom, I think it’s safest with you. If she found me with that key …”

  Teddy nodded. “Wanna tackle the next trial right now? I’m pretty sure I know where this itty-bitty thing goes, and …” He glanced at her cap, then grimaced, as though it pained him to admit what he said next: “It’s nice when you’re here. The garden gets lonely.”

 
; Piper fiddled with her locket. It was nice being with Teddy, too. He already knew all the progress she’d made in the garden because he was making it alongside her. And now he knew about her dad, also. There were no secrets to keep. Except maybe the fact that if they found the elixir, she wasn’t about to hand it over to him so that he or the others could finally have their permanent home. If her father only needed a sip of the drink to get better, she could hand it over after. But who knew how many doses the bottle held. Atticus might need to drink the whole thing, and if that was the case, she’d let him.

  An uneasy sensation pinched her side. She raised her chin, ignoring it. There was nothing to feel guilty about. Her father’s life was at stake! She had to save him. And once she had, when all this was over, Piper would make sure that Atticus called the right people. Police, foster services. The children of Mallory Estate would get the homes they deserved. Everyone could win.

  “It’s getting late,” she said, checking the sky. Garden duty had likely already started. “I’ll come back as soon as I can. Hopefully tomorrow.”

  Teddy nodded, and he walked her to the patio, a comfortable silence between them.

  * * *

  “How did you do that?” a voice demanded.

  Piper slid from the stag, freezing when her feet hit the patio. Julius was sitting at one of the tables, a notebook laid open before him. Her heart pounded. He’d seen her reappear, blink into existence out of nothing.

  If she’d been more cautious, she would have remembered to peer into the portal and search the patio before passing through. She’d have seen Julius sitting here.

  She glanced over her shoulder, scanning the garden, but Camilla and Kenji were nowhere to be found.

  “Did you give up the search for that key?” Piper asked Julius.

  “No, Camilla and Kenji are still searching inside. I needed to think, so I came out here. Now, don’t dodge my question. How did you do that?” Julius waggled a finger at her in a circular motion.