The Magic Garden
By Shane Alexander Greenhough
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Shane Alexander Greenhough

The flash and flitter of tiny wings glitters amongst the leaves in the garden out back. I watch from the kitchen window as they dance among the green, my face straining with a wide grin that cuts from cheek to cheek.
Three inches tall and as bare as birth, they flit from branch to branch, leaf to leaf, singing in a chorus of squeaking cheers as one then the other taunts the feathered regulars feasting on the days entrée  of stale breadcrumbs and last night’s leftovers. 
This is my magic garden.
The kettle, steam rising from its spout, clicks off next to me, barely noticed. Two mugs wait with endless patience on the counter in front of me, untouched. I’m enraptured, in awe of the tiny denizens of my enchanted woodland.
It’s not much of a woodland, I’ll be the first to admit. Half an acre of mown lawn fringed by manicured shrubs and the occasional small ash. In one corner a stumpy jacaranda sporadically shakes off showers of lilac petals as miniature dragon-winged people dart in and out of its broad boughs.
“Distracted again, Will?” asks a voice at my back, followed by a tinkling laugh.
“Ah hell,” I look down at the empty mugs on the kitchen counter in front of me, “your tea.”
“My tea,” Elette confirms.
She steps up behind me, ropes her arms around my waist and rests her chin on my shoulder, following my gaze out through the window. I don’t turn, but I can imagine the squint of her bright, blue eyes as she searches for the cause of her tardy cup of tea.
“What distracted you this time, something shiny?”

Oh yes, I neglected to mention that my garden is only a magic garden to me. This was a hard lesson the learning of which never failed to embarrass my parents when I was a child.
When I was six, my mother, standing in the kitchen where I am now, had recoiled in shock and shame when she spotted me gambolling naked from bush to bush with my shirt clutched in my little hand and trailing out behind me. I dove in, under and around the foliage, chasing creatures she couldn’t see, my paper-white posterior flashing the Johnsons - our neighbours, visiting for lunch at my mother’s behest. 
Of course I explained that the little people didn’t wear clothes, and I was just trying to fit in. The garden was their home, after all, and when in Rome…
Suffice it to say, paper-white was turned a few shades pinker shortly after my sincere explication.
I was a slow learner, so it was a year or two, and several thrashings later before I learned that while honesty is generally the best policy, a boy should perhaps be more careful about the honesty he chooses to express and how he chooses to express it.

“Worlds beyond imagining,” I answer truthfully and turn to smile at Elette.
“Don’t be so sure,” she winks, “never underestimate this girl’s imagination.”

*****
The air is chilly outside. Running around naked in the garden was infinitely more comfortable when I was a boy and it was mid-afternoon in summer.
Right now, though, it’s the middle of the night and Autumn is nipping at my pale rear. Still, I can’t help but smile.
Fire-flashes of faerie light dance on the air around me. In and out of invisible bushes in the dark they streak, to-and-fro. 
It’s not long before the boy in me takes over, and I’m again gambolling about after them. The wisdom of years has tempered my enthusiasm to a reserved giggle, but restraint in the presence of magic is hard to justify.
“The queen, the queen. The queen is coming.”
“And the prince too.”
Their high and tiny voices sing to each other, a raucous and tuneless choir. I can understand only the most oft-repeated words - these references to royalty - but I can reply with even less than that.
My voice, to them, is a wordless, booming echo.  Even my whispered laughs are a deafening machinegun-staccato rhythm.
Not that it matters. Understanding is unimportant – excited as I am for the arrival of faerie royalty, imagine the splendour!
What matters, in these stolen moments, is the rush of running and dancing in private audience with the court of the magic garden.
I rarely risk these night-time excursions anymore, as much as I love Elette, I just don’t think she’d understand, and who could blame her?
No, better I keep secret my Magic Garden goings-on. But this, news of a queen and a prince! I try to listen, straining my ears as I bound through the green while the little people – shedding light like dust – flit about my head.
“Soon. The Queen, the Faerie Queen and her freshly-ennobled beau,” one explains to no one in particular.
“In robes of green and gold, garments fit for kings,” the sing-song voice of another titters.
“Fit for a queen,” an agitated chirp corrects him.
“How soon?” I ask, forgetting myself. 
My voice booms in their delicate ears and sends them all darting away to hide beneath leaves and to hang in the air, out of reach – glowing like little earthbound stars.
I stop running, and wait – hoping that they’ll come out again, that they’ll play and fly around me just a little more before bed beckons.
They don’t. They watch me cautiously from their places of hiding – not much good for hiding considering the glow that clings to their skin in the darkness of night.
I don’t say anything (having said too much already) and simply raise my hand in apologetic supplication, turning toward the house with my head hung in shame. Something catches my eye from inside though. The blinking out of a light as I turned. Movement too, perhaps?
Elette.
I dash inside, my mind racing to find an excuse. Why was I running around, dancing naked in the garden? Nothing feasible presents itself. The kitchen is dark, and empty, but the light I thought I saw came from deeper in the house. In moments I’m through the kitchen door, up the stairs and in our bedroom.
“El’, babes?” I address the darkness. Is she sitting up in bed, looking at me? Maybe standing three feet in front of me, waiting for some sort of explanation.
Silence. 
“Elette?” I think I can see movement, hear the creaking of the bed. That’s a good sign.
“Mmm? Yes?” her voice is confused, weary – the voice of the still-sleeping, “what? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I smile, “Nothing at all. Sorry for waking you.”
I should be more careful, but I know I won’t.
Faerie Royalty!
*****
Sitting down to breakfast the morning after my discovery in the garden my train of thought is, to say the least, not riding the rails. The newspaper, as always, is open in front of me and, as always, I’m pretending to read it. 
My mind, however, is dancing. 
Outside, in the dead of night, the Queen of the faeries has already alighted upon the Magic Garden. Her hair is a silken cushion on which rests a crown of gold, her movements are the epitome of lithe elegance.
“Will?” Elette’s voice pulls me from my reverie.
“Hmmm? What? Yes?”
She laughs, “you’re even less ‘here’ than usual. What’s on your mind?”
“Oh, things,” obfuscation and misdirection always work best, I find, “has the mail arrived yet?”
“Yes, but we got a slip from the post office. There’s a package to pick up.”
“A package?”
“Indeed,” she smiles that charming smile reserved for my ‘moments’, “old Pat’s retired. I told you last week, so we’re going to have to pick up our own packages. Do you notice anything outside of your little world?”
The words might sting if not for the grin that hangs from every syllable. I wave the newspaper at her as though she’d believe for a moment I’d read it.
“Well,” I can’t leave the house, I might miss the Queen, “uh, do you want me to fetch it?”
She laughs - the music of joy - reading my tone like a book. 
“Relax. I was expecting a parcel, I’ll pick it up.”
“Oh? Who’s sending you gifts?”
“Hmm. Wouldn’t you like to know?” she teases with a wink.
Truly, I would.

While Elette gets changed for going out, I make a show of piling our dishes around the basin, but I can’t keep my eyes from the window for long. There’s nothing outside for now but birds, foraging in the grass for grubs and crumbs. Faeries are late risers. 
Surely the Queen wouldn’t arrive in these early hours?
I can’t resist the temptation of watching for her though, and every time I glance outside I sincerely expect to see her gently floating to the ground like a leaf on the breeze.
What might she look like - Just one more among a swarm of faerie women, each a beauty beyond belief in her own right?
No.  She would be something special, something magical. I just know it.
I squint at the old jacaranda across the yard, searching for a wee flash of skin, golden hair or raven locks between the lilac petals.
“Lost again?”
“What? Bugger. Yes.”
Elette’s laugh is an inviting one, without a trace of mockery it forces a guilty smile to my lips.
“Just try and have the dishes done by the time I get home,” her hair strokes my cheek as she leans forward to kiss my ear, “I swear, we’re going to have to get blinds for that window.”
I turn to watch as she disappears out through the door, dark wisps of hair carried on the still air behind her. On the few occasions that my attention can be dragged from the wonder outside it is always Elette that draws it. 
I rarely let her know, but perfection is the sight of the women I call my wife.
The dishes are done in moments that seem to take forever, and then I’m back at the window, watching as the first few heads peer up from their homes beneath miniature canopies of green.  Before long, little lizard-skin wings are carrying them into the air to begin another day of dancing on the wind.

*****
The moon is high and full, its light falling on the garden and flashing off glowing wings that have gathered in greater abundance than I can ever remember.
Tonight is the night, it has to be, but Elette is still awake.
For three days the parcel she collected sat unopened and untouched, but now - now - she decides to stay up and open it. 

“What is it?” I asked her on the day she brought it home.
“Don’t be so nosey,” she replied after depositing it on the coffee table in the living room, “you’ll find out soon enough.”
“You’re not going to open it?”
“Well, of course I am.”
“Now?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“The time. Not right,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at me, and refusing to answer anything more on the subject. I’d been insanely curious. The brown paper wrapping seemed to conceal secrets as enticing as the ones that frolicked in my Magic Garden. 

That was then, though, and this is now. Having to compete with the splendour my mind has conjured from thoughts of the Faerie Queen, those secrets seem as drab as the crumpled paper that keeps them from me.
But the secrets that interest me are a world away, on the other side of a pane of glass - to seek them out now would be to reveal my own. I have to turn my back on the garden court.
“So,” I ask, walking into the living room, where Elette is on the floor, her slender form sat between my eyes and the unwrapped box in her lap, “what was in the package?”
“I don’t know if I can tell you just yet,” I can hear the smile and, despite myself, I can’t help but let it reflect on my face.
“oh, come on. That’s hardly fair.”
“Secrets rarely are,” she replies, saying more than words.
“What?”
“Is it right, would you say, to keep secrets from the ones you love?”
I can’t answer.  Honesty is the best policy, after all, “Well, um…”
She turns to me, a twinkle in emerald eyes that an hour ago were a deep brown - almost black. Standing up, her loose-fitting blouse slips over her shoulders, gliding down over skin the colour of milk. She smiles as my stare falls from her eyes to follow the silken fabric down her arms until it comes to hang from the crook of her arms, I can’t help but turn my attention to the contents of the package, held tenderly in her soft hands. 
Entwined branches and roots wind about themselves like snakes to form a wooden, grey-barked hoop, bejewelled with thorns and sprouting leaves. It’s dull, not a trace of a golden glint to be seen, but clearly a crown nonetheless. 
On Elette’s face is a smile such as I’ve never seen before, even on her lips - warm, hopeful, joyous.
“My prince,” she whispers.
I say nothing but, with silent realisation, pull the shirt from my back, letting it dangle from my clutching hand as she takes a step toward me. 
Around us, beyond glowing swirls of air, upon which dance winged men and women, the world seems to shrink.
I was right, she is something special. More so than I could have imagined.

*****
The chill of mid-morning frost clinging to my bare form isn’t what it used to be. 
The cold does not go unnoticed, but it isn’t the discomfort it was all those years ago when I wore a different skin. I still run through the garden, darting in and out of bushes and bounding over flowers, now shaking loose the petals from the jacaranda in the far corner, but the grass no longer prickles the soles of my feet as I gallop across it.
No, now it is the wind I feel between my toes as I go.
The flash and flitter of wings is not the tiny mystery it once was, but my garden - my world - is no less magical for the fact. Perhaps it is more so.
My friends, my family - the little people I now know as my own - gather at the edge of a flowerbed, their eyes drawn to the house whose walls were once my sanctuary. Carried on splendid wings of green, I skim the currents to hang in the air alongside my queen - even more radiant in this life than my last - to join them.
There, on the other side of a pane of glass, eyes wide with wonder, the face of a young boy stares out at us. Somewhere inside his family must be busying themselves with boxes and movers and the beginning of a new life, in a new home.
My eyes meet his - though I know such a tiny detail will be lost on him - and I smile.