There was a garden. The girl would always remember it as the secret garden, bright flowers, cool grass green as melon skin and thick old trees that stretched upwards blocking out the grey buildings beyond. Her garden, her special place.
The other children weren't allowed to play behind the big locked gates, with their pinching fingers and mocking smiles. Even her sister didn't follow her in here, right up until the day she came with the court order of guardianship she never knew anyone but Mama Jermaine ever went behind those big gates. Mama Jermaine with arms like rolling pins and a thick stick all the kids knew well. Mama Jermaine who could get eighty francs a week for every child she took into her big grey country house, but who barely spent that a month on the lot of them combined. Mama Jermaine with a mind like a steel trap, a blow like a whip crack and a heart of ice.
The girl remembered the vast dirt yard she'd been led through by the social worker in his big black coat, her sister's sweaty hand gripping hers tightly, small suitcase in one hand. Mama Jermaine had met them on the steps, Mama Jermaine did not like the social workers coming inside.
"Two more for your care Madame Jermaine." Said the man, Mama Jermaine nodded blankly. They had talked briefly as the girls stood in the hot yard, dirt blowing round them in clouds, an old dog dozing regardless in the shade of the yard's wall. The conversation came back to her as the man prepared to go.
"The older one is a bright spark, she'll need plenty to occupy her." The social worker beamed at her sister before turning back to Mama. "The little one is...I'm afraid, a bit simple. But I'm sure she'll cope well."
Later in the long dormitory the girl had asked her sister what the man had meant. Her sister was hiding things from the suitcase in the lumpy mattress before the other children came to bed.
"It's the same as when Mother said you were special, 'cept not as nice way of putting it." Said her sister stuffing a photo book into a gap in the stitching. The girl asked when their Mother was coming to get them. Her sister stiffened.
"She's not, she's dead." Was the only reply.
Years went by, they grew up. The girl learnt to disappear first to the fields beyond the grey walls of the house, then to the cool lush oasis that was Mama Jermaine's private garden. They grew up more as more years passed and one day she found her sister packing.
"I'm sixteen tomorrow." Her sister told her. "They won't pay Mama Jermaine to keep me anymore. I'm leaving to find a job and a house."
"Can't I come now." The girl asked as her sister pulled long forgotten objects from the mattress.
"They won't let you, not yet. I'm going to see if I can get custody of you, it means you'll be allowed to come live with me." Her sister looked at her.
"You must be good and don't get into trouble. If they think you are trouble they'll make you stay here, they won't let me take care of you. You understand." The next day her sister was gone.
More time passed and as it went on Mama Jermaine began to write long letters and watch the girl more closely. It became hard to go anywhere or do anything. She took to sitting on the front steps and watch the long road passed the iron gates and thought longingly of her sister far away and the garden.
One day, when the heat was such that she longed to sit underneath the cool trees, Mama Jermaine took her by the arm and led her through the dirt yard to the big locked gates of the garden, she unlocked it and pushed her through.
"This is my garden." Mama told her. "I am going to grow vegetables in here. I want you to pull up all the flowers in these beds and pile them behind you." With that the girl was left alone. The flowers gleamed at her in the sunlight, the trees whispered to her. She wrapped a hand around one slender stem and felt the flower tremble under her touch. Her sister had told her not to cause trouble and she didn't want to be disobedient but the flower bobbed up and down in fear as she clasped the stem. In the sunlight and shade of her secret garden the girl and her simple mind made their own decision.
When Mama Jermaine lead two social workers and her sister through the gate an hour later the flowers waved at them happily from the beds. She watched Mama Jermaine's face turn purple from her cool spot under the trees.
"It seems." Said the man in the same black coat he had worn all those years before. "That the girl is not quite the disturbed creature you describe Madame Jermaine. The garden to me seems quite intact."
It was barely an hour later when her sister strapped her into the car and they set off down the lane away from the old grey house, from the staring children and Mama Jermaine and her stick.
"She didn't want to let you go you know." Said her sister as their car made its own dust clouds rise up from the lane. "She wrote these long reports on how bad you were. She didn't want to lose the money they paid her."
"I wasn't bad." The girl said quietly.
"I know." Said her sister as the car rushed them onwards. There was silence for a while. Her sister spoke first. "Listen my company are very pleased with me, they want to send me to one of their branches abroad. I only have a flat now but if we go the job has a house with it." The girl thought for a while.
"Does the house have a garden?"
"Yes." Said her sister. "A big one and parks nearby too."
"I like gardens." Said Serenity quietly as the car sped onwards through the heat and dust.
There was a garden here too. Not as grand as Mama Jermaine's in her foster home all those years ago but Serenity sat in the scrubby bushes, grass and weed ridden pots outside the window of the complex staring at the space as if it were the palace gardens of Versailles. It was dark too but such boundaries had never meant much to her after the stone walls and gates of her childhood. A rabbit was feeding on the scrubby grass nearby and she watched it too for a while.
There had been halls and corridors in the building inside, dimly lit glass pens which hadn't interested her and rooms of men she had avoided. Up here the construction looked a bit like a hospital, Serenity had been in plenty of those as she had got older, but the wards were empty and the building didn't feel sleepy, it felt dead.
She picked the dead grass and platted it between her fingers lazily. She would go back soon, her sister worried far too much for her to be gone long, and now another, a man, would worry for her safety outside his care. She had woken with his black hair against her forehead and felt his presence under her skin, in part of her mind. She knew without questioning that she belonged with him as previously she had belonged among the flowers and grass of the secret garden. These simple truths were known to her outside the complexities that dictated them. Her love for her sister beat at her, but it did not tie her or complicated the new relationship as it may have with others, as in the garden all those years ago with her hand around the flower stem her choice was so simple as to be nonexistent.
But the outdoors called to her, its presence like a living part of her still and she lingered up here, away from the glass pens and the unknown darkness she had woken in. Eventually voices drifted out from an open window behind her, there was the stench of smoke.
"He still breathing Doctor." The man's voice was rough and full of cold hatred, Serenity sat still behind the dying bushes. A second older voice chimed in.
"He will live General. The treatment was...harsher than I would have wished ideally but..."
"That damn vampire has to be shown the consequences of his actions. I can't have my arm ripped out of its socket every time I set foot in the enclosure."
"Understood General. I should also point out that I was against using the isolated genes to treat your wound."
"It's healed it though. I've been strapped up for months without that little miracle to assist me. Now it barely twinges."
"A great advancement for both our soldiers and medicine I'm sure...as long as there are not any side effects."
"Side effects! I've never felt more alive. Don't be so frightened this new science Doctor. Speaking of which, how's the livestock progressing down there."
"The latest two batches as normal, reasonable losses comparatively speaking."
"And did you figure out what when wrong with 27." There was a pause.
"It seems one of the technicians did not mix the splicing agent with the raw blood mix on several of the subjects. There is no guarantee that the target RNA will have been replaced with our own preparation in the second stage."
"Should we wipe the entire batch Doctor?"
"Our benefactor says no. You'll remember that several of our most interesting subjects have been taken from that batch. He is most interested to see how the rest progress."
"As he wishes." Serenity stirred under the window, she wanted to return badly now. She found the conversation confusing and the air was beginning to feel contaminated, like something foul was stirring in the space nearby.
" On a similar subject however General this news should please you."
"Really."
"Our DNA profile of the vampire is complete. A few more days of testing we can correctly replicate his blood and I think we can dispense with his services for good." There was harsh laughter from the window.
"Doctor you have made my year. I have some whiskey I've been saving for an occasion, and I think you've just provided one."
"General, really I don't drink on..."
Serenity listened to the voices disappear. As the garden became still once more she faded into the background until only the flattened grass showed she'd ever been present. She didn't see the darkness close over the spot where she'd sat, making the grass move despite the still air. Shadow within darkness brushing over the dead grass and the stench of the grave mugging the air.
