A minute passes in silence, him breathing in and out. He seemed so happy earlier and I ruined his mood. We should have stuck to gardening talk.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s talk about something else. What was it you wanted to show me?”
He sighs. “Of course.” He turns back to the garden. “Something I noticed last night.Afterdinner.” He stresses the word after. “When I passed your door,” he adds, with a half-teasing smile.
My door? What does he mean?
“Look.” He nods to the garden. “Take your time. I think you will be able to see it.”
So I look. And keep on looking. There’s no sign of formal hedges, pathways, and flowerbeds laid out in symmetrical patterns. None of the usual templates seem to fit. But after a few minutes, I calm down and settle into the usual peace that gardens always inspire in me.
Hmm. There’s a shape there. Something I’ve seen before. The feeling is so strong it nags and nags at me. It’s like when you’re searching for something that youknowis right in front of you but can’t see it.
I try another tactic. Relaxing my eyes until they lose focus. Blurry vision forces the logical part of my brain to the back and gives room for my imagination to step forward.
I can almost see a lady lying down.
It makes zero sense but it rings a bell. Something I’ve seen here, in this house. Actually, in my room.
“Osian.” I turn to him. “It’s the stained-glass panel above my door, isn’t it? What you saw last night.”
His lips stretch in the beginning of a smile. “Y-e-s…?” he encourages me.
Then we’re both hurrying back to my apartment, pushing the French windows open; inside, the stained glass looks dim because the sun is behind us. I open my front door, and we walk out to stand in the hallway and look up. Now with the sun shining through it, the image is clear. A lady in a blue dress lies on grass. The gown is far too long and spreads in a curve, like the letter S. The lady holds a fan, one of those old-fashioned ones that fold and open. Except this one has only five segments – the Victorians called them leaves – and at the top, flowers sprout out of each of the leaves. Pink flowers, graduating in colour through various shades from cherry blossom, orchid pink, raspberry, fuchsia and finally deep magenta.
“That’s the shape, a fan,” I breathe. “The slates are… they’re the dividing ribs of a fan.”
Osian’s eyes are shining. “With flowers inside.”
“Graduating in colour. Five shades…”
“Wait.” He puts a hand on my arm. “How many fans are there?”
I think I know the answer. It has to be. We both hurry back through my sitting room, out onto the balcony, and to the end where the perspective is just right to see the whole thing.
“Look.” Osian points. “There’s one fan. And up there, another.”
Not all the bushes have been cut, but enough to see at least part of the design. We count them. My heart wants fly up and out.
“Five fans,” I say. “I thought it might be the lady in blue, but it’s fans.”
“No. I think the lady in blue is a red herring. A blue herring,” he says, studying the garden below us.
No. No, no. Wait a minute. The Blue Lady fits too. “Look at the shape of the ground between the fans. Doesn’t it look like a sort of S?”
He squints trying to see it, but I can’t wait. “It’s a pond. Water.”
He keeps looking, then shakes his head. “This is something only you can see with your psychic vision.” He cocks an eyebrow at me. “But, seriously… pond water would not look blue. It’s not big enough to reflect the sky?”
True, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of this and can hear what the garden has been trying to tell me, finally. “It’s all dried up and has filled with soil and debris over the years. There are weeds growing there but I bet if we get rid of all that, we’ll find blue tiling. You know?” I swallow the lump in my throat. “Like the tiles in the blue wall.”
He lets out a long, low whistle. “Blue pond and five pink fan-shaped flowerbeds.”
“No, no. Each fan a different colour but within each fan, see, there are five sections. So each fan has flowers in that colour graduating from pale to dark.”
“What would the other colours have been, aside from pink?”
I’m laughing, but my eyes fill with tears. “Five colours. I don’t know yet, but the way this is going, the garden will tell me soon. There will be clues down there.”
