My Gardens

By Sara Fathima

The best as far as the eye can see, my gardens, the most beautiful, vibrant flowers that glisten under the sun, green bushes and thick trunks that drank my blood, sweat and tears and gave me fame and name. Gardens that rivalled the hanging ones of Babylon. Gardens that bewitched and consumed. Gardens that gave as much as they took.

People visited from far and wide, sailing on monstrous waves and walking through endless deserts just to get a glimpse, to satiate the hunger that always consumed their eyes, to smell heaven on earth.

No garden ever came close, they always lacked something. No one as good as me, the best gardener in the whole world, every seed I touched burst into the thickest trees, bore the most luscious of fruits. Magic, they said, there was magic in my hands. Magic that flowed through my veins alongside blood.

But one day my magic ran out, poured out and nothing of it was left. All of a sudden everything changed. I looked within myself, searched for the so-called magic in every nook and cranny, willed for it to flow again bit it never did, it stopped one day and never returned.

I found out that the sun and the land and the clouds were slaves of the magic, they left with it, the sun never shined its light on my gardens again, the land dried, squeezed every last bit of water and vomited it all out, it grew cracks, grew barren in the wake of its master's death. The clouds never weeped again, never blessed my gardens with their sorrow, they refused to humor the one their master deemed unworthy.

I've begged for the magic to return, begged for it to show me mercy, show my gardens mercy. But it never listened, wherever it was.

My flowers started wilting, they died of thirst and darkness, their colours faded into putrid shades, their smell turned nauseous, scratched throats with sharp nails. They fell at my touch, gave away under my hands, rained disgusting smelling powder on the insects that now crawled my barren lands. The leaves dried and the bark fell off, it all started coming undone, all my blood and sweat slowly evaporating just like that.

They didn't stop all at once, their number gradually decreased, they complained about the smell and the dead plants and them stopped coming all together, they turned their backs on me, talked in hushed voices as they walked by, their narrowed eyes filled with pity and hatred. The Kings didn't call for me to tend the royal gardens anymore, they didn't send anyone to check on me, to help me, they just replaced me with someone else. I cried at their feet, begged for them to help me but they didn't even spare me a second glance, they threw me out of the high palace and onto my dead gardens.

Oh how unfortunate, the fall of my gardens and my pride, oh how wretched the once vibrant flowers now looked, their heads forever bowed in shame, their petals hanging from their falling stalks. I watered them with my tears, I weeped over their dying bodies until my eyes hurt, I fed them my flesh and blood, tore off chunks and filled the cracks of the dried land, hoped that my lifeblood would give them life, but it didn't, they didn't absorb the food hungrily, they didn't bloom once again and I stayed there, waiting, praying.

Today, I woke up and felt it, felt life all around me, I cried even before I saw them, laughed through sobs even before I smelled them, oh I shouldn't have.

They were not dead, they weren't alive either, they smelled like death, they all looked the same, their colours were the same, a disgusting shade of green, the flowers' stalks were thicker than before, they grew taller and taller, the petals had holes in them, they were so big. The trees were naked, there weren't any leaves like I'd hoped, their branches grew longer and sharper.

They were all around me, these giant flowers and razor-sharp branches, they were alive, they were conscious. They moved. The long stalks of the flowers swayed but there was no wind, they fought with eachother, they bit at eachother with thin yellow teeth that lined the inside of their petalled faces. The branches slowly cocooned me inside the gardens, they moved and nailed themselves to the air, until nothing of the outside was visible, everywhere I looked there were branches, hundreds of them huddled together, making sturdy walls and a thick roof.

They trapped me in there, there was no way to escape, I was going to die here, going to bleed to the death in the very gardens that gave me life and made me who I was, they were finally taking what they gave me. I closed my eyes and even without seeing, I could sense it all around me, feel the air forcefully part and give way to thousand of flowers as they grew closer and closer to me, could feel every tree and fallen leaf watching, holding their breaths, waiting….waiting for the moment the sharp teeth finally dig into my skin and flesh.

And at last, the last inch of air parted, the space around me filled with thousands of flowers that longed for my blood and flesh, pain erupted through my being as the teeth sunk and the blood flowed.

And even as I stood there surrounded by my creation and my destroyer, falling to my knees as life slowly fell out of me, I loved them, my gardens.

By Sara Fathima