“In all things, we look first to the defense of the sacred tree. This is why the Thicket Wall has no gates or other weak points, much as we must eliminate the weak points within and among us.”

“But teacher, what could attack Holy Mazana?”

“Our enemies are debased mockeries of life, but without constant maintenance, even the most resilient of defenses can grow weak and frail. Ever and anon those beyond the Thicket Wall pressed against it and burrow below, seeking any ingress they can find or manufacture.”

“They’re really stupid aren’t they? I mean if they get in here the Holy Mazana will just be like ‘Die!’ and they’ll all die, right?”

“Indeed. The sacred tree’s prowess is unmatched and uncontestable. For everything there is a price though. Were the sacred tree to interfere, it would mean that we had failed in our duty. Become impure in our dedication, and what happens to the impure?”

“They’re tossed over the wall!” “They’re chopped up and chucked outside!” “They get sent away”

“Yes. We cast out the impure because where we receive the gifts of the sacred tree and nourish it with our love and devotion, the impure take and take and only give back sickness and disease.”

“I wanna fight the Impure!”

“And someday you will. When you are old enough to be called to service, you will stand as the sacred tree’s first bulwark with your faith and your purity as the truest of shields.”

– an except from Children’s Lessons for Boys, as delivered by the First Tender.

Golden eyes were locked onto my own and it felt like I could fall into them forever.

“You smell different,” my intruder said, searching for Holy Mazana only knew what in my features. “Better.”

“I purified this morning,” I said.

Because that was reasonable. Words hadn’t totally escaped me and I was fully in control of the situation.

“Hmm, no, not like that. You’re…something else?”

“No I’m not,” I lied. “There’s just something wrong with your nose.”

Could people smell the bad decisions I’d been making?

Could they tell I’d broken faith with…with everything?

Did I smell impure?

My expression slipped out of my control for a moment as the soul crushing horror of everyone being able to see what I was pounded my head with hammer blow after hammer blow.

“Rude,” my intruder said, and twisted her head to side to look at me from a different angle. “I said you smelled better now.”

“I don’t…listen, how I smell doesn’t matter. What are you doing here?”

There! I’d gotten a question out. The question!

“Looking for you.”

Which was not what the answer was supposed to be.

“Me?”

“Well, sort of. I didn’t think I was going to find anyone like me in here, but what is life if not a big old basket of surprises, right?”

“Uh, I’m not like you at all,” I said, the words instinctively leaping from my lips with zero input or consideration from my brain.

“Few people are, I’m a hard act to measure up to.” And then she struck a pose! 

“No. I mean, you’re not supposed to be here! If anyone finds you they’ll kill you, or worse, toss you over the Thicket Wall!”

Why that would be worse for someone who clearly was not Sylvan and therefor clearly had no place in the Garden wasn’t something I gave any consideration to, it was just the most horrible fate possible.

Right?

From my intruder’s confused expression, it was possible that wasn’t quite as certain as I’d been led to believe though.

“Don’t worry beautiful, I can land on my feet. I’m real talented like that.”

“Land on your…?” It was my turn to be confused. “You’ll be eaten.”

“Eaten? By what?” Her confusion looked to be, impossibly, as deep as my own.

“The things. The monsters. You know the…” I stopped.

And my mind nearly snapped.

My intruder wasn’t a native of the Garden. There’d never been a Sylvan ever who looked like her.

Which meant she had to come from somewhere.

Somewhere that was Not The Garden.

But I’d been told that all of the ‘Not The Garden’ places were filled with death monsters and despair beasts.

Girls with golden eyes who looked like they were my age and had about a thousand times the self confidence could not survive in places that were filled with death monsters and despair beasts.

“Where are you from,” I asked. I already knew the answer but I had to hear it. 

I didn’t want to. In fact, I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t process the words I knew she was about to speak. 

They couldn’t have been lying about THAT to us.

Not to all of us.

Not all this time.

“Goldflower Borough, Low Town,” she said, searching even more intently. “In the Third Wall.”

The.

What?

“Third…?” I started to ask what that could possibly mean, when I heard voices in the distance.

Far off in the distance.

Sorry. You needed the warning.

People were coming.

I was hearing people walking to the Chapel from much farther away than should have been possible.

“Much farther away” however was still far too close.

Without an instants hesitation for thought or panic, I reached forward, grabbed my intruder and hauled her onto the seat beside me as I rose to block her from view by anyone coming in the door.

Then I started singing.

Glory to the Holy Tree. Glory to the Pure and Faithful. Glory and Glory and Glory to Our Garden and All It’s Righteous Children!

And to the liar who had to practice alone.

It wasn’t hard to put a warble into the song to make it sound like I was practicing and needed the space to myself.

Over my song I heard the footsteps come to a halt before they reached the door.

Which clearly wasn’t possible. I should have drowned that out with my singing.

Please, do give me more more credit than that. Even your silly shrub could manage a gift that properly sharpened your senses.

I wanted to say I couldn’t be hearing what I was because I would never willingly use a demon’s gift, but even I wasn’t that stupid. If it meant staying undiscovered, I would happily accept the ability to hear trouble coming before it got to me, and offer a silent thank you to whomever or whatever provided me the chance to continue living.

If I had a heart, I believe I would be having a heart attack now.

I sang a few more verses, repeating myself as though I was practicing desperately to get the song right. The desperation part was real enough to be convincing it seemed since the conversation between the approaching people resumed as their footsteps retreated from the chapel without venturing inside at all.

“Thank the roots!” I gasped as soon as they were far enough away that they wouldn’t hear my song stop.

My intruder was sitting beside me, staring at me like I’d turned into something at once horrifying and fascinating.

“You’re strong than you look,” she said, making no move to get away or to attack me.

“Sorry,” I said, remembering that I’d grabbed her and plopped her down pretty rudely.

“No. No, that was interesting. I…hmm, and your smell. It was complex. What did you do there?” she asked, her whole body still and her eyes focused on me to the exclusion of all else.

“I sang something like the song they tried to teach us today,” I said. Why I was answering her questions, I had no idea. I was the one who needed answers, but losing control of the conversation made it like the rest of my life, which had apparently spun completely out of my control at some point.

“Why?” my intruder asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to come in here,” I said. “If they thought I was practicing alone, most people would leave the chapel for me to work on worshipping properly.”

“But, hmm, how can I explain this.” She looked away from me, searching for words in a manner which felt very familiar to me in that moment. “When you sang, what I’ve been calling a ‘bad smell’ came back but it was subtle. If you had my Blessing, you’d probably experience it in some other manner but, for me, foul magics, or corrupted divine power, those smell bad.”

“Foul magic? I wasn’t working any magic though,” I said, drifting right back into the confusion zone.

“Magic’s not always intentional. That song you sang though? There was magic in it. Ugly magic.”

“It was just a song of praise. Everyone sings them.” Though, to be fair, I did sing them well enough to be in the choir for Blueshine, and this wasn’t the first time someone had called my voice ‘magical’, though usually it was just people being nice or flattering.

“You were praising the big tree though right?” she asked.

“Of course.” Praising ourselves was a sin worthy of public humiliation.

“Okay, that explains why it smelled bad then. The thing is though, you also smelled really good too. Like actual Divine Blessing good.”

“I have a few of Holy Mazana’s gifts, but I wasn’t using any then,” I said.

I wasn’t using Holy Mazana’s gifts but…

Go ahead and complete that thought whenever you like, I’ll be here waiting.

But…no.

“The tree? Yeah, no, anything you get from the tree is corrupted as hell. It all comes from one of them.” She rose to look me eye to eye and then leaned in slightly closer to give me a sniff. “You…sorry, I know the smell thing doesn’t mean anything to you. I can sense, if that sounds better, something old from you.”

I was tempted to say ‘I’m no older than you’, but that wasn’t what she was talking about.

“Not something bad. Not the corrupted stuff that’s all over this place. This is something real. Something, I don’t know I haven’t smelled..sensed anything like it, but I think it might be related to what I’m here for.”

Oh look, a thought that wasn’t the one I wanted to avoid! I jumped all over that!

“What are you here for? This is so dangerous.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” she said and then added to no one in particular. “No, this was all your idea. I was just the idiot who volunteered. Hey, don’t blame Kalkit. Sure we listened to him, but can you blame us?”

I was silent.

There were easy, obvious questions I could ask.

Should ask.

Things like “who are you talking to”.

Take your time.

“Sorry,” my intruder said, shaking her head. “It can be distracting to be one of the Blessed.”

“The Blessed?”

I was not a good Sylvan. I had been possessed by a demon for years. My life was a shattered window hanging together for a moment before the wind of literally anyone’s awareness brushed against me. There was no version of the world in which I was ‘blessed’.

“It’s a whole thing,” my intruder said. “Turns out if you make the mistake of having a bit of faith and being a good match, you can become the home for a god, or a piece of one usually.”

“The gods are dead though. They failed the world.” Again my mouth opened and spit out words which had been driven into me since I could understand that syllables had meaning.

“Dead? Yeah. Sorta. Most of them. Their gods though, so in addition to being colossal pains in the ass, they’re also kind of a part of us, the Blessed and the rest. So if we’re here, then so are they.”

“But…wait…I don’t understand. If the gods still existed, they would be monsters wouldn’t they? I mean, everything beyond the Thicket Wall is broken isn’t it?”

“Beautiful, this whole world is broken. You, me, everybody. That’s why I’m here. See my God? She’s been protecting us, all of  us, and I think she’d like to take a break sometime before the end of eternity, so it’s our job to start putting things back together.”