In the Realm of the Midnight Gardener
Chapter 6: Into the Gardens

But enough of the mind drift. Across the grounds, on the right-hand side of the manor house, Domingo could see a gate. It was worth investigating, as it might be the way to the gardens he was seeking. At the very least, there were none of those disgusting trees nearby. He waited until he was sure all was clear and silent, then made a dash.

The gate was the only passage through a high fence running from the manor house all the way to the hedgerow wall on the other side of the front grounds. The fence could be scaled, but apparently it was unnecessary. The gate was open. Domingo’s brow scrunched at that. Every duster locked up their garden patches, their growing areas and laboratories. What was this nonsense then? If anything, the lack of security made him more nervous than before. With a shrug, he went in. Nothing for it but to press on.

Domingo scanned the garden patch and sighed. This was going to take longer than he’d imagined. The garden was less a garden and more a full-fledged farming plot. Five or six plots, actually, enough land to house a dozen small farms. The length and breadth of it extended out of sight. To his left, running parallel with the manor house, the land ran for kilometres, out to a distant forest. In front of him and to his right was nothing but fields, mounds, gardens, hillocks out to the low rise of the horizon. He could see the hedgerow to his right ran along the fields, slowly curving (he assumed) with the river, only ending at a high hill nearly four kilometres away. As far as the eye could see from the hedgerow to the manor house were hundreds of gigantic fields, intertwined with a network of dusty red clay trails, the first of which he was standing on now.

The trails were marked at various points and intersections with smooth, polished stones. Painted on them were a symbol or symbols of some sort. No doubt, the stones were markers for each field and its contents across such an extensive ground. The hieroglyphs were patently unfamiliar to him, but he’d not have expected otherwise. Any symbology used by a duster to catalogue and index his gardens would be of their own making. Only a fool would make it easy for another duster, or a thief (or in Domingo’s case, both) to come in and know which crops to raid.

Again, the urge to head back to the manor and seek out a map or cypher to the stones and their markings was compelling, however fleeting it was. In, out, map in hand and no one would be the wiser. Domingo forced himself to dismiss it. No time for such foolhardy shenanigans. He looked over the trails, figured one was as good as the next, and headed out, away from the manor.

It was time to put what he knew of blood turnips to the test. He needed something to go on. They were nearly as much legend as the Midnight Gardener. They were said to grow in very few places, but they grew best in darkness, in soil rich in the blood and bone of sentient creatures. Graveyards, battlefields, places where atrocities had been committed, this was the places the gruesome things loved best. They were carrion feeders, thirsty for blood in particular. Thus, Domingo surmised, was part of the reason for their name.

The stalks and leaves of the blood turnips were said to exude a black poison, the very smell of which frightened off animals and insects alike. The leaves were rumoured to be used as both as a poison and as a curative, to create tonics and reverse the aging process, restoring youth to the imbiber. Mad as it sounded, the stems could be properly processed to create an elixir to bring the recently dead back to life.

The turnips themselves, gruesome, fleshy tubers, were apparently blood-red in colour and pulsed with a life of their own. What purpose the things served was a mystery. Some said they gave life eternal, thus their connection to figures like the Midnight Gardener. Others claimed the turnips were life thieves, vampiric things that sought living blood to grow and thrive. In one story, an unwary, naughty girl ignored the wise woman of her village and bit into the flesh of a blood turnip, and thereafter was overcome with an insatiable need for blood, to remain and feed with the plants when another unwary soul wandered too close. She haunted the patch forever afterward, damned by the blood turnip and a good story for frightening naughty children at bedtime. The stories and rumours and legends went on and on, but if even one of the tales were true, it still didn’t explain what the Tindalosi wanted with these things.

Domingo supposed it didn’t matter all that much. Legends and rumours be damned. What was the truth and what was a lie, and whatever the stinking Tindalosi wanted with these things was no concern of his. All he cared was that they paid.

He’d wandered a good half kilometer through the fields, keeping to the trails, reviewing each marker as he went. They didn’t help. He was passing a massive plot of grey maize, nearly three meters high, when the sound reached his ears. He’d heard it before, back in the front gardens, the scratching, clawing run of beasts.

As before, he crouched low, side-stepping off the clay trail into the rows of maize for cover. This time, though, the sound neither diminished nor echoed away into the night. He saw them rushing through the twisting red clay trails of the garden. From his vantage in the maize, he saw them and went slack-jawed to witness such beasts. The Tindalosi had mentioned sentinels, but he’d never imagined this.

Six of the beasts were running the trail, loping in hungry, wolfish strides. Their bodies were oblong, pumpkin-like gourds, brown-red flesh in the shape of a beast’s torso. Where a head should have been, there was a wide-petaled flower of green and yellow. These were opening and closing in a sickly motion, as if the thing were breathing. He could see the stigma within were waving back and forth, searching, probing, sniffing the air. And though he couldn’t be sure, Domingo swore the stamens were glowing a faint green, something cruelly staring from their ends.

The beasts had six thick, bristled stems extending from the gourdish bodies. These stem legs ended in seven sharpened claws, which dug gouges in the path’s dry clay as the beasts ran.

Domingo couldn’t help but grimace at the sight of these abominations. He’d encountered his share of animate plant life, but never like this. Never so awful, so rabid and animal. He never imagined that the Midnight Gardener was engaged in the forbidden arts of splicers, but what else could explain such creatures?

He didn’t have time to ponder further. As the pack ran the path towards the gate and back to the front of the manor, one of their number broke off and turned, it’s flowery mouth opening and closing frenetically. It turned, snuffling, and charged up the path he’d taken. Domingo groaned. It figured.

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