The Sixth Turn

Blythe left the green bells until last.

For three evenings she had been separating the garden, closing connections, making smaller pieces from the whole. Nothing hurried her now. The conservatory withdrawal had been accepted. Nerida had written three lines in reply, formal at the beginning and warmer at the end. Keir had banked his course and spent his first free dusk delivering a lamp, which made Blythe love him with an exasperation she had not yet named aloud.

She had decided what to change before he ended the course. The drawing lay on the kitchen table, its corners softened by repeated unfolding.

Keep the blue bed. Keep the rose bells separately. Keep the new amber in its ring. Release the green descending line and the two connecting turns that existed chiefly to make the garden appear complete from the gate.

There would be space down the middle. A person could walk through without following her seven prescribed turns.

The retained beds would still need tending, but separately, briefly, on the evenings she chose to keep them active. She could bank one without losing the rest. It would be a different practice. Less impressive from the street. More possible to leave for a night.

She had explained this to Keir.

“Will you miss the whole?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then let me see it once more too.”

So she did.

He came at the old dusk hour, carrying the empty coil in his pocket rather than on his wrist. No active thread could escape it. They walked the old seven-turn path together, passing the detached first bed before entering the remaining circuit.

Blythe told him what each had been. Not the public explanations, which he could read on the cards. The private ones. A window she had wanted to own. A colour she had made after a customer told her she would never manage clarity. A blue hour she had captured because she was happy and distrusted how quickly happiness passed.

“You tried to keep that?” Keir asked.

“The light. I knew better than to believe I could keep the feeling.”

“Did you?”

She looked at him.

“Not always.”

They stood in the last bed until its blue deepened. Blythe took his hand.

“I loved making this,” she said.

“I can see.”

“I need to hear myself say that before I take it apart.”

“Then say it again.”

She did, softly.

They went indoors afterward. She did not begin the alterations while he watched. She wanted this last walk through the old arrangement to remain a visit.

· · ·Scene break

Now only the green bells remained connected to the old seventh turn.

Blythe crouched beside them with her tools on a folded cloth. Morning light showed every small flaw in the glass. She could remember making the lowest bell, how proud she had been of its exact edge. The praise that followed had not been false. The work was good.

She was allowed to want something else even when the old thing was good.

She loosened the copper joining strip.

The first bell dimmed. The next held a moment longer, then faded. By the time she reached the smallest, the line had become ordinary glass with a slight green tint, beautiful in a quiet way that had nothing to do with preserved light.

She set the bells in a box one by one.

Glass she had made, which might become something else or might remain in a box for years. She put a cloth between the smallest bells so their edges would not chip.

The seventh turn closed.

For the first time in eighteen years, dusk would not require a circuit through the garden.

Blythe sat on the path and stared at the gap.

It looked untidy.

She had imagined space, possibility, the handsome openness of her drawing. What she had made so far was a patch of bare stones with marks where the sockets had stood.

She laughed, then cried a little, then became annoyed because the crying made it hard to see the screws.

At noon Tamsen arrived with bread and found her still sitting there.

“Is this a new kind of work?” she asked.

“Apparently.”

“Does it pay?”

“Very badly.”

Tamsen sat on the low wall. She looked at the gap, the box, the smaller blue bed still shining on its own.

“I like being able to see the kitchen.”

Blythe turned. From this angle the warm room was visible through the whole garden. Before, the green bells had blocked it.

“So do I,” she said.

Tamsen handed her the bread.

They ate without plates. Blythe got crumbs on the path and left them there until after lunch.

· · ·Scene break

Keir came in the late afternoon.

He stopped inside the gate, looking at the open middle. Blythe stood by the kitchen door, suddenly anxious for an opinion she had not needed while making the decision.

“Well?” she said.

“I can see you.”

She felt the words in a place no discussion of arrangement could have reached.

“That is because I am standing here.”

“A remarkable design feature.”

She crossed the gap toward him. The path did not direct her through seven turns. She went where she wanted.

He caught her when she reached him, laughing at the force of her arrival. She put both hands on his face and kissed him until the laugh quieted.

“I have finished for today,” she said.

“Entirely?”

“Entirely. The blue is closed in its own ring. The rose too. They will hold until I choose to tend them tomorrow. If I leave them longer they will fade, and I may decide to let them. There is no whole garden to fail.”

He looked past her at the little beds.

“They’re still beautiful.”

“Yes. They are.”

She kissed him again, because she was glad and tired and wanted him to feel both.

They sat on the path in the open middle. Keir had brought a paper bag of chestnuts. This time they peeled them more successfully. He had learned to split the skins before they cooled. She considered this a valuable development in his character.

The sun went down.

For several minutes Blythe kept listening for a task. Her hands wanted to rise, touch copper, correct the connections that no longer existed. She let them rest in her lap.

Keir noticed.

“Do you want to walk?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

She looked at the gate.

“Outside.”

They left the house together at dusk.

The city was doing what it had always done while she was behind her wall. Bakers pulled down shutters. A woman argued over the price of a basket. A child ran past them carrying an ordinary paper windmill, followed by an adult whose patience had nearly ended. None of it required preserving. Blythe watched it with a hungry attention that made Keir smile.

At the river he held out his hand.

She took it.

They walked past the place where he used to begin the course. He looked toward it, briefly. She squeezed his fingers. Neither pretended the absence had become simple in a few days.

At the north steps they stopped. The stone still held a little warmth.

“I love you,” Blythe said.

Keir turned so quickly she almost laughed.

Then she saw his face and did not.

“I have been trying to find a way to say it that doesn’t sound like an explanation for everything else,” she said. “It isn’t. I love you. There are other reasons for the garden. This one is for you.”

He sat beside her, looking at her as though she had done something far more astonishing than any light in Caldris.

“I love you too,” he said.

She put her hand to his cheek.

“Good. I hoped so.”

His laugh broke a little in the middle. He kissed her hand, then her mouth, and she held him close on the familiar stone while the river went on moving below them.

Later they went home through streets lit by ordinary lamps. At the gate he paused to let her go first.

She took his hand and brought him with her.