The Girl in the Garden

Chapter 7

The first week of Ben's life at Bramble Manor was slow and lonely. He ate his meals with Lolly, Ms. Herrier, Sparrow, and the strange and ugly groundskeeper. Mr. Willoughs only ever appeared to leave the conservatory for dinner and never appeared to bathe. This seemed particularly strange to Ben because Ms. Herrier wouldn't allow him or Sparrow to sit for dinner if there was even a trace of dirt under his fingernails.

"It's important to be clean and presentable!" She said as she inspected the boys' hands.

"What about Mr. Willoughs?" Ben asked one day, and he could hear Sparrow snicker at the question.

Ms. Herrier sneered down at her nephew, then asked Ben, "What about him?"

"Well, you've probably noticed that he's never been introduced to the concept of a shower?" One of Ben's new favourite hobbies was to see how twisted the housekeeper's face could get when he questioned her authority. Her nostrils would flare, and her eyebrows would form one strong line above her angry eyes. "But you still let him sit and eat without inspecting his hands."

"Mr. Willoughs is a stubborn adult. You and Sparrow are still children who are capable of learning to do better."

That's how most of his conversations went with Ms. Harrier, in fact. He challenged her, and she made up reasons to validate her grumpy behaviour. It was easy for him to like Lolly better than the stern housekeeper.

Lolly was always warm and welcoming, and she always gave him delicious food. She was strange in her own ways; Ben never saw her leave the kitchen during the day, which was always dimly lit and humid. She would glisten with sweat most of the time as she toiled over the stove, but she always smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. Her eyes sometimes pointed in different directions, and they never seemed entirely focused on anything in particular, but when she looked at Ben, he felt welcome and safe.

As for his Uncle Wish, he didn't make a single appearance. Ben started to believe that he didn't live at Bramble Manor at all, that someone had played a trick to pawn him off on the strange staff members of the house rather than a family member his mother trusted. Ben spent days prowling the halls of the giant mansion, checking his key in every lock that he could find, and even while exploring the darkest corners, he didn't find a single trace of the man who took him away from the group home.

What he did find, however, was that every doorknob, and every lock, in the entire manor was made out of the same milky white substance as the watches he'd seen both Wish and Ms. Herrier checking before. It was a stark contrast the the heavy black key he carried around in his pocket, which was starting to convince him that he'd never find the right lock.

In most of the rooms that Ben searched, dusty white sheets covered the furniture. There were several rooms that Ben thought could be living rooms. He assumed that at one point in the manor's history, each of the rooms had a specific use, but now nobody used them for anything. Whenever he found a door that wouldn't open or a cabinet with a keyhole, he allowed himself to feel excited, only to be disappointed when the black key did nothing to unravel the mystery ahead of him.

He was walking slowly down one of the last unexplored hallways when he came across a heavy wooden door with a decorative crystal window. He could see tall shelves of books through the window, but the beveled glass distorted everything.

First, he tried the doorknob, but it refused to work. A quick scan told him that there was no way the key would fit, but out of habit, he took it from his pocket anyway.

"Oh," he heard a voice from down the hall. He turned to see Sparrow standing there, watching him. "What are you doing here? The library's off-limits, you know."