SHATTERED-LIGHT

EP6: ASHCOMBE

The dream returned without introducing itself.

There was never a moment when I drifted into sleep and found the garden waiting. Sleep simply disappeared. One thought belonged to my bedroom; the next belonged somewhere else entirely, as though the hours between them had been edited out.

Ashcombe had changed again.

Not dramatically. Dreams rarely announced the things they added. They expected you to notice.

The farmhouse sat where it always had, halfway up the slope, its pale stone walls catching the first light of morning. It wasn't large enough to impress anyone and too old to care if it did. The roof sagged slightly at one corner, and moss had claimed parts of the stone foundation. Someone had repaired the front steps more than once, each replacement using a different kind of rock until the staircase resembled several generations trying to solve the same problem.

The garden stretched behind the farmhouse in broad terraces that followed the shape of the hillside instead of fighting it. Nothing about it looked accidental. The rows curved with the land, disappearing behind low walls before appearing again farther up the slope.

Some leaves spread wide enough to collect the morning dew. Others curled inward like closed hands. Tiny white flowers crowded one section while another held nothing but dense green shrubs whose value clearly existed below the soil rather than above it.

I still couldn't name most of them.

That bothered me less now.

The dreams had taught me that understanding everything wasn't always necessary. Sometimes paying attention was enough.

A wooden sign stood beside the nearest path.

ASHCOMBE GARDENS.

The letters had been carved instead of painted, their grooves darkened by years of weather. Someone had cared enough to maintain the sign long after the wood had begun to age.

Farther down the hill, where the terraces opened towards the valley, another sign waited beside the path.

ASHCOMBE VALLEY.

I looked between the two.

The garden was behind the farmhouse. The valley began where the last terrace gave way to the slope. Simple enough, except I had never noticed how clearly the two belonged together until then.

It was strange how much difference a name could make.

I looked towards the valley again.

Mist rested across its floor in slow white ribbons, hiding the lower hills while leaving only their tops exposed. Somewhere inside it, water moved. I couldn't see the stream, but every now and then its sound reached me, faint beneath the morning wind.

The old man was already working.

He moved between the beds with the same quiet patience I had come to expect from him, stopping only when something deserved his attention. He never searched. His hands always seemed to know where to go before his eyes did.

The little girl followed a few steps behind, carrying the woven basket against her side.

Today she wasn't wandering.

She was learning.

The old man stopped beside a plant and brushed one finger across a single leaf before speaking. I still couldn't hear him. His lips moved, his expression softened, and the silence remained.

The girl watched carefully before cutting only a small piece from the stem.

Never the whole plant.

Sometimes she lifted the leaf to her nose before placing it inside the basket. Sometimes she frowned and returned it exactly where it belonged.

Once, she picked up a fallen leaf from the path and placed it beneath the plant it had come from instead of putting it in the basket.

The old man noticed.

He said something.

The girl looked at the leaf, then at him, and nodded.

I leaned forward without meaning to. It was such a small thing, but I wanted to hear what he had said. The dream gave me no sound, only the shape of the exchange.

The old man didn't reach for the leaf.

He simply waited.

I stayed with them longer than I had in previous dreams. There was comfort in watching people who had repeated the same morning so many times that neither of them felt the need to fill it with conversation. The girl knew when to wait. The old man knew when to let the silence remain.

My attention wandered beyond the final terrace.

The land dropped more sharply there, and the garden gave way to the valley. I watched the mist for a while, trying to find where the sound of water was coming from.

Nothing.

No river.

No stream.

Only white mist lying between the hills.

I looked back at the garden.

It had become difficult to think of it as something my mind had simply invented.

That thought stayed with me longer than I wanted it to.

The old man stopped.

This time, I noticed.

His hand had been resting over a bed of green leaves. Now it remained suspended above them.

The girl noticed too. She lowered the basket to the ground and looked towards the road without asking why.

I followed her gaze.

The road curved around the slope above the farmhouse, disappearing between the trees before reappearing farther down near the stone entrance.

There was nothing on it yet.

I listened.

For several seconds there was only wind moving gently through the herbs.

Then an engine found its way into the morning.

Distant.

Steady.

The girl reached for the basket again but didn't lift it.

The old man straightened.

Neither of them appeared surprised.

A dark blue sedan appeared between the trees, following the narrow road with unhurried confidence before turning towards the stone entrance.

It stopped.

The engine fell silent.

The doors opened almost together.

Three men stepped out.

They didn't speak to one another. They simply took up positions around the car, one near the front, another beside the driver's door, the third farther back along the road. None of them looked towards the farmhouse for long.

The rear door remained closed.

I waited.

It opened.

A polished black shoe touched the gravel.

Then another.

The man who stepped out wore a dark suit that seemed too precise for the muddy road. He adjusted one cuff before looking towards the garden.

The eye patch was the first thing I noticed.

The face was the second.

Recognition came before memory.

I knew that face.

Not from the dream.

From the portrait on my bedside table.

For weeks, I had believed I was drawing him from imagination. I had changed the shape of his mouth more than once, erased the line beside his cheek and redrawn it until it looked right. I had never given him an eye patch.

Now I understood why the face had always felt more familiar than anything I could invent.

The same narrow mouth. The same measured eyes. Even that slight crease beside his left cheek that my pencil had somehow remembered before I did.

I stared at him.

He stood beside the car for a moment, looking towards the garden as though he already knew what he was seeing.

The thought came and went before I could examine it.

He began walking.

The men around the car stayed where they were.

He didn't look down as he entered the garden.

That unsettled me.

Everyone else who entered Ashcombe seemed to notice where they placed their feet. The old man moved carefully between the beds. The girl knew which leaves could be touched and which couldn't.

He walked as though he already knew exactly where everything was.

He passed the first terrace without slowing, then the second.

When he reached the old man, they stood opposite one another without shaking hands.

For a moment, neither spoke.

The old man glanced towards the farmhouse.

The man with the eye patch followed his gaze.

Not towards the whole house.

Towards the second-floor window on the eastern side.

The curtains were closed.

I looked at it too.

Nothing moved behind the glass.

The old man said something.

I couldn't hear the words.

The eye-patch man answered. His voice was missing, but I saw the old man's fingers tighten around the edge of his sleeve.

The conversation continued like that, soundless from where I stood.

The eye-patch man barely moved.

The old man did.

A slight turn of the head. A hand lifting and falling. Once, he looked towards the girl.

She hadn't moved.

Neither had the basket at her feet.

I watched the man's face instead.

There was nothing dramatic in it. No anger. No impatience.

Just attention.

After a while, he looked towards the farmhouse again.

This time, the old man followed his gaze.

The second-floor window remained closed.

Whatever passed between them ended without either man offering a gesture that I could understand.

The eye-patch man turned towards the entrance.

The three men waiting by the car moved before he reached them.

He walked uphill without looking back at the garden.

At the stone entrance, he paused.

His fingers returned to the cuff he had adjusted earlier.

Then he got into the car.

The rear door closed.

The sedan turned onto the narrow road and disappeared between the trees.

I kept watching the space where it had gone even after the sound of the engine faded.

The morning returned slowly.

Wind moved through the herbs.

A bird called somewhere beyond the farmhouse.

The little girl bent to pick up her basket.

Then she stopped.

I followed her gaze towards the garden.

At first, I saw nothing.

Then a thin grey thread lifted between two rows of plants.

Smoke.

It was so faint that I almost mistook it for the mist in the valley, except this was rising from the earth.

The girl took one step backwards.

The old man turned.

The smoke thickened.

Something orange glowed beneath it.

I stared at the patch of earth where the first flame appeared.

The dew was still clinging to the leaves around it.

The fire should have struggled.

It didn't.

The first plant caught without drying. Flame travelled along its wet leaves, then slipped beneath them and appeared again several feet away.

Another bed caught.

Then another.

The fire crossed the narrow stone paths as though they weren't there.

It climbed from one terrace to the next, moving through the garden in a widening line of orange.

Heat reached me before I saw the flames come any closer. I perceived the smell of burning leaves, sharp and green, and for the first time since entering Ashcombe, the dream gave me something I could feel.

The little girl stood beside her basket.

The old man reached for her.

Then the man with the eye patch turned.

His eyes found mine.

Not the farmhouse.

Not the garden.

Me.

For one impossible second, neither of us moved.

I had the strange feeling that he wasn't looking through me or past me.

He had seen me.

And the garden began to burn.