Every time Tura spoke about him, she got weepy and changed the subject, which frustrated Suri. She wanted to know more because Tura’s father had predicted that she would find a baby in the forest, and he’d told her to raise the girl as a daughter and train her to be a mystic. How he’d known about Suri was a mystery that continually tantalized her. Her father had told Tura he would come back, and she constantly waited for his return. Given he was right about the abandoned infant, Suri waited, too.
“I don’t know that you want to make a flute of this,” Tura said.
“Why not?” Suri snatched it back and held it up, looking for what imperfection she might have missed. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothin’ except it’s a human bone.” She slapped her forearm. “From right here.”
Suri looked perplexed. Then she held out the bone and compared it with Tura’s arm. They were roughly the same size.
She’s right. I don’t want to put my lips to a stranger’s elbow.
“I’m surprised ya didn’t know. The rest of the skeleton musta been there. I guess some injured soul crawled in and died.”
Suri shook her head. “Not like that. Not at all.”
“This was the only bone you found?”
“Not like that, either.”
Doubly disappointed that Tura was not impressed with her discovery and that the bone wouldn’t be made into a flute, Suri was losing interest in the conversation.
“What then?” Tura asked.
“Room had a big pile in the middle. Thought it might be firewood, but no. Turns out this whole day is just one big disappointment.”
“A pile of bones?” Tura said looking at Suri’s onetime prospect for a flute.
“Human bones are stacked in a hidden room under the waterfall?”
Since Suri had just explained all that, and it wouldn’t make sense for the old woman to be asking again, Suri guessed Tura had been speaking to the bone. Tura spoke to many things, and a bone wouldn’t make a list of the most unusual. Tura didn’t press, reinforcing Suri’s guess, but it left her wondering if the bone had responded, and if so, what had it said.
Suri’s curiosity grew when Tura stood up. The old woman ducked into their home and reemerged wearing her old cloak, staff in hand.
“You should stay here,” Tura told her. “Check the garden and wash the strawberries.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have an errand to run.”
This was Tura’s all-purpose response for something she didn’t want Suri to know about. No amount of questions, or degree of persistence, or volume of tears would pry the truth from the mystic. Errands were things that had to be done. Never were they pleasant or enjoyable, so Suri needn’t fear missing out on something fun. Tura had assured her of this many times before. As such, Suri did not protest, and Tura set off up the trail, but she paused partway and looked back. “How big is this pile?”
Suri shrugged. “’Bout as tall as me.”
Tura nodded grimly. “Don’t wait up then. I might be late.”
The garden grew on the sunny side of their cottage. Suri viewed it as part of their home—the better part, the portion without roof or door. In late summer, there would be towering sunflowers and sprawling vines of pumpkins and squash. The border of the garden would be in bloom with an abundance of peonies, bellflowers, and bachelor’s buttons. This was where the onions lived along with tomatoes, beans, carrots, and cucumbers. Few of them ever bickered, but the pumpkins and squash constantly warred over territory, and the poor flowers trapped beneath their broad leaves complained, refusing to bloom if not treated better.
A small spring-fed pond was nearby and gave birth to a tiny creek that trickled and laughed. There were several perfect sitting stones to rest on, and a moss-enriched walkway of flat stones that Tura had placed long ago. A waist-high stone wall draped in ivy formed a half circle, but existed only as a place to put unwanted rocks.
The garden had no need for defense. Tura had long ago explained to the thieving raccoons, mooching deer, and pilfering crows that the garden was off limits. The inhabitants of the wood knew better than to steal from Tura. The one exception was the goulgans, who were decidedly less intelligent than even a rabbit. These burrowing pests popped up in the garden with regularity and could not be reasoned with. What they lacked in intelligence, they made up for in cunning and persistence. They disguised themselves as plants and were equipped with thorny teeth to bite any who might attempt to evict them.
Unlike groundhogs and squirrels, goulgans didn’t grab and dash; they set up house. Once in, they spread out and invited more of their kind to join them. When they reached out with their talons and strangled the carrots, smothered the beans, and starved even the great pumpkins and sunflowers of water, it was clear that the goulgans’ motives were pure malice. They never stole anything—they only murdered.
When she was old enough, Tura appointed Suri Garden Sentinel, and it was her job to defend the flowers and vegetables from the rampaging monsters. Goulgans were not terribly large, and Suri tore them out by hand, throwing them beyond the garden wall where they screamed and raged at her. This method, while effective, hurt as she was frequently bitten. The little monsters had small but sharp teeth. One day, Suri squared off with a particularly nasty goulgan who had slipped in unseen and established a firm stronghold behind the sitting stone near the wall. She had tried to pull him out but failed. During the battle, she had been badly bitten, and in her anger, Suri had cursed the goulgan. To the best of her memory, she had called it a brideeth, which was a new word Suri had learned from Tura. The old mystic had begun teaching her the Divine Language, saying it had special powers, and while Tura hadn’t actually taught Suri that word, the mystic had used it often enough to express anger and pain that Suri felt confident she had used it correctly. As it turned out—a tad too correctly.
The next morning the goulgan was dead. Suri found it withered and brown. Some parts were even black. More than that, a dozen other goulgans in the vicinity were also dead, and for weeks afterward, they stayed out of the garden altogether. But by virtue of being so dumb that they made rocks appear shrewd and dirt brilliant, the goulgans eventually returned. Suri was forced to repeat her curse on a regular basis to keep the garden clear, and that evening after Tura had set forth on her errand, Suri realized it had been quite some time since she’d screamed at the garden.
As expected, the garden had once more been invaded by an army of goulgans. As night rolled in, she managed to spot fifty in the dim light. Suri sighed and shook her head. As awful as goulgans were, she took no pleasure in eradicating them, but she knew death was common and necessary in the forest. One fallen tree gave room to wildflowers and new saplings. Bigger animals ate smaller ones, but Suri noticed the ones that killed never gloated. They didn’t cheer, or laugh, or dance. Death was a solemn event, like sunset or rain.
Minna came over to watch. She sat on the grass beside the sitting stone near the wall—the site of Suri’s first great battle—and waited. The wolf knew what was coming, and yet each time looked surprised when Suri screamed her curse. Suri had gotten better at it over the years, and she was able to put real venom into her words. By morning the garden would be brown with goulgan corpses.
“So, you possess a power, do you?” a raspy voice asked.
Suri jumped. Her eyes went wide as she stared at the garden, surprised the goulgans had learned speech. But the voice hadn’t come from them. The words had been uttered from the forest. Any speculation that the goulgans had spoken was erased when the voice then asked, “Where’s my bone?”