The Midnight Garden

The snow stretched out before her: a wonderful expanse of pristine white silk. The moon’s rays made it seem laden with sparkling silver diamonds, freshly sprinkled like morning dew. It lay endless, long, flat and undisturbed all the way to the horizon.

She stood, wrapped in silky black furs from shoulders to heels, under a solitary black-barked tree. It was draped in a gossamer blanket of little ivory blossoms with pink centres, as though they blushed in the moonlight. It seemed to her as though they had fallen from the sky like perfect silken-petalled snowflakes to cover the tree’s dead bare branches.

Her cheeks flushed the colour of the blossoms as a cold breeze seemed to urge her proceed. Wrapping her furs tighter as though for reassurance, she took a few tentative steps forward. Her feet crunched softly like whispers on the snow, yet she couldn’t see any prints left on its immaculate surface, and looked all around her. It was perfectly desolate. What a beautiful loneliness, she thought, what an incredible vastness.

She came to a raised part of snow where the tree’s roots disappeared, sugar-coated by fresh snow falling from the cloudless sky. It could have been a road edge, as an identical one ran parallel to it from horizon to shimmering horizon. She spared one more glance up at the elegant blossoms, then started to walk by the roadside.

The snow was too thick to tell if she was walking on grass or concrete, and she found it increasingly peculiar that she left behind no footprints. With no record of her expedition behind her, how would she ever find her way back? She had only flashes of where she had been, bits and pieces of memories. But then again, where was she now? And where was she headed? Wherever she was going, the moon lit her way with all the clarity of the sun, and even created a shadow as her travelling companion. The night was perfectly clear: an epic length of dark blue velvet cast across the sky. The moon was huge and full as seemed to float lazily along beside her, and the stars twinkled in her eyes as they watched from above.

She walked with a certain serene sense of purpose, though her journey had no particular destination or meaning that she was aware of. She huddled deeper into her furs as the wind blew tiny crystal flakes through her hair, yet felt strangely detached and peaceful. That’s when she became aware of the proud snow-muffled tred of horses behind her and she stopped.

She turned as a black open carriage with no driver pulled up beside her and halted in a flourish of snow. The two, small vellum-haired white horses towing it snorted and shook the snow off their manes. The carriage door opened and a set of cast-iron steps descended beckoning her in, which she obliged.

She settled gratefully into the snug velvet interior of the carriage and the horses continued on at a leisurely trot, the stairs ascending and door closing of their own accord. She tried to fix her fragmented memories- the darkness, the cold, the weightlessness she could recall- but her mind’s voice was a disembodied echo in her head as she pieced together the last thing she remembered.

Dieing was the last thing she remembered.

She had drowned. She remembered seeing her long blonde hair floating before her in the murk like pale coloured seaweed. Then she had closed her eyes, and opened them here.

She sat back in the carriage and let the horses take her down the long country road of her youth. Soon she’d see the cottage appear on the horizon where she’d grown up. She’d pet the horses and walk through the gate into the midnight garden where she’d spent her happiest childhood memories. Waiting inside was a warm meal, a roaring fire, and everyone she’d ever loved- and lost. She smiled for the first time since her death at the thought, and silently urged the horses on. They’d be expecting her…