Mei Lin POV
The north garden was not a garden.
It was a grave.
Mei Lin stood at the broken gate and stared at what was supposed to be her new home. Grey dirt that looked like ash. Dead roots curling out of the ground like old fingers. A fence that was missing every third plank. And in the corner, a shed that was leaning so far to the left it seemed to be making a decision about whether to fall down today or wait until tomorrow.
She had seen sad things before. She had worked in an office with grey walls and grey carpet and a coffee machine that cried brown water into your cup. But this place made her old office look cheerful.
She stepped through the gate.
The soil crunched under her feet like something that had forgotten it was ever alive.
"If you're here about the gardener position," said a voice, "you're the fourth one. The last three lasted four days, five days, and one very optimistic week."
Mei Lin spun around.
In the far corner of the shed's shadow, sitting on an upturned pot with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest, was the oldest man she had ever seen. He had white hair going in six different directions, a robe with a patch on the patch on the patch, and the deeply relaxed face of someone who had stopped worrying about anything a long time ago.
His eyes were open just enough to see her. Barely.
"I'm Pei," he said. "I tend the gate. Have for thirty years." He paused. "Mostly I sleep."
"The soil," Mei Lin said. "Is it truly dead? Or just "
"Dead," Pei said firmly. "Spiritually dead. Whatever energy this plot had, it used it all up long ago. Nothing grows here. Nothing will grow here." He closed his eyes another fraction. "The sect keeps the plot because removing a registered garden from the records requires seven forms and two elder signatures, and nobody wants to do the paperwork."
He was asleep before she could respond.
Not dozing. Fully, deeply, contentedly asleep, snoring once softly like a period at the end of a sentence.
Mei Lin looked at the grey dirt.
She looked at her hands.
In Shanghai, she had kept three plants on her desk. Small ones, in tiny pots, because the office had a rule against anything bigger. She had talked to them on hard days. Her coworkers thought she was strange. The plants had always seemed to grow faster when she was sad, which she had always thought was a coincidence.
She was starting to think it was not a coincidence.
She knelt down and pressed both palms flat against the ground.
It hit her like a wave.
Not pain. Something deeper than pain. The soil was not dead it was empty, which was completely different. Dead things have given up. Empty things are just waiting to be filled. And underneath the emptiness, underneath thirty years of grey and nothing, something was still there. Old. Patient. So hungry it hummed.
It recognized her hands.
She felt it the way you feel a door unlock that small, clean click of something that was shut coming open. The something under the soil pressed up toward her palms like a dog pressing its head into your hand asking to be petted.
Mei Lin sat back on her heels and breathed.
Her chest felt strange. Full and tight at the same time, like breathing in before a big jump.
She reached into her robe pocket. When she had been walking to the garden, she had passed a patch of weeds near the path and grabbed a handful of seeds without thinking pure habit, the same way she used to pick up interesting pebbles as a child. They were nothing seeds. Weed seeds. The kind of thing that grew in sidewalk cracks and meant nothing to anyone.
She picked one. The smallest one.
She pushed it into the grey dirt with one finger, barely a centimeter deep.
Then she pressed her palm over the spot, closed her eyes, and gave it just a little of whatever that warm thing was that lived in her chest.
She felt the seed crack open.
She did not mean to fall asleep sitting up against the dead fence, but she was tired in a way that went all the way to her bones. Being reincarnated, publicly humiliated, and then having your soul pulled into hungry soil all in one afternoon will do that.
When she woke up, the sky was pale pink with early morning light.
She looked at the spot where she had planted the seed.
Then she stood up very quickly because what was there was not a sprout.
It was a plant. Knee-high, already. Strong stem, wide leaves and those leaves were not green. They were threaded through with veins of gold, real gold, catching the morning light and throwing it back brighter. The whole plant was humming. Not a sound exactly. More like a feeling, a low steady vibration that she felt in her back teeth.
It was the most beautiful thing she had ever grown.
She stared at it for a long time.
"Hm," said Old Pei, who had apparently woken up and shuffled over beside her without her noticing. He stood there in his patched robe looking at the knee-high golden plant that had not existed eight hours ago. He scratched his chin. "That is new."
"Do you know what it is?" Mei Lin asked.
"No," said Pei, completely calmly. "Never seen anything like it. Have you?"
"No."
They both looked at it.
"Is it dangerous?" she asked.
Pei considered this seriously, which she appreciated. "Hard to say yet. But " He paused and tilted his head toward the fence.
Mei Lin looked.
On the fence, on the branches of the dead tree beside the fence, on the shed roof, and on every inch of ground around the outside of the garden's broken walls, there were birds. Dozens of them. Sitting perfectly still. Every single one of them staring directly at the gold-veined plant with expressions that were not normal bird expressions.
They were not scared. They were not hungry.
They looked like they were listening.
As she watched, three more landed on the fence. Then two more on the shed. They came silently, from every direction, settling around the garden's edges without making a sound.
Just staring.
Mei Lin looked at the plant she had grown overnight from a weed seed and a little warmth from her own chest.
She thought: I have no idea what I just made.
Then she thought: I need to make more.
Then, very quietly underneath both of those thoughts, the real thought: If the birds already know, how long before the people do?
Inside the shed, Old Pei sat back down on his upturned pot, folded his arms, and looked at the girl standing in the grey dirt surrounded by silent birds.
He had tended this gate for thirty years. He had watched three gardeners quit in a week.
He had lived long enough to recognize when something important was beginning.
He closed his eyes. He smiled. He went back to sleep.