Picture a rose. A single rose, in full rosy bloom. Now picture a bulldozer. Make it a big one...an American D-7 at least.

The bulldozer and the rose, that's all you need. You don't need to see the unctuous developers with their shiny suits and gold watches. You don't need to see the golden koi in the pond, or the daisies sparkling on the inviting green grass.

Focus on the rose and the bulldozer. That's the story, right there.






SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS

Episode Sixteen : Green Magic



The two of them were talking again, heads close together, both seated on a stone bench out by the Earth-lit reflective pool. For a single catty moment Amy wondered what they had to talk about: this barbarian Prince from Earth and the sheltered child Princess of the Moon Kingdom.

The moment passed quickly. Amy felt a wave of tender fondness for her young friend. The Moon Princess was such a dear. So pure, so trusting, a child so ready to explore the exciting great world about her. How terrible it was that her childhood should have to come in such a time as this.

The Prince had no sword. The palace guard did not trust him that far, not yet. But Queen Serenity understood the fastnesses of the heart in a way few others could. She saw the connection between the serious, black-haired young prince and her own golden-haired daughter, and she would let no-one stand between them.

The Prince didn't yet know he was in love. But he would. Amy knew that with a womanly awareness that was new to her.

She had arrived at the silver gardens and white palaces of the Moon Kingdom as a child, as companion to the little princess who would be heir to all of this. They had been close friends, close as only girls growing up together could be. Later, other companions had arrived. But Amy had been the first. She treasured that.

Little girls grow. New interests appear. Amy watched, fondly, as her friend sat so near Prince Endymion of Earth, and wished, nay, waited, for that day when romance came to her life as well.

***

A ping. What was that? Amy opened her eyes. She tried to lift her head. Fell back. She felt so terribly weak.

It all filtered in; the chill, the thin sheet above her, the faint noises of medical equipment, the smells of sickness and disinfectant. She was in the hospital. Vandreskakaoerkhmmlkr. His sword, that lonely rooftop. Crashing pain and blackness.

Amy lifted her head again. She was everywhere bandages, splints, tubes, wires. Like some kind of Borg. Someone sleeping in a chair nearby. Her mother.

It was so still in the room. Middle of the night maybe. Shadows of equipment, light only from the nurse's station. She was in the ICU. Hooked up to EKG, blood O2, IV's. Medical machines she didn't recognize crowded around her. A big one at the foot of her bed that looked complicated and very expensive.

The very expensive machine went "ping" again. Amy, oddly comforted, let her eyes close.

***

The doors flew open to let the Negaverse General in. The young princesses were huddled in the center of the shattered playroom, clutching at each other in their terror. It was General Malachite, the most senior of Queen Beryl's army. He had been pointed out to the girls, earlier, from the battlements. Now he was here, tall and terrible and filling this last sanctuary with his menace.

His uniform was splashed with blood and a new scar cut his cheek. His eyes glared crimson. Yet, there was still a nobility to his features. He was of an honorable lineage -- assuming there were such things within the kingdoms of the Negaverse.

In one glance General Malachite took in the bodies of the Negaverse shock troops who had been first into this room. The girls had defended themselves well.

It was Princess Venus who rallied them again. "Venus Crescent Beam!" she cried. "Jupiter Lightning Crash!" another of the young Princesses shouted. "Mercury Bubbles!" Amy cried, adding her own power to the others.

Malachite sneered, his handsome face turned instantly ugly. His hands, oddly clean still in white gloves, lifted to stop their attacks dead.

"Keep pouring it on!" Princess Jupiter shouted. Amy didn't have the strength for this. None of them did. This was no practice session to be ended when they were winded, but a solid powerful effort at the peak of their ability. Each of the Princesses faded in turn, the girl falling sobbing to her knees as her powers expended and left her.

The Negaverse General said nothing. For a moment it seemed he might salute this valiant but futile effort. Then his hands moved again and the wasted power of their attacks was gathered up, clarified, amplified, then sent back at them in a single crackling ball of energy.

The energy struck. Amy died knowing she had failed her Moon Princess once again.

***

"Code Blue! Code Blue!" The voice came over the speakers. Amy drifted up from drugged sleep to see bright lights in one corner of the ICU, pitiless white lights aimed down at a thrashing figure surrounded by trauma personnel. Terror held her by the throat. She was in one moment both in her chilly bed, pinned by that white light as surgeons thrust quick hands into her body and red blood gushed, and trapped on that rooftop again as the giant raised his massive sword.

Amy tried to gasp. Her breath was caught and there was a ringing in her ears. She thought she might be flailing, reaching out or trying to block. The panic raced over her in a dark wave and submerged her and rolled her over and over into blackness.

***

All the Princesses were there. Not all of life in the Moon Kingdom was masked balls and earth-lit walks. Now it was sewing, the embroidery that was one of the skills a young lady was expected to have.

The Moon Princess was terrible at embroidery. She was too easily distracted. Yet even now Amy could see flashes of the maturity yet to come; moments where she did concentrate, when her fingers flew and her needle was sure. Amy had been with the Moon Princess longer than any other in their little sewing circle, and what she saw, she was sure only her mother the Queen could see as well -- within this tiny, giggling blond was the spirit and the serenity to one day rule.

Other girls were there as well, comfortable and joking and gossiping with the rest. One was daughter of the Captain of the Guards. Two others were junior chambermaids. It was hard to see past that ease and friendliness to see the awareness that was always there of class, and the wariness that rested somewhere behind their easy laughs. It wasn't something most nobles thought about. But Amy had wondered, sometimes, if there wasn't a better way for people to live together, then to have the few served and obeyed by the many.

Vision blurred. Perhaps this was another day. The other girls had gone. The Princesses sat closer, a private game that others were not invited in. It had something to do with the Moon Princess's heritage; there was a memory of some argument, of the other Princesses feeling left out, of a dim awareness filtered down from the adults that times were changing and danger had come to the peaceful kingdom.

Amy looked down at her lap. She saw the white and aqua and baby blue, the pretty bow and the pleats that her needle secured with neat, tight stitches. She was making her uniform.

***

She awoke again and her mother was there.

"Amy?"

"I..." Amy swallowed. It had been so long since she had spoken. Strange dreams and visions, as twisted and incomplete as the ones that Greg suffered, chased after her from the drugged haze. "Oh, Mom! I was so....scared!"

The word wasn't adequate. Nothing could measure the icy despair she had felt on that lonely rooftop as the great sword had smashed her from the sky and hurled her broken body across the roof. And as she had waited, helpless, knowing she was going to be hurt again, then die.

"I came as soon as I heard. They didn't let me in while they were operating." The words were coming a little too fast, and Hanae Mizuno made a visible effort to stop herself. She smiled weakly and gripped Amy's hand even harder.

"I felt you," Amy said. "I knew you were there nearby." Her mother looked so much older now. Her eyes had dark rings. I hurt her a lot, Amy thought. She shouldn't have to see me like this.

"Amy, what happened?"

"I..." Amy started to say. She couldn't. Couldn't find the words, couldn't stand to bring the memories so close. She could feel the icy draft of that rooftop on her skin again. Taste the burnt-metal taste of pain and blood. She was breathing faster and faster, throat closing, chest tight.

"It's all right, Amy. It's all right. I'm here," her mother said urgently. She reached through tape and IV lines to give Amy a clumsy hug.

It had been a long time since they had hugged. We let ourselves drift so far apart, Amy thought. I was so self-sufficient, I let her let herself be driven away. Now, whatever else happens, we have a chance to rebuild a closeness between us.

And with that Amy was at last able to let go. She relaxed into her mother's arms as if she were a small child again, leaving behind worry and pain in the comfort of a mother's love.

***

The blade struck. Amy felt what happened in every obscene detail. First the skin split, exploded outwards from the wound in a shock wave of outraged flesh. Then, the contact with the flexible strut of the tibia. It tried to bend with the impact but the inertia of bone and flesh was too great. The sturdy little bone snapped in green-stick fracture, splitting up half of its length. The great blade moved inward, contacting her other leg even as both tibia and fibula split apart, fragments sent like bullets through the flesh about them. The solid column of the femur was stressed next. Too much matter, too much inertia again. It tried to flex along the protected paths of the joints but could not move quickly enough. With a snap that propagated a shock-wave of its own the great bone snapped across, followed shortly by its brother. Already hydrostatic shock was racing up through her body, blood pressure cresting in this last instant before the ruined flesh parted and let the pressure out in a spray of life-fluid.

***

She had almost coded on the table. From shock, and from bleeding out. The broken bones themselves had released almost two liters of blood into the tissues. And that wasn't counting the soft-tissue damage, or vascular laceration. Two units of whole blood had kept her from crashing and a whole lot more saline had been run in through large 16-gauge cannulas in both arms before she was properly stabilized.

Upstairs the wounds had been extended and explored, with the devitalized tissue excised. They had performed reduction and fixation on the worst of the fractures, wiring the fragments of her left patella and pinning both femurs to external "Wagner" frames. Intramedullary rodding of the tibial shaft fractures was done with stainless steel nails. The wounds had been left open under soft dressing with copious drainage and she was shifted back to the ICU.

It was really a sophisticated form of naming the demons, Amy thought wryly, like assigning gods to the thunder and the rain and giving them faces and personalities. She had a little knowledge. She had asked a bunch of questions. Did it make it easier, knowing exactly what had happened and exactly how badly she was hurt?

She might walk again. If she did her physical therapy properly and promptly, that is, and if there was no permanent nerve damage.

Like it mattered.

Amy lay back on the cool white sheets. She had failed. She was crippled, helpless, and their only slim chance to stop the Negaverse had already been squandered. Not even Sailor Mercury could make a difference now, and Mercury was trapped behind the Magic Fire Vandreskakaoerkhmmlkr had cursed her with.

It was only weeks, now, before Beryl descended on Earth with all her troops. And then it would be an end to all hopes, all dreams.








"There's a girl whom no one sees, there's a girl who's left alone. There's a heart that beats in silence for the life she's never known..."

The Secret Garden Lyrics by Marsha Norman.



Picture Raye Hino, once Shrine Maiden at an old and respected Shinto Shrine in the heart of Tokyo. Her face is smudged, her eyes ringed with dark. Her clothes don't fit her very well and aren't very clean, either. She has a bare handful of yen, one hoarded 500-yen piece and perhaps 200 in smaller coins. One more "morning service" and an order of curry rice from the machine and she will be broke.

She isn't sure where she will sleep tonight. She is running out of hiding places and she isn't long on trust right now. Not enough money for a sleep capsule out by the airport or a cheap hotel or even the sometimes-bargain a "Love Hotel" can be in the off-hours. Going near one of those places, looking young and female and desperate, is not on her list of smart things to do anyhow.

No home, no job, no family, the cops probably looking for her...her options are running out fast.





Molly was at her table again. Maxfield Stanton knew she was there. Molly knew that once he would have spoken to her; would have told her she needed to go home and would have ordered a cab for her. But he didn't speak now. He pretended to ignore her. But he knew she was there, all right. Knew and was oddly afraid to speak to her or catch her eye.

Molly knew she was in danger. She was in deep water; physically, and emotionally. She was playing with forces she hardly understood. She wished Serena would stop her and pull her aside and talk to her. For all her flightiness, Serena had a solid instinct for what was true and right.

Maxfield was troubled. He was worried at one moment, elated at another. Something was going to happen within weeks and he seemed in two minds about how he felt about it.

Molly was in two minds herself. She was frightened, more frightened then she thought was possible. And she was drawn to him, too, with an attraction she could not fight.





He wailed, but softly. His kind were natural skulkers, and he had no desire to bring an entire town down upon himself. This woods was too small. It wasn't the great wild tracts his kind preferred. It was more like a tiny copse. The strange lights of this great steel village stabbed deep within the branches and left little comforting shadow.

He wasn't entirely sure who he was. In one mystic arrow strike some of the essence that had driven him was destroyed, and something within had moved into the void. In his breast was the ache of hunger and fear and desire, but also things his kind had never felt...or at least had never admitted they felt; loneliness and a need for family, and a need to be something more than a rough beast.

Below in the night on the streets of Tokyo, a tall monk stood still and lifted the tattered bamboo hat from his face. "Hmmm," he made a thoughtful sound to himself. "Hrmm."






It was two weeks after she had gotten out of the hospital and Amy was invisible. She found that amusing. It was a cold amusement that could too easily become bitter, but it was amusement. She turned her chair around and backed up the curb before the doleful song of the crosswalk sign ended.

She had once been left out because of her intelligence and her bookish habits. Now she was ignored because of the chair. Amy wasn't walking yet, and wasn't sure she ever would. It hardly mattered anyhow. And the chair was comfortable. In it she was invisible. She was anonymous, unmarked; eyes slid away from her. People did not like being reminded of the fragility of flesh and of their own mortality.

She was out of school. One more dream had been cast aside. That loss had a special bitter flavor all its own, but it was really just one more thing she had accepted she could not have.

Amy had a new understanding now. Through her dreams, through the hours she had lain awake in her hospital bed trying to put off the moment when she had to shift position again and adjust all the tubes and wires and sheets once more, she had come to a new understanding of her core self.

Amy was a lonely girl. She was shy, and had difficulty reaching out, but there was space left open in her heart. Without her friends she was incomplete; only part of a person. She could live with what she was now, even reach out to touch the bittersweet of it, but she was less of the person she could be -- that she wanted to be.

Yet it was as much a kindness to Serena as it was self-protection that she stayed away. Serena was still the laughing child. She did not need to be weighed down by Amy's full and bitter understanding of their doom.

She rolled across another crosswalk. At least her arms were getting exercise. She wasn't doing her therapy. She knew the harm that was doing to her; every day her limbs stiffened more, and the chance she would ever leave the chair shrunk further. It only bothered her distantly. It bothered her mother more, and Amy could not explain, nor stand to see her pain.

On the other side, she found the sidewalk was blocked by construction. She'd have to go another block before she could cross the expressway. Amy caught her wheels in her gloved hands and continued.

Amy understood something else, too. Her methods of mind had failed her on that rooftop. But they were still her best tool. It was a part of her that she would never lose; this desire to understand, to come to grips with, to name the demons and take their power from them.

She had gone to the Azabu Library. She was returning from there now. Amy thought of the tall girl she had just met. Amy had known instantly she was seeing another champion. Another fighter like Raye, or like she had been herself.

"Why didn't I tell her everything?" Amy murmured to herself. Because she didn't want to get dragged back into that hopeless fight. The tall girl had hope, though. She was going to keep fighting. So what kind of loser did that make Amy?

She reached the crosswalk. The traffic was growing. She wheeled across quickly, worrying all the while. This wasn't a wheelchair-friendly city. She was a bit further North-east than she meant to be, and it looked like the street was curving further East. She continued under the expressway anyhow, hoping she could work her way out of Higashi-Azabu before her arms gave out entirely.

It was quieter on this side of the expressway. The usual shapes of embassies, the Daiichi Hotel and the Azabu Towers in front of her, the Tokyo Tower further on in the same direction. She wasn't on a main street and there was little traffic.

She was moving along a wooden fence that looked in need of repair. On the other side were trees. On impulse Amy turned further East and let the street carry her past more fence, a greenhouse, a stone wall with an iron gate.

Amy wheeled up to the gate. She had found a garden.











"Clusters of crocus, purple and gold. Blankets of pansies, up from the cold. Lilies and iris, safe from the chill. Safe in my garden, snowdrops so still."

The Secret Garden Lyrics by Marsha Norman.



It was called "The English Garden." Just to make sure everyone got it, the sign was posted in romaji; in that cute little 26-letter alphabet the English-speakers used. It was a nice sign, subdued colors and a busily serif'd black-letter font. It hung on a wrought-iron gate that brought back twin memories of Mejii Restoration buildings and the romantic mysterious Europe.

It had been part of the estate of a feudal lord during the Togugawa regime. Ieyasu's innovation in security had been to "invite" the families of his daimyos to spend part of the year in Edo. Many of them had built lavish second houses on the outskirts of town.

This lord had not fared well. The Shogun had him executed and his estate confiscated. The garden languished until 1868, when the restored Meiji Emperor had it turned into a public park and directed that it be rebuilt in the style of the great English gardens.

Over the years, however, funding dried up. There was now a single gardener, a man old enough that he should have retired decades ago, who hung on and did what he could to keep the place running.

Tokyo had continued to grow. Boundaries expanding constantly, building over Tokyo Bay, extending inland, spreading over the Kanto plain and eating smaller cities as it held onto its place as one of the world's greatest conurbations. The economy spiraled upwards with no end in sight, fortunes were made overnight, investors marched four abreast. It wasn't possible to lose money, especially in prime Tokyo real estate.

The title to lands under the garden, taken so long ago by one Shogun and granted anew by an Emperor, was questioned. Posses of lawyers turned over moldering scrolls in an attempt to find any irregularity that would allow the land to be developed anew. The government was only too happy to oblige. Only the immediate neighborhood stood up for their garden, and tried hard to make their voices heard.

Now, at last, the deeds were being signed. A new office tower would rise from the earth and stomp more of Tokyo's precious green open space under feet of concrete and steel. One more delay to weather, one more appeal to be smothered, and the bulldozers would move.






"You just about can't kill a rose," Tadahiko said. The old man was clipping away as he spoke, bare hands flicking among the thorny stalks and canes of the tall English roses. "Water and light, that's all it really needs. And a little care here and there. Cut away the dead parts, open it up and thin it out so it can breathe."

"I understand," Amy said. She liked to talk to him. She liked to watch. She had come here often during the past days.

"Some say to cut them back in early winter. Some like to trim them with each bloom and keep the rose blooming through the spring. Give it plenty of light and water and a mild climate, though, and it will bloom season round. Roses are forgiving. Ow."

He touched the spot of red blood on his hand. Wagged a finger at the bush.

"Don't you wear gloves?" Amy asked.

"Can't feel the life that way," the old gardener answered. "Need to feel the warmth under my fingers, know whether to cut or to save. Besides, the rose feels better if it can get in a lick or two in return. Likes to know it was in a fight."

Amy laughed. The gardener laughed with her. It felt good.

The warmth of the sun was on her. June was ending, summer coming in. Those still in school would be taking their vacation soon. Amy was up in the Rose Terrace with Tadahiko. To her left was the green sward of the Croquet Lawn (although croquet had not been played there in fifty years or more), and behind her was the Rose Walk that wound in gentle switch-backs down to street level at the North Gate.

The roses were in full bloom. Up here in the terraces they were in alternating patterns of red and white and a deep amber. Out across the grass ginkgo spread shade with their pale green leaves. Further South stood the tall sentinels of Red Cedars -- Sugi -- a ancient breed of "fossil" tree and relative of the Giant Sequoia. The Sugi and Hinoki almost hid the 800-year old Camphor that stood solidly like a sturdy old man.

Amy breathed in the scent of the roses. Sometimes subtle, sometimes strong, and each one different. It was a rare peace that she found here. It helped. It helped very much. It had been a week since a nightmare had yanked her from sleep. She could even look at the shine of silver on a cooking knife without a shudder.

That evening, as her mother bathed her, Amy had an odd thought. She looked into her mother's round face, so much like her own. I am her daughter, her child, Amy thought, but I am also somehow of a kingdom far away and across some strange barrier of time. As Princess Mercury I was born to another; raised and loved by another woman. How can I reconcile having two pasts?

It didn't lessen her love for, or her bond to, her mother now. But how would Hanae Mizuno take it? Would she feel threatened, even lessened, knowing her daughter was not hers alone?

Yet she already shares me, Amy realized at that moment. With Ihara Mizuno. They write to each other. She tells him about me. It had been a passionate romance that burned so brightly it burned itself out. Now they were close friends: pursuing their careers in different places and in different worlds. As infrequently as I think about him, though, he is my father. Some of that love for poetry and writing is in me, too.

"You just worked through something, didn't you?" her mother said gently. "Your face smoothed out a little there."

Amy was able to smile, just a little, in return. "I don't mean to be keeping secrets from you," she said then. "I want to tell you everything. I can't, not just yet. But soon, I promise. Very soon. I don't want there to be any more secrets between us."











"When a thing is wick it has a way of knowing, when it's safe to grow again you see. When there's sun and water sweet enough to feed it, it will climb up through the earth a pale new green."

The Secret Garden Lyrics by Marsha Norman.



Darien had been coming to The English Garden to rest and meditate between sessions of cram school. He was, oddly, getting used to having two lives. Or, as might be a better way of looking at it, being two people sharing one soul. It seemed to be a common problem these days.

He and Tuxedo mask had a cordial relationship now. His effort in fighting off the geas that gripped them both had broken through somehow; Darien was aware now of what his alter-ego did. And Tuxedo Mask in return had gained a self-awareness that let him search, now, for answers to the riddle of his existence.

Tux had a plan. It involved gathering the Rainbow Crystals, which he hoped would lead him to the Silver Imperium Crystal and the Moon Princess. Darien, remembering his haunting dreams of the Princess, approved of the scheme.

It felt good to be in motion. To be actively working on his problems instead of moping about them. Whatever came of it, Darien was sure this was a change for the better.

A flash of blond hair caught his eye. Serena was coming towards him along the winding path that led from the bridge to just past the gazebo. She hadn't realized he'd noticed her. She was trying to be casual, trying so hard to pretend she hadn't seen him yet and was going to be surprised.

Darien waiting calmly. He found he liked watching her. She was a child, as coltish and awkward as they came, but she was so delightfully alive and full of such innocent happiness it made one smile just to see her.

"Excuse me," she said as she stopped before him. It was surprisingly formal for her, and very polite. "Is this seat taken?"

Darien didn't point out there were a dozen benches spaced around the Duck Pond, most of them at least as good as this one. Even a day earlier he might have said that. Or said something equally sarcastic. Or perhaps ignored her.

Instead he shrugged, a sort of non-committal "go ahead and take it" shrug.

Serena sat in that way of hers, like a spring wound up and set down on a counter and ready to bounce up again at a moment's notice. Then, slowly, she settled. She sighed, almost inaudibly. Relaxed into the bench as if finding a home there.

She almost seemed to be humming, like a little dynamo of happiness. She WAS happy, Darien realized. Happy to be sitting near him. Such a simple thing. A little space begrudged by him, a little of his privacy given up. Such a simple thing to create such happiness in another person.

He realized he'd misjudged Serena again. He had never even dreamed of the depths of emotion she could carry. Somehow her feelings, her needs now looked more real, more important. If there could be such a weight of emotion, then perhaps she knew better than he did the recesses of the human heart. Perhaps it was he that was being foolish and immature.

He felt humbled by her in that moment. And he felt a growing sense that all his self-control and his plans and his posturing were going to be swept aside once again by some force outside of him. It was just a sense yet, just a tickle. But it was there.







Amy watched them from across the grass. Her friend Serena looked so peaceful and so happy. And Darien...Amy was sure the young man in the black hair had no idea how natural he looked beside Serena. He most certainly was not in love. But Amy wondered how long that would be true.

My friend is growing up, Amy thought. I miss her. I wish I could share this time with her. Our growing-up time. Our first romances, our heart-aches. But there is so little time left.

There was little time for the garden as well. Amy knew that now. She mourned that, and it wasn't a distant pain. For the first time since she had awoken in the hospital she found herself able to care again and to want to help.

Bulldozers were already here. They didn't have the right to move even a meter, to cut even the exterior fence, but they had been brought in already. Amy was very suspicious. Tadahiko had been missing for days. A weekend was starting. It looked very much as if the developers meant to jump the gun and present the court with a fait accompli on Monday.

The sun was already low. Shadows slanted half way across the Duck Pond, shading the daybloomers and lotus. In the beds the popcorn curls of Daylily and the firework clusters of Butterfly Milkweed caught and threw back the orange that had just started to touch the West. A few secretive purple blooms of Dahlia added accent, as did the cotton-ball puffs of Yarrow.

The shadows were deep and slanting under the Red Cedar, Japanese Cypress and the still-green Maples. The little forest path that led to the statue of Peter Pan was dark and hidden.

Someone was watching her. Waiting for Amy to notice her in return.

It was the tall girl. She was amid the trees, dappled by their shade. She spoke from within them.

"This place isn't safe today."

Amy turned her chair fully. She was on the path, of course. As inviting as the green grass looked, she could not run barefoot through it. All she could do was mire her wheels.

"What do you mean?" she called back in a low voice.

The tall girl emerged from the woods. "Can't you feel it changing?" She asked. "The spirits of this place are awakening. And they are angry." One toss of her head was enough to point to the bulldozers.

Amy bit her lip. The tall girl was right. She could feel it now when she looked at it. As unscientific as it might be, there was an intelligence here. The intelligence of green growing things, of ancient trees, of the secrets of wood and soil. An old and dangerous intelligence that men woke at their peril.

She wasn't going to leave.

"My name is Amy," she told the tall girl. "I'm staying. I'm staying to help. And come down here; there's some things I need to tell you."











"It's a maze, this garden, it's a maze of ways..."

The Secret Garden Lyrics by Marsha Norman.



The sun was leaving and it was growing dark. Darien sat up, suddenly, realizing how late it had gotten. Serena, too, looked around and noticed the time.

They were just turning towards each other, sharing a grin a embarrassment, when a chittering broke in.

A squirrel was watching them. It wasn't quite like any squirrel Darien had ever seen before. It was large, as large as a small dog. The teeth were long and yellow.

"Serena," Darien said quickly. "We need to get out of here. I'll take you home now."

There was no need for Tuxedo Mask to appear, Darien thought. The evil that had been done here had been done days ago. There was nothing left for him to fight. The only important thing now was to get Serena home safely.

He hardly noticed he had his arm around her as they walked back to the gate.






They had sat for hours, Lita cross-legged in front of the girl she now knew as Amy. Amy had told her about the Negaverse, and the fight she and the other girls had led against it. They had discovered they had much to share. They were friends now. Somehow they were immediately close friends, and there was a lifetime of sharing they had to go through in a few hours.

When the choking, ratchetting sound came from the parking lot Lita leapt to her feet. "The dozers!" she cried.

Amy was right behind her. They got back to the parking lot as fast as they could. What they saw was a handful of construction men in yellow hard hats and a man in a suit giving them some unneeded advice in an annoying, superior-sounding voice.

"This is illegal," Lita told them, hands planted on hips. "You should be more patient."

"And who is this?" The developer turned enough to favor her with a baleful eye. "Keep your nose out of what you don't understand, sweetie."

You'll be understanding my fists in a moment, Lita thought. She remained calm, but a small, dangerous smile was already on her lips. "You will have to wait for the final papers," she said. "No fair jumping the gun."

"They can't do this!" Amy's voice was ragged. Lita wondered which tore at her friend worse; her love of the garden, or her fear for the men here should they disturb the thing that waited.

Lita saw what she saw. She could see the way the trees were tossing in a wind that was hardly there, hear the creaking like voices from the woods, see the way even the ornamentals and the runners had contorted themselves in shapes of menace.

The workmen were already uneasy. Lita thought it likely some of them also sensed what they sensed. It would be hard, she realized, to push dirt and wood around for a living and not get a sense for the moods of the earth.

The young man from the developers was having none of it. He brushed imaginary pollen from his expensive suit and made a point of checking his gold watch. "Time is money, gentlemen," he said. "We aren't in the business of paying men who don't work."

The driver of the first dozer sighed. Gave it a little gas, warming up the engine. It boomed and rattled and black crud came from the exhaust.

Amy moved. Swiftly. Before anyone realized what she was doing she had parked her chair directly in front of the bulldozer.

"That's it," the driver threw up his hands. He swung out of the cab, dropped to the ground, and took off his hard hat.

"What are you? You some kind of tree-hugger?" The developer sneered. "Well, you don't get much sympathy from me. Go throw your crippled little body in the way of some-one else's building project and leave me alone."

"What you are doing is wrong, and dangerous," Amy said urgently.

Lita let the confrontation go on. This was Amy's right; to stick up for what she believed in. To place her own body in the path of danger, if need be. She admired her new friend. Amy had strength she didn't seem to be aware of. And her voice, so reasonable, so sure, was doing as much to turn the construction men from their task as was the presence of her chair in front of the lead dozer.

"Look, we're sorry, Mr. Ehara," one of the workmen made himself spokesmen for the others. "We'd better come back Monday. By then it will all be settled and legal and all."

"She'll move," the developer said confidently.

"I don't think so," the workman said.

"She'll move!" With that the developer pushed the startled man aside and swung himself into the cab of the bulldozer. The instrument lights shone upwards at his face, making his expression strange and unreadable.

He gunned the engine. Amy didn't move. He reached for one of the two sticks, ground it against the gearbox, then found the clutch and tried again. Perhaps he had tried to raise the blade in a menacing way. Perhaps he meant to edge forwards a few centimeters.

What happened instead is the full 11,000 Kg of the Komatsu D41, driven by a roaring 110 HP diesel, jumped at Amy like a startled lion.

Lita was across the gravel, through the open door of the cab, and out the other door with the young developer under her so fast no-one, including him, had even seen her move.

He fell back on the gravel, though, making no effort to defend himself. His hands were out -- but his face had an open sneer.

The doors of the big black American car in the parking lot opened and four very large men got out.

"Oh, goody," Lita said. She got to her feet, planted her sneakers wide on the gravel, and cocked her fists. "Come on -- bring it on!"







Amy was on her face on the grass.

She had leapt, straight out, clearing the dozer blade by centimeters. It had slammed into her chair and sent it skittering across the grass.

She smelled damp earth, the sap from broken grass. He breathing was loud in her ears. Behind her in the darkness Lita was fighting. The dozer engine still rumbled and burbled in idle. And the trees rustled in renewed anger.

She was pressed against the grass. A blade hung in the growing shadows just centimeters from her eye. Amy could see the striations, the subtle folds, the tracery of circulation. There was so much complexity, so much purpose, in just that one blade. Within those folds and tissues were cells, frameworks of sturdy cellulose. The chloroplasts swimming like things alive, a glowing green as they scavenged sunlight. Chemicals transferred across membranes, proteins synthesized out of amino acids, link by chemical link in the seething vacuoles.

The cycles of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon, the inhalation during day and exhalation during night. Creating substance from water and air; fixing carbon, nitrogen, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and storing energy in phosphate bonds.

Growing. Not caring about the construction machines poised to tear the soil. Not caring even if there is a break across a blade, sap oozing, the plant dehydrating, no chance of recovery. The choroplasts and vacuoles and endoplastic reticulum still working, still in their endless dance.

In the soil, more life, more creatures, a vast community, a catalog of worms and insects and bacteria and fungi. All growing and striving and fighting for life.

Only humans, Amy thought, are stupid enough to give up. Only a human could accept that the battle was over and try to stop living.

Her hands found the ground. The sigil of Mercury blazed suddenly on her forehead. She pressed. She gasped. Come hell or high water, she was going to move, and she was going to get back in the fight.






"Welcome to my nightmare," Yamamura said under his breath. He had almost been too late.

The trees were whipping back and forth now. And they weren't the only thing in motion. A man screamed as dog-sized squirrels leapt at his face. Yamamura raced that way first. He ripped the creatures away, kicking one solidly as it fell. "Run for the gate!" Yamamura shouted. The man covered his bleeding head with his hands and staggered that way, still screaming.

Some low somethings that rustled were attacking the idling bulldozer. Yamamura couldn't see well enough but he thought they were teabushes. Over by the parking lot Lita was fighting hard with some bodyguards. It looked like she was holding her own, at least for the moment.

Yamamura ran across the grass. He yanked another man out of a strange embrace with a shockingly scarlet Turk's Head, and hoped the scarlet was the plant, not the man. The ginkgo's were getting active and he didn't think there was much time left.

Amy was fighting grimly and silently with a spiderwort. At least she hadn't tangled with a rose, he thought. It had managed to capture one arm and one leg and Amy was energetically making sure it didn't get near her throat.

The police inspector grabbed handfuls of sticky plant and hauled. Clumps of dirt came up with the roots but Amy was free.

"We have to stop meeting like this," she said with a faint grin. Yamamura pulled her arm around his shoulders and they staggered back towards the parking lot.

Suddenly Amy turned around. "Ehara! What's happened to Ehara?"

They heard the splashing at the same moment. "Don't look," Yamamura told her. "I think the koi got him." He thought of the gasping, fleshy mouths and shuddered. "We need to get out of here," he said. "It's only a matter of time until the topiary show up."






Lita was having a very good fight. She wasn't exactly winning. But she was holding up okay. She had been fighting for a good five minutes before she realized just how mad she was. Normally she didn't have anger in a fight. But trying to run over Amy with a bulldozer...that had tipped her over the edge.

She'd lost or thrown away the bandage. Something was wrong in her wrist now, but it still worked great for the roundhouse blows she loved. One of the bodyguards was down for good, but the other three were pressing her hard. Lita had just enough presence of mind to keep moving, shifting and stinging them, and make sure they never got a chance to get a good grip on her.

She was bloody. They were bloody. She was breathing hard through her teeth and there was a haze around her vision. She got a good one in. Someone else got her in the back of the head.

And then Amy was there, with the police detective in the suit, and she was shouting something. "Hey, you goons!" Amy was shouting. "Your boss is drowning in the Duck Pond!"

They broke off. Someone grabbed Lita and held her back; it took a moment to realize it was her friend.

Lita shook her head to clear it. The garden seemed to be seething now. Strange shapes moved in the gloom. "We got all the workmen out of it?" She asked.

"We did," Amy nodded. "I think it's over."

An line of red light slanted out of the darkness and a 200-year old ginkgo burst into flame.

"Cripes!" Yamamura yelled. "Shin, no!"

The man was a mere shadow framed against the lights of the city. He came into the garden, something with glowing bits on it in his hands. Another line of red light, another scream of flames. Amy was crying.

"That's...that's the guy that killed Joe!" Lita seethed.

"Shin, stop it!" Yamamura ordered. "There's no need!"

"Protect the public!" the Department Six man yelled back. "Or have you forgotten that, Inspector?"

"Is this the public we support?" Yamamura yelled. "People who break the law, who tear down a neighborhood's heart?"

The red light shot again and again. Shin was walking deliberately into the screaming garden, fires blooming angry yellow on all sides of him.

Lita saw the shape before anyone else did. It stood quietly in the edge of the seething woods, but it's eyes were fire.

"A stag?" Lita breathed.

"No!" Amy screamed. "It's Tadahiko!"

It was an English Stag. A proud, antlered beast. It was so beautiful and brave that Lita's heart stopped for the sight of it.

Shin shot. Fire bloomed along the stag's flank.

It charged. Shin shot again and again, some going wild, others chewing into the creature, the heart of the garden, the center of its spirit and its caretaker made anew.

The stag caught Shin, dying already, and the flame enveloped both.










"All through the darkest nighttime, it's waiting for the right time. When a thing is wick, it will grow."

The Secret Garden Lyrics by Marsha Norman.



The classroom was buzzing. Miss Haruna wasn't in yet, and the class was out of their seats. Melvin was there, and a tired-looking Molly, her friends Katie and Sarah, and all of them were clustered around Serena, who had just come in with the tall girl Lita -- and had pushed in the wheelchair of Amy Mizuno.

Amy was back in school. She looked tired, but determined. Focused. The girls that circled around her, welcoming her back to class, pressing her with questions and expressing their sympathy, could sense the purpose in Amy and gradually fell silent.

"It is time you all knew," Amy said calmly when they were quiet. "The Negaverse threatens all of us, but it makes a particular target of us. Of young people."

A murmur went across the class. Another followed it as they saw Lita, who was too new to have earned their trust, and Serena and Molly, who had, nod in agreement with this strange thing Amy was saying.

"This isn't a problem of adults. It isn't something that should be kept hidden. We young people have been the victims of too many Negaverse schemes. It is time for us to protect ourselves."

And Amy, with help from the others, began to tell her classmates everything she knew.






His heart went into his throat when he saw her. Chad had searched so hard, and so long. And he had worried so much; since he had returned to the Shrine to find it closed and dark and surrounded by police tape he had wondered and worried about what had happened to his friends within.

Chad knelt by the bus terminal bench. The girl hardly looked like a Shrine Priestess now. There was in her dark eyes a feral look. She had the look of a small, dangerous forest creature; there was a wildness about her, as if she might snarl or bite.

"Raye," Chad spoke gently. "Come on, Raye; I'm taking you home."








Dedicated to the people who work trauma, from surgeons and ICU nurses to the paramedics and ambulance drivers. They perform miracles every day.

All song excerpts copyright of Samuel French, Inc. and come from The Secret Garden; Book and Lyrics by Marsha Norman, Music by Lucy Simon, based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.




Next: Lita has it and Department Six wants it back. Next episode; "The God Gun." Be there and I'll show you!

Next Episode
Previous Episode
Fiction
Index