Chapter 3 A Garden Of Secrets

• The sky was overcast, casting a muted silver sheen over the garden behind the house. Lucy moved carefully between the rows of half-wild herbs and vines, her boots wet with morning dew, the scent of damp earth thick around her. What had once been her grandmother’s pride—neat beds of medicinal plants, flowering fruit trees, and sacred herbs—had grown unruly in the years since her passing. It was still beautiful, but wild now, as if grieving with her.
• With gentle hands, Lucy dug around the roots of a clump of starflower, a pale-blue bloom used for calming fever and mending the mind. She intended to transfer it to her Sanctuary, one of the few remaining plants that had not yet been replicated inside. But as her fingers brushed deeper into the soil, they found something hard, not root or stone—something placed.
• She cleared the dirt with careful fingers and uncovered a small box of blackened wood, no bigger than her palm. Symbols had been carved into the lid, nearly faded with time. One of them she recognized: a warding sigil for concealment, drawn in the old language of mystics. Her breath caught.
• "Gran," she whispered, her voice too loud in the quiet of the garden.
• She sat back on her heels, heart thudding. With reverent fingers, she opened the lid. Inside, nestled in folds of dried moss, were three small items: a bundle of dried white lavender, a silver ring etched with the same concealment sigil, and a worn scrap of parchment.
• She unfolded the note with shaking fingers. Her grandmother’s writing, unmistakable in its careful loops:
• "If you are reading this, child, then I am long gone. Some secrets I could not share while I lived, not for lack of trust, but because of the danger. The gifts in our blood run deep—healing, the prophetic dreams—but each of us also carries one gift more, a secret one, different for every generation. Mine was modest—charm crafting, rooted in farming. I could bless soil, whisper to seed, keep rot from fruit, and life from fading. I buried these to protect you—and me. Trust your instincts. You are stronger than you know. Use this ring and the sigils when you tend to what remains. They are small remnants of what I could do, but they will help you continue what I’ve nurtured."
• Lucy pressed the note to her chest. The tears came quietly this time, not the storm that had followed her grandmother's passing, but a soft ache of longing.
• In the days that followed, Lucy worked through the garden row by row, moving everything she could into the Sanctuary. She cataloged what she found, cross-referencing with her grandmother’s old journals, the ones filled with sketches and handwritten notes in the margins. She discovered plants she had overlooked—nightglow root, used to draw out poisons; ghostleaf, bitter and silver-veined, for pain of the soul. Some had been hidden behind tall hedges or camouflaged among vines.
• And there were more secrets.
• In a small grove beneath the lemon tree, she found a ring of stones arranged in a spiral. The earth inside had a different scent—sweet, pungent, like dried blood and honey. As she knelt within the circle, memory overtook her.
• She was nine years old, barefoot in the grass, chasing fireflies. Her grandmother stood by the lemon tree, humming an old tune, her hands brushing the bark as if it whispered back. Lucy had asked, bold with curiosity, "Gran, why do you sing to the trees?"
• Her grandmother had smiled, her eyes the color of warm ash. "Because they listen. Because when you carry magic in your bones, everything alive wants to speak. Even the roots. Even the wind."
• "Can I hear them too?"
• "One day," she said. "If you listen closely."
• That memory came with a pang now. Lucy stood in the spiral and placed her hand on the soil. The Domain inside her stirred, a gentle warmth in her chest. The land responded, even here.
• She whispered, "I’m listening."
• No voice replied. But she felt it—a hum in her bones, a soft acknowledgment. The earth remembered.
• One afternoon, Lucy found a rusted tin behind the tool shed, buried beneath a tangle of mint and thornleaf. Inside was a stack of folded papers, old letters written to names she didn’t recognize. Some were never sent. Most spoke of visions, warnings, veiled mentions of “the ice to come.”
• "The stars are aligning again," one letter read. *"I see frost creeping over the fields, stealing the breath of those who sleep. It’s not this year, perhaps not the next, but it comes. We must prepare."
• It was dated fifteen years before Lucy was born.
• She sat at her grandmother's old desk that night, with letters all over it. Slowly, her fingers followed each line. Questions, sorrow, and a fresh realization raced through her head.
• Whispering, "You saw it too," she said. "You knew."
• A quiet knock on the door startled her. She turned to find one of the village elders, a woman named Aling Rina, holding a basket of dried fish and rice.
• "You haven’t eaten," Rina said softly.
• Lucy took the basket with a grateful smile. "Thank you."
• Rina peered past her into the room. "You’re sorting her things."
• Lucy nodded. "She left more than I realized."
• "She always did." Rina stepped closer, her gaze softening. "Your lola was kind and wise, always ready to help anyone in need. We all admired how the land thrived under her care, how she always had something to offer no matter the season. But there was always a quiet part of her she kept to herself."
• Lucy didn’t reply. She only bowed her head, hands tightening around the basket.
• No one ever truly knew what Lucy and her grandmother were capable of. Not the depth of their gifts, not the sacred weight of what had been passed down through generations. All that the village saw were the tangible offerings: a legacy of healing knowledge, roots buried deep in herbal remedies and ancient care, and a generosity as steady as the seasons. The land flourished beneath their hands, and its yield was shared with quiet grace. In return, the people respected them—not out of fear or awe, but because of the lives they’d touched and the steadiness of their kindness.
• What lived beneath that surface—the prophetic dreams, the hidden charms, the soul-bound Domain—was never spoken aloud.
• In the weeks that followed, Lucy worked quietly. Her life remained simple—studies in the city, healing the sick for supplies, and tending her garden. But now, every step she took was with purpose. Every herb she transplanted, every letter she read, every sigil she redrew in chalk and ash.
• She preserved the garden not just for its healing but for what it meant. A legacy. A promise.
• The Domain grew with her will, shaped by her knowledge and her intention. But outside, in the waking world, she lived as she always had—quiet, kind, and patient. She would not show her power. Not yet.
• But she was preparing.
• The dream had made her wary.
• The garden had made her wise.
• And the memory of her grandmother’s voice, soft as wind through lemon leaves, made her brave.