Meanwhile, Anthē was dreaming.

She was in the middle of a garden, bursting with life all around her. Trees towered and flowers of every colour dotted the lush grass. It was beautiful. The garden seemed to radiate energy so that the different colours came alive in the eye, blending into each other but standing out individually at the same time. She was enrapt. No single tree or flower looked the same; each seemed to posses its own set of shades and hues, as if one could almost sense the personalities of the leaves and the bark and the butterflies from their unique colours. Here, colour was felt.

At first, not knowing that she was dreaming, Anthē just blinked.

“How…?”

“How did you get here?”

Anthē started. These words had been spoken by someone behind her. She turned to see a young man with red hair, dressed in green, his hands busy writing on parchment while he spoke to her.

“Who are you?” she managed.

“You can call me Leukos.”

“How did I get here, Leukos?”

“Everyone has a secret garden within themselves,” said Leukos matter-of-factly. “Some people think it’s the most beautiful place you can go.”

“I certainly do. This is wonderful...” said Anthē, accepting the logic of the dream.

“Yes, and it belongs to you.”

“To me?” Anthē laughed.

“Right,” said Leukos. “Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. It’s meant to belong to exactly one other person as well.”

What could he possibly mean? Anthē had never even been to this place before. But then…why did it feel so familiar to her?

“Are you sure?” she said. “Who else does it belong to?”

“Not even I can tell you that. Only you can know who it is.”

“That’s strange.” Anthē was only half paying attention to Leukos, still staring at the trees and flowers. “Why does it have to be like that?”

“That’s the way the gardens are designed.”

Anthē moved around under the boughs, staring up in wonder. “Well, I hope I find the person I’m supposed to share this with...”

“So do I,” said Leukos with empathy.

Anthē laughed again, though less confidently this time.

“Hang on, if I’m here now, on my own, does that mean I can come here whenever I want?”

“Yes. As soon as you find the key you can enter whenever you want. It is terribly sad.”

Sad? What did that mean? The boy was speaking in riddles. She decided to humour him.

“What do you mean it’s ‘terribly sad’, Leukos?”

“Well, the gardens weren’t designed for people to enjoy them on their own. If you’re on your own, you can only access half of it. When some people find their key, they go into their gardens and steal fruit from them to keep and eat for themselves. But because they never see the whole garden this way they start to yearn for the other, hidden half. Most of the time they don’t even find this and they just go on stealing more and more fruit, hoping to satisfy their hunger. Or even trespassing in other people’s gardens that don’t belong to them, that aren’t joined to their garden. But they are never satisfied. It’s terrible, really.”

This was clearly a joke. What Leukos was saying made no sense. Anthē thought she’d play along with his game though, at least for a while, and then he could tell her where they really were and how they had arrived here all of a sudden, just exactly what was going on. She looked at the boy. “Alright then, so if what you’re saying is true, that means that this garden has a special extra half I can’t get to, right?”

Leukos looked her in the eyes. “Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, where is it then?”

To her surprise, she got an instant answer: “Do you see that hedge over there?”

At this Leukos pointed to a tall, long hedgerow in the middle distance. It seemed to mark the border of the garden, refusing to disclose what lay beyond it, being too thick to see through and too tall to see over.

“Yes...what about it?” said Anthē, hesitating visibly.

“Come with me,” said Leukos, and he began to walk towards it. Anthē followed him through the flowers and between the trees, content to simply stroll through the garden in the sunlight. She kept her eyes fixed on the mysterious hedge at its end, however, and as they neared it they began to pick out an irregularity in it, a glimmer or sparkle where there should only be a leaf or a branch. When they came closer still she saw that there was a large metal structure embedded in one section of the hedge. When it became clear what it was, Anthē broke into a run. Overtaking Leukos, she went right up to it and began pulling back branches and brushing aside foliage to expose the totality of the structure: a golden door. Leukos just stood behind her, watching and writing. When she had finished, he spoke quietly.

“Your can’t open it by yourself.”

“But I need to get to the other side.”

“You cannot.”

“Why not? Why can’t I?”

“The other half belongs to one other person. Only when you both bring your keys and unlock the door at the same time will it open, and the two gardens will become one.”

“Why does it have to be like that?”

“Don’t ask me, that’s just how the gardens are designed.”

“But I want to go there now! How can I get in now?”

“Only when you both bring your keys and put them in the lock from both sides, only when the time is right, only when everything is as designed, only then will you see the other side.”

Anthē was kneeling in front of the door. “You don’t understand, I need to go there now. I can… I can taste what grows there… Somehow I can taste what is behind this door, and I… I need to go there.”

“Is it not as I said? You must wait for the right person. For the right time.”

Anthē stood and turned to face Leukos with a cry. “Why? Why must I wait?”

Leukos looked down at his manuscript, writing with more urgency. He replied in a quiet, but nonetheless firm, tone.

“Do not presume to be angry with me. I did not design this garden. It has been arranged so that everything will bloom at the appointed time, when everything is perfect for you and the person on the other side. When the door is unlocked and the hedge is brought down and the two gardens are one garden, when everything coincides, when the time is right. That is not a matter of choice; it is the way things are.”

Anthē had tears in her eyes. “Well why does it have to be like that? Who says? I never agreed to this! If it’s my garden I should be able to decide what happens in it!”

Leukos did not say anything, but continued to write.

“Answer me!” She turned to him. “Answer me! Stop scribbling in that stupid book! Where am I? How did I come to this place?”

Again Leukos did not say anything, though he now began to walk in the opposite direction, away from the door. Anthē did not want to leave it, but she managed to reluctantly pull herself away in pursuit of him. She ran to keep up with his brisk pace, gasping for the sweetly scented air in between what had grown into deep, heavy sobs. This time she followed him along a winding path that weaved its way between the tall trees, which became more densely packed so that she eventually found herself in a forest. Anthē cried out for Leukos to slow down, but her cry was choked by tears. In her desperation she reached out to pull him back, but as she did so her foot caught on the root of a tree and she was brought to the ground. Instantly she tasted the soft earth in her mouth, and this made her cry even more. It was delicious. As she scrambled to her feet something caught her eye.

She froze.

A little way away from the path there was a small cluster of blackened tree-trunks, the remnants of tall oaks that appeared to have been burnt down. The flowers surrounding them were either singed or entirely burnt away. They were the only dead things in the garden. Anthē walked over to the trunks slowly and knelt on the ground once more next to them, weeping. She caressed the trunks, held the fragments of flowers in her hands and covered herself in tears, alone in her own beautiful garden.

When she could cry no more, she got to her feet and walked on in search of Leukos. She eventually found him where the path came to an end by a hedge not dissimilar to the one they had just come from. Sure enough, there was another large door hidden in it. Whereas the other had been easy to see from a distance because of its magnificent sheen, this one was a lot less easy to spot: it was covered in a good deal of moss and rust and was even slightly dented in one place. The metal it was made of certainly didn’t sparkle or shimmer with the glow of newness; it was grimy and rusty and in fact it looked as if it had been forced open on more than one occasion.

Leukos was sitting on the grass next to it, writing busily, and paid Anthē no attention as she gathered her speech.

“Leukos, back there in that forest, I saw… I saw… Somebody had damaged my garden...”

No reply, just the scratch of the quill, the song of the birds and the brush of the breeze past her ears.

“Somebody has been in my garden! Someone ha-”

At last Leukos spoke, almost with a sigh. “Yes, I know.”

“How did they get in?”

“You gave them your key. Or they broke in.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have a key, Leukos. This is the first time I’ve ever been here!”

“It most certainly isn’t.”

“What do you mean it isn’t?” More anger bubbled up through Anthē’s tears. “Tell me, Leukos! Tell me! Where am I?”

Leukos stood slowly. “You must leave now. The key is in your pocket.”

Anthē just looked at him, bewildered. After a brief moment she dared to slip her hand into the pocket of her dress, knowing that it was empty and yet discovering that it contained a small golden key. Without a word she strode up to the battered door and placed the key in the lock. It fitted perfectly. She turned it.