Good Neighbours

 

12 months ago the instructions of what to do about the wall and the gate were revealed to subscribers to my Patreon. Now I am releasing them to everyone, and I only hope you have not wandered into the realm of the Moon Queen since then.

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Here’s what they tell you. You go around the wall, all the long way through the orchard and over the brook, and you end up in the far meadow by the river. You go through the gate and you end up in Mysteria, the realm of the Moon Queen. Every now and then someone will come with the authority to open the gate, and when they do you fetch the second key and let them do it. This is what every head gardener has told his successor when he’s appointed at Bleakmore House.

Try not to let anything grow on the wall Old Peterson told me as an afterthought.

Anyway I kept the locks oiled, cut down the various vines that tried to grow on it, generally kept people away. Looked after it properly. Twice now someone has come with a warrant from the sheriff and the first key and we opened the gate. The first time putting something on the step the other side, the second time a traveller passed through. A simple task but an important one.

No one tells you what to do if the wall collapses.

By the time I got there the entire outdoor staff were staring at it. Undergardeners, game keepers, the carpenter and his lad, the smith and his girls. On our side a pile of bricks, the other side grey stones. I pushed through the crowd and looked at it, and further on to where black and red blooms grew on bushes.

“This is a big mess,” said the figure on the other side. Wrapped up in a long coat so dark it absorbed the sunlight, a scarf across their face, a broad-brimmed hat low on their brow. “Very big mess.”

“Wet winter. Got in the stones,” I offered.

“Behemoth Mules tramped across the field,” they replied, indicating torn up soil and damp pools that almost looked like foot prints.

“We’d best fence this off,” I said, turning and looking at the undergardeners, then the carpenter. “Don’t want folks with no business crossing over.”

“Don’t we?” asked the figure. “Ah, I suppose not. Well nice to meet you, even if it took all this to do so.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance. I’m Josiah Brown.”

The figure nodded. “Robin Gardener. I suppose we shall have to learn to be neighbours.”

A bright rainbow flash as an extraordinary bird flew through. “I suppose we will,” I said.