The Garden God

The garden looked imposing up close, it looked daunting enough from afar. It was an overgrown mess at the back of her new flat, lots of brambles, a few trees, and what looked like a tumble down shed right at the back.
Tess had just moved to Cardiff looking for work in the big city. She had grown up in villages and towns, and this was the next big step, she had found a one bedroom flat close to town, and had its own parking, mainly for when relatives came to visit.
After getting used to the area and starting with her new job for a few weeks,(she managed to get a shop job in town) she decided to venture out into the wilderness of the garden, armed with pruning shears, heavy duty gloves and comfortable shoes, she went in.
she had picked a good weather day, a beautiful Sunday, the sun was shining off the odd flower that were scattered around and peeking through thorns and stinging nettles, it was nice and warm and despite being on a main road it was lovely and calm, surprisingly serene.
The butterflies and bees were out in abundance, and Tess enjoyed looking at the spiders in their webs. She started hacking away at the long brambles trying to make a path to the tree, she could see apples, big ones, and she was picking at the blackberries as she went along, nice and sweet, there were lots of them.
After battling through to the tree she picked one of the apples, it was a baking apple, that was OK, she could still cook with them. Behind the tree was a little bit more ‘garden’ and a shed with a corrugated iron roof and hiding behind bushes of holly, thinking there might be something interesting inside the shed she carefully chopped away at the holly ( that would be useful come Christmas she thought). Poking her head through the door apart from spiders webs and dust she found a perfect oval of dust on the floor, as if someone had removed something that had been there for a long time, as she turned to leave there was a slight movement from the corner of the room, she turned quickly back to see nothing, just her imagination.
As Tess started to walk back past the tree ducking the lower branches she could hear birds singing and rustling in the bushes, she had seen cats in the garden before out of her bedroom window so assumed that was what it was, then loads of things happened at once, the rustling stopped, the birds went quiet and it was like a bubble had encapsulated that moment, no noise could be heard, it actually felt amazing, then she heard something, very faint, and sounded like a small child whispering.
‘Please help us’ it said, and constantly on repeat
Tess completely confused as to what just happened asked
‘Who, how, why?’
‘ We are the residents of the garden, we need help, we can’t survive long if we are without our god’
‘What, who is your god?’
‘ It was taken from us, from the house, we need it’
Tess was thinking of the oval of dust in the shed, ‘I’ll see what I can find out’ she said thinking what else can she do;
‘What does your god look like?’ otherwise she wasn’t going to get very far at all
‘Our god is old, and can feed us with life, by showering down nectar from the heavens’
‘Right OK’ Tess said hesitantly trying to think what it could be.
Then just as soon as it happened, it un happened, the bubble was lifted and she could hear cars in the background, birds singing and a butterfly flew across her path.
Dazed and confused Tess went back inside her flat carrying a few apples and she picked some blackberries to settle her nerves.
What could have made that shape in the dust?
As the weeks went by she gave up trying to work it out and concentrated on other things. Looking out of the bedroom one day she noticed the garden was not as blooming as once it was, with all the rain they had had recently the garden wasn’t more overgrown, nothing had grown in weeks. She went outside to have a look, and on closer inspection Tess found the chop marks from before, the path that she had made was unchanged, the apples that had fallen from the tree were not decaying, there was no sounds coming from the overgrown bushes and no wasps,bees or butterflies fluting around it was all quite creepy and eerie really.
She headed towards the shed again to see if the empty void was still there, it was.
Looking around more she could see tidy footprints and scuff marks in the dust, she thought about taking a photo, but then decided that if she did show someone she would sound mad, that would be a great first impression to her new friends.
As she walked back along the overgrown path she noticed off to the side was an old rusty wheelbarrow upturned, very carefully she moved it ever so slightly and out came a funny looking creature of bark looking like a bigger version of a moth but with legs and massive wings standing up straight, it looked up at her, it snarled barked and ran of into the nettles. Tess was losing it, although it did make her think of what the made that void again, she was due to see her landlord today so she decided to ask him what could have made that mark.
‘Hi Tess’
‘Hi Ed, how’s it going’
‘Fine thanks, how can I help you are you settling in well?’
‘yes thanks, just a couple of things, any chance someone could fix my oven hob, I’m having trouble lighting it and my light bulb strip above the kitchen is flickering, and I don’t know how to change it?’
‘That’s fine, I can get my electrician to call you at the end of the week if that’s OK?’
‘That’s great thanks’
‘Oh really random quick question since your here, has anything been taken from the shed out the back as there’s a void in the dust?’
‘Oh yeah, I needed a watering can and I remembered where I had one’
‘Oh, that makes sense, thanks, sorry weird question’
‘That’s al-right, I’m popping back at the weekend to see the upstairs tenants, see you later’
‘Thanks bye’
Now he said it, it made sense, the showering remark that the whisper mentioned, she decided to go to a hardware store in town and bye a cheap new stainless steel one, for resilience and longevity.
That evening she dropped in her stuff, put on old trainers/jeans and carried the new watering can to the shed, she matched up the void with the watering can and walked away, half way back through the bramble path it went quiet again, it was that bubble again, all she heard was a low whisper of thank you. Back to reality in a second and she found herself hemmed in by the nettles, the ones that haven’t been growing for weeks and all of a sudden appeared, so much for her path, lots of scraps and scratches later she got to the concrete backyard to find a basket made of branches with apples and blackberries in it, she smiled, looking back she could see the tree looked more beautiful and everything had more colour and a fresh feeling about it, she could also swear that the bark on the big tree was moving, but maybe it was just her imagination.