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I.
The sky had reached the color of weak tea when Mary Lennox and Dickon Sowerby finally found the last rose of the year.
"It is a rather puny thing, is it not?"
"'Tis a sweet little thing," Dickon said firmly. "And brave to bloom now, so long after its brothers and sisters did."
"I did not expect the blossoms to fall so fast," Mary said ruefully. "This summer...there were so many of them here, and now they are all gone. All but this one." She reached out and tentatively touched the base of the small rose-head, which trembled slightly beneath her finger. "All of that, and now only this one remains."
"They've jus' gone underground," Dickon said, crouching down beside her. "They've gone to rest among their roots 'til winter passes. In the spring, there will be roses again. Tha'll see."
"I know," Mary said, but she could not entirely suppress the forlorn note in her voice. Every morning, she awoke to find winter creeping closer and closer to Misselthwaite Manor. "Spring seems a long way away."
"Aye, I guess," Dickon said, looking at her sidelong. "Yet Winter has its good points as well. Winter cuts everything down to its roots and barest bones. It clears the way for all the green pretty things of Spring, and it has its own prettiness, in its way. Tha'll see."
"I suppose," Mary said. "Did you bring a knife, Dickon?"
"Oh, aye." Dickon fished through his pockets until he found a penknife, which he passed to Mary. Mary sighed and pressed the blade against the upper part of the stem. She had to saw at it a bit before she managed to cut away the last rose of the season.
"There. I hope we are in time," Mary said, climbing to her feet and brushing off the hem of her skirt. "I hope Colin hasn't left yet."
"Colin will not leave without saying good-bye," Dickon said. "Nowt if he had to miss a dozen trains."
Mary tucked the rose protectively within her coat, and then they hurried out the gate of their garden and through the myriad kitchen gardens that stretched along the grounds of Misselthwaite Manor. When they reached the front drive of the manor, they found a small cluster of servants helping to load luggage atop a brougham. The sky had lightened to blue, and it fair promised to be yet another cold, cloudless day.
"Oh, Mistress Mary! Where have thou been?" One of the servants waved an exasperated hand in her direction. "Master Colin has been asking for thee."
"Yes," Mary said breathlessly. "Yes, I am sure. Where is he?"
There was no need for directions, however, for they immediately heard the eager voice of Colin from above.
"Mary! And Dickon!" They both turned to see the pale boy standing impatiently at the top of the manor steps. He began to leap down, two steps at a time. "Where were you?"
"We went to our garden," Mary said as Colin came to a hopping stop before them at the base of the stairs. "We brought you something." She reached into the inner pocket of her coat and pulled out the little rose. Its small red petals were still tightly furled together, as if it were holding a secret within its heart.
Colin froze. "There are roses left? I thought they had all gone."
"There was one left. It was hidden in that far corner, behind where the lilies were. We wanted to send it with you, so that you would have a piece of this place when you left."
Colin took the rose as gingerly as if it had been made from glass. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you, Mary."
"It was Dickon's idea," Mary said, for she was an honest child. The tips of Dickon's ears turned red.
Colin turned up his glowing grey eyes upon the taller boy. "Then thank you, too, Dickon. It will be like a...like a magical talisman. Something to bear all the Magic of our garden. It will...it will keep dragons and goblins at bay." Colin swallowed and directed an apprehensive gaze upon the loaded brougham in the drive.
"Well, p'raps," Dickon said with some perplexity. "I just know that, whenever we must travel from home, our mother likes to send a little piece of the moors with us. She says we cannot get homesick if we have a little piece of home with us."
Colin gave a strained smile and began to protectively wrap the rose within his handkerchief. "I will not be homesick. I will not be gone long enough to be homesick."
Little frown lines appeared on Mary's forehead, but before she could say anything, the enormous front doors of the manor swung open and Mr. Craven came down the steps. Like Colin, he was dressed in traveling clothes.
"Father," Colin said, turning.
"Uncle," Mary murmured.
"You have all found one another then," Mr. Craven said, smiling down at the three children. "Good. It looks like we shall have good weather for our journey, Colin."
"Yes," Colin said quietly.
"Mary, I expect we will be back within the week," Mr. Craven said. "But it's possible that our business may detain us in some way, or the weather may worsen. We shall write you, should anything delay us." He smiled, but there were lines of anxiety at the corners of his mouth.
It was the first time Colin had been away from home, and both he and his father were attempting an untroubled nonchalance that neither of them quite felt. A part of Mary was irritated at these pretenses, but another part of Mary was impressed by their bravery, because both Colin and Mr. Craven were being brave in their own individual ways. Each of them was happily blind to these brave pretenses, of course: Colin felt that his father was unperturbed by the coming trip, while Mr. Craven thought that Colin was unreservedly exited about visiting another place. Clear-eyed Mary saw through these shallow disguises, but she gave no sign of seeing, for she did not wish to dishearten her uncle or her cousin.
"Are you ready, Colin?" Mr. Craven asked.
"Yes," Colin said, and one hand went to the handkerchief-wrapped lump in his coat pocket. "I am ready."
"It will be an adventure," Mary whispered suddenly and fiercely in a voice that reached only her cousin and Dickon. "It will be a great adventure, Colin."
"An adventure..." Colin said, swallowing. He shook Dickon's hand, and then he shook Mary's hand (to her bemusement), and then he followed his father to the door of the brougham. For a moment they stood there, two figures against the black carriage. They were dissimilar in posture -- Colin standing straight beside his father's crooked, forward-leaning shoulders -- but they both shared a certain indistinct quality. They looked like men steeling themselves to step into a hurricane.
Both father and son were afraid of this trip, Mary knew, and her heart hurt a little at the thought of it.
Then the driver opened the carriage door, and both Colin and Mr. Craven disappeared into the carriage interior. Immediately, however, Colin's pale face was thrust out the window.
"You will take care of the garden while I'm gone?" he shouted to them.
"Of course we shall!" Mary shouted back indignantly.
"And each other!" Colin shouted as the driver climbed into his box and urged the horses forward. "You must take care of each other while I'm gone!"
"Nowt to worry," Dickon said, swinging up his arm in an enthusiastic good-bye wave as the brougham moved down the drive. "Safe travels, Mister Colin!"
"An adventure! Remember, it is an adventure!" Mary shouted, and Colin shouted something back, but he was too far away, and they could not hear what it was. The brougham moved past the bend in the drive and out of sight. The morning sun shone brightly down on the dust raised by the horses' hooves, on the servants grumbling to one another as they trooped back into the house, and on the two children standing at the base of the manor steps.
Dickon glanced down at Mary. "They will be back soon. Thou will barely have time to miss them."
Mary dug the toe of her shoe into the dirt. "I suppose."
"Do thou think that Colin will like this school tha' his father will show him?"
"I don't know," Mary said.
One of Mr. Craven's friends was starting a new boarding school for boys near London, and he had suggested that Mr. Craven and his son come and see it. Mary knew that Colin was simultaneously delighted and terrified of the idea of school, although he had tried to hide his terror from his father. Mary also knew that his father was similarly conflicted, because he would be pleased if Colin was able to go to school like a normal boy, but he also wanted to keep Colin at home in the safe nest that was Misselthwaite.
Dickon turned away slightly. "Art thou afraid? That Colin will go off to school?"
"I don't know," Mary said again. "I am...a little afraid that Colin will love this school and go off to it and leave Misselthwaite Manor behind." She tiredly rubbed her forehead. "But I'm also afraid that he will hate it and come back again. School would be an adventure, and he wants adventures. And if he doesn't like it, he will feel as if he failed his father, and I don't want him to feel like that. I want him to feel brave and courageous." Mary gave a low, bitter chuckle. "So I will be sad either way."
"But happy, too," Dickon said mildly. "Happy either way, yes?"
"It is very strange," Mary said. "To know that no matter what happens, you will neither be completely satisfied or completely dissatisfied."
"Oh, well," Dickon said, and there was a tired note in his voice. "Nowt that strange, I think."
"Mmm?" Mary said, looking up at him, but his face was averted and she could not read his expression. Her hand crept out of the safe warmth of her coat pocket, and she took his hand. She felt a startled pulse of blood in his callused palm, and he looked down at her with wide blue eyes.
"We must have adventures, too, while Colin is gone," Mary said firmly. "We must have things to tell Colin when he comes back. He must not think that we were bored in his absence."
"Aye," Dickon said, and he smiled at her in a way that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "We must get right stuffed up with stories to tell."
II.
The letter came eight days later on a day that dawned cloudy and grim. Mary opened the envelope, and the tea beside her grew cold as she read its contents, slowly, twice.
"Is it news from Master Colin?" Martha asked as she came into the room.
"Yes," Mary said shortly.
"He and Mr. Craven are coming back then, are they?"
"Yes," Mary said again, staring down at the letter.
"Well, that is nice," Martha said. "If they come in the next few days, they may miss the snow entirely."
"Yes," Mary said, and then she said, "Martha, do you think the kitchens might make me a picnic basket today?"
"Today?" Martha asked with an incredulous glance at the storm clouds gathered outside the window. "For outside? Why...they might? If you asked? But you would have to be very sweet about it, and very firm, because the cook has a toothache and is in a rare temper. And Mrs. Medlock has gone to visit her sister, and so they have all gotten quite rowdy and saucy downstairs. They might, though...if you asked..."
"Very well," Mary said with resolution. She slipped the letter into the pocket of her dress, and she put on her coat, and then she set off firmly in the direction of the kitchens.
She was rarely permitted to penetrate into the sanctum of the Servants' Quarters, and she was only permitted on this occasion because the head housekeeper was gone and the head cook was in pain and thus a kind of gentle anarchy reigned in the lower halls.
And even then, Mary might have failed in her quest if she had not known the magic words to say when the cook balked and the scullery maids looked daggers at her.
"But it is for Dickon," she said in a voice that was as sweet and smooth as cream. "I must have the hamper for Dickon."
Dickon's name was a magic key; it opened all doors and cleared all paths. The cook immediately began to smile; the eyes of the scullery maids softened. Everyone knew Dickon, who had rescued the lost kitten of everyone's little sister and helped every brother-in-law with his ailing calf. And if for some reason they did not know Dickon, then they knew his mother, who assisted at every birth and helped lay out every corpse on the moor. Mr. Craven might pay the wages in the Servants' Quarters, and Mrs. Medlock might rule over the administration of the household with an iron fist, but their power at Misselthwaite Manor paled in comparison to the influence that Dickon could have wielded, had he so chosen.
In another age -- an age where warriors painted themselves in blue and ran screaming down upon Roman legions -- these folk might have elected Dickon as their king. In this age of steam power and serialized novels, however, he was simply a queer Yorkshire boy and possibly the more happy for it.
These were Mary's thoughts as she sat at the edge of the kitchen and watched the cook and her helpers bustle about. Marvelous things were mixed in bowls or pulled from the oven before being sealed in jars or wrapped in linen napkins. The servants loved Dickon, and they were rather impressed by Mary (although they would have been loathe to admit it), and, most of all, they were quite bored, because they had been waiting in anxious anticipation for Mr. Craven's return. To be always on the verge of cooking a feast for the manor's master and yet never quite being called upon to do so can take its toll on the nerves, and the staff of the kitchen seized upon Mary's picnic hamper as a conduit for their accumulated energy.
When at last she set foot outside, she did so with a basket so heavily laden that Mary found it difficult to carry at all. Somehow she managed to lug it awkwardly out of the kitchen, through a side door, and past the endless kitchen gardens until she was finally standing in their secret garden and could put the hamper down and rest her protesting muscles.
The garden was empty, and so Mary sat down beside the closed hamper and stretched out her legs across the dead leaves that carpeted the ground. She surveyed her surroundings with a cool and analytical eye. Winter was coming to the garden, and the gaudy colors that the garden had worn in the spring and the summer had now faded to dark greens and somber browns. And yet, Mary thought, Dickon was right: the garden in winter would have a chill, austere charm all its own. The garden was not dying. It was condensing down to its purest, hardest essence. The garden in winter, Mary thought, would be the garden still.
"Miss Mary?"
Mary looked up and smiled. "Dickon. You came."
"Aye," Dickon said, smiling down at her. "I had to help Ben with his cabbages, and it took me a wee bit longer than I thought. Is that supper?"
"Aye," Mary said, "tis supper."
So they sat on either side of the basket and opened it up and marveled over everything that they pulled forth from its mysterious, magical depths. They ate hard-boiled eggs and iced cakes and little jellies from jars that they could not quite identify. Mary got mustard on one sleeve, and Dickon had a streak of green jelly on his cheek, and they both enjoyed themselves immensely as they passed food back and forth and the golden sun dipped toward the horizon. And if they remembered past feasts in the garden, or felt Colin's absence at all, neither of them said so.
Instead, they spoke of their adventures. These adventures were small and modest -- Mary had helped Martha find a missing ring; Dickon had stumbled across an odd foxhole on the moor -- but they were a pleasing part of the great cosmos that was life in Misselthwaite Manor and Missel Moor. This place was a world onto itself, and Mary and Dickon stood at its center.
At last they had reduced the basket into a pale shadow of its past glories. Dickon stretched out beside the basket and folded his hands behind his head, while Mary clasped her arms around her knees and dreamily watched the lengthening shadows on the bare branches overhead.
"I have a letter," she said at last, "from Colin."
"Aye?" Dickon said sleepily. "What does he say?"
"He says that he loves the school. That he wants to start immediately. That it is a true place of science and adventure."
Dickon said nothing. Insects chittered in the distance.
"And he says that the man who runs the school is starting up another school soon. For girls. And Colin thinks that I should become a student."
Dickon closed his eyes. "Aye? Do you want to go to school?"
"I don't know," Mary said. "I never thought about it. It was strange enough to think of Colin leaving. I never thought about leaving Misselthwaite Manor myself." She stirred restlessly. "I did not even really think I would ever get a governess... But maybe Colin is right. Maybe I should see this school."
"Maybe," Dickon said. "So tha'll be leavin' us?"
Mary wrapped her arms tighter around herself. "I don't know. But how could I ever want to leave this place? What place could be better than this place?"
There was a long moment of silence, and then Dickon said, "Aye, it is a fine place. But my mother has a saying about places like this. She says that we carry around the places of the heart with us, wherever we should go."
Mary looked up at him. "I would miss seeing this garden in the spring. I want to see it bloom again. I want to see all those roses return."
Dickon laughed. "I could send thee the roses tied in parcels with brown string."
Mary smiled. "It would not be the same, though. It would not be this garden." She pressed her head against the top of her knees. Around them, the light was growing dark and the air was growing colder.
"Then I shall send seedlings," Dickon said. "Grass clippings, pots of soil, little earthworms in the post. I shall bring thee enough of the garden to grow around thee anew, wherever thou come to root thyself. Aye?"
Mary giggled. "Is that how the Magic works? Can it be endlessly divided?"
"Aye," Dickon said. "Aye, indeed. It will follow thee wherever thou should need to go, and then it will always lead thee back to here. If thou leaves. Thou might stay." A warm callused hand found its way into the grip of a small white one. "Thou might stay."
"Aye," Mary said. "I might stay. Should I stay, Dickon?"
It was now too dark for Mary to see Dickon's face, but she could feel his hand tighten around hers. "It is thy choice. But I think thou have already chosen."
"Aye," Mary said. "I think I have." The garden around them was still and quiet and full of promise.
"Good," Dickon said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "It will be an adventure."