He found it by accident, or maybe it found him. He had wandered far past the dead-end paths of the street, where the moon refused to shine, when a glow shimmered in the distance—a pulse of green and blue and violet, breathing like a sleeping beast. There was no path leading to it. But somehow, he stepped forward, and there it was.

A greenhouse stretched wider than the horizon, its glass walls curving up into infinity, lit from within by bioluminescent flora. Fungal blooms pulsed with slow light, vines spiraled in fractal patterns. He circled it, searching for a door, a latch, a crack; but the structure was seamless, an unbroken prism containing a world.

Then the child appeared.

She wore an old and cracked fox mask with strands of moss hanging from the snout like whiskers. Her voice echoed oddly, as though it came from beneath the earth or from the crown of the trees above.

“You want in?”

He nodded.

“Three riddles. Fail, and the Garden forgets a light.”

He agreed before he could stop himself.

The first riddle: “What grows but is never born?”

He thought hard. A shadow? he guessed.

Wrong. A glowing orchid by the glass curled in on itself and went dark.

The second riddle: “Who speaks with your voice when you dream?”

He hesitated and said, My reflection.

Wrong again. A vine snapped in half, and its light faded into black smoke.

The third riddle was not spoken. The child pointed at him and tilted her head.

And he understood: the riddle was himself.

He said his name.

The child looked disappointed. “Three wrong.”

And then, miraculously, the glass melted. The greenhouse split along unseen seams and opened like a ribcage. The child was gone. Only the mask remained, face-down in the moss.

He stepped inside.

The air was thick and slow, like honey. Every breath took effort. The plants moved in rhythms that made no sense. Petals closing backward, roots floating midair, fruits forming then unforming, throbbing like reversed heartbeats. Time had slipped its leash here.

He walked deeper and saw a woman seated on a stone bench, unmoving, her hand suspended inches above a child’s head. The child was laughing soundlessly. He watched for minutes, but the moment did not budge. 

When he touched the scene, it flickered and he saw the woman’s face change into a face he remembered from a dream. Not his mother, but someone who had once called herself so.

Further on, he saw himself. Or someone like him. Older, eyes sewn shut, tending to a tree whose bark whispered every name he had ever pretended was his.

The memories weren’t his. Or they were, but from lives he hadn’t lived yet.

A tree near the heart of the garden bore no leaves, only blood-shot eyes. Its trunk was carved with words in a language he did not know but somehow understood.

“To go forward, lose your name.”

He touched the bark, and it felt warm like skin. Beneath his palm, the letters shimmered, then burned away.

He tried to say his name. It slipped through his teeth like water.

Then the garden pulsed, once. An enormous heartbeat. The frozen memories began to move. The woman touched the child’s hair. The child laughed. Somewhere, a clock struck a note that sounded like weeping.

And he walked on, nameless now.

To Be Continued …