This season seemed different. The daffodils were already stretching themselves in bright yellow and white bulbs. It wasn't even spring yet but since they seemed so eager to sprout, I turned the watering can over them, enjoying the water leak out in an organized symphony.
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The garden was supposed to soon become colorful again. When spring comes, it should begin to bloom with Tulips and violets, heralding butterflies, and those small colorful birds.
I wrapped my scarf around me and headed over to the ground where the Camellias should have grown, trying to see if there was luck where I had found none these few weeks. The soil was still upturned like the first day I transplanted them, looking back at me as if in mockery.
Nothing was growing in this place anymore. They all seemed to make a unanimous decision to die whether I put in effort or not.
I had made up my mind not to allow any of them to frustrate me, but the shop my grandmother left me on Maple Close had shut down three months ago.
If only Grandma had stayed alive.
I turned back to find my way to the garden shed where I lay my head every night since my uncle chased me out of the big house and sold it off to Mr and Mrs Jakes. The couple was nice but they “Didn't have room for a street urchin” so they offered me the shed. I was content with it.
They didn't have kids of their own so I went into my family house to clean it up for another family.
I didn't ask them to pay me to clean the house, it was what I had done since I could hold a broomstick correctly but Mrs. Jake squeezed some dollar bills into my palm each time I was done, sometimes she offered me a plate of cookies. I always turned them down.
I was at the shed now, dawn was giving way subtly to the faint orange glow in the sky when I heard music. It was faint at first like someone was playing musical notes softly with a flute.
“d…r…t…s
f…t..l…”
I turned around the shed where the sound was coming from and saw the tiniest but most colorful bird I had set my eyes on. Its bright blue wings were spread out as it seemed to do a planned movement on its feet.
“You're not a normal bird” I wasn't asking but it finally stopped dancing and nodded its head.
“I was sent you by Grandma. She sees you suffer. Time has come for you, no suffer no more” I had to crouch to hear it.
“My grandma is dead,” I told it matter-of-factly. It scoffed and shook its orange tail.
“I come from the spirit world. I was sent you by Grandma, she sees you suffer….”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time” I waved it away.
It began its singing and dancing again but I wasn't interested, I walked into the shed and slammed the door.
I woke up the next morning to louder singing just behind the shed.
“Grandma say give you this” It stretched a glittering necklace towards me. I recognized it immediately. It was the gift I got Grandma for Mother's Day. I snatched it up “Remember the code, enter into a new world,” the bird said and began singing and dancing again.
If Grandma was truly reaching out to me through this bird, I had to figure out what it was saying.
“Why don't you just tell me the message?” I asked after listening and getting nothing.
“Code is in song. Grandma says sing”.
I crouched again and listened carefully, watching its movements as it sang. Then it came to me.
Grandma always said every morning before they headed out to the flower shop that, “The code is to dance, run along to the shop, and find the light.”
The minute I said the code out loud, I heard a loud shimmering sound with tiny stars flying around me. I saw my garden come to life; the tulips, hyacinths, pansies, and lilacs.
I ran into the house and saw my mom seated in the dining room, my dad was seated just across from her, laughing just like I remembered.
“Mom? Dad?” I ran towards them, my pigtails flying behind me. I was 12 again with mom, dad, and my nanny Victoria. I looked up to see the bird wink at me from the window sill.
“Have a happy life, Charlotte. Grandma died to pay the price.”
And so my life went back to how it had been before my parents and nanny died in a ghastly accident, leaving me with grandma.
Now she had died to bring everything dead in my world back to life.