CHAPTER VII
Behind the Evergreen Ivy.

Kyungsoo woke up before the sun rose, and sat upright in bed, beaming brightly. He was ecstatic about today, so much that during the night he tossed and turned dreaming of magical worlds beyond the locked door, barely managing to sleep.

As the curtains were already drawn, he tiptoed across the freezing hardwood floors barefoot towards the large window, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and slipped behind the velvet curtains to kneel at the window seat. A concoction of purple-grey and deep blue reflected his doe eyes, matching the hues of the moors and the early-morning sky filled with thick dark clouds, some of which had spilled further down to Earth causing the fog to sit across the fields.

He sat and stared at the clouds, watching them slowly move across the landscape. It had been a long time since he sat and watched the sunrise, and after a while the sun peaked from the horizon, slowly making the sky become lighter. But the cold and dullness of the winter sunrise was incomparable to the beauty of summer, it made Kyungsoo feel sad.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t wait to go outside, so sat and waited, and waited for Jina to arrive and light his fire and bring his meal. Waddling back to bed as it was a cold morning, he decided to read something while he waited, and propped his pillows behind his back to snuggle under the huge duvet.

Kyungsoo had nearly dosed back to sleep when Jina came in, she was humming a soft tune and smiling at the boy. He stayed in bed and waited until the hearth was lit before climbing down the bed and sitting in an armchair close by the heat.

“I’ve been up before sunrise,” he said to Jina, warming his toes. “I want to go outside today.”

Jina smiled at the boy, relieved at his statement and agreeing that the fresh air will do him good to clear out his brain. It had been a few days since he had been outside, and she had begun to worry that he had become too immersed in his stories.

“Anne will be pleased. Come eat before it gets too cold, I brought you your favourite; oatmeal with blueberries and bananas.”

Kyungsoo didn’t waste time when eating. He let Jina chatter on as normal while she helped herself to a cup of tea. The wind was howling across the moors, branches from nearby trees tapped against the window.

“You’re eating very well today,” Jina observed. Kyungsoo helped himself to extra blueberries and drizzled a healthy amount of honey into his oatmeal.

“It tastes nice today. Can I have some more blueberries?” noticing that he had scoffed the whole bowl.

“You can have some more after lunch. Benjamin picked them just for you.”

“Who’s Benjamin?” The boy wondered. He hadn’t met anyone called Benjamin before.

“He’s one of the gardeners that tend to the fruit and vegetables. You must have met him, spending so much time outside.”

Kyungsoo pondered for a second. “Does he wear a checkered hat and sometimes talks to the robin?”

Jina smiled. “Yes! That’s him. You must thank him later. He’d be delighted to know you enjoyed his fruits.”

“Does he grow a lot of fruit?”

“I think so. Most fruits aren’t ready to be harvested yet. In the spring and summer time, you’ll be eating so many strawberries!”

The boy wondered what else Benjamin had grown in the gardens. He didn’t eat a lot of fruit at the orphanage because it was expensive and the nuns wanted to fatten the children up with meats and bread. He finished up eating and then brushed his teeth while Jina picked out his outfit for the day.

She dressed him in black cords, a cotton white shirt with a frilly collar overlapping the neck of his emerald green knitted jumper. Kyungsoo put his boots and coat on, and before he ran downstairs, she wrapped a long scarf around his neck three times before tying it and placing his black beret on his head. When Jina left his room, he quickly took the key from under his pillow and pocketed it, giggling and shaking with excitement.

As he left through the front door into the bitter cold, Jina had called him back holding his skipping rope. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” She beamed, handing the rope to the boy.

Hopefully this time Kyungsoo wouldn’t trip over, as his scarred knees had just about healed.

Humming down the long narrow paths and through the fruit garden, he skipped all around the gardens. Benjamin wasn’t there as he had hoped, but he was too eager to get to the door to worry about that further. He remembered the way off by heart, the fog had faded and the gardens were much clearer, the frost had melted from plants and grass too.

When he turned the corner of the hedge, his heart started to palpitate fast and hammer in his small chest. Although the walls of the garden were covered in ivy, Kyungsoo still knew where the door was. The key felt heavy in his pocket, it bounced around as he skipped along the pathway.

Once he reached the doorway, a small tweet was heard. Kyungsoo looked up to see the Robin sitting on the top of the ivy, swaying in the wind.

“You showed me the way, and I found the key!” Kyungsoo said cheerfully. The robin tilted his head, as if he understood everything Kyungsoo said.

He put his hands under the leaves and began to pull and push them aside. Thick as the ivy hung, it nearly all was a loose and swinging curtain. Kyungsoo’s heart began to thump, and the robin kept singing and flapping his small, fluffy wings.

He put his hands in his pocket and drew out the key, he found that it fitted the keyhole. He put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it, it was stiff and cold.

And then he took a long breath and looked behind him up the long walk to see if anyone was coming. Nope. No one ever did come, it seemed, and he took another long breath, because he could not help it, he held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly―slowly.

Then he slipped through it, and shut it behind him. He stood with his back against it, looking about him and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight.

He was standing inside the garden.

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses, which were so thick that they were matted together - just like Kyungsoo’s own nest of hair. Kyungsoo knew they were roses because he had seen them in his story books. The entire ground was covered with grass of a wintry brown, and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rose bushes, if they were even still alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so spread their branches that they were like little trees. Other trees stumped the garden too, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains.

No roses were blooming on the bushes, and Kyungsoo did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin grey or brown branches and sprays looked like a ort of hazy mantle spreading over everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It was this hazy tangle from tree to tree which made it look so mysterious.

“It’s so still!” He whispered. “How still.”

Then he waited a moment and listened to the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his tree-top, was still as all the rest.

“No wonder it is still,” he whispered again. “I am the first person who has spoken in here for many years.”

He moved away from the door, stepping as softly as if he were afraid of awakening someone. He walked under one of the fairy-like grey arches between the trees and looked up at the sprays and tendrils which formed them.

“I wonder if they are all dead,” he said. “I hope not.”

If Jongin were here with him, he would be able to tell Kyungsoo whether the wood was alive by looking at it, but he could only see that there were only grey or brown sprays and branches, and none of them showed any signs of even a tiny lead-bud anywhere.

But he was inside the wonderful garden, and he could come through the door under the ivy any time, and he felt as if he had found a world all his own. Not even the magical stories he had read couldn’t compare.

The sun started to shine inside the four walls and the high arch of blue sky over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seemed even more brilliant and soft than it was over the moor. The robin flew down from the treetops and hopped about from one bush to another. He chirped a good deal as if he were showing Kyungsoo things. Everything was strange and silent, and he seemed to be hundreds of miles away from anyone, but somehow he did not feel lonely at all.

His skipping rope hung over his arm when he came in, and after he had walked about for a while he thought he would skip round the whole garden, stopping when he wanted to look at the scenery before him. There seemed to have been grass paths here and there, and in one or two corners there were alcoves of evergreen with stone seats or tall moss-covered flower-urns in them.

Abandoning the skipping rope, he approached the alcoves with a renewed interest. There had once been a flower-bed in it, and he thought he saw something sticking out of the black earth―some sharp little pale green points.

He wondered what they were, and he bent very close to them and sniffed the fresh scent of damp earth. It had a pungent kick in his nostrils- one he liked very much. He thought they must be flowers, but he didn’t have any idea what kind.

The wet damp grasslands cushioned his bound feet as he decided to walk around, slowly and keeping his eyes on the ground. He looked in the old border-beds among the grass, and after he had gone round, taking in all that his eyes could absorb so as not to miss a single beautiful detail, he had found a sharp, pale green point, and became quite excited again.

“It isn’t a dead garden,” he cried out softly to himself. “Even if the roses are dead, there are other things alive!”

He wondered why the garden had been abandoned and not cared for. Why it was so hauntingly still.

Even though he didn’t know anything about gardening, the grass seemed so thick in some places where the green points were pushing their way through that he thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. Remembering all those times he snuck around to where Jongin would tend to the animals and dug out weeds for them to eat, he searched around until he found a rather sharp piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until he made nice little clear places around them.

“Now they look as if they could breathe,” he said, after he had finished with the first ones. “I am doing to do ever so many more. I wish Jongin was here to help. He would know what was alive or dead and could help me.”

He went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed himself so immensely that he was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees. The exercise made him so warm that he first threw his coat off, and then his hat and scarf. The robin was tremendously busy, he was very much pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate; where gardening is done all sorts of delightful things to eat are turned up with the soil. He was hopping around Kyungsoo’s hands, taking out bits off dead grass the boy had pulled away and collected a hefty amount to take back to his nest.

Master Kyungsoo worked in his garden until it was time to go to his midday dinner. In fact he was rather late in remembering, and when he put on his coat, hat and scarf, he could not believe that he had been working two or three hours. He had actually been happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them.

“I shall come back this afternoon,” he told the garden, looking all around at his new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and rose bushes as if they heard.

Then he ran lightly across the grass, pushed open the slow old door, and slipped through it under the ivy.

The digging around and fresh air did him good, as soon as he got indoors he went straight to the dining room to sit down and eat. He helped himself to two pieces of meat and Jina was surprised to see what good the outdoors did for him.

In the course of his digging, Kyungsoo found himself digging up a sort of white root rather like an onion. He put it back in its place and patted the earth down carefully.

“Jina,” he said, “what are those white roots that look like onions?”

“They’re bulbs,” answered Jina. “Lots of spring flowers grow from them. The very little ones are snowdrops and crocuses, and the big ones are daffodils and jonquils. They are nice, Jongin’s got a whole lot of them planted out in our bit of garden.”

“Does Jongin know all about them?” asked Kyungsoo, a new idea taking possession of him.

“Jongin can make a flower grow out of a brick wall, he just whispers things out of the ground.”

His work in the garden and the excitement of discovering his own little secret made him feel quiet and thoughtful. He felt drowsy from his afternoon dinner, and he let his head rest on the cushioned seat of the armchair near him. Fresh air and digging made him feel so comfortably tired that he fell asleep by the fire.

The sun shone down for nearly a week on the secret garden. The Secret Garden was what Kyungsoo called it when he was thinking about it. He liked the name, and even more so the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut him in, no one knew where he was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in a fairytale, and after reading many books about fairies and secret gardens- he enjoyed the fact that he was now able to have his own one.

In some of the stories that he read, naive kingdoms and princesses went to sleep in the garden for hundreds of years, which he thought must be rather stupid. He had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, he was becoming more awake and vibrant with each day that passed at Misselthwaite. Having grown fond of being outdoors where he ran around faster and was now able to skip to a hundred; he no longer hated the wind, but rather enjoyed it.

The bulbs in the secret garden must have been astonished; such nice clear spaces were made around them that they had all the breathing space they wanted, and - without Kyungsoo’s knowledge- they had really begun to cheer up under the dark earth and work tremendously by anchoring their roots and cosying themselves to the bed made for them. The sun could get at them and warm them, and when the rain came down it could reach them at once, so they began to feel very much alive.

Benjamin the gardener gifted the odd boy with his very own spade, it was tiny for the old man but it was perfect for Kyungsoo’s little fingers. He had told Benjamin all about his new obsession with gardens and asked him many questions about seeds and flowers, the gardener grunted most of the time, which made him see uninterested that Kyungsoo was pestering him, and yet he would go out of his way to pick blueberries and give him his old spades.

Kyungsoo started to feel like Mr McGregor from his favourite book, except he wasn’t a nasty old man that wanted to eat rabbits and put them in pies. Kyungsoo wouldn’t mind having rabbit friends as Jongin did. He would make them little bonnets and jackets and talk to them.

Overall, Kyungsoo was an odd, determined little person, and now he had something interesting to be determined about, he was very much absorbed indeed. He worked and dug and pulled up weeds steadily, only becoming more pleased with his work every hour instead of growing tired of it. The pale green points seemed to be starting up everywhere, and each day he was sure he found tiny new ones, some so tiny that they barely peeped above the earth.

He wondered how long it would be before they showed and bloomed, sometimes he stopped digging to look at the garden and try to imagine what it would be like when it was covered with thousands of lovely things in bloom.

During the week of sunshine, he started to converse more with Benjamin. He surprised him several times by seeming to jump up beside him as if he sprang out of the earth. Kyungsoo talked a lot to Benjamin, but he never mentioned the secret garden. Not even Jina or Jongin knew about it.

After Kyungsoo’s lunchtime dinner, he set back outside with his little spade. He walked down the path, the familiar trees passing by when he noticed a figure in the distance. As he got closer he could see that it was Jongin, sitting on a tree trunk feeding crumbs of bread to a squirrel.

He did not want to scare away the animal, but Kyungsoo had not seen his friend in what felt like forever, and he wanted to jump on the lad. Jongin had noticed Kyungsoo’s presence, and he sprinkled the rest of the bread on the bark and began to walk towards the boy.

“Jongin!” Kyungsoo cried with joy, he missed him so much. He wanted to put his arms around him and smell him. “I have been looking for you.”

“I have been waiting for you too. My sister told me you have started digging your own little garden.” The elder beamed, his dimple standing out more now the sun was out. Kyungsoo noticed how golden Jongin’s skin was in the sunlight, he glowed and glistened just like honey.

It had only been a week since they had seen each other, after their sleepover the two boys played outside and Kyungsoo helped Jongin with his reading. In the week it felt like a lifetime.

“Could you keep a secret?” Kyungsoo asked. He knew Jongin wouldn’t tell anyone about his findings, but he still wanted to ask.

“I’m keeping secrets all the time,” Jongin replied. “If I couldn’t keep secrets from fox cubs, and birds nests and wild things there’d be nothing safe on the moor. I can keep secrets.”

Kyungsoo put out his hand and clutched onto Jongin’s sleeve. He led him around the laurel path and to the walk where the ivy grew so thickly. Jongin followed him with a curious look on his face. He felt as if he were being led to look at some strange bird’s nest and must move softly. Kyungsoo stepped to the wall and lifted the hanging ivy, he pushed the door and they passed in together, and then Kyungsoo stood and waved his hand round defiantly.

“This is it,” he said. “It’s a secret garden, and I’m the only one in the world who wants it to be alive.”

Jongin looked round and round about it, mouth gaped slightly. “It is a queer, pretty place. It’s as if I were dreaming,” he whispered.

For two or three minutes Jongin stood to look round him, while Kyungsoo watched him, and then he began to walk about softly, even more lightly than Kyungsoo had walked the first time he had found himself inside the four walls. His eyes seemed to be taking in everything―the grey trees with the grey creepers climbing over them and hanging from their branches, the tangle on the walls and among the grass, the evergreen alcoves with the stone seats and tall flower urns standing in them.

“I never thought I’d see this place,” he said at last in a whisper.

“It’s the garden, isn’t it? The one my uncle locked up years ago.” Kyungsoo replied. Jongin nodded and stopped to look at the lovely grey tangle above them, his cub like-eyes looked queerly happy.

“The nests will be here come springtime,” he said. “It will be the safest nesting place in England. No one ever coming near, I wonder if all the birds on the moor build their nests here.”

Kyungsoo tangled his fingers with Jongin’s, feeling a warm sensation through his hand that spread throughout his body and settled in his stomach.  “Will there be roses?” he whispered. “Can you tell? I thought perhaps they were all dead.”

“Not all of them,” Jongin answered, “Look here!”

Scanning his surroundings, he stepped over to the nearest tree―an old one with grey lichen all over its bark, but upholding a curtain of tangled sprays and branches, then took a thick knife out of his pocket and opened one of its blades.

“There’s lots of dead wood that ought to be cut out,” he said. “And there’s a lot of old wood, but it made some new last year.” He touched a shoot which looked brownish-green instead of hard, dry grey.

Kyungsoo touched it himself in an eager, reverent way.

“It’s as wick as you or me,” Jongin said, smiling at the boy.

“What’s wick?”

“Alive. This whole place is alive.” Jongin replied, then went around from tree to tree and from bush to bush. Jongin showed Kyungsoo things which he thought was wonderful. Using his tactics with his knife, he knew how to cut the dry and dead wood away, and could tell when an unpromising bough or twig had still green life in it. In the course of half an hour, Kyungsoo thought he could tell too, and when he cut through a lifeless-looking branch he would cry out joyfully under his breath when he caught the sight of the least shade of moist green.

“How did you even find it?” Jongin asked after a while of walking around. “Surely it was locked?”

“The Robin showed me the way.” Kyungsoo replied smiling, “I think he likes me. I found the key in an abandoned room in the house, it was with pictures of my mother. Do you think she knew about it?”

“I don’t know. These things are not to be spoken about. That’s why this place was locked up.”

Kyungsoo didn’t understand. He had so many questions, about the garden, his mother, his cousin. But he felt like no one had the answers for him. So he didn’t ask anymore.

“We shouldn’t tell anyone, this is our secret garden.” He said after a short period of silence. “We can come here every day, and tidy it and make it alive again.”

“This will be our secret. Not even the animals on the moor will know. I’ll come every day if you want me, rain or shine,” Jongin replied. “Shut in here with you waking up a garden makes me feel alive.”

Kyungsoo’s heart felt like it was going to burst out of his tiny chest. Jongin began to walk about, looking up in the trees and at the walls and bushes with a thoughtful expression.

“I wouldn’t want to make it look like a typical garden, all clipped and spick and span, would you?” he said. “It’s nicer like this with things running wild and swinging. Like a lost kingdom.”

“What kind of flowers will grow, can you tell?” Kyungsoo asked curiously.

Jongin walked over to an area that Kyungsoo had cleared, “These are bluebells, and over here, these are Foxgloves.” He took Kyungsoo’s had and pointed at each bush, every stem and told him what they would be, what they would look like by spring and what colours they would be.

“In the summer, it will be so beautiful and enchanting,” Jongin said to the boy. “We could plant our own seeds here, watch them grow.”

“Will you show me?”

“Of course. I have packets of seeds at home. I’ll bring them tomorrow and show you. We can make this place really wonderful.”

They walked towards a large tree and Kyungsoo noticed there was a swing tied to one of its branches. It was covered in vines and leaves and was rather well hidden. The boy brushed them off and sat on the large wooden seat.

“I have seen my Mother on this swing, in my dreams,” he whispered, staring above him and gentle swaying. Jongin walked behind him and began to push the boy lightly. They took it in turns on the swing, Kyungsoo used all his strength to push Jongin as high as he could, and they sat on it together facing each other.

“I’m so happy you showed me your secret,” Jongin said, not taking his eyes away from Kyungsoo’s.

Kyungsoo startled when he heard the big clock in the courtyard strike the hour of his midday dinner.

“I shall have to go,” he said mournfully. “And you will have to go too, won’t you?”

Jongin smiled at the boy. “My dinner’s easy to carry about with me,” he said. “Mother always lets me put a bit of something in my pocket.”

He picked up his coat from the grass and brought out of a pocket a lumpy little bundle tied up in a quite clean, coarse, blue and white handkerchief. It held two thick pieces of bread with a slice of something laid between them.

“It’s often nothing but bread,” he said, “but I’ve got a fine slice of fat bacon with it today.”

Kyungsoo thought it looked like an unusual dinner, but he seemed ready to enjoy it. Reluctant on leaving Jongin, he hesitated before walking away, but he knew that he would see him tomorrow. They both went slowly to the door in the wall and once they were through the ivy, Kyungsoo stopped and turned to him.

“Whatever happens, you wouldn’t ever tell?” he didn’t want anyone to find out, and he didn’t want to get into any kind of trouble.

Jongin’s poppy-coloured cheeks were distended with his first big bite of bread and bacon, but he managed to smile encouragingly.

“If you were a missel thrush and showed me where your nest was, do you think I’d tell anyone?” he said. “You are as safe as a missel thrush.”

And he was quite sure he was.

With that, Kyungsoo smiled with ease before departing and running back to the Moors. As he reached the entrance, Kyungsoo ran so fast that he was rather out of breath when he reached his room. His hair was ruffled on his forehead and his cheeks were bright pink, his dinner was waiting on the table, and Jina was waiting near it.

“You’re a bit late,” she said. “Where have you been?”

Before Kyungsoo could open his mouth to reply, Anne came barging through the room.

“Jina, get Master Kyungsoo ready. His uncle has arrived and wishes to see him right away.”

A/N: thank u to my son for betaing for me.

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