Chapter 4: Living Topiary
The grey light of dawn didn’t so much break as it seeped, bleeding into the sky and casting the topiary garden in a watery, unforgiving pallor. The sculptures weren’t just hedges anymore. They were captives. Twisted ivy and boxwood had been trained into the shapes of naked, contorted human forms, some kneeling, others bent backward in impossible arches, their leafy faces frozen in silent, open-mouthed pleas.
Zoe walked the gravel path, her silk robe whispering against her calves. She inspected the work with the critical eye of a curator.
“This one’s jawline is slack,” she said, stopping before a figure that seemed to be choking on its own leafy tongue. “It looks pathetic, not pained. There’s a difference.”
From behind her came the soft crunch of gravel on knees. David crawled, his movements a steady, practiced rhythm. His hair was longer, tangled. The silver bell on his leather collar tinkled with each forward motion. A pair of razor-sharp pruning shears was clamped lightly between his teeth, the steel glinting in the low light.
He made a soft sound, a muffled ‘hnn’ around the shears, and nodded towards the sculpture’s head.
“No,” Zoe said, not looking at him. “You don’t fix it by clipping. You rewire the primary branch from beneath. You have to get underneath the problem, Dog. Basics.”
He nodded again, a quick, jerky movement. His eyes were on her slippers. They were calm, empty ponds.
She moved on. The air was thick with the scent of damp soil and crushed greenery, but beneath it, like a hidden note, was the coppery smell of sap that could almost be mistaken for blood. She paused before another sculpture, this one shaped like a figure trying to shield its face. “Better. The terror here is quieter. Interior. I can almost hear its thoughts.” She reached out and snapped off a single protruding leaf with her fingernails. “Almost.”
Her stroll was leisurely, a queen surveying a silent, green battalion of the damned. David followed in her wake, a silent, crawling shadow. He didn’t seem to feel the bite of the gravel into his kneecaps, the strain in his thighs. His world had narrowed to her voice, the path ahead, and the shears in his mouth.
At the base of a particularly large sculpture—a cluster of figures that seemed to be melding into one another—a plain ceramic bowl of water sat on the ground. His bowl.
Zoe stopped beside it. She gazed at the tangled green mass, her head tilted. David halted, waiting, breathing softly through his nose. The bell went still.
“The synergy here is getting there,” she mused. “But it’s still just a group of individuals. I want a single, collective agony. A chorus, not a duet.” As she spoke, she shifted her weight. The toe of her slipper hooked under the rim of the bowl.
She didn’t look down. She just kicked, casually, the way someone might dislodge a pebble from their path.
The bowl clattered over, spinning. The water gushed out, darkening the grey gravel into a spreading stain. It pooled for a second, then began to sink away.
David didn’t move. His eyes tracked the dying spill of water. No anger crossed his face. No disappointment. He observed it like a weather event—something factual, neutral. His throat worked once. A dry swallow.
Zoe finally glanced down at him, a faint smile playing on her lips. “You’ll have to wait for the rain now. Or lick the dew. Creativity in problem-solving is the root of all artistry.” She turned and continued her walk. “Fix the jawline on the first one. I want it resolved before the sun is fully up.”
Behind her, David crawled forward. He didn’t look at the empty bowl again. He moved past it, the shears still gripped in his teeth, towards the flawed sculpture. His reflection, distorted and green, flickered in the glass of the mansion’s east wing.
Inside that window, on the second floor, Ed stood frozen, a coffee mug cold in his hand. He’d been working for hours, the numbers on his screen beginning to warp into a viable, monstrous shape. He’d looked up for a moment, just a moment, to stare at nothing.
And he’d seen it all. The crawl. The shears. The kicked bowl. The terrifying compliance.
His own stomach clenched, a visceral echo of the poison’s promise. The deadline wasn’t abstract anymore. It was here, in this garden, wearing a collar and crawling on torn knees. Part of the furniture.
Down below, Zoe looked up, straight at his window. She couldn’t possibly see him through the reflection, but she smiled anyway, a slow, knowing curve of her mouth, as if she’d felt the weight of his gaze. She raised a hand and gave a single, slight wiggle of her fingers.
A wave.
Then she turned back to David, who was already on his back, wriggling under the base of the flawed sculpture, his hands searching for the primary branch to rewire.
The new sun, finally clearing the horizon, caught the edge of the pruning shears he’d laid beside him. It flashed, a single, blinding star against the dark earth, before the green shadows swallowed it again.