The Garden Guardian

Violet stared gloomily at the emerald blur of ferns and cedars racing past the car window. Every so often, she flicked her eyes to her mother, Margaret, in the driver’s seat. Though lively and sparkling green in the past, Margaret’s eyes were now blank and hollow as they focused on the road. Violet knew that her own eyes carried a similar look; it was one month on the day since her father and Margaret’s husband, Pat, had suddenly died from a heart attack.

Violet had already struggled with depression and anxiety for years, and then this loss occurred, throwing her into a chasm of sadness and grief that she doubted she could ever escape. Pat had been her best friend, never pressuring her to be anyone but herself. For as long as she could remember, Violet had preferred drawing, novels, and comic books over sports or time spent with people her own age. While Margaret constantly encouraged her to come out of her shell, Pat had never minded her lack of interest in a lively social life. Instead, he joined her in painting and sketching, watching movies, listening to old music, and reading comic books or fantasy and sci-fi novels. He never forced her to talk about anything, yet his calm presence wordlessly invited her to open up when she needed someone to talk to. As her mental health struggles, school anxieties, and awareness of her queer identity grew, he was always the first person to support and encourage her, or to make her feel better with or without words. He was the first person she told about her ambition to become a writer, just as he was the first person she confided in when she started dating her ex-girlfriend, Laura. He never harangued her about college plans or friends or finding a boyfriend, as her mother so often did.

In the days following her father’s death, Violet wondered numbly if his loss would improve her long-strained relationship with Margaret. Perhaps she and her mother would become closer in their mutual grief? Instead, it quickly became apparent that they were drifting further apart. Mother and daughter withdrew into themselves and barely spoke to one another. The gulf between them grew so vast that Violet was caught completely off guard when Margaret announced two weeks after Pat’s death that they were moving to live with her mother, Violet’s Grandma Helen. What followed was two more weeks of frenzied packing and finalizing the rapid sale of the only home Violet had ever known.

Now, they were now almost to the new place. Violet refused to think of the arrangement with her grandmother as “home,” for she doubted that any place could ever feel like home again without her father there.

Grandma Helen lived hours from the nearest city, on the outskirts of a small town. It had been many years since Violet's last visit; she only remembered that her grandmother’s house was surrounded by garden and forest. Whenever she tried to search her memory for details, her thoughts quickly turned to the worry that moving betrayed her father’s memory. Nevertheless, Violet felt so overwhelmed by grief and anger that she lacked the energy to protest the move or to even care. Her father was gone, and she and Laura had broken up soon after his death, amidst news of the impending move and Violet’s lack of desire to talk about her grief. What could remain for her in the city now, other than painful memories?

After what felt like hours of passing no other cars on the winding road, Violet felt a jolt as the heavily laden Subaru turned onto a long gravel drive. A thick, mossy forest formed a verdant tunnel about the drive, which took multiple twists and turns as it wove ever deeper into the trees. The car had just crossed a sturdy wooden bridge that spanned a creek when a red house with blue trim came into view.

Violet’s first impression was that the house looked as if it belonged in a fairy tale, or on the cover of Gardener’s Weekly. Smoke puffed from the brick chimney, and peach-hued roses climbed the side and front of the house from their trellis. Clematis vines with electric purple flowers twisted around the porch railing and posts, intermingling in some places with the delicate tracery of ivy that sprawled across the upper walls and wrapped around the small tower protruding from the roof. Lavender, Black-Eyed Susans, Nasturtiums, and an array of other flowers and shrubs that Violet could not name burst along the stone path to the porch. A varnished wooden fence hemmed it all in, partially obscuring the garden on both sides of the house. Regardless, Violet could tell that the garden was a riot of color, with fruit trees, ornamental trees and shrubs, and flowers of every shade just visible beyond the fence. Grandma Helen, a small woman with thick gray curls and a green raincoat, emerged from the front door and rushed down the path to meet them.

The next few hours were a blur of unloading boxes from the car and excited welcome from Grandma Helen. It all gave Violet a pulsing headache, to the point that she retreated to her new bedroom and collapsed onto the bed’s soft quilt at the first opportunity. She didn’t want to be rude, but maybe her grief-weary body would feel better after a few minutes’ rest…

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Violet jolted awake and looked around. The light streaming through the window was not the soft evening light she was expecting, but the bright golden and copper rays of morning. She had slept through the night. Before she could go back to sleep, the noise sounded again.

Tap. Tap.

It was something hitting the window. Still groggy from sleep, Violet rose from the bed and padded to the window, pressing the antique latch to open the panes. She leaned out to search for the source of noise. For the first time, she registered that her room overlooked the garden on the western side of the house. A cheerful flowerbed lay below her window, with a garden gnome standing sentinel amidst a cluster of zinnias and marigolds.

The gnome moved.

Violet barely suppressed a scream, clapping a hand to her mouth in shock as the gnome gazed at her with twinkling blue eyes. Violet blinked several times. She had to be dreaming.

Looking up at her with polite curiosity was not the porcelain garden gnome she had first believed to see, but a living, breathing man with a red cap and salt-and-pepper beard that glinted in the sunlight. He stood no more than eight or nine inches tall, with his small, plump body attired in a fleece purple robe. Green tartan stockings and handsome leather boots covered his skinny legs.

“Are you done staring at me yet?”

Violet nearly screamed all over again. The gnome continued to hold her gaze with a patient smile.

“Y-you’re real?” Violet stuttered.

“As real as you are.” His voice was light and airy. “My name is Lewis. It’s truly a pleasure to meet you. I’m so glad you’ve come. And I’m so sorry for the pebbles on your window. I just wanted to get your attention, and that was the only way I could think of.”

Violet nodded, dumbfounded. Her mind worked furiously as she tried to recall how to continue a conversation, but for a few moments, she could only gawk at Lewis and shake her head in wonderment. Finally, she remembered herself.

“I’m Violet,” she said slowly. “Nice to meet you too, but if you don’t mind my asking, are you…”

“A gnome, yes,” Lewis finished for her. “A guardian gnome to be more precise, not that awful porcelain garden gnome stereotype in so many yards. We guardian gnomes are guardians first and foremost. We protect households with our magic, but we also love flowers, so we keep wonderful gardens. Won’t you come outside, and we can talk?”

Violet rushed out of her room to the kitchen, where the kitchen door provided the nearest exit to Lewis’s position beneath the window. Sure enough, the gnome was still there as Violet crunched down the gravel garden path toward him. He even gave a little jump of delight as she stopped in front of him.

“Oh I’m so glad you’ve come!” He exclaimed. “We have been so lonely lately, Helen and I.”

“Grandma knows you?”

“Of course. We guardian gnomes only protect households with the occupants’ knowledge and consent. We need them to know about us too - otherwise they wouldn’t leave us offerings.”

“Offerings?”

“Oh yes!” Lewis beamed at the thought. “Usually just small things - coffee, cake, candy, buttons, candles, books, bread rolls, cookies, a mug, a blanket… it’s part of my code as a guardian gnome that I receive offerings in exchange for my tremendous labors and services. Too long without offerings, and I must find a new home to protect.”

He seemed to catch Violet’s curious look. “It’s not merely transactional, I assure you! Helen and I are dear friends. She made me this robe…” - Lewis lovingly caressed his purple robe - “and she often helps me in the garden. It has just been rather difficult lately because Helen is losing her memory, and it seems her memories of me are the first to go.”

Violet felt the blunt force of another shock, though she had imagined that nothing could surprise her anymore after the morning’s events. “Grandma’s memory is going?”

Lewis nodded sadly, clutching a nearby marigold for comfort. “It’s really awful. She is so much lonelier and more confused than I have ever seen her. She often doesn’t remember me anymore, no matter how I try to remind her. I think it’s some form of dementia. And with not remembering, she keeps forgetting my offerings. I won’t be able to stay much longer without them.”

Violet sighed and allowed her gaze to travel around the garden. Flowers in all colors and shapes glowed like lanterns in the morning light, and a variety of birds sung from their perches on hedges and apple trees. Violet marveled that so much beauty could exist amidst so much sorrow - her father dying, her breakup with Laura, and now her grandmother suffering dementia. Maybe it was a good thing that she and Margaret were to live with Grandma Helen. Violet imagined that Helen would need a great deal of help, plus it seemed that Lewis needed someone to step into Helen’s gnome pact duties.

“That was part of what I wanted to talk with you about, actually,” Lewis tugged nervously at his beard. “I was hoping that you might leave me offerings like your grandmother always has, and help me in the garden and keep me company sometimes too? Guardian gnomes are often solitary creatures, and I don’t need much, but I have sorely missed your grandmother lately.”

“I know what it’s like to miss someone,” Violet said, feeling a deep resonance with Lewis’s loneliness. She was amazed at the empathy that she felt for this gnome she had just met. What was more, she had thought less about her grief for her father in this conversation than she ever had since Pat’s death. Decision made, she knelt down and smiled at Lewis.

“I’ll be happy to leave you offerings,” she said. “And of course, I’ll help you in the garden and keep you company. What would be the best offering to start?”

Lewis took her hand in both of his small ones and shook it. “I’m so glad - thank you, thank you! I’m so excited to know you! I’m very partial to KitKats or Goldfish crackers…”

On that note, Lewis began to show Violet around the garden of her new home.