I

Every day she would wander through the sprawling gardens, which lay silent and motionless every day again. She would stroll along the paths of cracked flagstones, the beds of still, dark roses and the trees with wide flat leaves that never fell, until she inevitably hit upon the wall that sealed off the garden from the rest of the world. She knew the wall well: at least three times her height, built of rough-hewn stone grown thickly with moss. She had followed the wall all the way around time and again; she used to keep one eye out for a hidden, overgrown gate that she had somehow managed to overlook, and another on the large dark shape, half-mansion half-castle, that towered in the middle of the gardens, turrets and steep roofs emerging slowly as she circled it. The many windows were tightly curtained and sealed, she knew – but the master came and went as he pleased, and had a way of knowing where she was.

She had by now given up hope of ever finding a way over or under or through the wall, but walked the same circular route day after day because it had become a routine. Just like it had become routine to pause every time she passed the old ash tree that grew close to the wall, and to clamber up to its higher branches.

The first time she had done this, a lifetime ago, it had been in a moment of sobbing desperation which had banished all thoughts of deals struck and trades made from her head. It had been a mad scramble to get over the wall, if only for a moment, to escape the cloying feeling that she was crumbling slowly to dust within these walls. She had pulled herself up among the leaves and crept along the single branch whose tip reached across the wall, still so high up that she could see nothing on the other side except for bland blue sky.

For several long, long moments she had refused to acknowledge that the wall came no closer, and the tree trunk went no further, although she clawed her way along as fast as she could, more and more frantically until she had to stop or fall the long way to the gravel below. She was pathetically suspended in mid-air, neither here nor there, when she noticed something through her tears. The branch on which she crouched was lush with dark green leaves, gleaming dully – up until the wall. If she craned her neck she could just make out the tip that extended into the space on the other side. The leaves outside the garden were stained deep reds, yellows and browns.

She had come back every day after that and climbed the tree. The autumn leaves had been brown and crumpled the next day; the branch tip was pitifully thin and bare the day after that; and on the fourth day, the sky on the other side of the wall had been awhirl with snowflakes falling heavily, sometimes swept to one side by a wind she couldn't feel; not a leaf stirred on her side of the wall. She had had the uncanny sensation of being in an inside-out snow globe – trapped all alone in a bubble of glass while the snow whirled outside and out of reach, a thought that filled her with such despair that she had fled back down to the ground where she couldn't see.

It had been several days before she had been able to bring herself to go up there again. When she did, the leaves were back – tiny, still tightly furled, and the most tender shade of green.