Liora returned to the garden at dawn, certain she knew where she was.
She had been here before. She remembered the path: three pale stones half-sunk in the soil, a low arch of branches, the sound of water somewhere to the left. She remembered the way the light gathered, how the air felt cooler just beyond the threshold. There was no doubt in her mind. This was the same garden.
She stepped forward—and stopped.
The stones were there, but not quite as she recalled. The arch leaned at a different angle. The water sounded farther away. The garden had not changed dramatically; nothing was obviously wrong. And yet it would not line up.
Liora frowned, then smiled slightly. She had learned not to rush this part.
On her first visit, she had brought measuring cord.
She had laid it carefully along the ground, marked distances, counted steps. The garden had cooperated then. Beds aligned. Paths held their length. Corners stayed put long enough to be named. The numbers had behaved impeccably.
She wrote them down and left satisfied.
On her second visit, she returned with the same cord, the same notebook, the same intent. But this time she entered humming, distracted by the way the light fractured through the leaves. She stepped over the threshold half a pace faster than before.
The garden did not resist. It simply failed to settle.
The cord stretched and slackened. Distances blurred. Paths that had once met cleanly now drifted past one another, as if acknowledging an old agreement they were no longer bound to keep.
Liora suspected the garden was not refusing measurement.
It was refusing this measurement.
She tried again the following day.
This time she entered deliberately. Same pace. Same angle. Same breath held at the threshold. The garden gathered itself and, almost courteously, held still.
The measurements returned.
Not new ones. The old ones.
She laughed aloud then—not in triumph, but recognition.
Liora sat beneath a tree whose trunk split cleanly in two just above the ground. From a distance it looked like a single tree. Up close, it was clearly not. She wondered how she had counted it last time.
A voice spoke behind her.
“You’re trying to decide whether it has changed,” it said.
She turned. An old gardener stood there, hands folded, watching the leaves rather than her.
“Yes,” she said.
“No,” the gardener replied gently. “You’re trying to decide whether you have.”
They walked together along a narrow path. With each step, the garden adjusted—not abruptly, not deceitfully, but with the quiet responsiveness of something paying close attention.
“The garden holds,” the gardener said, “when you hold it.”
Liora stopped. “So it’s stable only if I am?”
The gardener shrugged. “Stable enough.”
At the centre of the garden stood a small stone table. On it lay maps—dozens of them. Each precise. Each internally consistent. No two identical.
Liora picked one up. It matched perfectly the garden as she now perceived it.
“Are these wrong?” she asked.
“No,” said the gardener. “They’re local.”
She replaced the map carefully.
When Liora finally left, she did not take measurements with her. She took instead a slower step, a steadier breath, and a quiet understanding.
The garden had not refused order. It had not descended into chaos. It had simply asked a question before cooperating:
Which way are you coming this time?
And in that question, Liora sensed something she would encounter again and again in other places:
