He came at dusk.
Not walking.
Crawling.
A boy — no older than ten — dragging himself through the cracked gate on elbows and knees, face smeared with dirt and something darker.
His lips were blue.
His fingers twitched.
He didn't cry out.
Just gasped, once, like a fish on dry land.
I ran.
But the garden was faster.
A vine — thin, green, unassuming — slithered across the soil and blocked my path.
I stopped.
"Let me through."
The vine didn't move.
From the corner of the yard, Thistle swayed, voice low:
"He's eaten Nightshade Berries. Corrupted ones. Grown in the dead zones."
"He'll die in two hours. Or turn."
"Then I have to help him!"
"Why?"
The question didn't come from Thistle.
It came from the basil.
Calm. Cold. Ancient.
"Last year, his kind sprayed us with poison. Called us 'invasive.' Burned the wild mint fields. You remember."
I did.
I remembered the helicopter flying low, misting the hills with chemical fog.
The stench of dying roots.
The silence that followed.
I looked at the boy.
He wasn't one of them.
But he carried their world.
Still, he was here.
Not to steal.
Not to burn.
Just to survive.
Like all of us.
I knelt — not to go around the vine, but to speak to it.
To ask.
"I'm not asking you to forgive.
I'm asking you to choose.
We don't kill the weak.
We don't punish the child for the sins of the grown.
That's how he thinks — the Hollow.
That's how decay spreads.
Not with fire.
With indifference."
Silence.
Then, slowly, the vine drew back.
I reached the boy.
His skin was cold.
His breath shallow.
Tiny black veins spidered from his mouth, creeping toward his eyes — the mark of corruption.
In another hour, he'd start screaming.
Then attacking.
Then rotting from the inside.
I touched his wrist.
And listened.
Not with ears.
With roots.
The poison was alive — not natural, but engineered.
A byproduct of the System's chaos, grown in soil tainted by Hollow's touch.
It didn't just kill.
It rewired.
But the body — even poisoned — still fought.
Cells straining.
Heart refusing to stop.
He wanted to live.
I placed my hands on his chest.
And reached into the garden.
Not to command.
To call.
"He's not one of them.
But he's not beyond us.
Help me."
The mint was the first.
A single leaf detached, floated through the air, and landed on the boy's tongue.
It dissolved.
Then the lavender — three sprigs, drifting like ash in reverse.
Then the oak.
A single drop of sap, thick and golden, fell from a high branch and struck his forehead like a blessing.
The garden chose.
And beneath my hands, the boy shuddered.
The black veins slowed.
Then retreated.
His breath deepened.
And just before he slipped into real sleep — not the stillness of death, but the peace of recovery — he whispered:
"...told them... the green place... was real..."
I sat back.
The night was quiet.
No celebration.
No laughter from the plants.
Only the cactus, dry as ever, muttering:
"Don't get used to it. Next time, he might deserve to die."
I didn't answer.
Because I knew two things now:
The garden could heal.It could also refuse.
And that made it more alive than anything left in the world.