She had been weeping for some time now, head in hands.
Her eyes had been covered for so long now that she wasn’t quite sure where she was, but she still listened, and when she listened she heard the sun rise. The flowers opening at the same time she felt the heat of the morning on her cold shoulders, and the songs of birds somewhere high up where the boughs creaked beneath the weight of themselves. The sound of window panes swinging and latching open, of leaves crunching under boot and water running, of a soft and calm humming in the distance, of doors slamming shut and wind chimes ringing. Rapid, light footfall and the giggles of little voices around her, felt tiny hands press themselves to the back of her thighs and hushed whispers before joyous shrieks and then the hands and voices flew away from her.
She listened as the bees worked and wanted to smile beneath her palms when she felt the tiny feet of the hummingbird rest on her shoulders for only a few seconds before it was gone again. She heard the water of the fountain, trickling on and on day and night. Though, she could not tell day from night, nor had she been able to see around her for what was nearing 180 years.
Only once had she been allowed a glimpse of her surroundings, when she had just been born and her marble skin was unmarred by time and the Sculptor had tapped her head. Then she had felt the loosening of sculpted joints and removed her hands from her eyes for the first time. Even now, the beauty of the garden in which she had been placed still shone bright in her memory. There was nothing for which she wished more than to see it again, to remove her hands and get but one good look around her at the paradise she had been placed in. This she pled for every day and night; her only wish to see the children she heard laughing and playing, the leaves she heard rustling, the merry she heard being made all around her in the wind’s brush and the birds’ song.
The Sculptor (not her sculptor, but the Sculptor: the being who gave consciousness to every statue once their sculptor had finished carving them) had a particular fondness for those statues crafted with their eyes, their ears, or their mouths covered. As has been mentioned before, statues of these kinds were allowed one look, listen, or word spoken before they were returned to their natural state; this happened when they were first carved and placed. Once this small mercy was given them, they were not allowed another for a great stretch of time. However, there was another chance that such a statue as our garden statue might have at seeing the land around her again. Once a year in an act of compassion, the Sculptor chose one statue to bestow temporary movement upon. They were not allowed long at all, but one glimpse of the world was all the garden statue wished for.
On the day of her 180th year in the garden, she sent out a plea again, hopeful as always. On this day, as fate would have it, the Sculptor finally answered.
“It has been some time,” the Sculptor spoke. The garden statue never forgot a voice. “You have waited so patiently for this.” She felt a gentle hand touch her head. “Go on, then.”
The first muscle to move was her lips: a smile of such gratitude leapt to her face, even before she removed her hands. The movement pressed the palms of her hands up, letting small gaps of light in for the first time in nearly two centuries. With a gasp of pleasure, she dropped her hands away to gaze at the scene out front of her:
There were trees, to be sure, but rather more muted and raggedy than she had recalled. The grass had receded into small, gangly patches for the season, some tufts sprouting up from around the fountain several feet away; a fountain whose stone had been deeply loved by moss, and chipped and cracked all around, as if time had returned again and again to take a bite out of it. A handful of poppies scattered about the terrain dipped and swayed in the breeze, their petals brushing up against stone structures. There were many stone structures, in fact, almost all of which were headstones, a different name and date scrawled on each one.
“What has happened?” she cried. “Where are the birds?”
“They sing in the morning. It is evening now and the sun is setting,” replied the Sculptor.
“But the children,” she continued, “I am sure I hear the children play around me.”
“They come at night, when they are feeling brave and are meant to be in their beds.”
“But.” She could not reconcile with this image now seen before her. It was not as she remembered it. Not at all. “It was beautiful; it was golden. I recall: when I last opened my eyes, peonies bloomed, and roses, and cardamoms, and there were wooden benches—”
“There are the benches.” The Sculptor pointed her in the direction of two dilapidating structures hidden beneath overgrown shrubbery.
“There were bees and flowing water.”
Her gaze was directed to the fountain, from which a trickle came out and where several little bees sat.
“But there were no tombstones. This was not a graveyard when I was placed here.” Her tone had become one of frantic desperation.
The Sculptor remained quiet. The garden statue remained distraught.
“Please, you must tell me, what has happened to the beautiful garden?”
After a moment, the Sculptor gazed on her pitiful form and said: “it has always been a graveyard, you were simply too young to see it.”