Read Into the Garden for Free Online

clowns and horses, scenic views, and some cartoon characters on the white and candy apple red wallpaper. I, especially, felt like Gulliver in Lilliput, a giant among tiny people. I was afraid to move, afraid I might step on something or shatter something with a clumsy gesture.
"We don't have to sit on furniture," Jade said, as she saw us lingering in the doorway. "We can sit on the floor. That's what I usually do when I'm up here."
She closed the door behind her and went to the small area where there was a dining room table all set with toy dishes and silverware. Behind it was a miniature kitchen with cabinets, a sink, and a stove. None of us, not even Misty, could fit on those tiny kitchen table chairs, I thought. A beautiful doll with long flowing golden hair was seated at the head of the table. On the other chairs were characters from various children's stories. I recognized Pinocchio of course, and Dorothy from Oz, as well as Pocahontas.
Jade opened one of the small cabinet doors, reached in, and then turned back to us with a long, black candle in her hand. I saw her look to Star who nodded. Then Jade pulled down the shade over the small window to darken the room. She set a candle holder down on the floor and squatted beside it, inviting us to do the same. We gathered in a small circle and Jade set the candle in the holder.
"I don't mean to be so dramatic about all this, but I've been thinking about us and I've done some research on different rituals designed to bind people the way I think we all want to be bound."
"What do you mean by bound?" Misty asked.
Jade looked very thoughtful for a moment. It was very quiet. All I could hear was the tiny ticking of a small clock on a shelf behind me.
"We've all got to feel we're part of something much greater than ourselves. If you put a teaspoon of water into a bottle of wine, the water would lose its identity. It would take on the smell and the taste of the wine. We've got to dissolve ourselves like that into each other."
"How do we do that?" Misty asked. Without realizing she was doing it, she was whispering.
Instead of answering right away, Jade lit the candle.
"We have to pledge ourselves to each other, to the sisterhood, and swear to put the interests of all of us above our own personal interests."
Misty still looked troubled and confused.
"Don't you want to do that?" Jade asked her.
Misty looked at me and then nodded.
"Sure. That's why we're here, I guess."
"We've all been brought together because people who were or are supposed to be responsible for us were more interested in their own happiness. That's why we have to be unselfish when it comes to each other," Jade said.
The candle burned brightly, the light flickering on all our faces, making our eyes look like they all had tiny candles in them as well.
"But what do we actually do? Swear on a Bible or cut an X in our palms or something and take some sort of blood oath?" Misty inquired.
"Too typical, right out of comic books," Jade replied. "So, then what?" Misty looked at Star who looked at Jade. She nodded at the candle.
"We have to toss something into the small flame," Jade continued, "something that will prove how much we trust the OWP's."
"I don't understand," I said. "Into the flame?"
"That's just symbolic," Jade said. "Fire consumes, burns away the se/fish part of ourselves. It changes one form of energy into another. That's why it's so often used in any ritual."
"But what would we toss into it? What form of energy?" I looked at Misty who didn't look worried anymore. She looked intrigued.
"We make an offering, a deep secret," Jade said, glancing at Star, which convinced me the two of them had talked a little about all this. "We change a secret into a common bond, an offering, a
commitment to each other. It has to be something we didn't even tell Doctor Marlowe, something so close, so revealing, we couldn't do it. Obviously, something then, that no one else knows about us. If you've told someone, it's no good. In