Page 10 of In the Garden of Monsters

I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. Considering the green glow I had seen the night before, he might not be jesting after all.

“Have you had to rescue many of your guests?” Gala asked, her tone teasing.

“You are the first visitors we’ve had in years, though there are curious trespassers on occasion.” Ignazio pointed down the path ahead. “This is a back passage into the Sacro Boscoor, as it is often called, theboschetto,the little wood. The original main entrance, now unused, is on the other side of the garden. There you’d have been greeted by two worn sphinxes, one of which bears an inscription that reads ‘You who enter here put your mind to it part by part and tell me then if so many wonders were made as trickery or art.’”

“So, the statues are riddles to decipher?” Jack asked.

Ignazio gave him a brilliant smile. “Or are they just art? Come, let us find out.”

I fell in step behind him, marveling that we were walking along paths that were centuries old. The air felt charged with magical energy, although I was sure it was only my excitement to be sitting for Dalí. Then I stumbled, nearly crashing into Gala, who grunted as I used her arm to steady myself. Regret washed over me for having worn my best pair of heels; it was an attempt to make an impression. And indeed, an impression was being made, but not in the way initially intended.

A bleat emanated from somewhere deep in the garden. “That didn’t sound like a monster,” Jack remarked.

“There are a few locals who let their sheep graze near here,” Ignazio explained. “They think the monsters scare away the wolves.”

Jack and I exchanged looks. He clearly thought the same as I—Italian superstitions truly made no sense.

“Wait,” I called out to Ignazio as he started forward. “We were told that the locals are afraid of this place, because of a woman who died in the garden. Is that true?”

“Yes. A long time ago. Several women are rumored to have died in the garden. The details are lost to history, but superstition remains long in the mind.” Ignazio’s eyes did not leave mine as he spoke, and it was as though he was imploring me to discern some hidden meaning in his words.

My heart skipped a beat.

“It’s a shame,” he continued. “Theboschettowas once a place of great wonder and beauty that was much talked about among the Italian nobility.”

“Are there ghosts?” Jack asked, elbowing me playfully in the ribs.

“Perhaps.” A fire seemed to light in Ignazio’s eyes, but he said no more.

Jack elbowed me again. “I told you there were ghosts.”

I gave him a little chuckle, but it was a nervous laugh.

We had come to a small stream banked by bushes colored with autumn’s brush. A wide board had been placed across the shallow water. As we traversed the wobbly bridge, I felt that I had somehow pierced a veil of light, shadow, andsomethingindescribable. This feeling was coupled with an intense sense of déjà vu. It was as though we were entering someplace that was not part of our real world, but despite that, it was as familiar to me as if I were walking into a home of my own. I had a distinct impression that I had trodden this path before, many times.

Arriving at a fork in the trail, Ignazio steered us down the short trail to the left, which brought us to an enormous monster with a wide-open mouth and several square, chipped teeth. Upon its head was a striped globe topped by a small castle.

“I think he wants to eat us,” Gala said.

Dalí stood in the monster’s open mouth, touching its chipped teeth. “Let him eat,” he declared as Paolo began snapping photos.

“This is Proteus Glaucus,” Ignazio explained. “He became a sea god after eating a magical herb.”

“What is that on his head?” Jack asked.

“You’ve seen the Orsini bear and the double roses throughout the palazzo—the globe and the castle are also family symbols.”

“But what does it mean?” Jack eyed the statue, clearly puzzled.

Ignazio shrugged. “It’s set apart from the rest of the statues on this dead-end path. Perhaps it’s meant as a sign that one has lost their way. Or perhaps it’s a warning?”

“A warning?” Gala folded her arms across her chest and tapped her fingers against her arm as though she didn’t believe anything Ignazio was saying.

“A final warning to turn back, away from this garden of monsters.”

“Should we?” I asked without thinking. After I spoke, I had an odd feeling that perhaps we should. All my conversations with Lillian came flooding back to me. Was it really wise that I was in a creepy garden with complete strangers? And one of them a known freak of a sort?

I stared at Proteus Glaucus. For all my lost memories, somewhere in my past I had absorbed the depths of the myths. Glaucus had loved the nymph Scylla, but she was repulsed by his scales and webbed hands. He asked the witch Circe for a love potion, but his charms had already enraptured Circe. When Glaucus rebuffed her, she took revenge, turning Scylla into an oceanic form of a hydra.

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