I remembered how she could linger in my head and listen to my conversations.
I said, “Show yourself, Jannoula.”
Dame Okra’s expression sharpened at once, her bulgy eyes narrowing to feline cunning. “Hello, Seraphina,” she said with Jannoula’s flat inflection. “I don’t suppose this really counts as a surprise, but it is pleasant nonetheless.”
Surprise or not, I felt sickened. “Release Dame Okra. Leave her at once.”
Jann-Okra shook her head, tsking. “And you immediately turn things unpleasant. Why, Seraphina? Dear Okra’s mind reached out to me. I’d tried knocking—it worked with Gianni, and other unsuspecting innocents—but she wouldn’t answer. She was very closed off; I couldn’t reach her any other way.”
Dame Okra had been so adamant about not letting anyone into her mind. She must have heard Jannoula’s “knock,” but her suspicious nature kept her from answering. Gianni would not have had the wit, but who were these others? Someone had told her about my search.
“I’ve made an old woman a little less lonely,” Jann-Okra was saying. “You overheard her talking to me, surely. How could you not? She has a voice like a mule.”
I glowered. “I heard.”
“Why begrudge her my company if she enjoys it?” She leered nastily, an expression Dame Okra’s face was already quite good at. “I’m tempted to teach you a lesson. I could speak to you in your head again, through Miss Fusspots, and make you unfasten her, like you did Gianni. I could make you eject everyone from your garden, one by one, until you are truly, utterly alone.”
She smiled bitterly. “You’ve never appreciated how lucky you are. Your mind reached for the rest spontaneously. I had to go looking, but my diligence reaps a good harvest at last. I have sought and I have found. Seeing them all in your head helped me. You were my map.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”
She looked mildly surprised. “I want exactly what you want, Seraphina: the half-dragons together at last. We’re on the same quest; I consider you my helpmate.”
“I’m not doing this for you!” I cried.
She wasn’t listening; her eyes had suddenly gone glassy. Her wrinkled cheeks paled, and a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. I leaned forward, holding my breath, hoping that this was the opening salvo in some internal war, that Dame Okra was fighting back. The old woman was so pugnacious that I couldn’t imagine her not battling Jannoula. If anyone could hope to defeat her, surely—
Her eyes refocused and Jannoula’s voice said: “So that’s her famous sense of premonition. Intriguing, and surprisingly painful.” She rubbed Dame Okra’s padded belly and swallowed like one fighting nausea. “The vision pleased me, however. Seraphina, you have helped me whether you meant to or not, and in mere moments you will learn how I’ve helped you.”
There was a knock at the front door.
One of Dame Okra’s maids scurried past the library to answer it; after a hushed and hurried exchange of words, the visitor came clumping down the corridor toward us. Jann-Okra pursed her thick lips into a coy smile. I turned to face the door, bracing myself, not sure whom or what we were expecting.
It was Od Fredricka. Her red hair had tangled into an even wilder mane; mud caked her shoes. She stared with wild eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in days. She stumbled into the library, clasped her hands to her heart, and fell on her knees at my feet.
“Seraphina. Sister. Thank Allsaints I got here in time,” said Od Fredricka, huskily, in Samsamese. “I don’t know how to ask your forgiveness. I was awful. I mocked and abused you. I told the monks you were a monster, and they had you followed.”
I put a hand to my mouth, horrified. Here was the author of Abdo’s heartache.
“I have been alone all my life,” she pleaded, cupping her hands as if I might pour forgiveness into them. “I raised a palisade against the world. It kept hurt at bay, but it gave me no option to let kindness in. I did not—could not—believe in your friendship.
“I see now what a lonely life that was,” said the painter, groveling at my feet. “I don’t want to die alone. I want us all to be together. Forgive me my unjust hostility.”
I looked quickly back at Dame Okra, who raised her hands innocently and said in Jannoula’s voice, “It’s not me animating her. I can’t occupy more than one mind at a time. I can’t even attend to myself while I’m in Dame Okra’s head. For all I know, my body is being eaten by wolves right now.”
I ignored her melodrama. “You did something to her. You changed her mind.”
“I merely opened a few doors and showed her a truth she had hidden from herself. Her loneliness is her own.”
“You did that against her will.”
Jannoula shrugged Dame Okra’s shoulders. “If it was Od Fredricka’s will to be a miserable crank, then her will is an ass. I have no qualms about overriding it.”
Od Fredricka did not understand our Goreddi, but she heard her name spoken. She raised her forehead from the floor and said, “What?”
Dame Okra’s face went momentarily slack, and then she blinked rapidly, clutching the arms of her chair as if she’d grown weak and dizzy. I watched her intently, wondering if this signaled the end of Jannoula’s active possession. It seemed to, but I knew Jannoula’s awareness might still be coiled passively in Dame Okra’s head, observing everything through her eyes and ears.
Dame Okra rose with dignity and strode around the desk. “My dear, dear friend,” she said, taking Od Fredricka’s hands and gently urging her to her feet. “I am so pleased we are together at last.”
They embraced each other like long-lost sisters. I turned away, a nauseous admixture of emotions stewing in my gut.
This is what I’d wanted, the garden, the half-dragons loving each other like family. But how could I possibly want it now?