Wraithwood Botanist

Doug Hill wasn't a religious man—but he found something when his daughter was born.

She was his first child—his only child at the time.

And even now, she was his only daughter—irreplaceable.

He could still remember naming her.

Tanya was very pregnant at the time, and she could never get comfortable. So she asked her doctor, and the asshole told her, "Sleep on your left side—it increases blood flow," and for the first time in his and Tanya's marriage, she forced him out of his coveted position on the left side of the bed (to which she had banished him so many years before) so that when she slept on her left side and woke up, she was in a perfect position to talk to him, or in practice—routinely wake him up at 1:00 a.m. with statements like:

"What do you think about Rose?"

And while he never remembered his dreams, Doug imagined himself on the beach somewhere, drinking margaritas between firing .50-caliber Browning shells at a dragon or whatever good dreams men usually have, mere moments before the hand of reality slapped him awake with yet another name.

"Hmmm?"

"Rose? What do you think about Rose? It's been cherished for generations, yet so few women have it."

"Cherished by your generation."

"Our."

"Yeah, our…"

"So?"

"So what?"

And so it'd go until he would roll around and groan and say, "What's wrong with Alison?"

And she would get angry and say, "You can't just pick the same name every time we speak."

And somewhere in the midst of a few dozen sleepless nights like this, he ended up going, "Fine… Whatever. Just… give me a second."

He thought about it seriously for the first time, moving through a catalog of names that were socially acceptable enough to be middle class but steered away from basic names like Sarah that are reserved for nervous parents who think that being too different would hurt their child's opportunities. Somewhere in that list, he found a few and chose the one he liked most, knowing it would get rejected anyway, and said:

"Mira."

He could still remember the way it rolled off his tongue as if it were a magic spell, mere words in a magical tome that lay dormant until chanted. The sensation raised the hairs on his arms, and he turned to his wife, who was lost in profound contemplation.

Then she said yes—

Softly. Weakly. Determinately.

Their daughter was named Mira Hill, and when she came out of the womb and cried and screamed, and Doug panicked and feared he'd snap her neck if he held her tiny red body wrong, the doctor thrust her in his arms—

And it clicked.

Just everything. That Mira was his daughter, someone he would protect then and forever with his wife, and the first words out of his mouth were…

Mira.

Mira. What a troublesome name.

It seemed so cliché, but this girl was born to love plants. Doug had to board up the dog door because she would crawl outside. After Tanya started screaming for her and Doug stopped reloading shotgun shells or reading his books and joined her, they would always find Mira out in the garden, dirty as a beggar, giggling and touching plants.

Oh, yes, she loved plants. So he… bought one for her.

It happened sporadically, really. He swerved off the road when he saw a gardening store, grinning slightly, feeling like he'd terrorize his wife a bit with a prank joke on Mira's gardening adventures (lovingly, of course), and when he got there, he saw the perfect plant.

It looked like… a Chia Pet. He doubted kids had seen them at the time, not with their cellphones and Netflix and such, and he considered that. But he remembered. His grandfather made one with him; it was a clay pot statue with holes, and you would plant seeds in those holes, and when you water it, the chia plants would grow out of it, wrapping around the statue like vines, as if it were from an ancient civilization that was left behind for generations.

It was similar to the small leaves for those pets, but it was a sprawling ground cover he could keep in a dish pan. She could crawl all over it because it was soft… so soft… and gentle, yet sturdy enough not to get cut up and leave stains.

Most of all, this plant ("Soleirolia soleirolii," as Mira would later insist upon) was called Baby Tears.

And so it goes…

What started out as a joke turned into a small obsession for Doug.

Tanya would always catch him coming out of Mira's room and check his hands because he was always doing something, and even when he was clean, she would still open up the door and find a third of her bedroom was a sprawling mess of Baby Tears or, in later years, a small garden with real flowers.

And when Tanya complained about "the good carpet," like his and her mothers before them, he ripped out the carpet and replaced it with hardwood floors and even spent three weeks on weekends plumbing a sink into the room so Mira, who was three at the time, could wash her hands at her mother's insistence.

Tanya would always sass him afterward, saying things like, "I ask you to change our brakes, and you're too busy, Mira wants plants and you suddenly have time," and he would have to schmooze her into forgiving him.

But the funny thing…

The thing that only men with responsible mothers would understand…

Is that you know when a wife is angry and disapproves. You can feel it in your bones. And Tanya… she would always sigh and tell him to wash up for dinner and let him get away with it, week after week, month after month, year after year for decades, even after Mira's walls had morning glories vines up them and he had to rip out the wall and part of the floor when he thought it would be "cute" to add oyster mushrooms to Mira's Magical Garden.

Because she loved it too.

Because while most parents know how fast children get bored of things, Mira would never get bored of plants. She would always jump up and down when Doug brought new plants, and then he and Tanya would drink wine and watch Mira as she picked at her Baby Tears and poked at her daisies or demanded they eat her carrots (once she was old enough to start a serious garden).

Now, Doug was walking down a pathway through a prehistoric forest as armed guards reminded everyone not to trip and leave the path, or the plants would start killing everyone.

This was his fault.

It was all his fault.

But if she still had that goofy smile….

He'd be okay with it.

That's what he told himself anyway.

In truth, he didn't know what to think about his daughter, who left for the forest and started killing harvesters and riding beasts—but he was still so excited to see her last year. Now was no different. He really wanted to see her more than anything.

Tanya laced her fingers with his and squeezed. He squeezed back.

Meanwhile, they walked on, surrounded by Hadrian and other Dante guards, as Brexton and Aiden walked ahead.

It was the ultimate entourage—an indestructible party.

But there was something wrong with the scene.

Aiden wasn't the person he was the year before, and Brexton was surprisingly calm. Doug had only met him a few times, but the kid was a freak who sculpted his brain like a bodybuilder builds muscle. He was charming but unnatural, so seeing him have a casual conversation for an hour with his hands in his jacket's pockets just felt… wrong.

And that eeriness put him on edge and primed him for the horror of seeing a black dot on the horizon—a human that wasn't Mira. It was a man in black, whistling this haunting tune that spread through the traveling line of harvesters with amplification magic.

Hadrian didn't stop walking and soon scoffed when they approached. "Must you insist on being a clown?"

Doug squinted his eyes and saw that the mysterious person ahead of them was Brexton Claustra. Then he looked at the perfect clone walking beside Aiden, and the man exploded into a plume of sinister black smoke.

Tanya trembled. "You… did hear him right? Like… on the way?"

"Yeah… he was having a conversation. I heard it."

"Isn't that something?" Aiden said, turning around with a slight smile. "Engineers spent a century trying to make holograms a real thing when they were doing it wrong all along. Turns out, all you need is a bit of magic, and you can practically touch the caller."n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Doug was stunned and blinked, and Aiden blinked twice. Then his lips turned into an amused grin, and he turned around. "It was an illusion. And don't worry, These people are scary, but Mira's a lot scarier. I guarantee it." He took a drink from an elaborate flask, and he walked on to meet Brexton. "What's that look for?"

Brexton walked up to the group, and his lips twisted in strange angles, and when he looked at Doug he couldn't help but laugh.

"What?" Doug asked.

"I just…" Brexton grinned. "Well, let's just say, I thought that Mira would like… um… sugar coat things?"

"What does that mean?" Tanya snapped panickingly.

Brexton turned to Tyler, who turned away sheepishly.

"Tyler Maxwell Hill," Tanya said. "What is he talking about?"

"I don't know, Mom," Tyler said. "Something… killy or something? I doubt she's covered in blood, but I'm guessing that's the general idea."

Doug and Tanya turned to Brexton.

"You'll just have to see."

And oh, they did.

The scene was so much worse than their wildest imagination.

Before Doug ever saw Mira, he saw twenty-foot ribs protruding up from the earth like jagged yellow arches. They were massive, something from the times of Gods and titans, and the bones extended a football field in length between the fractured limbs of various titan bodies.

And in front of that was a massive pile of fresh corpses, one of which was the size of a double-decker bus. And flanking both sides were massive wolves the size of elk.

Tanya's face drained of color, and Doug held her back, and Tyler yelled, "Mira!" with the cheeriest goddamn voice Doug had ever heard before running off to this death pit without any concern or consequence, flanked by Dante guards.

"What?" Doug looked up and saw Mira sitting on a rib above the corpse pile, waving at them like she was a windshield wiper.

"What the hell is this?" Tanya whispered. "Mira Isabella Hill! What is this!"

Tanya flew after Tyler, and somehow, both of them seemed to disregard the beasts! True, they were briefed on these massive creatures, but it didn't matter! They were still… to hell with it.

Doug ran after them, fighting past his old age and out-of-shape body to get there first. And before long, he could see Mira, and his mind blanked out, and he started crying when she jumped off the rib and over the corpses and landed on the path, and started running to them, too. It wasn't until she was lifting Tanya and carrying her to Doug for a double hug that he realized that he was bawling.

Mira was there—and she was sobbing, too.

She gripped both of them and said esoteric, gargled things as she hugged them, squeezing too tight and letting go—trying to find the right pressure.

"I've missed you," Mira said first.

"I've…." Doug choked, and Tanya answered for him:

"We've missed you, too."

Mira released the two of them, hugged her mother for about five seconds until she got the point across, and then flew into Doug's arms.

She might be older and a bit scarier, but she was still a daddy's girl, and how grateful he felt for it.

Because just as she was a daddy's girl, she was his baby girl, and he loved her more than anything.

That's all that mattered.

Everything else became untethered and threatened to disappear forever until Aiden coughed uncharacteristically and said:

"Soooooooo are we just going to pretend like the corpses don't exist?"

The whole family turned to him, and he looked away with faux awkwardness, smirking as he turned and walked away. For whatever reason, this made Mira burst into laughter and more tears.

"Yeah," Tanya said, breaking out of her trance and looking at the massive stack of corpses. "Why are these corpses here?"

Mira glanced away sheepishly as the rest of the harvesters crowded around. "Well, funny story, really…"

And that's how the harvest began. He had no idea then what he would see or experience or what impact it would have on him. All he knew was that he was with his daughter—and that was enough. Rain or shine, corpses or killing—he loved his daughter—and that was enough.