The Garden of Enchantment

  This was originally published in Perchance To Dream.

You have visited beautiful gardens before, but this garden is special.

This garden is here to restore the spirits to the disenchanted.

Welcome to The Garden of Enchantment.

From the moment you approach its all-encompassing hedge, you feel it working on you already. Your first sense affected is scent, as the Garden offers you scents from every flower you ever loved.

The sun shines on your body as you open the gate, a little iron thing which opens with a squeak to allow you entry. There is a footpath beyond, cool stone cobbles undulating across the lawn, past the central fountain with its rushing, babbling waters glittering in the daylight.

And then you walk past the fountain, and on into the garden proper, following a desire path through the grass.

This is a journey of pleasure, past banks of fragrant flowers flooding the air with their sweet scent, to clouds of pollinating bees and butterflies, clustering around overhanging wisteria.

Beyond that is a large ornamental pond, the cool waters taking away the heat of the day.

And soon, your desire path through the undergrowth takes you to the labyrinth at the heart of the garden.

This labyrinth is unicursal. The path only goes in one direction, closer and closer to the centre with each turn. As your feet step onto the winding path, your thoughts slow down, your mind growing still and silent as all urgency leaves you.

There is only the sun on your body, and the feel of the soil on the path beneath your feet, and each turn which takes away yet more of your thoughts and emotions as you carefully, methodically, calmly, just follow the path, and your planning stops as your whole life becomes just following the path, just seeing the path dead ahead, no further than the next bend.

Because, as the labyrinth takes you closer to the centre, all the paths are getting shorter, and your ability to think gets shorter and shorter, too, and it's so easy to let go and drop now, but you've got to see things through, at the centre.

Because the centre is so close, now, and when you get there, all you need to do is go blank, and let go, and let all your thoughts stop, and even as you realise this, you see the centre of the labyrinth just up ahead, and when you reach it, all your thinking stops, and your mind stops, and it all goes blank and empty, and so so peaceful, and you'll just want to go here next.