"The Garden" by Einsturzende Neubaten, from Ende Neu

They are all gone now.

The garden is silent, the grass burned and trampled, the dragon nowhere to be found. Samantha sits and waits for the horses, but they too have left. She would be grateful for any company, anything but her devastated garden and the still, wan face of the red-haired woman who lies as if dead in the clearing.

Samantha and Scully in the garden; it feels as if nothing has changed in this place for all of eternity.

Soon, Samantha thinks, there will be other flowers. All of the missing ones will come back to the secret garden, and everyone will be together. She wonders if they will be motionless like Scully, or alive and awake in this dream state, in this lull before the storm.

She wishes fervently for someone to talk to her.

Samantha misses the Awake Scully, the sound of her voice reading aloud in the hospital room, she misses the companionship of someone who understands. Scully walked in this garden once - Samantha is certain of it.

She's sleeping now, and she will never wake, she will be here until she dies and they've all left her, forgotten her, lying here as the world goes up in flames around her. Samantha does not pity Scully - pity is a foreign emotion - but even so, she longs to trade places with the other woman. She aches for a sleep that is not this dream of a garden, for a sleep that is simply oblivion.

Samantha remembers, a long time ago, waking from a nightmare in her mother's arms, staring up into eyes dilated from Valium, the soft voice that murmured, "Awake, Samantha, awake..." and she wonders if her mother, too, knew of this place. She cradles Scully's head in her pale, trembling hands, the flame-red hair as soft as silk against her palms.

She whispers, "Awake, Scully, awake..."

There is a stirring in this place, where nothing was ever supposed to change. There is fire at her fingertips - she can hold it, command it. And her wish now is to correct the wrongs that have been done, some of them committed in her own name. She is painfully aware of the sacrificial lamb, the victim of someone else's plans, and she wills the red-haired woman back to the world of the living as subtly as she weaves the fire from her hands.

Scully opens her eyes.

Samantha swallows hard, and she looks up towards the bruised, darkening sky. Thunder lurks somewhere on the horizon - the beating of hooves, a distant omen. Scully will live, but the rest remains. The lamb will still be sacrificed, and the garden is crumbling all around them.

Samantha's hands burn from the remnants of a fire, now extinguished.

Back to Fire Eaters index

Look at Soundtrack