Sometimes she whispers to me, when the hours fall quiet. She tells me of the veins of leaves like spiderweb-tapestries, crisscrossing betwixt the stars. She can be cruel like that, with her poems.

 

‘You’ve never seen a leaf, my love,’ I tell her. ‘We’ve been in these cages all our years.’ At which point she gets huffy and says naught for a while.

 

I sit and listen to the stones. I look to the blank wall and think, Window, but it is a leftover word, stuck in my head from another life. What does it mean?

 

In the morning – at least when it feels slightly more morning than night – they lead me out of my room, to where the others sway and sniffle. I sit on a chair and the doctor raises his knife; they fret and squirrel away, but I do not move. I watch with practised boredom as he cuts along my arm and my blood drips into the bucket. Wafts of ancient metal.

 

When enough is taken, they bind the wound in rags, and the rags slowly redden. The doctor picks up the bucket and studies it, as if admiring his red reflection, and they lead me back to my room. I nurse my arm, alone with her, as she chirps softly, earlier grievances forgot.

 

The first time they cut me, I screamed. I raged. Perhaps I hurt someone. They bound my arms to my chest, pushed me into a desolate hole, and I sat alone — truly alone. They say the problems in my mind stem from my veins. I have too much bad blood. Or perhaps it is to keep me weak, so I don’t get out of hand.

 

I have been in the asylum only a little less time than the walls and the roof. I have seen many folk arrive, seen them falter and cease to blink. I have seen the keepers and the would-be doctors change faces time and again. My name was written on a piece of paper, but I lost the paper and now I have no name. All I know is that I am a lunatic among lunatics in a lunatic asylum.

 

Once there was a scholar. I knew him so well I could list every nick and scar on his hands. He said that ‘lunatic’ came from the word for moon: we are simply moon-folk who have found ourselves on the wrong celestial sphere. He was clever like that.

 

I went with him everywhere. I was his shadow, clinging to his soles. But in time, his reasoning descended into uncouth gibbering, and they took him and bound him in stone and called him mad, even while he murmured about the sound of the stars. The scholar died a long time ago. Only a lunatic remains, trapped in his body, staring at his hands. I’ve forgotten many things I used to know. The scholar wrote his name on a piece of paper, but I lost the paper and now I have no name.

 

Denied my reason, I relished in madness. I howled, swooned, growled at any who came close, spat out medicine and wept upon the walls. It was a life of storms, with no dawn in sight. Then one day the green-eyed keeper, who is kinder than the rest, gave me my own room. And in the corner was a cage, and in the cage she sat waiting, with her smudge of gold feathers and her delicate beak.

 

‘A gift,’ said the green-eyed keeper. ‘It’s your canary now.’

 

She was like something imagined, come down from the sky to keep me company in my cage. I reached out a finger, and she hopped forward and nipped me gently. A smile spread across face.

 

‘What will you call it?’ asked the keeper.

 

The canary perked up her head, and in that dank, sunless chamber, she sang the sweetest enchantment ever to grace mortal ears. ‘Calypso,’ I said. She pondered a moment. Then in a voice of melodies, she said, Calypso? Yes. That sounds right.

 

I sit now, huddled against the wall by her cage, offering a handful of seeds which they give to me to give to her. She accepts them daintily through the bars — they do not trust me with the key. With a yawn, she ruffles herself down to sleep. I put my head against stone and close my eyes.

 

The dreams come unbidden, dancing. Dreams of leaves and roots and unseen things. I awake with tears staining my face. Gritting my teeth, I curse myself. In an asylum, a lack of imagination is a blessing. The barren halls grow worse when one imagines all the things that are not there.

 

I turn to check if she is awake, and gaze at the bottom of the cage. A seed. Below her perch, a tiny black speck, mixed in with the whitish waste. I poke my fingers through and pick it up. I don’t remember feeding her this. Has she been supping on mysterious fruits while I sleep?

 

Calypso gives no answer, merely turns her head and suggests I rest. Biting my tongue, I place the seed in a crack in the wall. Then I tuck my head under my arm and close my eyes.

 

The following week, six people die. I hear it: a silence in the ceiling. I see it in the doctor’s drawn face, in the eyes of those left alive, rattling their chains in mourning.

 

The theatre of the asylum has a small cast. Twelve or so patients, less than a dozen keepers. I hear whispers of a disease creeping in from the perilous world beyond. With a wave of Death’s hoary hand, our population is halved, while the rest, lunatics and learned men alike, shiver as if it were winter.

 

The whispers change. Not a disease of the body, but a disease of the mind. A man strangles himself in the dead of night. This is not all that odd, until I learn it is the doctor, in his clean white robe, lying red-faced on the floor. The keepers devise a theory. Insanity is contagious, the infection is spreading. Most of the staff pack their things and are gone within the week, leaving three keepers to tame the lunatics, lest we claw each other to pieces or tear off our clothes and dance beneath the moon.

 

I no longer have my blood drained. All treatments were strangled with the good doctor. I feel no more insane than usual. On the rare times I leave my room, the other lunatics wring their hands and bow their heads. I am the eldest. The asylum incarnate, scarred and grey-eyed, hair like matted chains.

 

Something grows from the crack in my wall. A shoot uncurls itself, tender, pale. On what does it feed, with no rain and no sun? An illogical thing. But I suppose this place wasn’t built for logic. I give it what little water I have, and I talk to it, and Calypso sings, and perhaps the two of us imitate a fair spring breeze.

 

Food is little. They give me a crust from another man’s meal. ‘It’s bad times, out there,’ says the green-eyed keeper. He does not elaborate. Perhaps war wages in the outside world. Or famine. Or plague. The distant places are ever on the verge of collapse, but nothing can breach these walls.

 

I no longer leave my room. I tend the growing shoot. Nights go by, but no one comes. No food, no water, no seeds. I worry for my shoot, for my canary. Have they forgotten me?

 

At last, someone bangs upon the door.

 

‘Water!’ I cry. A key clinks, and then footsteps fade. I wait – nothing happens. I approach the door. Bewilderingly, it is open. On the floor is a plate of stale bread, a half-filled jug of water. I pour some on the shoot, soak the bread to give to Calypso, then drain the last drops and content myself with crumbs. When all are fed, I step out my room. The asylum is empty. No screams, cursing or wandering feet. I pace the halls, at a loss. The few keepers that remained have gone. The patients have died, disappeared, or fled.

 

Fled?

 

I find a door ajar. Hastily I push it closed, lest the outside leak in. I return to my room. Alone with my treasures, I realise I am no longer a lunatic. I am the lunatic.

 

The shoot grows. It winds up the wall, spreading branches into slender fingers, creeping over the ceiling. It sends down white trunks, rooting into the floor. The work of years occurring in days. Perhaps time’s flow is changing, or my madness worsening without treatment. Small, orange-red fruit grow. I pluck one. Poisonous? Madness-curing? Both? I bite down: the flesh is bitter and sugary. When I do not die, I give one to Calypso. I split open another, peer at the little black seeds.

 

Calypso asks, Do you remember what the scholar said?

 

‘You never knew the scholar. He’s gone. Long gone.’ Still, I frown and think. ‘He said many things. Rambled on for nights on end about all manner of lunacies.’

 

What did he say about trees?

 

‘Trees? He knew their names. He liked names.’ I squint at the fruits, at the twisting trunks. ‘Ficus benjamina, strangler fig. Indian. Plants itself onto a host. For wont of trees, it can root onto buildings. They say one seed can turn a temple into a forest.’

 

Is this a temple? she wonders. There are no gods.

 

‘There’s you,’ I say, and earn a flattered chirrup. I pick out a handful of seeds, leave my room and scatter them about the asylum. They take root as if the entire place were strewn with soil.

 

In their search for the sky, the branches gouge a hole in the roof. I blink, blinded by a shaft of light. Beside me, she flutters and sings.

 

‘What witchcraft is this?’ I say.

 

Sunlight, she whispers.

 

‘Sunlight?’

 

Sunlight.

 

I shut my eyes and shuffle away. Lying there, brushed by a breeze from above.

 

The harsh light softens and cools — I know what it is before I open my eyes. My whole self shakes. Oh, there never was a poem that did justice to the moon, shining in a quiet night. ‘Look, love. Look.’

 

I’m looking, says she.

 

The moonlight calls them. They come wafting: seeds, gardens, Edens. Streaming through the hole, seeds of things I’d forgotten I knew. They take root in the fabric of the place. I poke my head from my den and wander, sitting at times in silence, as I watch the asylum become something else.

 

Trees. They spring from the tiniest cracks in the floor, surge upwards and blanket the ceiling. So much painful slowness rushing past so fast I can scarcely take it in. I reach out, touch ridged grey bark. Oak. A choke in the back of the throat. I touch a smooth, mossy, stone-like surface. Beech. Ivy spirals overhead, scouring the trunks with green; mistletoe drips from the canopy; lichens curl and writhe; ferns unfurl their faces.

 

From the branch-broken ceiling, stars and rain pour through, and I stand with open mouth, gulping. She hops and trills. Head up-raised, I see them — truly see them — for the first time.

 

Leaves. An abundance, a miracle of greens, some so green they are somehow gold, each leaf stencilled with a hundred patterns, each branch holding uncountable leaves, each tree holding boggling branches, each one but a speck in the wood which overcomes my asylum.

 

I faint.

 

Awaken. Too much. Too much magic for one madman. I lay my head on the floor, rest my eyes.

 

Why? Why must I torment myself, when doubtless I lie in my unadorned home, drained of blood, the moon but a fantasy, leaves but a fiction, while lunatics pace and mumble outside?

 

I open my eyes.

 

Sleep well? says Calypso. Fruit falls on my face. The moon raises an eyebrow. The woodland that has sprung up inside these walls is there, waiting, as if it had stood for a thousand years, and I but a spectre wandering the bracken.

 

I pull a twig from the fig, poke it into the lock of her cage. She perks up. The twig snaps, and I grab another, rustle around in the lock, biting my lip, wishing I was one of those former-thieves who faked madness to avoid imprisonment. Inside, she hops up and down, singing. Her tail flutters.

 

A click. The cage door whines open. She falls still, sitting there, uncertain. Then she flits onto the ground, onto my hand. Gazes into my eyes.

 

‘My love,’ I say.

 

Calypso ruffles herself, feathers aglow. With a flicker of her wings, she is in the air, wavering. A triumphant chirrup. I grin. Then, like a candle being snuffed by a breeze, she flies up through the hole – and is gone.

 

I stand there a moment, waiting. Staring at constellations I once could name. Waiting. The silence sinks in. I fall to my knees, choking.

 

It’s all caving in again. The walls failing. The colours sickening. I hear the rattle of scholar’s bones, taste bile on my tongue.

 

‘Calypso!’ I call, and the word turns into a scream.

 

Where is she? Where did she go? Why did I let her go? Will she come back? Is she dead? Am I dead? Where is the scholar? Why are the trees staring? Calypso?

 

A realisation. I came here to seek asylum from the moon and her visions. And now my love has left me, the moon has me, and I am mad.

 

The trees are old and tangled. A fox digs his den in the doctor’s old room. A boar roots in the cellar. Spiders spin patterns, flowers become butterflies. The floor is anemones and moss. No birds. That’s the strangest thing. The hum of gnats, the poems of bats, but no matter how I strain my ears, no birdsong.

 

I sit in the grove which I am fairly sure used to be my room. The shoot that sprouted from the wall now holds up the sky, trunks like pillars, each the width of the widest tree. The ground is scattered with its unearthly fruits. Phantoms dance before my eyes.

 

People visit sometimes, treading lightly, as one does in church. They come to drag me away, to force me back into the light. I throw sticks at them. Stones. They don’t linger.

 

Do not disturb the lunatic of Lunatic’s Wood. He is raving, and does not trust the uncouth creatures that come from out there.

 

I have lain by the fig so long I no longer know what is leg and what is root. I look at the slit of sky betwixt the million, million leaves. All of them, all of this, came from her seed – from Calypso. And now, without her, all I have are ghosts.

 

What is there to do, here in the wreckage of myself? Do I lie for another thousand years until I am soil and worms? Or do I brave the bitter, reeling, waking, clear-skied world – and look for my love? The world will break me.

 

But then again, I suppose I’m already broken.

 

I raise myself, wavering. Coughing, blinking. As I survey my kingdom, I hear a trilling. A high piping above my head. Birdsong after nightfall? The world really has lost its wits. I shake it away — no time for fantasies. What was I thinking?

 

But the sound comes again. The song sinks in, and I stand utterly still. My breath falters. I raise my eyes. Shaking, I extend a hand.

 

From the fathomless canopy, Calypso flies down in a brush of gold and alights on my wrist. Tears burn down my face. I hold her close to my cheek.

 

‘My love,’ I say.

 

My lunatic, says she.