The Watchtower

about the lights, but when I reached her, I was distracted by the display in front of the statue.
    A dozen candles had been lit at the statue’s base, explaining why it glowed, as well as heaps of flowers, fruit, and small glasses of bitter-smelling, green liquid that cast an emerald glow on the base of the statue.
    “Who left these?” I asked.
    “Worshippers of the tree spirits,” she said, kneeling before the statue and lifting a rose to her nose. “There have been cults dedicated to the tree spirits here since before the Romans came. They simply changed their names to Diana and Faunus and Silenus so that the Romans would let them be. When the Christians gained power, they laid their offerings and lit their candles to the Virgin Mary and the saints. During the Terror they hid their relics in the catacombs. In this day and age they call themselves Wiccans and neo-pagans and come to places where the tree spirits still hold rule.”
    Madame La Pieuvre stood and looked around her. Other lights were flickering at the edges of the shrubbery. I stared at one candle shrine before a statue of a dancing faun. The face of the faun in the flickering candlelight seemed to be laughing. As if in response to my thought, I heard a scrap of laughter rise in the air from the trees behind me— Had there been trees there when I walked in the park earlier? —and then an answering peal of hilarity from deep within the gardens near the carousel. Something white flashed in the onyx-green woods and someone—or something —shrieked.
    “So it’s just people,” I said, picturing young girls in the white, embroidered camisoles and slips sold in flea markets and young, goateed boys in skinny jeans and vintage vests—the type of students and tourists that filled the cafés and streets of the Latin Quarter—wandering the dark park in search of an authentic Parisian adventure.
    “People,” Madame La Pieuvre replied. “And those that feed off them. Come…” She wrapped two of her arms around me tightly and pulled me toward the Grand Basin. “Sylvianne holds court at the Medici Fountain. Stay close to me.”
    We skirted the Grand Basin, which lay eerily calm in the center of all the moving foliage, and the Luxembourg Palace—or at least I assumed the palace still stood where I had seen it this morning. Drapes of violet and mauve fog fell over it now.
    “To shield the guards from what’s happening in the park,” Madame La Pieuvre answered my unasked question. We followed a narrow path—narrower than I recalled these paths being—past a statue of Silenus cavorting with a bevy of naked nymphs. More candles, flowers, and glasses of green liquid stood around this statue. The green-tinged candlelight gave the satyr’s face an even more salacious leer than usual.
    “These statues,” I asked as we approached a long, rectangular basin of lily-pad-covered water, “are they here because this is a favorite place of the tree folk—or do the tree folk frequent the park because of the statues?”
    “A little of both,” Madame La Pieuvre replied. “Humans often erect shrines and statues of pagan gods in places where they’ve glimpsed … well, something they didn’t understand. And then the fey are drawn to these places. They like nothing more than to be flattered in marble and bronze.” She gestured toward the group of statues at the end of the long basin. Candles flickering in a shallow grotto illuminated a tarnished bronze giant hovering over two slim white figures carved from marble.
    “The Cyclops Polyphemus surprising the lovers Galatea and Acis,” Madame La Pieuvre informed in a tour guide’s voice. “Do you know the story?”
    “A little … from art history class. Polyphemus loved Galatea, but Galatea loved Acis, right? It doesn’t look good for poor little Acis.”
    “Polyphemus killed him,” Madame La Pieuvre said, the tour guide’s smooth voice replaced by an anguished rasp. “Tore him limb from limb in front of poor Galatea’s eyes. She poured her tears into his blood and begged the gods to prolong his life in one form or another. You see, she knew she would live forever and she couldn’t bear to live an eternity without him.”
    I glanced at Madame La Pieuvre. Her face glistened with moisture, but whether from tears or the rain she drew to herself, I couldn’t tell.
    “The gods took pity and turned Acis into a river. It flows past Mt. Aetna in Sicily, where Galatea still resides.”
    I wanted to ask