Poison Ivy

Have you ever been to a garden so beautiful that you forgot to breathe?

The Gotham City Botanical Gardens were exactly like that — row after row of roses and ferns and orchids, fountains trickling softly, butterflies resting on petals the color of sunset. Families came on weekends with picnic baskets. Children ran between the hedgerows. On a warm afternoon it was the most peaceful place in all of Gotham.

But this morning, when the head gardener arrived at six o'clock sharp, he found the gate completely blocked. Not by a fence or a sign — by a wall of enormous vines, each one as thick as a person's waist, braided together like a green and knotted fortress. The gate was gone. The pathways inside were gone. The whole garden had transformed overnight into a shifting, sighing maze that moved on its own.

Poison Ivy.

Batgirl arrived twenty minutes later, having picked up the alarm on the Bat-Computer. She stood before the vine wall, head tilted, studying it. The vines breathed — she could see them slowly expanding and contracting. Somewhere deep inside, a faint glow pulsed. Green, then darker, then green again.

"I need to see the layout," she murmured, and reached into her utility belt.

She deployed her mini-drone — a small, six-winged device that could hover silently and send video back to the display screen built into her gauntlet. Up it went, over the top of the vine wall, mapping the maze from above. Batgirl watched the screen as the drone threaded between the canopy.

What she saw was extraordinary. The maze was not random at all. It was a spiral, perfectly geometric, and at the very center — she had to lean close to see it — a single flower was glowing with a warm amber light. An orchid. The most unusual orchid she had ever seen, its petals traced with what looked like silver veins.

Ivy was protecting something.

Batgirl also noticed the hazards. Puddles of amber-colored sap that looked sticky enough to trap a boot — or a whole leg. And between the vines, fine clouds of pale dust drifted in the still air. Batgirl recognized the shimmer. Tickle-dust spores — harmless but disorienting, and enough to make a person sneeze so hard they couldn't think straight.

She fitted the micro-filter over her nose, sprayed her boots with the solvent she kept in her belt for exactly this kind of job, and stepped through the gap in the vines.

The maze shifted around her the moment she entered. Paths she could see on the drone map were no longer there. New walls of vine rose and fell. Batgirl kept her eyes on the drone feed, navigating by the screen on her wrist, adjusting her route every thirty seconds.

Then she heard them — faint, high, crystalline notes drifting from somewhere in the canopy. Musical chimes. She paused and listened harder.

The vines were moving in time with the music.

She understood at once. The chimes were not decorations. They were controls. Whoever played the right sequence could direct the whole maze like a conductor leading an orchestra.

Batgirl opened the sound-analysis program on her gauntlet — a tool she had built herself during three very late nights in the Batcave — and captured the tone sequence. She tested a combination on the gauntlet's speaker. Three soft notes. Four. A pause.

A vine on her left pulled back like a curtain.

She kept playing. Notes falling like drops of water, careful and precise, each one making the green walls breathe open just enough to let her through. She was not fighting the garden. She was learning its language.

At the center, she found Poison Ivy kneeling beside the glowing orchid, one hand cupped gently beneath its lowest petal. The flower pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat. Ivy's green eyes were soft, focused, completely absorbed.

She looked up as Batgirl arrived. Her expression was neither afraid nor angry — just watchful.

"I only wanted them to stop trampling the beds," Ivy said. "The staff here uses herbicide on the south path. Herbicide, on a botanical garden. Can you imagine?"

Batgirl looked at the orchid. "What is it?"

"The last one," Ivy said simply.

Batgirl was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "If I can get the city to agree to plant more trees along Central Boulevard — and ban the herbicide use on the designated heritage beds — will you open the garden back up?"

Ivy considered. A long silence, filled with the soft hum of the chimes.

"The downtown neighborhood on Seventh Street has been asking for green space for years," Batgirl added. "I could make sure your species list is part of the planting plan."

Ivy looked down at the orchid, then back at Batgirl. "You did your homework."

"I always do," Batgirl said.

By noon, the vines had drawn back to their beds, the paths had reappeared, and the park rangers were gently clearing the remaining sticky sap from the south path while Batgirl stood nearby making sure Ivy's rarest specimens were labeled and protected.

The glowing orchid stayed exactly where it was, right at the center of the garden, humming quietly to itself.

And somewhere across the city, a letter was already on its way to the Department of Parks, signed by one Barbara Gordon — requesting more trees.