The Letter in the Garden
A story doesn’t always begin with a sentence. Sometimes, it begins with silence.
A few years ago, I wandered into the maze at Schönbrunn Palace.
I wasn’t looking for inspiration. I wasn’t even looking for the exit.
I just needed a moment outside the noise—an afternoon path hemmed in by hedges and soft light.
And then I felt it.
A pause.
A question.
The sensation that something old and hidden was waiting—like a memory half-remembered or a voice that speaks just as you turn away.
That’s when the letter arrived—not in my hands, but in my imagination.
It wasn’t written to anyone.
It was written for someone to find.
Folded carefully between the centuries, sealed by time and moss and music.
🌿 Listening to Place
Before this story ever made it to the page, I had to learn to hear differently.
Hearing loss ended my long career in language teaching. I could no longer hear students clearly, missed their mistakes, lost my confidence.
Eventually, I stopped teaching.
But what I lost in external clarity, I began to recover in internal stillness.
I listened to staircases.
To lilacs brushing old stone.
To corridors and cracks and overgrown gates.
Places don’t forget.
And Vienna—layered, lived-in, reluctant to reveal—began whispering things I’d never thought to ask.
✍️ Writing from the Labyrinth
Whispers in the Maze is the first story that emerged.
It didn’t come all at once. It came like the maze itself—curved, circling, offering fragments.
A thought seeded.
A gardener imagined.
A letter dreamt - written long ago but meant to be found now.
And a city embraced - where even the hedges remember.
📚 Whispers in the Maze is here!
I have just released Whispers in the Maze as a free illustrated short story.
It’s part of the Traveler Series—a quiet invitation to walk with Vienna instead of rushing through it. (You can read it here.)
And while this project is fiction, it is deeply personal.
It's about losing one way of being and finding another.
It’s about how a city can become a mirror.
And how even loss can lead to a letter waiting in the hedges.
What did you find there?
I'd love to hear your story—reply in the comments or send me a note.
And if you're curious to see what happens in the maze…
🔗 Subscribe here to receive Whispers in the Maze before the official launch of Understanding Vienna.
Because sometimes, the best stories are the ones that whisper.
—Yolanda