The Garden of Darkness (22 page)

“So you won’t forget me,” she said. “Ever.”

Clare herself had been carrying around a gift for Jem ever since they had found the gold house. Luckily she had packed it in plastic so it had stayed dry. She had intended to give it to him earlier but had never found the right time.

“Let’s go outdoors,” Jem said once it had stopped raining. “You can’t say ‘no.’ It’s my birthday.”

He took Clare by the hand, and they went out into the night. It was very cold. The stars were brilliant flecks of ice in the black sky.

“Here.” Clare gave him the package under her arm. He opened it.

“
Peter Pan
,” he said. “With illustrations by Arthur Rackham. This is amazing, Clare.”

“Who knows?” said Clare. “Maybe you’ll never grow up. Maybe you’ll be fourteen forever. Maybe this is your last birthday.”

Clare was sorry she’d said those words the moment they left her mouth. But they were already out there, and she knew no way to propitiate the gods of ill-wishing.

MASTER

T
HE
M
ASTER PADDED
down the hall quietly. Eliza had been acting as if she feared him. She had given him her blood, and the act should have been a privilege for her. Eliza was lucky to be the right type. The completion of Part One: at its best, the act should be a duet. And even after Part Two, there would still be plenty of children like her to pair up, and those children would produce more with the recessive genes.

Britta, he knew, would have given anything to trade places with Eliza. Britta would have drained her own veins, if that were what it took to keep him happy and alive. For Britta, even Part Two, the recreation, would have been consensual.

In the basement, his scrapbook lay open to a blank page.

He stood in the dark hallway of the mansion, and in his hand was a pair of surgical scissors.

He went past what had been Greg’s room. Britta and Doug had finally read Greg all of
The Stand
(Greg’s choice) and a large portion of
Middlemarch
(Britta’s choice) before SitkaAZ13 took him. Greg had died horribly, as if the disease were making up for the long reprieve it had given him. The Master let only Britta tend him; he didn’t want his children to fear Pest. They were going to have to live their lives with Pest in their future, but the Master wanted them to get used to the idea gradually. There was nothing like denial.

Greg had almost made it to nineteen. Unheard of, really.

When the Master and all of his children had gathered together to bury Greg, the older children had looked restless. They were, the Master knew, waiting for him to say something about their cure. But the Master needed time, more time—time to train them. Their life with him would be good, rich and fulfilling. They would live well. But they would have to learn to accept that they would not live long.

The Master moved forward with confidence. He knew that the others were all outside looking at the newly hatched ducklings. The Master came down the corridor to Eliza’s door. He fingered the scissors in his pocket.

He thought of the cellar. The open page waiting in his scrapbook. He could imagine the feel of the paper’s grain under his fingers. Eliza would never feel the pain of SitkaAZ13. He wouldn’t force her to live that long.

The Master didn’t knock.

In Eliza’s room the bedclothes were tangled. The window was open.

Eliza was gone.

He knew she wouldn’t be back, and, in some ways, he was relieved—she had proved difficult; he wouldn’t go after her. But he enjoyed picturing her struggling through the forest, growing weaker, becoming an easy target for a Cured. He thought of her death; he thought of it again and again and again.

Back in his cellar, he looked at the creamy page of the scrapbook. He decided to keep that particular page blank.

He hoped the birds got her eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SHEBA

T
HE RAIN WAS
depressing. They heard a crash outside the house and ran out only to find that the gutters had fallen. They may have been out-running death, but there seemed to be no way to outrun the persistent rain.

“There’s something fundamentally optimistic about us,” said Clare. “Instead of wintering over here, we’re heading into the heart of winter and following an impromptu map made according to second-hand directions given to us by a man-boy whom we don’t know whether or not to trust.”

“Yeah,” said Jem. “What could go wrong?”

“We’re taking a chance.”

“Everything’s a chance,” said Sarai softly.

But finally the rain stopped.

It was Mirri who discovered the horse. They were almost ready to leave when she ran into the house, wide-eyed and out of breath.

“I found a
horse
,” she said, panting. “I ran all the way here. It’s in the woods behind the house. It’s
big
.”

“Let’s go take a look,” said Clare.

“Are you sure it wasn’t a deer?” asked Jem.

“It’s a horse,” said Mirri. “It’s
much
bigger than a deer.”

“Horses and deer look a little alike,” said Jem.

“It’s a
horse
. It doesn’t look anything
like
a deer.”

“All right,” said Jem.

“The horse is going to
run away
while we’re
talking
.” Mirri danced from foot to foot with impatience.

“Let’s go,” said Clare.

“Maybe I could have it as a
pet
,” said Mirri.

“We can’t afford to have pets,” said Jem. “Except Bear.”

“Bear’s not a pet,” said Clare. They all looked at Bear, who was standing behind her. It was true that he did not, in fact, look like anyone’s pet.

T
HE TREES GLITTERED
in the sunlight. They startled a deer as they went through the meadow, and, for a moment, Clare thought it was the horse Mirri claimed to have seen. Then she saw it was too small and too fast and its tail flipped up, like a white flag. Bear wanted to spring after it, but Clare kept him by her side.

It was cold, and their breaths hung in the air. And that’s how Clare first noticed the horse: as a plume of vapor coming and going a little beyond the first of the trees.

“It’s just there,” Clare said. “Before the old-growth forest.”

“I don’t see anything,” said Sarai.

“There,” said Mirri. “Can’t you
see
him?”

The horse was now a brown blur among the trees.

“We’re going to have to be really quiet,” said Clare. “I’ll see if I can get Bear to herd it towards us.” Clare looked down at Bear, and he looked up at her with his yellow eyes. She was fairly sure that what he would really want to do was eat the horse.

Then the animal moved into clear view. Even at this distance, Clare could see that the beast was an old sway-backed country horse without an ounce of breeding in him. She thought he had probably been used for farm labor from the day he was born. He was like the big shaggy animals she had seen at horse-pulls at country fairs, except that he was now nothing but a walking set of bones in a hide.

“That horse doesn’t look so good,” said Sarai.

“We have to move slowly,” Clare said.

The horse saw them, and its ears pricked forward. Then it took a step towards them.

Clare let Bear go, and he moved in a wide semi-circle in order to get behind the animal. He gave a low growl as he approached.

The horse spooked and leapt sideways with an agility that belied its condition. Clare called Bear back, and he came reluctantly.

“We’re not going to catch it,” said Sarai. She was biting her nails.

“Try clucking,” suggested Jem.

Clare clucked.

“It’s a she,” said Sarai suddenly.

“How do you
know
?” asked Mirri.

“I looked.”

Mirri looked at Sarai with newfound respect.

“I have an idea,” Mirri then said, “give it some
food
.”

“Excellent idea,” Clare said to Mirri. “First get a rope. Then get us some of the carrots that we found in that bin.”

(“Not the carrots,” hissed Jem. “We can eat the carrots.”

“Yes, the carrots,” Clare hissed back).

Clare told them to move back into the meadow. After Mirri came with the carrots and the rope, she obediently backed away as well.

“Horses are a girl thing,” Jem said as he went into the meadow with Mirri.

“Coward,” said Clare.

She stood quietly with her arms outstretched and the food in her hands.

The horse looked interested.

Clare gave a sigh, like the sound of a horse breathing.

The horse came a step closer. Then, abruptly, she came to Clare and, lowering her head, began to eat the carrots. Soon there were chunks of carrot and strands of horse saliva on Clare’s hands. The horse breathed on her and then rubbed her huge head on Clare’s shoulder. Clare patted the horse while slipping a rope around her neck.

“Well,” said Jem as they walked back. “It looks like we have a horse. I notice that it’s a wet horse. A smelly horse. But a horse nonetheless.”

“We’re
all
wet,” said Clare. “And we all probably smell, too.”

Once Clare had patted the horse some more and told her what a good horse she was, the animal became completely docile, as if this were what she had been waiting for. She shambled along with them, head thrust out a bit towards the carrots that Clare was carrying.

The rain began again.

Mirri couldn’t stop looking at the horse.

“She’s absolutely
beautiful
,” she said.

Clare looked back. Every bone showed through fur that was, in places, matted and filthy. In other places, there was no fur at all where the horse had either rubbed it off or it had fallen out. She was knock-kneed and part of her tail was missing.

“Yes,” said Clare. “She absolutely is.”

“Useless, though,” said Jem sadly.

“Nope,” said Clare. “Now all we need is a harness and a cart, and scavenging will become much easier”

“You’re brilliant, Clare,” said Jem.

“Does that mean we’re not going to
eat
it?” asked Mirri. “Because I don’t want to do that.”

“Can you seriously see one of us walking up to this docile creature and slitting her throat?” asked Clare.

Jem considered. “No. Actually, I can’t.” The rain stopped, and they took the horse into the nearest barn to feed and groom her. She shivered with pleasure as they brushed her fur. Clare named her Sheba. In a corner of the barn, near the horse box, hung an old mildewed harness that would do until they could find something better.

“We’re lucky,” said Clare.

“The whole thing’s already written,” said Sarai and nodded, sagely.

Throughout the exclamations and excitement, Sheba stood and chewed thoughtfully on moldy hay. She wasn’t picky about her food. Clare looked her over. If they needed muscle, Sheba, once she had bulked up, would be able to provide it.

The next day, they found a horse cart in the third barn they searched.

It was time to get the harness onto Sheba and see if they could set her up in the traces. But it wasn’t as easy as they had hoped it would be. Sheba was entirely cooperative and simply stood by the cart. She seemed to be waiting to be hitched up, but the harness was tangled, and it wasn’t easy to figure out where all the bits of leather went.

Sheba became restless as morning passed into afternoon.

They paused for lunch.

“Well, we’re not leaving today,” said Clare.

“It’s just a matter of patience,” said Jem. “It’s not as if we’re trying to get the electricity on again, or restart a nuclear reactor. We’re just trying to hitch up a horse; people did this for hundreds of years. It should be imprinted on our genes.”

Clare made an effort to clean the harness and then, after lunch, they put it on the ground in the pattern that they felt it should go on the horse. This time the process went more smoothly. Mirri gave Sheba treats to keep her still. It took hours to get the harness hitched to the cart, but they were finished before dusk. By the time they were done, however, Mirri’s treats were no longer keeping Sheba still, and she was pawing the ground and shaking her mane.

“That’s about as annoyed as she gets,” said Clare. “Personally, I’d be halfway to the meadow by now.”

“I wonder what she thinks of us,” said Mirri.

“She thinks we’re idiots,” said Clare.

“Now what?” asked Jem.

“Now we take it all off and do it again early tomorrow,” said Clare.

There was a collective groan.

“And today and tomorrow we can load the wagon with what we’ll need,” said Jem.

Tomorrow, the real journey begins,
thought Clare.
Tomorrow we set out on the final road.

That night Clare lay awake for a while. In the bed next to hers, Jem was awake, too. He propped himself up on an elbow.

“I can’t sleep,” he said.

“Me neither.”

“You can come in with me. If you like.”

Clare sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I probably would like.” She got out of bed, crossed the room and crawled in with Jem. Bear followed her and lay down at the end of the bed.