A Stranger in the Garden

To Saint Darwin: Your story still remains to be told

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to my editor, Navah Wolfe,

and agent, Jennifer Laughran

Some day, but not at this time,

I shall make an announcement of something

that I never once dreamed of.

—Nikola Tesla

T
he first sound Charles heard was rain. It was such a familiar sound that he thought for a moment he was back in the gutter of New London, huddling in rubbish for warmth. Then he realized that he was curled around something knobby and hard—a tree root.

He worried for a moment that he was in the Forest, that the dryads had somehow enspelled him and brought him here. He searched his memory and remembered Lucy Virulen’s hand slipping from his as he fell through howling darkness toward a door of light.

We are where I said we’d be.

The Grue.

There was a tiny part of him, like a black box shut deep in his mind, that the Grue couldn’t always control. That little part was disappointed. He had hoped if they achieved their aim and opened the door he would be free of the Grue, the magic, everything. He had hoped that he could start anew.

He shut away those feelings before the Grue could mock him for them, and breathed deeply. Old London. The smells were different than home—loam rather than sewage, wet leaves rather than the burning bone of the Refineries. This place reminded him of the Virulen countryside with its orchards and gardens.

Kent, to be precise,
the Grue said.
London proper is now much the same as your home. Though without the magic, of course.

Charles looked up. He was lying under the spreading branches of an apple tree. Speckled, blushing apples dripped water on him, and he found himself thinking briefly of Saint Newton. The curtain of rain obscured all but the most basic details. He was in an orchard with a gravel path beyond. The chill in the air felt like September.

He sat up slowly, every bone in his body settling back into place with great pain. He gasped at the sharpness of it. It was as if his skeleton had been unstrung and now was being reassembled.

It practically was.
The Grue snickered.
Travel between the worlds isn’t easy on flesh like yours.

Then why did we do it?
Charles asked silently.

Always so many questions.

Charles waited. He knew the punishment if he asked more than the Grue was willing to tell. It was always a careful and calculated agony that made Charles wish he’d never had a single thought of his own. It had taken him a long time to learn to hide his thoughts, and he couldn’t always do it well enough.

The worst thing he could do was demonstrate that he had any will of his own.

We are here because this is the Gathering Place where long ago I was cast from this paradise.
There was the hint of a sneer in the Grue’s voice.

Charles looked up at the nearest apple, and a strangely passionate longing to pluck it grew within him. But the Grue hungered for other food. It sometimes felt like Charles had eaten the entire world for his master, but it was never enough. He had devoured the Sphinx, the Wyvern hatchlings . . . anything made of
myth
to satisfy him. But nothing ever did.

There was only one thing the Grue wanted now.
Her.

Charles had long known that the woman for whom the Grue yearned was someone of such importance that the creature had nearly destroyed an entire world to get to her. He also knew that she had betrayed the Grue and that he longed for revenge perhaps even more than he longed for the sight of her. Everything the Grue had made him do—hoarding power by eating raw
myth
, killing anyone who got in his way, capturing the Manticore to take her Heart—all had been done for this nameless woman. For the chance to be in her presence again and take revenge.

But Charles still didn’t know who she was. Her face was imprinted on his memory—a face like starlight, eyes deeper than oceans. He knew that in a time long past, she and the Grue had been lovers. He knew that she had betrayed him during a war and allowed him to be exiled with some of his kin. That was when the Grue had become what he was now—a shriveled homunculus, all his beauty and power stripped down to this horrid, vengeful core.

“Is there a reason you’re sitting under my apple tree, young man?” a voice said from behind him.

The rain had obscured the sound of the man’s approach. Charles turned.

Charles Darwin, the Saint for whom he was named, peered in at him under the laden apple branches. He was ancient. His white beard flowed over his collar. He wore a broad-brimmed black hat and matching coat that glistened with rain. He clutched the head of a cane with a hand as gnarled as the roots of his apple tree. None of his mythical Apes could be seen dancing around him.

Charles stared at him, openmouthed.

Don’t be such a git,
the Grue said.
He’s a man, nothing more.

The Grue’s hunger beat at him. After all the magical energy expended to get here, they were both completely drained. The Grue needed food, and the most obvious source was right in front of them. Charles pushed himself to his feet. He clenched his fists and then shoved them in his pockets. He didn’t want to do this—not so soon anyway—but the Grue didn’t care what he wanted.

Darwin watched him with a knowing look, far too knowing.

There was no reason to speak. The old man would be easy to overpower. The Grue wished for the soul jar, so that he could trap the Saint’s soul, but they would have to do without it. Charles felt the Grue summoning the magic through him, the magic that would subdue Darwin and bring him under their control. The Saint wouldn’t feel anything.

And afterward? Charles couldn’t think about that. The Grue wouldn’t allow it.

He summoned the magic, but nothing came. When he reached for it, in fact, there was a stunning jolt, as if an arc of
myth
fire had swept through his body. The Grue growled. Charles stumbled back against the tree, and it was only the splinters of bark under his nails that kept him from fainting.

“Are you quite all right?” Darwin said.

Charles realized Darwin must have asked him several questions that he hadn’t caught. Charles managed to shake his head before the Grue could take possession of his tongue.

“Let’s get you inside,” Darwin said, a bit too gently.

Charles was chilled to the bone. It was as if whatever magic he’d touched had not only shocked him but frozen him to the quick.

The magic is different here. You must channel it and work with it differently.

And then it felt as if the Grue fainted away from the shock himself, because Charles could no longer hear his thoughts.

Such a thing had never happened in the year that Charles had hosted him. There was always a response to his thoughts—a sneer, a smirk, and very rarely, praise. He had gotten so used to that voice that he’d almost thought it his. Being alone was odd, and yet he longed to know the stillness of his own thoughts again.

Darwin led him inside. Charles wasn’t sure how he managed to walk into the house; his legs were like jelly.

A little girl ran up to them as they entered, and Darwin divested himself of coat and hat. “There you are, Granpapa!” she said. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

She looked at Charles. “Who is that?”

Darwin glanced at Charles. His brows were like white clouds in the gloomy house. “I found him under the apple tree. There hasn’t been time for introductions.”

“I’m Charles Waddingly. Charles Darwin Waddingly. I was named after you.”

A servant bustled in and unnecessarily tidied the coat and hat Darwin had already hung. “Sir, if you’d come through the other door . . . ,” he began, then stopped when he saw Charles.

“Turnbull, that’s precisely why I didn’t. I don’t need all your fussing,” Darwin said. “Bring tea to my study, will you?”

Turnbull tried to tear his stare from Charles without much success. “Of course, sir.”

The little girl tugged on Charles’s sleeve. “I’m Gwen.”

Darwin whispered something aside to Turnbull that Charles couldn’t catch.

Charles nodded at her. Even in the gloomy afternoon, her little cheeks were red as the apples on the tree.

His mouth watered. The Grue was waking again.