The Garden of Darkness (33 page)

“How’s your ankle?” Jem asked quickly.

“It hurts.”

“You’re sixteen now,” he said. “You slept through your birthday.”

“They aren’t something to celebrate anymore.”

Jem gave her some pills from the codeine they had liberated from the gold house, but Clare didn’t like the feeling they gave her.

“The pills help the ankle,” she said, “but they make me feel as if I have cotton wool in my head.”

“Don’t be such a baby. You’re just lucky I managed to fish you out.”

“Thank you,” said Clare. She hadn’t thought any thanks were needed. Of course Jem had saved her life. Of course.

T
HAT NIGHT CLARE
dreamed of Robin. Robin was saying to her, very earnestly, “It’s not Michael, Clare. It’s not Michael at all. Wake up.”

Clare woke up. The tent was dark and still except for the soft sound of breathing, but she could make out Jem’s form near her. She knew that the dream-Robin was trying to tell her something, but she wasn’t sure what. Something about Michael. She hugged his varsity jacket to her. She had thought her heart was a shrine, and all of that, but sometimes Michael seemed a world and a lifetime away. Lazily she wondered what it was she was supposed to wake up to. Jem murmured in his sleep, and Clare kept very quiet.

Whatever it meant, Clare couldn’t say the dream had been a nightmare— not at all. And it had been nice to see Robin again.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TEMPTATION

B
Y DAY,
C
LARE
limped and leaned heavily on the crutch Jem made for her. When she slept, she made sure to keep her ankle elevated and this, thankfully, alleviated much of the swelling. They decided then that it was sprained not broken. After a while, the days became easier. Though Clare was punishing her ankle, it was getting better in spite of her.

As Clare healed, their resolution became more firm: they were going to reach the Master’s; they were going to get the cure if there was a cure to be had, and they were going to take it back to Thyme House.

One evening, while Ramah was collecting wood for a fire, Clare and Jem sat on a boulder near the copse of trees they were camped under. A sea of ferns spread out from the rock. The moon glowed on the ferns, and the wind rippled through them. It looked as if a giant hand were stroking fur against the nap.

“You miss Thyme House,” said Jem.

“Don’t you?” asked Clare.

“Some. But we’re together. And that’s good.”

Clare dipped her feet into the ferns as if testing the waters of the ocean. The leaves tickled her legs. “I feel like we met a long time ago,” said Clare. “Like we’ve been friends forever.”

“You should have seen yourself when we first met. You looked like death. No offense, but you smelled a little like death, too.”

“I was a mess. Now I’m not such a mess, but I can’t walk without a stick.”

“Now you smell like rosemary and mint. Like the herb garden at Thyme House.”

“Beats death.”

Jem got down off the rock and gave his hand to Clare to help her down. The grass beyond the ferns was damp, and they walked through it back to the camp, where Ramah was waiting for them.

The next day dawned bright and glorious, and, as they walked, Bear rushed into the grass ahead of her, flushed a pheasant out of the underbrush and went streaking after it.

“Good news,” said Clare. “Nobody’s here to shoot the pheasant.”

“Bad news?” asked Jem.

“I think it’s going to be Bear’s lunch.” But, to her surprise, the pheasant took quickly to the sky, leaving Bear behind, a black dot against the ripe gold landscape.

When they reached a hill, conversation stopped for a while. A butterfly alighted on Ramah’s pack. Bear panted, his pink and black tongue lolling. The light flickered through the trees.

Clare thought of Thyme House, and she thought of the deep past, when she had been needy and lonely. Such a very long time ago.

That day they camped away from the road in the center of a ring of trees. Small yellow flowers glowed against the moss at the base of the trees and reminded Clare of the gold coins they’d found in the attic of Thyme House. As evening came in, they built a small fire, for comfort as much as for anything else, because the nights were no longer so cold. Clare heated up some food, and they all ate well. Then the three of them crawled into the tent, as, overhead, the Big Bear, the Little Bear, Gemini and Virgo wheeled in the sky.

C
LARE WOKE IN
the dark with a start. Bear was asleep at her feet. She carefully unzipped the flap and looked out, and at once Bear was up and by her side, but Clare stopped him with a gesture. Deep in his throat, he growled.

She saw the figure of a man sitting by the fire. He was warming his hands, and, as the orange coals flared up, she could see he was smiling. He didn’t behave like a Cured, but he was old. Clare thought that maybe he was fifty—more than twenty years older than any age a delayed-onset could hope to reach. She was glad Bear was with her. His reaction was the only thing that made her think she probably wasn’t dreaming the man. Even so, she wasn’t certain. She could, after all, be dreaming Bear too.

Clare looked from Bear to the man, then she sent Bear to the end of the sleeping bag and whispered “down.” After all, if she so much as breathed distress he would come crashing through the tent’s netting to save her. She went outside as quietly as she could.

“I was waiting for you to wake up,” he said. “Your dog wouldn’t come over and keep me company.”

“He doesn’t like strangers,” said Clare.

“He didn’t mind my watching you make camp. He didn’t give me away, and I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you might have done to him.”

“You think I drugged your dog? You think I hypnotized your dog? I’ve always gotten along well with dogs. And other animals. As long as they understand the rules.”

“I should wake the others.” Clare wondered why she hadn’t done so already. She almost called Bear right then, but the man was so very old. She wanted to hear his story.

“But I want to meet
you
,” he said. It was as if he could read her mind. Clare went out and sat on the ground across the fire from what was surely the oldest man in the world. His face bore no signs of Pest, but it was a worn face; it was a face, Clare thought, that had seen many things. He wore jeans and a shirt that was buttoned up tightly against the cool night air.

“Why me?” asked Clare.

“I’ve heard of you and your dog. I received a full description,” he said. “One of my children talked about you.”

“You have children?”

“Have you been travelling long?” he asked. And Clare didn’t mind the change in direction the conversation was taking. Rather than hear his story, she found herself wanting to tell him everything. But somehow she didn’t think that telling him would be a good idea.

Bear, she noted, had left the end of her sleeping bag and was standing at the flap of the tent. His eyes glowed in the firelight.

“A lot of things have happened,” she said. “We’ve been different places.”

“What place are you thinking about now?”

“Home.”

“Thyme House,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“I heard you talking as you were setting up camp.”

“You eavesdropped.”

“I consider these woods mine. So I suppose the conversations in them are mine, too.”

“What about you? Who are you?”

“A traveler. And I’ve got something to offer you.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“As we speak, the Cured are moving into the countryside and destroying what they find. Your Thyme House will eventually perish, long before the time comes when the patches fail and the Cured die.”

“You know about the patches?”

“Of course. I know about a lot of things. But here’s my offer: I know that if you come with me, tonight, now, we
will
get the real cure, and you
will
see Thyme House again.”

“I’d have to talk it over with the others.”

“I don’t mean the others. I’m not interested in the others, although you can give them the cure if you want. Just come with me and everything will be all right.”

Everything will be all right. When Clare had been a child, her real mother had always told her that. But then her mother had died.

“And if I don’t come with you?”

“Then we’ll meet later, anyway,” he said finally.

Clare thought of what would happen if she left now, in the night. Jem and Ramah would wait for her as she had once waited for Robin. “How do you know that everything will turn out all right if I come with you?”

“You’ll have to trust me.”

“I need to get my pack out of the tent.”

“No,” he said. “Leave your pack. You need to come with me now.”

“Not without Bear,” she said, and suddenly she became acutely aware that they had somehow moved from a discussion of whether or not she would leave (how did they get there?) to a discussion of what she could take with her.

“All right,” he said. “The dog can come.”

“You’re not a Cured?”

“I’m not.”

“Are you the Master?”

“Of course I’m the Master.”

At that moment, Jem called out in his sleep, “Clare.”

His voice brought her back to the moment. The fire was almost out; the glamour that had hung around the man was gone.

At that moment his game seemed perfectly obvious to her.

“I won’t make them wait for me; I won’t scare them like that,” she said.

The man stood. From the opening of the tent, Bear growled, an echo to Clare’s thoughts.

“You’ve made an interesting choice,” said the man as he moved towards the trees. And then he was out of sight.

Clare sat by the embers. The memory of the man was fast disappearing into the world of dreams.

But the dream had been a strong one, and she realized that the apparition had been infinitely more powerful than she was. But she thought she had finally won their little game. It was true that the stranger was older, stronger, and, perhaps, wiser. But then she remembered in some corner of her mind that the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift. Time and chance come along and screw with everything.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

HEAVEN

T
HEY KNEW THEY
were close when they reached the gardens—beautiful gardens that seemed to serve no useful purpose whatsoever. A profusion of flowers tumbled together in a jumble of colors—Clare made out yellow daffodils and purple irises. There were no vegetables, no herbs and no weeds. Not one.

Following the path, they turned a corner to see a child not far from them chopping at the dirt with a hoe. Nearby, they spotted two more children trying to pull along a goat. The goat head-butted the girl leading it, and she turned and smacked it on the rump.

“Children,” said Clare. “I can’t believe they’re real.”

The goat head-butted the girl again, and she let out a cry.

“They’re real,” said Jem.

At that moment, the children with the goat stopped and stared, and the child with a hoe stood and looked at them.

“Let’s talk to the one with the hoe first,” said Ramah. “The ones with the goat look older.”

“Maybe we should talk to the older ones first,” said Jem.

“No.” Ramah was seldom this firm.

“Why?”

“Little kids aren’t as easy to brainwash as adolescents,” she said. “The Emperor’s New Clothes. And all that.”

“You know about some weird things, Ramah,” said Jem.

As they approached the little boy, he raised his hoe, alarmed.

“You can put down your hoe,” said Jem. “We’re not Cured.” The boy’s look of fear was replaced by a sheepish grin.

“Sorry,” he said. “In that case, I’m supposed to say that you’re welcome here and to go ahead to Master.”

“Where is the Master?” asked Clare.

“Just keep going. Straight ahead, beyond Britta and Doug—the ones wrestling the goat, you’ll come to the gate.”