The Garden of Darkness

“No,” said Mirri.

As they got closer, Clare could see the woman’s face more clearly. Her eyes and mouth had a beautiful shape, and Clare was strongly reminded of someone, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint whom. The rest of her face was marred, and Clare recognized that the course of Pest had been arrested during the final stages. The thick ropes of scar tissue matted the woman’s nose into her cheeks, and the marks of Pest on her neck were black. Her swollen knuckles had curled her hands into dirty claws.

Mirri stole a look at Clare’s face.

“She won’t hurt you,” she said. “I know it. She’s never tried to hurt any of us.”

“You need to be careful,” said Jem. “She’s not a pet.”

“I wasn’t thinking of her as a pet,” said Mirri.

It was at that moment that Bear rejoined them. He had the desiccated body of a long-dead squirrel in his mouth, and he dropped it at Clare’s feet. He then looked up at her, tongue lolling out, as if waiting for approval.

“That’s pretty disgusting,” said Clare, but she stroked Bear’s head as she spoke.

Bear snuffed the air and, in a moment, his body stiffened, and he made a move as if to lunge forward. Clare knew he had become aware of the Cured-in-a-blue-dress.

“Grab him,” said Mirri. “He’ll hurt her.”

Clare knew she could never catch Bear if he went after the Cured-in-a-blue-dress, but, after his initial movement forward, he stopped. He let Clare put her arms around him. His ears were pricked forward, and he was alert, but he made no move to attack.

“He’s not even growling,” said Clare.

“That’s because the Cured-in-a-blue-dress is harmless,” said Mirri. “Dogs know.”

Clare put a hand on Bear. He seemed relaxed. Perhaps Mirri was right.

Then Clare looked at the Cured-in-a-blue-dress. Oddly, the blue made her think of her mother. Not of Marie, her stepmother, but of her real mother, long dead. Clare remembered that they had buried her in a sky blue dress. Madonna blue.

They approached the barn, and the Cured-in-a-blue-dress got up and began to move away. She looked around urgently, as if for a place to escape. And then she ran past them and around the house.

“She isn’t very stable,” said Mirri. “That’s the word Jem uses—‘stable.’ Sometimes she does odd things. For no reason.”

“She killed our only chicken,” said Jem.

“You don’t know that,” said Mirri.

“But she didn’t eat it,” said Jem. “That’s not very stable—she killed for no reason.”

“Well, we ate it,” said Mirri. “So it doesn’t matter.”

Clare, as she listened to Mirri, felt she needed to get some perspective on her situation. She thought simply that there were too many unknown quantities in her world now. She didn’t really know Jem. Not really—not as she had known Robin. Mirri and Sarai were strangers. The Cured-in-a-blue-dress was a worry. And the Master was an enigma.

If only Michael were there, everything would be completely all right. He would know what to do. Sometimes she wanted him so much, she simply wished she could sit on the ground and put her head in her hands and rock back and forth until the want went away. And these children had never been part of her old world—even Jem had never been anywhere but on the periphery. She should be—what was the term Jem used? Vigilant.

But it then occurred to her that at some point she had already made up her mind: she trusted Jem. She trusted them all. Vigilance? It was already too late for that.





SARAI’S FEVER WAS gone that evening, and she was up on the sofa, reading, while Mirri and Jem showed Clare every corner of the house and attic before returning to the living room for dinner. The kerosene lantern shed a soft light, and what by day was, they assured her, a dingy wallpaper, looked a rich yellow with a golden inlaid pattern.

That night they lay on the floor of the living room, now covered in pillows, and ate out of cans and drank soda. Sarai moved gingerly, but she was clearly feeling better. Mirri seemed open and happy. She made a tower out of fruit cocktail tins in front of the blank television.

“I want to go explore east tomorrow,” said Jem. “We haven’t checked out that part of town.”

“Okay.” Mirri popped the top off another tin of fruit cocktail.

“I’m warning you about all that fruit, Mirri,” said Jem. “It’s going to bite you in the butt. No kidding.”

“It’s really good,” she said.

“Mirri,” warned Sarai. “Jem said.”

“Yeah, but you’re not the boss of me.”

“But I am,” said Jem. “And you’re not having any more fruit cocktail after that tin. You’ll get sick.”