The Garden of Darkness

THEY WERE AWAKENED by Sarai, screaming for them from the yard.

“Darian’s gone, and he took the pig.” Her face was grey and marked with shock, her eyes, swollen and red. “And he peed on the ground right in front of me before he left. Right in front of me. There. By the door.” As Clare looked, Bear trotted over to the damp spot, raised his leg and regained his territory.

Clare had failed; she had accepted Darian even though, in retrospect, there had been something off about him. His smile had been a little too wide. Yet there she had been, fearing for his safety and missing the danger he might pose to them all. It had never occurred to her— “It’s going to be okay,” Jem said to Sarai.

“You shouldn’t steal from people who give you food,” said Sarai. “It’s wrong. It’s rude.”

“We’re going to get that pig,” said Jem, and Clare could hear the anger in his voice. Darian had betrayed them, and the pig was the least of it.

“I’m telling you, he peed right in front of me,” said Sarai. “Right there by the door. I saw his thing. He already had the pig; he told me to stay in the barn while he left; he told me to count to a hundred before telling, but I only got to seventy before I lost track.”

“He only dared because he thinks we’re kids,” said Jem.

“We are kids,” Clare said.

“Not in the post-Pest world,” said Jem. “Not anymore.”

“This isn’t going to be easy,” said Clare. “He has a head start. And he’s strong.”

“The pig will slow him down,” said Jem.

“And you’re our secret weapon, Clare,” said Sarai. “Right?” Clare could not help but smile, and Jem laughed.

“Let’s get our pig back,” he said.

“Darian thinks he’s a nacho man,” said Sarai. “But he’s not.”

“Macho,” murmured Clare. There was something emphatic about Sarai’s words that reminded her of Mirri. And that’s when she noticed that Mirri wasn’t with them.

Mirri didn’t come when they called. They looked in the bedroom to see if she were still sleeping, but her bed was empty.

“This isn’t good,” said Clare.

“I didn’t see her when I came out,” said Sarai. “I only saw the pig. And Darian. And his thing.”

“Mirri goes into the meadow some mornings,” said Jem. “She likes looking at the rabbits.”

“Darian might have run into her,” said Clare, “when he left with the pig.”

“But I can’t believe he’d hurt her,” said Jem. “Or steal her away. She wouldn’t go, for one thing.”

Clare said nothing, but her thoughts were dark and bitter. Mirri would have trusted Darian because they had all trusted Darian. For her part, Clare had been making assumptions because Darian had looked so much like Michael. And it occurred to her that on some level she had assumed, too, that Pest had killed all the bad people—that they had only the Cured to fear. She had not imagined evil children. But she had been na?ve; surely bad people had survived too. Bad children. Distorted children.

Clare had never realized how fragile, how tenuous her new life was.

Still. At any second Mirri might come up the path to the door of the house.

They searched the house and the barn.

Clare remembered Mirri saying “I’m his favorite,” and, in looking back, she remembered Darian’s hand touching Mirri’s hair.

Clare remembered the vision of blood on Darian’s shirt. Somehow she had got it all wrong. Darian wasn’t the one to worry about; it was Mirri. They had to get her back.

Jem pulled his coat closely around him.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Bring Bear.”

“Of course.”

“And Sarai—go get the rope we used to bring the pig home.”

Sarai came running back with the lead.

“Are you going to kill him?” Sarai asked.

Jem opened his mouth, but Clare forestalled him.

“No,” she said.

“What if he’s hurt Mirri?” asked Sarai.

“That would change things,” said Clare.

“What about a gun?” asked Sarai. They both looked at her. Jem hesitated.

Then Clare spoke. “We don’t need one.”





SARAI SHOWED THEM the direction Darian had gone, and they followed his tracks and, more easily, those of the pig through the high grass in the meadow. When they came to the fence, the swath of broken plants widened and Clare made out a small footprint.

“Mirri,” Clare said. “I’ll bet she came here on her way back from a walk. I’ll bet she was sitting here on the fence just in time for him to find her.”

Neither of them spoke of why Darian might have taken her. In fact, that was a point on which they were never to be fully satisfied.

“Maybe,” said Jem, “we should have listened to Sarai and brought a gun from town.”

“It would’ve taken too long,” said Clare. “And we don’t know how to use a gun.”

“I know how to use a gun,” said Jem.

“No way.”