The Garden of Darkness

Sarai and Mirri came into the room with a pot full of markers and settled down to draw horses. Clare watched them closely.

“They take care of each other,” she said to Jem.

“They’re going to have to,” said Jem grimly.

“Not if we get to the Master,” said Clare. “Not if the Master has a cure.”

“Not if that.”

Mirri looked up for a moment from her drawing. “I hope you noticed Sarai,” she said. “I combed out her hair, and I think she’s beautiful.”

Sarai’s long hair fell in a sleek waterfall of black down her back.

“You do look beautiful,” said Clare, and, for a moment, all her vague fears about the future vanished. “Really beautiful.”

Time to go. Time to move on.





MASTER





THE MASTER GAVE Eliza both Cinderella Barbie and Luke Skywalker for her birthday. She politely dressed and undressed Barbie a few times, but her main interest clearly lay in the Luke Skywalker figure. Britta and Doug gave her a comforter with dolphins on it. The others gave her various tokens: a bracelet, a packet of Gummi Bears, the Barrel of Monkeys game and a field guide to birds. Britta and Doug were in charge of making the cake, but first they had to prepare dinner. Eliza went to the kitchen with them: she loved them both.

The Master followed. He found he liked following Eliza, watching her discover the hidden recesses of the mansion, being there if anything frightened her, tucking her in, just as he did Britta, almost every night—when he wasn’t away on his searches for other children. His searches would sometimes last for days.

“There’s nothing like lamb stew on a cold night,” he said as he poked around the dinner preparations. It was important to be able to do inanity. And he did inanity well—whenever he spoke, he made sure to appear very normal indeed.

“Did you figure out what killed the lamb?” Britta asked. They had found it dead in the field, its throat torn out.

“A wolf,” he said. “Or a dog.” But no dog had done this.

He had.

It was just one of those irresistible urges.

Somewhere behind the mansion the Master could hear the chugging of the generator. The oven was at just the right temperature, and Britta put in the cake. Eliza cut vegetables. A child named Dante was helping her. The Master was watching her handle the knife when it skittered off the potato she was holding and embedded itself deep in her hand.

Eliza made no sound. She pulled the knife out and the blood began to flow freely down her arm in a spiral of red against milk white.

“Put cold water on it,” said Britta. She moved quickly, a dishcloth in her hand, but the Master got to Eliza first. What he felt was not an irresistible urge but the workings of cold calculation. The blood streaming out of Eliza’s hand was enough to keep Pest at bay for six months—maybe more.

The Master was free of SitkaAZ13, oh yes, but as long as the disease was in the world, he needed—what to call it?—boosters.

Britta was the only one that the Master trusted with knowledge about the boosters. Boosters meant ingesting some blood from the right little girl. Boosters were Part One of the process that left him happy and healthy. Part Two was purely recreational. Britta didn’t know about that. He cherished her ignorance.

Eliza bled.

The Master caught Britta’s eye.

He suddenly turned away and pinned Eliza to the wall. Britta and Doug looked on as he bent down and licked the blood off her arm, moving his tongue right up into the wound.

Dante had stopped chopping vegetables, and he looked horrified, but Doug, without saying a word, went and stood against the door so none of the others could come in. Eliza was crying, but she did not scream.

The Master heard Britta as if from far away.

“You’re lucky, Eliza,” she said bitterly. “You’re lucky. And you, Dante—if you ever say a word about this, I will kill you.”

The Master knew that Dante would listen to Britta; all of the children did.

He released Eliza, expecting her to stay, somehow expecting her to go back to preparing the vegetables, but instead she stared for a moment at Britta, and then she pushed aside Doug and ran out the door. Dante began to follow, but Britta grabbed his arm.

“You won’t tell,” she said. “Ever.”

“I won’t,” said Dante, his face white. “Not ever.” Britta let him go. She turned to the Master. He smiled at her.

“They won’t tell,” Britta said. “Both Eliza and Dante are only ten. Children don’t tell.”

It was as if Britta could read his mind. She herself was only twelve, but she was mature for her age.

The Master then used his authoritative voice. He looked most carefully at Doug as he spoke. “My cure is in the blood,” he said. “And without me, your new world would fall apart. It didn’t hurt her at all.”

“Is that what we do to be cured?” Doug asked.

“No,” said the Master. “You have a different road. There’s nothing children can do to keep SitkaAZ13 at bay. But here you have a life worth living.”