The Garden of Darkness

“I did not like Noah dying,” Mirri said. “I had a bad dream. I drew it.”


That night Clare and Jem waited for Sarai and Mirri to go to sleep before they crept from the room and went to sit by the woodstove. The glowing embers warmed their faces. Clare closed her eyes and imagined spring, her hands full of thyme and rosemary, and then a summer garden, where someone she trusted walked towards her under a cold moon.

“Rick was right, you know,” said Jem. “It’s only a matter of time before you grow into Pest.”

Clare silently contemplated the winking coals as the fire began to die down. Then she sighed. “I’m just not that old.”

Jem ignored her comment.

“When we go,” he said. “We need to go at a faster pace. If Mirri and Sarai can.”

“Mirri and Sarai would follow you at any pace. Anywhere.”

“And you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What’s ‘yes?’”

Clare smiled.

“You look like the Cheshire cat,” said Jem. “And your answers are just as cryptic.” Clare could tell he wasn’t really troubled by her reply.

They sat by the woodstove companionably.

“My birthday’s coming up,” said Jem. “Soon, actually.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“It didn’t seem like an auspicious occasion.”

“Fourteen. You’re catching up to me.”

“When’s your birthday?” asked Jem.

“May fourth.”

“Alice. That sounds about right.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s Alice Liddell’s birthday—the girl who inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

“You know the weirdest things.”

“I like Lewis Carroll. And we’ve certainly gone down the rabbit hole.”





THE NEXT DAY they were up and on the road early. As they walked in the cool air of the morning, Mirri dropped back to flank Clare.

“Will we be together at Master’s?” she asked.

“We’ll stick together,” said Clare, giving her backpack a hoist, “until world’s end.”

“The world’s already ended. I just don’t want us to come apart when we reach where we’re going. So do you promise we’ll always be together?”

Clare promised. Perhaps Clare should have considered the difficulties that might lie ahead of them, and perhaps she should have sensed the weight of the promise, but it didn’t really matter. She would have promised anyway.

The next day it snowed lightly for a while before the snow turned to steady rain, which, while camped miserably under a lean-to, they tried to wait out. They set up the tent, but the rain dripped steadily onto the roof until it was saturated.

“And I didn’t even keep the warranty,” said Jem, but nobody laughed. Sarai was shivering, and Clare wrapped her in two sleeping bags. Sleep was sporadic that night.

The rain did not let up the following day, and they were becoming very tired, wet and quarrelsome when Mirri spotted a house amongst a copse of trees.

“We’ll try it,” said Jem.

The ceiling in the living room leaked, but the biggest bedroom was dry, and so they moved all the blankets and comforters and sleeping bags they could find inside it.

“Notice something?” Clare asked Jem.

“Yeah,” said Jem. “No bodies.”

“Nice change.”

It was four in the afternoon. They all put on whatever dry clothes they could find and huddled together under the covers in the middle of the room. They finally slept soundly, lulled to sleep by their exhaustion and the murmur of the wind and rain.

And it rained.

When Clare woke up, it was still raining. She found herself curled around Sarai, who was holding on to Mirri for warmth. Jem’s arm was around her waist. She tried to disengage herself without waking any one of them up. They didn’t stir. They had slept through the late afternoon and the night.

Clare started making breakfast, and the rest of them soon came to the kitchen, drawn by the smell of hot food. Everybody’s mood improved as they ate.

“Beans, beans,” sang Mirri. “The musical fruit; the more you eat the more you toot!” Sarai giggled, and she wasn’t usually a giggler.

“The more you eat,” Sarai joined in, “the more you see that beans, beans are the fruit for me!” Mirri peered at Clare as if to see if she were shocked. Jem laughed.

“Let’s do the cemetery song,” said Sarai.

“That’s the best,” said Mirri.

Sarai began. “If you laugh when hearse goes by, you will be the next to die; they wrap you up in a bloody sheet—”

“And bury you a hundred feet deep.”

“Chorus!”

“The worms go in, the worms go out. The worms play pinochle on your snout. Your stomach turns a ghastly green, and pus pours out like sour cream; you spread it on a piece of bread, and that’s what you eat when you are dead.”

“Second verse!”

“That’s all right,” said Jem. “We’ll stick with the first verse.”

“Do you know the one about diarrhea?” Sarai asked Mirri.

“No,” said Mirri. “Teach me.”

“Other room,” said Clare.