The Garden of Darkness

They stayed in the house and spread their wet clothing across chairs to dry. And still it rained.

Clare and Jem started preparations for leaving, assuming that the rain had to give at some point. A plague and then a deluge. If there were a God, he had their attention.

The packing made Sarai and Mirri unhappy, but when Clare told them that it was Jem’s birthday, the girls were ecstatic. Packing ceased.

Together they made a carrot cake—with flour, orange food coloring and a couple of very old carrots they found in the pantry. In the evening, they cooked it over the wood stove. It tasted terrible, but Jem loved it. Mirri handed him one of the two Breyer model horses she had hidden in her bag; Sarai gave him, very quietly, a locket with a wisp of her hair in it.

“So you won’t forget me,” she said. “Ever.”

Clare herself had been carrying around a gift for Jem ever since they had found the gold house. Luckily she had packed it in plastic so it had stayed dry. She had intended to give it to him earlier but had never found the right time.

“Let’s go outdoors,” Jem said once it had stopped raining. “You can’t say ‘no.’ It’s my birthday.”

He took Clare by the hand, and they went out into the night. It was very cold. The stars were brilliant flecks of ice in the black sky.

“Here.” Clare gave him the package under her arm. He opened it.

“Peter Pan,” he said. “With illustrations by Arthur Rackham. This is amazing, Clare.”

“Who knows?” said Clare. “Maybe you’ll never grow up. Maybe you’ll be fourteen forever. Maybe this is your last birthday.”

Clare was sorry she’d said those words the moment they left her mouth. But they were already out there, and she knew no way to propitiate the gods of ill-wishing.





MASTER





THE MASTER PADDED down the hall quietly. Eliza had been acting as if she feared him. She had given him her blood, and the act should have been a privilege for her. Eliza was lucky to be the right type. The completion of Part One: at its best, the act should be a duet. And even after Part Two, there would still be plenty of children like her to pair up, and those children would produce more with the recessive genes.

Britta, he knew, would have given anything to trade places with Eliza. Britta would have drained her own veins, if that were what it took to keep him happy and alive. For Britta, even Part Two, the recreation, would have been consensual.

In the basement, his scrapbook lay open to a blank page.

He stood in the dark hallway of the mansion, and in his hand was a pair of surgical scissors.

He went past what had been Greg’s room. Britta and Doug had finally read Greg all of The Stand (Greg’s choice) and a large portion of Middlemarch (Britta’s choice) before SitkaAZ13 took him. Greg had died horribly, as if the disease were making up for the long reprieve it had given him. The Master let only Britta tend him; he didn’t want his children to fear Pest. They were going to have to live their lives with Pest in their future, but the Master wanted them to get used to the idea gradually. There was nothing like denial.

Greg had almost made it to nineteen. Unheard of, really.

When the Master and all of his children had gathered together to bury Greg, the older children had looked restless. They were, the Master knew, waiting for him to say something about their cure. But the Master needed time, more time—time to train them. Their life with him would be good, rich and fulfilling. They would live well. But they would have to learn to accept that they would not live long.

The Master moved forward with confidence. He knew that the others were all outside looking at the newly hatched ducklings. The Master came down the corridor to Eliza’s door. He fingered the scissors in his pocket.

He thought of the cellar. The open page waiting in his scrapbook. He could imagine the feel of the paper’s grain under his fingers. Eliza would never feel the pain of SitkaAZ13. He wouldn’t force her to live that long.

The Master didn’t knock.

In Eliza’s room the bedclothes were tangled. The window was open.

Eliza was gone.

He knew she wouldn’t be back, and, in some ways, he was relieved—she had proved difficult; he wouldn’t go after her. But he enjoyed picturing her struggling through the forest, growing weaker, becoming an easy target for a Cured. He thought of her death; he thought of it again and again and again.

Back in his cellar, he looked at the creamy page of the scrapbook. He decided to keep that particular page blank.

He hoped the birds got her eyes.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE





SHEBA