The Garden of Darkness

Clare had been dreaming, too. She dreamed of the flood of gold coins cascading out of the box and onto the floor of the attic. In the dream, Clare could pick them up, and they were like warm suns in the palm of her hand. They were so real that they were like the promise of a return.

Perhaps they should listen to Ramah’s dreams.

As Clare was taking the radio to put into her pack, she turned it on. It was tuned to the Master’s frequency.

“I am the master-of-the-situation. If you are alive, you are a child, and when you come of age, you will die of Pest. This is what the Pest rash means. But I can cure you. Come to me. North of Herne Wood near route I-80. North of Herne Wood near route I-80. I am the only adult left. I am the master-of-the-situation. If you are alive—”

The message cycled on and on. Clare turned the radio off. She realized that she had come to a decision.

“All right,” she said to Ramah abruptly. “Come with us.”

“Clare,” protested Jem.

“When,” asked Clare, “has Ramah ever wanted anything that wasn’t good for us?”





JEM AND CLARE and Ramah woke early the next morning so that they would have the full day to help the others set out a routine for running the farm. And Clare took some time off to walk through the meadow that surrounded the garden and to sit on the big rock in its center. In the kitchen garden then she saw that herbs were already coming up—oregano, basil, mint, thyme. Perhaps it was a little early, but then the farm seemed to have its own weather patterns, and the days had been temperate and inviting. The earth was warm. Clare was glad that she and Jem were coming back, if only to get the others. Maybe, after the cure, they could come back to stay. She decided to call the house ‘Thyme House.’ The others followed her lead that day and called it Thyme House too. They named the house as if they could all stay there always, as if Clare and Jem weren’t leaving the next day, as if there were no possibility of darkness waiting in the future.

Clare and Bear and Sarai took Bird Boy fishing on that last day. It seemed a good skill to have. Bird Boy caught an eighteen-inch trout in the deep pool by the creek, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill it. It was Sarai who took it from him and hit it with a rock.

“It’s dinner,” she said.

“It was alive.” Bird Boy was sheepish. He watched as Clare used her scaling knife to gut the fish. Bear ate the innards and then went to put his head in Bird Boy’s lap. “You smell,” said Bird Boy. But Bear didn’t move, and soon Bird Boy was stroking him.

That evening, before eating Bird Boy’s trout, Clare and Jem went back to the pond and sat and watched the ducks dipping their bills into the water for duckweed. Only when Clare saw Jem frowning at her did she remember they were going to leave the next day for the Master’s.

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.

Tilda, who had spent some time at Thyme House, knew how to care for the animals. And Clare found packets of seeds in the house—tomatoes, peas, peppers, corn, squash, radishes—and left them with Sarai after telling her what to do and when to plant.

“You and Mirri manage the garden,” she said. “And Tilda can help, too.”

“But you’ll be back soon,” said Mirri.

“You’ll be fine,” Clare said. Mirri looked at her pleadingly. “And you’re right. We’ll be back soon.”

Abel, astonishingly, turned out to be good at milking cows, once Clare showed him how. She was always to remember him sitting on a cow stool, the top of his head not even reaching the flank of the cow as he milked in a steady rhythm.

“Make sure they share tasks,” Jem told Bird Boy.

And Clare saw Ramah take Bird Boy aside. Clare listened hard, wondering what Ramah would say, not minding the fact of the eavesdropping in the least.

“I’ll be back,” Ramah said to Bird Boy.

“You’ll be back,” said Bird Boy, but he didn’t look convinced.

“Until then,” she said. “You have to watch over all of them.”

“Watch over them.”

“If we don’t come back—”

“You said that first. That you’d be back.”

“If I’m wrong, don’t go straight to Master. Find out about him.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, Bird Boy.” Bird Boy was weeping.

Clare and Jem and Ramah set out the next morning after frightened goodbyes and frantic well-wishing—and with Mirri’s last-minute gift of one of Sheba’s spare horse-shoes. They would miss Sheba, but they were moving fast overland now, so that soon they would be at the Master’s.

They left on May third, the day before Clare’s sixteenth birthday.

They walked miles through hypnotically swishing waist-high grass. Maybe Clare was still in a kind of dream, or maybe neither Ramah nor Jem were there to steady her at the crucial second. But one moment she was crossing a stream on a fallen tree, and the next she slipped on the moss, her ankle gave out, and she fell. On her way down, she hit her head on a boulder in the water.