The Garden of Darkness

JEM DRAGGED HER out of the water and onto the bank, and, she was to remember vaguely later, pressed down on the wound on her head while swearing fluently, which was unlike Jem. She had swallowed water, and she was sick, and her head ached—and she wanted to sleep, but Jem wouldn’t let her. She could feel that Ramah was there, too. But then even Jem couldn’t keep her awake.

She didn’t remember anything for some time after that. When she woke up, she was leaning against Jem, and he had his arms around her.

“Look at all that blood,” Clare said. “Such a lot of it,” she observed. “Where did it come from?”

“You,” said Jem.

Clare lay down again.

Not much later, Jem leaned over her. “I think you have a concussion,” he said. Clare was vaguely aware that Jem and Ramah had made camp, but, really, all she wanted to do was sleep. Jem kept rousing her back into consciousness, and she supposed he was worried about the concussion, but mostly she was annoyed at being awakened. The next afternoon she woke with a terrific headache and an ankle that looked like a puffball mushroom, only bigger.

The others were speaking as if she were still asleep.

“It looks broken,” said Jem anxiously.

“It’s just going to have to heal itself,” said Ramah. “You can make a crutch to help her.”

“We could go back,” said Jem.

“No,” said Ramah. “We have to get there. Pain is better than Pest.”

“You think she’s that close?”

“I dreamed something last night,” said Ramah.

“What did you dream?”

“That we can’t go back. For us it’s only forward.”

“That doesn’t sound like dream-vision stuff. That sounds practical.”

“Who says dream-visions aren’t practical?” asked Ramah.

Ramah was sponging Clare’s ankle with cool water from the stream when Clare finally opened her eyes. When she did, their eyes met.

“I can keep going,” Clare said.

“How’s your ankle?” Jem asked quickly.

“It hurts.”

“You’re sixteen now,” he said. “You slept through your birthday.”

“They aren’t something to celebrate anymore.”

Jem gave her some pills from the codeine they had liberated from the gold house, but Clare didn’t like the feeling they gave her.

“The pills help the ankle,” she said, “but they make me feel as if I have cotton wool in my head.”

“Don’t be such a baby. You’re just lucky I managed to fish you out.”

“Thank you,” said Clare. She hadn’t thought any thanks were needed. Of course Jem had saved her life. Of course.





THAT NIGHT CLARE dreamed of Robin. Robin was saying to her, very earnestly, “It’s not Michael, Clare. It’s not Michael at all. Wake up.”

Clare woke up. The tent was dark and still except for the soft sound of breathing, but she could make out Jem’s form near her. She knew that the dream-Robin was trying to tell her something, but she wasn’t sure what. Something about Michael. She hugged his varsity jacket to her. She had thought her heart was a shrine, and all of that, but sometimes Michael seemed a world and a lifetime away. Lazily she wondered what it was she was supposed to wake up to. Jem murmured in his sleep, and Clare kept very quiet.

Whatever it meant, Clare couldn’t say the dream had been a nightmare— not at all. And it had been nice to see Robin again.





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO





TEMPTATION





BY DAY, CLARE limped and leaned heavily on the crutch Jem made for her. When she slept, she made sure to keep her ankle elevated and this, thankfully, alleviated much of the swelling. They decided then that it was sprained not broken. After a while, the days became easier. Though Clare was punishing her ankle, it was getting better in spite of her.

As Clare healed, their resolution became more firm: they were going to reach the Master’s; they were going to get the cure if there was a cure to be had, and they were going to take it back to Thyme House.

One evening, while Ramah was collecting wood for a fire, Clare and Jem sat on a boulder near the copse of trees they were camped under. A sea of ferns spread out from the rock. The moon glowed on the ferns, and the wind rippled through them. It looked as if a giant hand were stroking fur against the nap.

“You miss Thyme House,” said Jem.

“Don’t you?” asked Clare.

“Some. But we’re together. And that’s good.”

Clare dipped her feet into the ferns as if testing the waters of the ocean. The leaves tickled her legs. “I feel like we met a long time ago,” said Clare. “Like we’ve been friends forever.”

“You should have seen yourself when we first met. You looked like death. No offense, but you smelled a little like death, too.”

“I was a mess. Now I’m not such a mess, but I can’t walk without a stick.”

“Now you smell like rosemary and mint. Like the herb garden at Thyme House.”