Swanny meandered unsteadily through the overgrown garden, assembling angry bouquets in her mind. The weeds beneath her feet were no goddamn use. She needed birdfoot deervetch for revenge. Monkshoods to murder the world. White carnations for disdain, lime blossoms to say fuck you. And snapdragons—don’t forget those, snapdragons, snapdragons, snapdragons.
She wandered beyond the garden’s edge, into the tall grasses that no one ever bothered to mow, and was surprised to see Corona, some distance away, standing on the barren patch where they’d filled the in-ground swimming pool. Corona was holding a lit match and dipping at the waist, and as Swanny got closer she could see she was lighting candles, several of them. Swanny was going to say something snide about witchcraft or exorcism when she noticed Corona was also crying.
Instead Swanny said, in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically meek even to her, “Are those for your son?”
“I didn’t see you there, gordita. Yes. For my son, and for your father.”
“My father?”
“They loved to swim in this pool. Don’t you remember?”
“My father wasn’t doing much swimming the times I can recall.” Swanny remembered almost nothing of her father, but she was loath to admit it. She scratched her toe in the dirt. It was strange how this one patch on their estate never grew much, when all around it the plants were riotous and flourishing.
“Your father treated Ignacio like a son. I come here to pay my respects.”
“The sentiment is well meant, I’m sure, but shouldn’t Mother be doing that?”
“Your father was smart. He stayed out of her way. Now he’s gone, she returns the favor.” Corona set down the last candle. The little flames danced in the summer breeze. “You don’t remember him. It’s sad.”
Swanny snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. I am his daughter, after all. I remember how the doctors looked at me the day he died. The intensity of my grief frightened them.”
“That wasn’t what frightened them. It was your teeth. A little girl so small, with all her teeth come in.”
“They thought I was going to bite them?”
Corona dried her eyes on her apron. “No.”
“Were Mother and Father first cousins?”
“Why would you ask me that?”
Swanny rubbed her gum with one finger. “Mother says that’s why I have so many teeth—from inbreeding. I wondered if perhaps Mother and Father were first cousins, like President and Mrs. Roswell.”
“Oh, La Diabla,” Corona murmured softly.
“Corona, incest is imprudent, I’ll grant you, but it’s not criminal. You can’t blame a woman for seeking someone of her own class. Now, tell me, before they were married, did they have the same last name?”
Tiny raindrops darkened the earth around them. Corona frowned at one sputtering candle. “There are many things a child should not know.”
“Sometimes I think you take offense at my becoming an educated woman.”
The two of them began making their way back to the house. Corona’s step was heavy and slow. Swanny’s kitten heels sank into the moist earth.
“What she’s teaching you is no education. Where I grew up, we studied math and history, language and poetry. Maps of the world.”
“Say what we will about Mother, I hardly think she’s skimping on my lessons. By the time she’s through, I’ll know everything under the sun, twice over, whether I want to or not.”
“El tiempo da buen consejo.”
“Speak English. You know I can’t understand you.”
6
HOMECOMING
The HowLux is a fully loaded recreational vehicle: it boasts three sleeping berths, a built-in icebox, a macrozap oven, two ThinkTanks with unlimited connectivity for in-air chat and trading, a fold-down card table/ironing board, a Wash ’n’ Dry, a Port-a-John, and in-seat massage functions with three focus areas: Upper Back, Lumbar, and Adult. Customized for Osmond’s special needs, this one also features a ramp hatch (most have stairs) and entirely hand-operated steering, enabling him to manipulate the acceleration and brake with a pair of antique gold knobs that bear the likeness of stately gryphons.
“I don’t get how I can be in trouble,” mutters Ripple, sitting shotgun, “when I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Osmond pointedly adjusts the rearview mirror. Behind them, the HowLux’s main hold is a U-shaped space, lined with an oxblood leather banquette. The craft’s attendants, two janitors borrowed from the mansion’s disposal and maintenance staff, sit to one side, exchanging bemused glances. On the other, Abby kneels, naked except for the chamois toga Ripple hastily fashioned for her after boarding the craft. Her hands are pressed flat against the window. Steam clouds the glass between her fingers. The sound she’s making is otherworldly—a high-pitched keening emitted between clenched teeth. She’s looking back, though there’s nothing left to see. Night has swallowed the Island whole.
“What became of your clothes?” Osmond asks.
“I told you, I was hurt. We had to cut them off. Check out my arm. She totally played doctor on me back there, you should thank her.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
Abby rocks back and forth, clutching at her bony elbows. A foam packing peanut falls from her hair. Her keening stops. Then, all at once, she vomits yellow bile onto the leather seat. She tries to wipe it up with her bare hands, but succeeds only in smearing it. One of the janitors flicks a switch on the wall. With a faint whirring sound, a brass-plated Sorcerer’s Apprentice scoots out from a cubby near the floor, diodes flashing. Abby shrieks, scrambling backward as it sweeps up the side of the banquette to shampoo the upholstery. She pulls her chamois toga off over her head and drops it onto the cleaning bot, then smashes at it with her fists, as if attempting to squash a very large, very persistent insect.
“Won’t they just be glad I’m alive?” Ripple asks, quieter.
Osmond reaches for the glass of stout in his cup holder. “No.”
Ripple stares glumly out the window. Below them, in the dark, the dragons’ sleek bodies glide like rayfish over the city’s lustrous fires.
“How’s Mom?” he asks.
“Cringe-inducing, as always. The other day she was parading through the Great Hall of our ancestors, wearing nothing but a smile.” He nods at Ripple’s handmade loincloth. “Fashion sense runs in the family, it appears.”
“Actually, I’m freezing. Do you have any PJs or anything?”
“None that I’m willing to share.”
Meanwhile, Abby has succeeded in disabling the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. She flips it over to prod at the casters and the sucto-grips, and to twist the little nozzle, which pitifully fizzes detergent.
“Dunk?” she calls plaintively. “Make it die?”
“Hang on, fem. We’re still talking.” Ripple lowers his voice. “Pro, you gotta help me out here.”
“It would appear that I’ve already done you a rather large favor, by rescuing you from certain death on that noxious landfill.”
“Help me sneak her up to my room.”
Osmond sighs and resettles the voluminous folds of his tan-and-black djellaba. “Duncan, if you think you can conceal this feral woman-child in your toy box for deviant sexual purposes, you vastly underestimate the prowess of our resident exterminator.”