The Nightmare Garden

by Caitlin Kittredge

  All right, I admitted. She’s not my favorite person on the face of the earth, but she’s not an evil stepmother, either. In time, maybe I could accept the fact that my father had replaced Nerissa with her. After all, it wasn’t really Valentina’s fault. That lay wholly with my father, and meant an entirely different unpleasant conversation we would have to undertake at some point.

  But not now. Now, my stomach growled and reminded me that real food was nearby, and I hadn’t had nearly enough of it lately. I headed for the stairs.

  In daylight, with a chance to look around undisturbed, I saw that the Crosley house wasn’t in much better shape than my old, mud-stained clothes. Everything was clearly expensive, overstuffed and velvet-covered and practically oozing out the money it had cost, but it was all curiously faded and dusty, as if nobody had come to the house for a long time and the house preferred it that way.

  I followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen, which was vast and modern, both icebox and range a pale pink I’d only seen over a makeup counter in a department store. All the latest gadgets to mash and peel and open cans under the power of clockwork rather than doing it yourself sat on the countertops, covered in a thick layer of dust.

  My father stood at the stove with his back to me, and I watched him for a moment. I tried to see myself in him, as I had the day before, and as I’d done with his portrait at Graystone before that. His posture wasn’t mine—he stood feet apart and shoulders thrown back, even as he chopped onion and turned eggs in a frying pan.

  Our hands moved the same way, though, sure and quick. Our hands knew what to do even if we didn’t. You needed steady hands and a delicate touch to be an engineer. It was the one way being smaller than everyone else in the School of Engines had come in handy. In those days, I could always fix what was broken.

  “How long are you going to stand there?”

  I ducked away reflexively at being caught and then looked at the toes of my shoes, my face heating. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak.”

  Archie didn’t respond. He scooped up the onions and dropped them into a second frying pan, covering them with egg mixture from a pink porcelain mixing bowl. He tossed in a few lumps of soft white cheese and then wiped his hands on a blue-checked towel and turned to face me, sizing me up with those stony eyes once more. And once more, I felt like a squirming specimen under a microscope.

  “How did you know I was here?” I said finally, to break the unbearable silence.

  “Basic situational awareness isn’t a magic trick,” Archie said. “At least, not a very good one. And it’s something you’re going to have to learn, if you want to stay alive by more than pure luck.”

  I bristled. He could at least give me a tiny bit of credit for staying alive this long. “It’s not just luck. I know things.”

  Archie raised an eyebrow and then turned back to the stove, flipping the omelet in the pan with an expert hand. “You can’t fight. You don’t know wilderness survival. You know nothing about the Fae or the Erlkin, or even the Gates. You’ve spent your whole life safe in Lovecraft.” He slid the omelet onto a plate and cut it into sections, placing them on several dishes along with potatoes and bacon and toast. “Tell me, Aoife—exactly what great feat of skill or strength kept you out of the clutches of the Proctors besides pure, blind luck?”

  He turned back, set a plate on the table in front of me and folded his arms, awaiting an answer with the tilt of his head.

  I stared at him for a moment, stared at the plate, and then, unable to contain myself, shoved the plate back at him, scattering food everywhere. “If you feel that way, Dad, why’d you ever pull me out of Lovecraft on your stupid, prissy airship and let your stupid, prissy girlfriend act like you two actually wanted me here? If I’m such an idiot, you should have just abandoned me to the damn ghouls.”

  I turned and left the kitchen, my ridiculous shoes clacking on the wood floors, raising tiny hurricanes of dust in my wake. I snatched an overcoat from a tree by the wide French doors leading to the back deck and ran across the lawn, past the Munin, all the way down to the shore. My breath sawed in my chest, pushing the urge to scream to the surface.

  I’d been right the first time. My father didn’t care about me. All he wanted to do was hold me up as an example of how he could do everything so much better.

  As if I’d ever had a chance, with him leaving. He was a hypocrite, and he was cruel.

  The waves were higher than my head on the beach, breaking with vibrations that raced up through my feet where I stood on the sand. The heels of my shoes sank in, and I yanked them off viciously and threw them, along with my stockings. The freezing sand bit into my bare feet, and my toes went numb. Good. My whole body could have gone numb for all I cared in that moment. I wanted to smash up against something, like the surf, vent my rage on something tangible, but there was nothing there. I settled for staring furiously at the waves, tears blinding me as I faced the wind, breath coming in short, hot, razor-sharp gasps.

  The ocean was gray, and far off I could see the wobbly horizon line, the promise of a larger storm to come. I stayed, relishing the sting of cold and salt on my face, waiting for the wind and rain to roll in and blanket me in their fury, so much larger than mine that it was the only thing that might erase how I felt right then.

  “Aoife!” My father’s voice cut straight through the wind and the roar of the surf, and when he appeared at the top of the dune, he sounded as if he were right next to me. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  He came down the rickety weathered steps from the dune two at a time and crossed the sand to grab me by the arm. “It’s not safe out here by yourself! Anything could be wandering around!” His brow furrowed. “And where on the scorched earth are your shoes?”

  I looked down at his hand, back at his face. Suddenly I couldn’t even muster the energy to be angry. He’d told me how he really felt, and that was that. Now that he’d been honest, I had no reason to be angry, or hopeful, or confused any longer. Just numb, like all the exposed bits of my skin. “Let go of me,” I said, flat as the wet sand around us. Far down the beach, some kind of aquatic mammal had beached itself, white skeleton picked over by a horde of gulls.

  “I …” Archie dropped his hand from my arm and stuck it in his hair instead, his face a mask of confusion and upset. The dark strands were laced with white and stood out from his head, toyed with by the wind. “I’m no good at this,” he said. “It’s not gonna do any good to sugarcoat it, Aoife—most Gateminders grow up learning how to do the job. And for various reasons, you didn’t. It’s going to be hard to teach you what you need to know in so short a time. But it doesn’t mean I’m …” He spread his hands, at a loss for words.

  “Disappointed,” I finished for him. “And you are. I can see it.” Why wouldn’t he be? He was a Gateminder and I was his daughter who had destroyed everything he and the Brotherhood had tried to build up. Build up and keep safe for hundreds of years. I was a failure as a Grayson. There was no sugarcoating that, either.

  “I’m disappointed in a whole hell of a lot,” Archie said. “I’m disappointed I couldn’t tell my daughter not to trust the first Fae who fed her a good story. I’m disappointed her mother went so crazy even I couldn’t fix her. I’m disappointed we live in a world that’s so full of lies it seeps poison like a snakebite. But I’m not disappointed in you, Aoife.” He reached out as if to cup my cheek, but then detoured to my shoulder, patting it awkwardly. I felt like I should pull away after what had happened, but I didn’t. I allowed myself the tiny hope that maybe things would turn out all right after my tantrum. “You’re my child,” Archie said. “We’re kinda stuck with each other.”

  “I do have my Weird, you know,” I told him, drawing my brows together in reproach. “You act like I need rescuing, but I can be useful.” I wanted my father to believe that more than anything.

  Archie’s mouth curled into a smile. “Yeah, they seemed pretty excited about that in Ravenhouse when they caught
you. It works on machines, huh?”

  I nodded, adding my own smile. “Anything with moving parts. Some things are easier than others.”

  Archie leaned down, and his expression was conspiratorial, like we were the same age. “Wanna see mine?”

  His enthusiasm was infectious, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the boyish side that had entranced Valentina, and likely my mother. So different from his perpetual frown and judgmental gaze. I wanted to see more of that, so I said, “All right. I’d like that.” I stood back, excited, but not sure what to expect. Better to be out of the danger zone, as I’d learned when Cal and I had taken a welding class and he’d lit not one but three of his aprons on fire with his torch.

  My father winked at me, then trained his eye on a pile of driftwood and dried seaweed that had washed up a few dozen feet farther down the beach. He opened his palm and blew on it, just the smallest touch of air to skin.

  A split second later, the driftwood ignited with a whump, a jet of crimson fire rushing toward the sky.

  Archie let out a whoop, and I clapped my hand over my mouth. I’d figured out from his journal that my father could conjure fire, but seeing it in reality was a whole new dimension of thrill. I stared, unable to stifle a grin that matched my father’s miles-wide one.

  I wasn’t alone. We could both do things that would be considered heresy by any Proctor.

  But it wasn’t born of anything evil. It was magic, pure and simple.

  “So?” My father was breathing hard from the effort, his face flushed. In the warmth of the nearby fire, my skin was no longer numb.

  “Pretty neat,” I admitted. My father looked so animated, I couldn’t resist teasing him a bit. “I’ve seen better.”

  “ ‘Pretty neat’?” Archie shook his head. “You kids today. What do I have to do to get your attention, dance a jig?”

  I shook my head rapidly, trying not to giggle. “Please don’t. Really. It’s not necessary.”

  Archie reached out and messed up the top of my hair. I didn’t care—Valentina’s beautiful curls were lost to the wind anyway. “Who taught you manners?”

  It was like walking a tightrope—I took one step at a time and hoped I wouldn’t fall into a chasm. Archie was behaving like a father, me like a daughter, and I decided to just keep going until something did go wrong. “Certainly not you,” I teased.

  “True enough,” Archie agreed. “Can’t say I’d have done a much better job if I’d been around. My manners are shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and then looked at me, pained. “See? You’re not supposed to swear in front of your teenage daughter. I’m hopeless.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “I’ve heard worse.” I knew that sooner or later, we’d run into another roadblock, have another fight, and things would go back to being strange and strained. But right now, I wanted to keep taking the tiny steps, keep swaying on the rope and enjoy a few minutes alone with my father.

  The way things were going, they might be the only ones I’d get.

  I pointed to Archie’s pocket watch, tucked into the front of his vest. My father’s clothes were nice, but they were also out of fashion by about ten years and clearly ripped and repaired dozens of times over. He was always just a bit too unkempt to maintain the appearance of a gentleman of his station. He looked more like a professor or a clock maker than somebody who lived in a grand house and could call flame out of thin air.

  Then again, I supposed I looked more like the daughter of the same than what I really was.

  “My turn,” I said. “Give me that and I’ll show you what I can do.”

  Archie frowned, turning the silver watch in his hands before he gave it over. “Be careful. That watch was your grandfather’s.”

  I popped open the top. The face was mother-of-pearl, and the hands were black, the numerals painted on in a fine hand and intertwined with vines hiding tiny forest creatures. It was a work of art. Inside the lid was an engraving, almost worn away with age: There is no rule but iron, and no balm but time. The date was 1898.

  Pushing a little of my Weird to the forefront of my mind, I let the smallest tendril touch the watch. Here, away from the city and in Valentina’s iron-free house, the whispers and the pain weren’t nearly so bad. I could probably stay here for years before I started to go truly insane.

  My Weird responded eagerly, unmuted by iron, and in the space of a heartbeat, the hands began to turn backward, still ticking off time. The dates in the face also turned back, and once I’d ensured they would stay that way as long as I held a bit of the watch in my mind, I handed it back to Archie proudly. “I can do that with anything. Came in handy when we were on the run.”

  “Pretty neat,” he told me with a grin, and this time I didn’t hesitate to return it.

  “What’s the inscription mean?” I asked.

  “It’s the motto of the Brotherhood,” he answered. “Or was, at least. Back when the Brotherhood actually did some good.”

  I started to ask what he meant but thought better of it when his smile dropped and the stone-faced expression I recognized returned. He shut the watch and shoved it into his pocket. When he looked up, he was smiling again. “But enough about that. Want to take another crack at breakfast?”

  “Sure,” I agreed, and followed him inside. The hundred questions I had about Nerissa, the strange comments about the Brotherhood and my Weird could wait. I did trust my father, and I just hoped that sooner rather than later, he’d be in a mood to give me answers.

  The next two days at the Crosley house passed uneventfully. Things with my father were all right when it was just the two of us, but when Valentina was around he got gruff and awkward and had a hard time looking me in the eye. I wasn’t sure how to act either—yes, I was his daughter, but in reality he barely knew me, and the last thing I wanted was a spat with my de facto stepmother over territory she had clearly already claimed.

  Valentina wasn’t completely bad, as long as we avoided serious subjects. She showed me how to apply rouge and paint my nails without getting the enamel everywhere. We sipped tea in the sunroom and everyone gathered around the piano to hear her play thunderous classical music that sounded like the ocean had broken down the dunes and come rushing through the music room.

  It was a break from running, that was for sure, and there was decent food and a warm bed. Still, every time I looked toward Lovecraft and saw the orange glow against the night sky from still-burning fires, my guts churned with guilt and worry.

  On the third morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. My patience caved, and with it went my placid veneer. “Are we going to stay here forever?” I said to Archie. He and I were washing up from breakfast, a task I’d taken away from Bethina by force. She thought as long as she was in Archie’s presence, she had to revert to her old job of maid, but I’d bribed her with some leftover scones and cream and sent her away with a suggestion of taking Cal for a walk along the dunes. She wasn’t a maid any longer, and I wanted her and Cal to be able to relax.

  “It’s safe here,” Archie said. He was scrubbing while I dried. “Relatively so, anyway. We’re not behind walls like in New Amsterdam and San Francisco, and there are things roaming out there, but no Fae is going to risk coming within spitting distance of this house and not one but two members of the Brotherhood of Iron.”

  “Is the Thorn Land trying to invade us?” I asked bluntly, setting the plates in a pile. They clacked like ghouls’ teeth. I hadn’t asked yet because I didn’t really want the truth, but I couldn’t avoid it any longer. If I’d done more than wake the queens of the Thorn Land, if I’d opened not just a crack but an actual channel for invasion, I needed to know.

  “You sure are good at picking the one question I don’t have an answer to,” my father said. He shut off the hot water and dried his hands, wincing. I noticed that his knuckles were cut, like he’d driven his hand into something hard and unforgiving.

  “Tremaine said—” I began.

  “Tremaine lied to you,” Archie s
napped. “That’s what he does. He’s a snake, even among his own kind. He told you exactly what you needed to hear so you’d wake the queens, and then he told you exactly what you needed to hear so you’d stay good and scared and not try to put anything right once you saw what you’d done.”

  He had a point—I’d seen the extent of Tremaine’s lies firsthand. But his lies always held a grain of truth, and that terrified me.

  “You’re with the Brotherhood of Iron!” I cried in frustration. “You all saved the world when Tesla made the Gates. You’re supposed to know what to do.”

  “The Brotherhood is not some magical cavalry that rides out of the smoke and hellfire and saves the poor, innocent humans from the menace of the otherworlds,” Archie said. “No matter how much Grey Draven and his cronies might want to change us into that very thing.”

  He gestured me outside to the kitchen steps, and despite my irritation I followed him. He stood quietly for a moment and then furtively drew out one of his cigarettes. “Truth is, Aoife, the best we ever were was a police force that was too small and spread too thin to do all the good we could against encroachment from Thorn, the Mists and wherever the hell else nasty monsters crawled up from. And that was in my grandfather’s day. Now the Brotherhood has … Well. They’ve lost sight of the endgame, to say the very least, and there’s a lot of things the leadership and I don’t agree on.”

  I sat next to him, pulling my skirt down over my legs to keep out the cold. I’d wanted the Brotherhood to be the knights, to have the knowledge in their collection of Gateminder’s diaries to fix what I’d done. But the image of squabbling men, and only a handful of men at that, didn’t inspire much hope. “So they can’t help us?” I was only half surprised. Most hope these days died a quick death the moment I got close to it.

  “Oh, they’re trying to shut the broken Gates, and keep the Fae and the Mists at bay while they do it,” Archie said. “Avoid Draven and his plans to turn them into his own personal shock troops while they’re at it. But when Tremaine came after me and started this whole mad plan that ended with you, I couldn’t ask the Brotherhood for help.”