The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  We walked slowly through the hall, me pushing the barrow and Bliss doing her best to stabilize the front. Zara stopped us near the front entrance, where the scent of honeysuckle filled the air and mixed with a more chemical smell from one of the rooms we never, ever saw open. Like the tattoo room, Lorraine’s room, and Avery’s former playroom, the walls were opaque and solid, with a punch pad beside an honest-to-God door. We weren’t supposed to be here.

  And I’d still never seen Des put in his main door code.

  “Do you think if I asked for this one, he’d give it to me?”

  “For the honeysuckle?”

  “No, because we all avoid this part. Then I wouldn’t be seen as much.”

  “Ask him. Worst he can do at that point is say no.”

  “If I asked you right now to kill me, would you?”

  I studied the empty glass case because I didn’t want to see if she was serious or not. Zara could be cruel, mocking the other girls until they cried, but she didn’t have much of a sense of humor. “I guess I’m not that good a friend,” I said finally.

  Bliss said nothing.

  “Do you think it hurts?”

  “He says it doesn’t.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “No,” I sighed, leaning against the doorway into the plant life. “I don’t think he knows one way or the other. I think he wants to believe there’s no pain.”

  “What do you think she’ll be like?”

  “Who?”

  “The next Butterfly.” She craned her head back to stare at me, her brown eyes fever-bright. “He hasn’t gone hunting in a long time. Not since Tereza. He’s been so happy with Desmond here that he hasn’t even looked for anyone else.”

  “He might not go look.”

  She snorted.

  He didn’t always, though. Sometimes a girl died and he didn’t go hunting. Not until someone else died. Sometimes he brought back one girl, occasionally he brought back two, though he hadn’t done that during my time here. Trying to understand why that man did anything the way he did was a worthless endeavor.

  We were still standing there when Lorraine came out of her room to start dinner. She seemed startled at first, one hand flying to the dark chestnut hair, somewhat faded and heavily streaked with silver, that she still wore long and up, as the Gardener preferred. Even though he never looked at her, never commented on it, she still wore it that way. She glanced at the bandaged Zara, at how pale she was except for two bright blotches of red on her cheeks, then at the empty case.

  Zara’s eyes narrowed. “Wishing you were in there, Lorraine?”

  “I don’t have to put up with you,” the woman retorted.

  “I know how you can be.”

  Suspicion warred with hope in fading blue eyes. “You do?”

  “Yeah. Magically become thirty years younger. I’m sure he’d love to kill and display you then.”

  Lorraine sniffed and stalked past us, slapping Zara’s ankle on the way. The movement jarred the broken, infected hip and she bit back a scream.

  Bliss’s eyes followed the cook-nurse. “I’ll send Danelle to help you back.”

  “Why, where are you—” I took a second look at her expression. “Right. Never mind. Danelle.”

  The gasping Zara and I watched her jog away. “What do you suppose she’s doing?” she asked after a minute.

  “I’m not asking and I don’t want to know in advance,” I said fervently. “Depending on what it is, I may not want to know after the fact either.”

  A few minutes later, not just Danelle but a very confused Marenka walked down the hall to join us. “Should I ask what Bliss is doing?”

  “No,” we answered together.

  “So I shouldn’t ask why she borrowed my scissors?” murmured Marenka, a hand to her throat where a ribbon usually held her tiny pair of embroidery scissors.

  “Right.”

  Danelle thought about that, accepted it, and lightly touched the edge of the wheelbarrow. “Into the Garden? Or back to your room?”

  “Room,” groaned Zara. “I think I get to take another painkiller.”

  Between us, Danelle, Marenka, and I got her settled back into bed with a glass of water and a happy pill. Then Bliss walked in, hands held behind her back, and an eminently satisfied look on her face.

  Oh, God, I didn’t want to know.

  “I have a present for you, Zara,” she announced cheerfully.

  “Avery’s head on a platter?”

  “Close.” She tossed something onto the coverlet.

  Zara lifted it up to stare at it, then burst out laughing. It dangled from her hand, the ends slowly releasing from their pattern. “Lorraine’s braid?”

  “Enjoy!”

  “Think I could take it with me?”

  Danelle rubbed the ends of the hair between her fingers. “We could probably rebraid part of it into a garter for you.”

  “Or braid it into your hair like extensions.”

  “A crown, definitely.”

  Everyone who came in through the afternoon and evening had another suggestion to make, and it was an indication of our universal contempt for Lorraine that no one expressed any sorrow or sympathy for our cook-nurse. When it was time for dinner, we all took our trays and crowded into Zara’s room, all twenty-odd of us, knee to knee on the floor and even in the shower.

  Adara lifted a glass of apple juice. “To Zara, who can spit seeds farther than anyone else.”

  We all laughed, even Zara, who raised her glass of water to return the toast.

  Nazira stood next, and I think we were all a little apprehensive about that one; Nazira and Zara got along about as well as Avery and Desmond. “To Zara, who may be a right bitch, but she’s our bitch.”

  Zara blew her a kiss.

  It was sick. I don’t think there’s a person there who doubted that. It was sick and wrong and profoundly twisted, and yet somehow it made us feel a lot better. One by one, we all stood and made a toast to Zara, some mocking, some serious, and sure there were plenty of tears to be had, even if not by me, but maybe the Gardener was right, maybe this did help.

  When it was my turn, I stood and lifted my glass of water. “To Zara, who’s leaving us too soon, but who we will remember in a non-creepy fashion for the rest of our lives.”

  “However short they may be,” added Bliss.

  How fucked up were we that we laughed?

  When everyone had taken their turn, Zara raised her glass once more. “To Zara,” she said quietly, “because when she dies, Felicity Farrington will finally rest in peace.”

  “To Zara,” we all murmured together, and drained our glasses.

  When the Gardener came, it was without a dress but with Desmond, and he smiled to see all of us together. “It’s time, ladies.”

  Slowly, everyone kissed Zara, gathered their trays, and filed out of the room with the Gardener kissing each and every one of them on the cheek. I waited until the end, perching on the side of the bed so I could take her clammy hand. Lorraine’s silver-streaked braid was pinned like a coronet around her double-twist. “Anything I can do?” I whispered.

  She dug under her pillow and gave me a battered, dog-eared, highlighted, and notated-half-to-death copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “I was really into theatre in school,” she said softly. “When I was taken from the park, I was supposed to be meeting my friends for a rehearsal. I’ve spent three years writing notes for a production I’ll never do. Do you think you and Bliss could put together a reading for everyone? Just . . . something to remember me by?”

  I took the book and held it against my heart. “I promise.”

  “Take care of the next girl, and try not to visit me too much, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She pulled me into a tight hug, her fingers digging into my shoulders. Despite how calm she seemed, I could see her shaking. I let her hold on as long as she wanted, and when she finally took a deep breath and pulled away, I kissed her cheek. “I only just m
et you, Felicity Farrington, but I love you, and I will remember you.”

  “I guess that’s as much as I can ask,” she half-laughed. “Thank you, really and truly, for everything. You’ve made it all easier than it could have been.”

  “I wish I could have done more.”

  “You do what’s yours to do. The rest belongs to them.” She jerked her head at the men in the doorway. “I guess you’ll see me in a couple of days.”

  “By the honeysuckle, so we’ll almost never see you at all,” I agreed, almost inaudibly. I kissed her again and walked out of the room, holding the book so tightly my knuckles popped.

  The Gardener glanced at the braid that very obviously wasn’t Zara’s, then back at me. “Lorraine’s been crying,” he murmured. “She says Bliss attacked her.”

  “It’s just hair.” I looked him square in the eyes. “She isn’t you or your sons. We don’t have to tolerate her hurting us.”

  “I’ll speak with her.” He kissed my cheek and went to Zara, but Desmond held back with a puzzled, slightly worried frown.

  “Is there something I’m missing?” he asked me quietly.

  “Too much.”

  “I know you’ll miss her, but we’ll get her taken care of. She’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Maya—”

  “No. You don’t know. You should, you’ve seen enough—well. I do know. You don’t get to tell me she’ll be fine. Right now you don’t get to tell me anything.”

  Avery was the Gardener’s firstborn, but in the ways that mattered Desmond was his heir.

  And before long, we’d find out just how much his father’s son he was.

  I looked back at Zara, but the Gardener was in the way. Ignoring Desmond’s hurt gaze, I walked away.

  Returning my tray to the kitchen—and taking a spiteful glee in Lorraine’s sniffles and her mere inch and a half of ragged hair—I declined an offer from several of the girls to join them and went back to my room alone. After maybe half an hour, the walls came down. Zara was too injured for a final tryst, after all, and Desmond was there with them. I curled up on my bed with the play, read all the notes in the margins, and got to know Felicity Farrington a little.

  Around three in the morning, the wall that blocked me from the hallway lifted. Only that wall—the ones to either side that looked through display cases and, if you squinted, into Marenka’s and Isra’s rooms, stayed in place. They’d been there for weeks, and it was a strange breed of lovely to not see dead bodies every time I opened my eyes. I closed the book on my finger, steeling myself to see the Gardener in the doorway, one hand at his belt and his eyes full of excitement.

  But it was Desmond, his pale green eyes haunted and bruised in a way I hadn’t seen in months. He clutched the glass wall to keep himself standing, his knees buckling and swaying with every attempt to support his weight.

  I closed the book properly, slid it onto the shelf, and sat up on the bed.

  He took a few wobbly steps into the room and fell hard to his knees. He buried his face in his hands, then flinched violently, staring at his hands like they’d somehow become separate from the rest of him. A sickly sour chemical smell wafted around him, the same scent I noticed any time I went near the honeysuckles at the front door. His entire body shook as he doubled over, pressing his forehead against the cool metal floor.

  Almost ten minutes passed before he said a word, and even then his voice was hoarse and broken. “He promised we would take care of her.”

  “He did.”

  “But he . . . he . . .”

  “Put her out of pain, and prevented her from decay,” I said neutrally.

  “. . . murdered her.”

  Not entirely his father’s son then.

  I pulled off my clothing and knelt down in front of him, unbuttoning his shirt. He gave me a sick look and batted my hands away. “I’m putting you in the shower—you reek.”

  “Formaldehyde,” he muttered. This time he let me undress him, and stumbled along behind me as I pulled him across the room to sit in the shower. A twist of my wrist sent warm water pouring over him.

  There was nothing sexual about what happened next. It was like bathing Sophia’s girls when they were half-asleep. When I told him to lean forward or lift his arm or close his eyes, he obeyed, but numbly, like it didn’t entirely make sense. My shampoo and body wash were both fruity as hell, but I washed him head to toe until the only remaining chemical smell was his clothing.

  I draped him in towels and used one of his shoes to push the clothing out into the hallway, then returned to dry both of us off. I had to keep wiping his face—unseen in the shower, a constant stream of tears ran down his cheeks.

  “He injected something to make her sleep,” he whispered. “I thought we were going to carry her out to the car, but he opened a room I’d never seen before.” A shudder wracked his body. “Once she fell asleep, he put her in this orange and yellow dress and laid her out on an embalming table, and then he . . . he hooked up . . .”

  “Please don’t tell me,” I said quietly.

  “No, I have to, because he’s going to do that to you someday, isn’t he? That’s how he, how he keeps you, by embalming you while you’re still alive.” Another shudder, a sob that fractured his voice, but he continued. “He stood there explaining all the steps to me. So I could do it on my own someday, he said. Love was more than just the pleasure, he said; we had to be willing to do the hard things too, he said. He said . . . he said . . .”

  “Come on, you’re still shivering.”

  He let me lead him to the bed and pull the covers up over him, and I sat beside him, atop the blanket, hands in my lap. “He said if I really loved you, I wouldn’t let any hand other than my own take care of you.”

  “Des . . .”

  “He showed me some of the others. I thought . . . I thought he just left them back on the streets! I didn’t realize . . .” He broke down completely, weeping with an intensity that damn near shook the bed. I rubbed circles on his back as he choked on the sobs, unable to give him more comfort than that because he still didn’t know the full truth. Zara had the bone infection, and he thought all broken people killed themselves or let themselves go so completely that they died. He didn’t know about attitudes and ages.

  And at that moment, when he was so close to broken himself, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I couldn’t use him broken. I needed him brave.

  I didn’t think he ever would be.

  “She picked out her case,” he managed a few minutes later. “He made me carry her there, showed me how to pose her, how to close the glass completely to pour the resin in. Before he closed the glass, he . . . he . . .”

  “Kissed her goodbye?”

  He gave a jerky nod, hiccupping with the force of his sobs. “He told her he loved her!”

  “As he understands it, he does.”

  “How can you even stand to be around me?”

  “Sometimes I can’t,” I admitted. “I keep telling myself that you don’t know the whole of it, that you’re still ignorant of so much of what your father and brother do, and some days that’s the only way I can even look at you. But you . . .”

  “Please tell me.”

  “But you’re a coward,” I sighed. “You know that keeping us here is wrong. You know it’s against the law, you know he rapes us, and now you know he kills us. Some of these girls might even have families looking for them. You know this is wrong, but you don’t report it. You said you were going to learn how to be braver for me, but you haven’t. And I honestly don’t know if you can.”

  “Finding out about this . . . having it all come out . . . it would kill my mother.”

  I shrugged. “Give it enough time and it’ll kill me too. Cowardice may be our natural state but it’s still a choice. Every day you know about the Garden and don’t call the police or let us go, you’re making that same choice again and again. It is what it is, Desmond. You just don’t get to pretend anymore.”
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  He started weeping again, or maybe it was weeping still, all one massive shock that just kept compounding past his ability to bear it.

  He spent the rest of that dark morning lying silently on my bed, and when sunlight came to the Garden, he gathered up his formaldehyde-scented clothing and walked away.

  He didn’t talk to me for weeks, and only came into the Garden once: to see Zara after the resin solidified and the wall came away from her case. All the walls lifted then, and the reality that had blurred over the summer crashed back down with resounding force. We were Butterflies, and our short lives would end in glass.

  “Wait, I thought you said things changed with Keely,” Eddison says.

  “I did, yes. I’m getting there.”

  “Oh.”

  She rubs her thumbs against the blue dragon’s neck and takes a deep breath. “Keely arrived four days ago.”

  It took time to keep my promise to Zara. The Gardener readily agreed to get us a full set of A Midsummer Night’s Dream when I told him what it was for, but he wanted the affair “done right.” He ordered up all sorts of costumes and gave Bliss a box of clays that weighed as much as she did to make us flower crowns. We assigned parts and coached girls through the language. Some of them had read a play or two in English, but most didn’t have much in the way of real exposure.

  I’d lived for almost two years with Noémie, who walked around the apartment in her underwear reading aloud soliloquies as she brushed her teeth.

  Yes, brushed her teeth, which for that very reason took forfuckingever.

  When the evening arrived, the Gardener had Lorraine arrange a feast in the Garden itself, spread on both sides of the little stream. We had these strange chairs somewhere between an ottoman and a beanbag, all in bright colors, and each of us had semi-sheer silk gowns in beautiful colors that for once had nothing to do with the wings inked on our backs. I was reading for Helena and the Gardener had given me a gown of forest and moss greens, with a single layer of deep rose. That was the color Bliss matched for my crown of clay roses.