The Garden of Darkness

by Gillian Murray Kendall

“We don’t know that Master is safe,” said Jem. “The fewer who go, the better.”

  “We thought that two would be best,” said Clare. “And we’re the ones who most need the cure.”

  “I see,” said Ramah. She was adding flat bread to her pack.

  “You’re not invited,” Jem said quietly.

  “You’ll need me,” said Ramah. “More than they’ll need me here. I know it.”

  “I’m sorry, Ramah,” said Jem. “We’re the oldest. It’s our risk to take.”

  Ramah sat back on her heels. “It’s not the way it’s supposed to happen,” she said unhappily. “I’m supposed to go with you. I’ve dreamt it. It’s not like the old days, when dreams didn’t mean anything. You’re going to need me before the end.”

  It was, perhaps, the longest speech Clare had heard from Ramah.

  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.

  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 sle
pt 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.”

  “Beats death.”

  Jem got down off the rock and gave his hand to Clare to help her down. The grass beyond the ferns was damp, and they walked through it back to the camp, where Ramah was waiting for them.

  The next day dawned bright and glorious, and, as they walked, Bear rushed into the grass ahead of her, flushed a pheasant out of the underbrush and went streaking after it.

  “Good news,” said Clare. “Nobody’s here to shoot the pheasant.”

  “Bad news?” asked Jem.

  “I think it’s going to be Bear’s lunch.” But, to her surprise, the pheasant took quickly to the sky, leaving Bear behind, a black dot against the ripe gold landscape.

  When they reached a hill, conversation stopped for a while. A butterfly alighted on Ramah’s pack. Bear panted, his pink and black tongue lolling. The light flickered through the trees.

  Clare thought of Thyme House, and she thought of the deep past, when she had been needy and lonely. Such a very long time ago.

  That day they camped away from the road in the center of a ring of trees. Small yellow flowers glowed against the moss at the base of the trees and reminded Clare of the gold coins they’d found in the attic of Thyme House. As evening came in, they built a small fire, for comfort as much as for anything else, because the nights were no longer so cold. Clare heated up some food, and they all ate well. Then the three of them crawled into the tent, as, overhead, the Big Bear, the Little Bear, Gemini and Virgo wheeled in the sky.

  CLARE WOKE IN the dark with a start. Bear was asleep at her feet. She carefully unzipped the flap and looked out, and at once Bear was up and by her side, but Clare stopped him with a gesture. Deep in his throat, he growled.

  She saw the figure of a man sitting by the fire. He was warming his hands, and, as the orange coals flared up, she could see he was smiling. He didn’t behave like a Cured, but he was old. Clare thought that maybe he was fifty—more than twenty years older than any age a delayed-onset could hope to reach. She was glad Bear was with her. His reaction was the only thing that made her think she probably wasn’t dreaming the man. Even so, she wasn’t certain. She could, after all, be dreaming Bear too.

  Clare looked from Bear to the man, then she sent Bear to the end of the sleeping bag and whispered “down.” After all, if she so much as breathed distress he would come crashing through the tent’s netting to save her. She went outside as quietly as she could.

  “I was waiting for you to wake up,” he said. “Your dog wouldn’t come over and keep me company.”

  “He doesn’t like strangers,” said Clare.

  “He didn’t mind my watching you make camp. He didn’t give me away, and I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what you might have done to him.”

  “You think I drugged your dog? You think I hypnotized your dog? I’ve always gotten along well with dogs. And other animals. As long as they understand the rules.”

  “I should wake the others.” Clare wondered why she hadn’t done so already. She almost called Bear right then, but the man was so very old. She wanted to hear his story.

  “But I want to meet you,” he said. It was as if he could read her mind. Clare went out and sat on the ground across the fire from what was surely the oldest man in the world. His face bore no signs of Pest, but it was a worn face; it was a face, Clare thought, that had seen many things. He wore jeans and a shirt that was buttoned up tightly against the cool night air.

  “Why me?” asked Clare.

  “I’ve heard of you and your dog. I received a full description,” he said. “One of my children talked about you.”

  “You have children?”

  “Have you been travelling long?” he asked. And Clare didn’t mind the change in direction the conversation was taking. Rather than hear his story, she found herself wanting to tell him everything. But somehow she didn’t think that telling him would be a good idea.

  Bear, she noted, had left the end of her sleeping bag and was standing at the flap of the tent. His eyes glowed in the firelight.

  “A lot of things have happened,” she said. “We’ve been different places.”

  “What place are you thinking about now?”

  “Home.”

  “Thyme House,” he said.

  “How did you know?”

  “I heard you talking as you were setting up camp.”

  “You eavesdropped.”

  “I consider these woods mine. So I suppose the conversations in them are mine, too.”

  “What about you? Who are you?”

  “A traveler. And I’ve got something to offer you.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “As we speak, the Cured are moving into the countryside and destroying what they find. Your Thyme House will eventually perish, long before the time comes when the patches fail and the Cured die.”

  “You know about the patches?”

  “Of course. I know about a lot of things. But here’s my offer: I know that if you come with me, tonight, now, we will get the real cure, and you will see Thyme House again.”

  “I’d have
to talk it over with the others.”

  “I don’t mean the others. I’m not interested in the others, although you can give them the cure if you want. Just come with me and everything will be all right.”

  Everything will be all right. When Clare had been a child, her real mother had always told her that. But then her mother had died.

  “And if I don’t come with you?”

  “Then we’ll meet later, anyway,” he said finally.

  Clare thought of what would happen if she left now, in the night. Jem and Ramah would wait for her as she had once waited for Robin. “How do you know that everything will turn out all right if I come with you?”

  “You’ll have to trust me.”

  “I need to get my pack out of the tent.”

  “No,” he said. “Leave your pack. You need to come with me now.”

  “Not without Bear,” she said, and suddenly she became acutely aware that they had somehow moved from a discussion of whether or not she would leave (how did they get there?) to a discussion of what she could take with her.

  “All right,” he said. “The dog can come.”

  “You’re not a Cured?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Are you the Master?”

  “Of course I’m the Master.”

  At that moment, Jem called out in his sleep, “Clare.”

  His voice brought her back to the moment. The fire was almost out; the glamour that had hung around the man was gone.

  At that moment his game seemed perfectly obvious to her.

  “I won’t make them wait for me; I won’t scare them like that,” she said.

  The man stood. From the opening of the tent, Bear growled, an echo to Clare’s thoughts.

  “You’ve made an interesting choice,” said the man as he moved towards the trees. And then he was out of sight.

  Clare sat by the embers. The memory of the man was fast disappearing into the world of dreams.

  But the dream had been a strong one, and she realized that the apparition had been infinitely more powerful than she was. But she thought she had finally won their little game. It was true that the stranger was older, stronger, and, perhaps, wiser. But then she remembered in some corner of her mind that the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift. Time and chance come along and screw with everything.