The Garden of Darkness (32 page)

But it was Sarai who fainted. “I feel hot,” she said and slumped to the floor.

“Put her head between her knees,” Ramah said. “So her head’s below her heart.”

Then, as Sarai groggily came to, Ramah returned to Mirri. She and Clare brushed off the leeches, now loosened by the salt.

“They’re gone,” Clare said to Mirri. “They’re all gone.”

“How did you know about using the salt?” Jem asked Ramah.

“In
The African Queen
that’s how Katherine Hepburn gets the leeches off Humphrey Bogart. It’s the only movie I’ve seen.”

“What about
SpongeBob SquarePants
?” asked Sarai. “Have you seen
SpongeBob SquarePants
?”

“No.”

Sarai looked at Ramah as if she were from another planet.

Jem got the Bactine and some gauze and cleaned out the round mouth-wounds left by the leeches as best he could.

“There,” he said to Mirri. “You’re all set.”

Mirri was irrepressible once more, and she went with Clare and Bear when they went out to the barn to feed the cows. The cows were contentedly chewing their hay, and Clare pulled the great barn door closed to keep out the sharp wind before turning to Mirri.

When she did, she noticed that Mirri seemed different somehow. She looked, in a way that Clare could not have quantified, healthier.

“Those leeches were
gross
,” said Mirri.

“How do you feel now?” asked Clare.

“Actually,” said Mirri. “I feel really good. In fact, I feel
terrific
. It’s strange, but I don’t remember feeling this good in a long time. I feel like I’ve been half
dead
for all these months. D’you know what I mean?”

But Clare didn’t. Although, when it came right down to it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in the mood to do a cartwheel or a handspring or a back flip.

“I feel
alive
,” said Mirri.

“You’re absolutely glowing,” said Clare.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

LEAVING THYME HOUSE

L
ATER THAT EVENING
Tilda walked out of the woods near the pond, pale, thin and wraithlike, like the spirit of a tree out of some old story. She had grown taller, and to Clare she seemed a lot older.

“I heard you come in,” said Tilda. “But when I saw him”—she indicated Bird Boy—“I thought he might be a Cured.”

Bird Boy gazed at her mildly. “Not a Cured,” he said.

“Rick died four days ago,” Tilda continued. “I tucked him in. For the long night. We didn’t want to leave this place, and then it was too late. You’ll see—life here is good. But you have to remember to leave. I saw Mirri and Sarai in the garden just now and decided to come and see them. In case they needed help. In case you and Jem were dead.”

“Not dead,” said Bird Boy. He looked upset.

“We’re all right,” said Clare. “For now.”

“We’re going to Master’s,” said Jem.

“That’s what Rick said,” said Tilda sadly.

They ate together and then went through the ritual of picking a bedroom. They moved in the mattresses, sleeping bags, comforters, sheets and pillows and unloaded a stock of the food supplies. Tilda made it clear she would be more than happy to sleep in the same room with them that night.

While the others went to help Tilda round up the chickens and ducks she had released when she saw them coming to the farm (“I didn’t know who you were or how you’d treat them—I thought I should let them go”), Jem put the two packs he and Clare had been carrying against the wall.

Ramah was watching carefully.

Jem didn’t seem to notice her gaze as he set about putting more food and fresh clothes in the knapsacks, but Clare found that she couldn’t look Ramah in the eye.

“Were you thinking of leaving without me?” Ramah asked quietly.

Jem didn’t look up. “Yes,” he said. “You have more time than we do. And I’m not letting Clare go to Master’s alone.”

“When do you plan to go?” she asked. Jem still didn’t look up.

“The day after tomorrow,” said Clare. “We want to help you settle in. But Jem and I agree that we should check Master’s place out before you and the others go. We know nothing about the set-up there. You’ll stay and take care of the others until we come back for you. It won’t be long, Ramah, and this looks like a good place; you’ll all thrive here.”

“The others will be all right without me,” said Ramah. “Bird Boy would die for them.” And she put her pack next to theirs, along with her bow.

“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?”

J
EM AND
C
LARE
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.

J
EM 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.