The Garden of Darkness (36 page)

“It knows we’re here,” he said.

“Why did you have to say ‘it’?” whispered Dante.

The door opened, and light poured into the hallway.

A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. The man was big, much bigger and taller than any of them, although Clare realized that they weren’t used to adults anymore. She had guessed, on the night in the woods, that he was fifty or so, and she saw that she had probably been right. But she hadn’t noticed then that his face had smile lines around his eyes and mouth. It was a soft face, gentle and inviting.

“It’s Master,” said Dante, with relief and anxiety mixed in his voice.

“It’s you,” said Clare to the man, and Jem and Ramah and Dante looked at her, startled.

“It would have been less complicated if you had come with me then,” said the Master to Clare.

Clare couldn’t think how it could possibly have been simpler if she had left in the night with the Master, but then the pain in her head had spread to her neck, and she couldn’t think very well. She only knew that the Master was the adult, and she didn’t have to be responsible anymore. This was the moment she had been waiting for since she had watched her father and stepmother die. The Master would care for them all; he would give them the cure; they would go home. It would be as he had said: everything would be all right.

But she had discovered in all her time with the others, and even before, that things happen. That just when it seems that you’re sitting safely beside the great road, you find that you’re actually smack in the middle, where the traffic is.

The Master stepped aside to let them into the room.

“Jem,” she murmured.

“Clare?”

“I don’t feel so good.”

The room that the Master led them into was one of light and shadow. Hurricane lanterns illuminated high ceilings and walls filled with niches. Everywhere they looked there were paintings and statues and tapestries. A large painting with four children in it dominated the room.

“It’s not hard to collect art anymore,” said the Master, as they looked around wonderingly.

“This is beautiful,” said Ramah.

“Clare needs to sit down,” said Jem.

“You should all sit down,” said the Master. “And tell me why you’re down here.”

“We were exploring,” said Dante. “We weren’t prowling. They wanted to explore. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went with them.”

Ramah cast Dante a look of utter contempt.

“We passed the room full of dolls,” said Jem. “We didn’t like them.” The Master laughed.

“I found them when I first came to Haven,” he said. “Which is what I call this place. I should get rid of them. I suspect they were a child’s toys.”

All the ‘I’s strung together in his sentences annoyed Clare, but she was finding it hard to focus.

“This wasn’t always your home?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” said the Master. “I lived and worked in the city, but after Pest I needed a place where I could offer help to the survivors I found.”

“That’s very good of you,” said Jem. Clare recognized his tone; Jem did not like the Master.

“But we’re not really survivors in the long run,” said Ramah. “Pest’ll eventually get us. True?”

“True,” said the Master. “The rash indicates the presence of Pest. You may notice it in other ways as well. Perhaps, without even realizing it, you’re becoming more lethargic. Maybe you don’t really feel all that well. The symptoms depend on the child.”

Clare certainly wasn’t feeling very well at all. But she suddenly found herself remembering Mirri saying, “I feel
terrific
.”

“And you have the cure,” said Jem.

“I do,” said the Master.

“And you’re going to cure us all,” said Jem.

“I am. But you have to wait here until you’re on the very cusp of Pest. I can’t cure you before that. And my price for the cure is fair—you need to help me rebuild the world.”

“We heard about that,” said Jem sharply.

“Careful,” said Ramah quietly.

“We heard you want to pair us up as if we were sheep or cattle.”

“Sheep and cattle don’t pair off,” murmured Ramah.

“I don’t think you understand,” said the Master. “Let’s go upstairs. We can talk more there. Nobody has to be part of the new world if they don’t want to be, and I allow personal preferences. I could match up you two, for example.” He nodded at Clare and Jem. “If you want.”

Jem looked away.

“That’s just wrong,” said Clare. “Personal preferences or not.”

The Master’s eye lingered on Clare for a long moment.

“Come with me,” he said. “I’m upsetting you, and I don’t mean to.” Holding a hurricane lamp, he ushered them out of the room. Then he held up the light and gazed into Clare’s eyes.

“Really remarkable,” he said.

On their way to the stairs, they passed the doll room again. Clare felt cool air brush her cheeks, and she shivered.

The Master walked in front of them with the lantern, and his long shadow covered them all as they went up the stairs. He turned down a hallway and then went up another flight to reach the airy regions of the central house. Behind her, Clare could hear Dante whispering apologies to Ramah. And Jem—Jem was at her elbow, as if he knew how tired she was and was ready to steady her if she stumbled.

They passed a window, and Clare thought she detected the first light of dawn on the horizon. Finally the Master stopped in front of a door they had not seen before.

“Dante,” said the Master. “You go to bed. When it’s time for breakfast, tell them all I’m back.”

Dante turned and left.

The Master used a heavy key to unlock the door.

This room was the mirror opposite of the room in the basement. Big windows let in the weak light of dawn; the furniture was spare. There were two Madonnas on the wall and what looked like several portraits, although it was still too dark to tell. But there was nothing like the riot of color and form they had seen below.

“This is my special collection,” said the Master.

“I want to go home,” Clare said. Her voice was weak. She swayed on her feet, and Jem put his arm around her waist to steady her.

“You want to go back to Thyme House,” said the Master. “Yes, I know. You want the cure, and you want to desert us, too. But we can bring your friends at Thyme House here. We can make them part of this larger family, and they’ll be safe. I’ll care for you all until you’re older.”

“We could go back and forth between here and Thyme House,” said Jem. “We could come and visit when the time for the cure comes.”

“Maybe,” said the Master. “But maybe you think so because you’re so very young. Maybe what you want isn’t what you need.”

Clare did not want to move to Haven. Yet she heard something in the voice of the Master that made her believe that maybe what he said was true—maybe what she wanted wasn’t what she needed. She glanced at Jem.

“We’re doing pretty well,” said Jem. “We just need a cure.”

“It isn’t that easy,” said the Master.

Of course not, thought Clare. Nothing had been easy, not since Pest. She missed the before time—the hours gossiping on the phone with Robin; the number of back flips she could do; Reading
King Lear
in the middle of the night. Or reading
The Hunger Games
as Chupi pecked at the margins. Or
Jane Eyre
for the millionth time. And talking with Michael. It seemed as if she hadn’t thought of Michael in a long while.

“Who are you?” Jem asked the Master. “What were you before Pest?”

Clare wasn’t listening. She was drifting on a flow of her own thoughts. She looked at the paintings. One showed two adults in a house, the woman knitting. Outside on the lawn stood a child, but she wasn’t playing with her toys, she was standing by what looked like a pet sheep and looking away with her ice-blue eyes. The eye-color looked as if it had been added to the painting. And the shadows around the toys were all wrong, as if she were in a different world than the adults. The plate screwed into the frame was blurry to Clare, but she stared at it until the words became clear. ‘Mourning Picture. Smith College Art Museum.’

Clare turned her attention to the Master again.

“I was and am a doctor,” said the Master. “A pediatrician, originally. There’s a certain irony there, don’t you think? But at the end I was a research scientist. And I think it’s safe to say that I know more about Pest than anyone living or dead. I was close to a cure before Pest shut everything down. A real cure. My name is Doctor Andrew Sylver.”

“The patches on the Cured,” said Jem, after a pause. “‘SYLVER.’”

“Yes.”

“You made those people insane.”

“Yes. But not on purpose, of course. The side-effects are unfortunate, but soon enough there’ll be no Cured in the world—the patches were only ever designed to last a year, while we developed a real cure.”

“Can’t you cure the Cured as well?” asked Jem.

“Well, no,” said the Master. “No. Their madness is too far advanced. Their brains are like, well, like cheese.”

Clare seemed to rise to the surface for a moment, out of the tide of her thoughts.

“Why blue eyes?” she asked.

“I love my blue-eyed children,” said the Master. He shook his head as if bemused, and his hair fell back from his neck.

“You’re wearing a patch,” said Ramah.

“I had to endure the Cure, yes,” he said quickly. “I needed the Cure to gain the time to find a real cure. Which I have.”

Clare didn’t think this was a good time to point out that the patch had made him insane.

She slid quietly to the floor. Such weakness. And nothing to be done.

Almost immediately, she could feel Jem’s arms around her, pulling her up onto his lap. Then he was unbuttoning the top buttons on her shirt, and she could feel his cool hands on her burning neck.

He was so gentle, so tender. She was grieved for him when she felt him touch the telltale blisters that she had discovered less than an hour before.

“Pest,” he said softly.

“I’m sorry,” said Clare.

And it occurred to her, now that it was too late, that she loved Jem, and that she had loved him for a long time. Knowing she loved him was like knowing her heart was still beating. Clare would have given a lot to have the time to talk about it with him, not least because he was her best friend. And Clare wanted to explain to him how he had saved her from the danger of her silly, selfish self.

She closed her eyes and as she did she felt something wet on her face. Someone was crying.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

ASHES, ASHES

C
LARE CAME OUT
of her delirium to find that they were back in their bedroom. She stared up at ‘Diana and the Hunt’ and ‘The Royal Picnic.’ She turned her head then and saw Ramah and Jem by the bed, watching her.

“She’s coming out of it,” said Ramah.

“For now,” said Jem bitterly.

Clare propped herself up on her elbows.

“I feel better,” she said hoarsely.

“I’m glad,” said Ramah. Jem was silent. Clare looked at him.

“It’s the kind of feel-good that comes before the final relapse,” said Clare. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Jem, finally. “It is.” This time Ramah was silent.

“I guess it won’t be long, then. I don’t even get three days.” She touched her face with her hand and felt the lesions on her skin, especially around her eyes and mouth. Soon she wouldn’t be able to speak.

“I guess I’m pretty ugly,” she said.

“Not to me,” said Jem.

“The Master brought us here and left,” said Ramah. “He says he’s going to announce that you have Pest. He wants to show you to the children; he wants to scare them. We don’t know where Bear is. Still in the compound, maybe.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Clare said.

“What?” asked Jem.

“Being matched with you. I wouldn’t have minded.”

“We can talk about that later. You’ve been delirious.”

“There is no later.”

Clare thought of the first time she had seen Sarai and Mirri and Jem. She had thought of Jem as a little kid. She remembered further back, to the cabin she had lived in, first with Chupi and then alone, to the stag in the cabbages, to Bear’s breath on her face.

“I don’t want to die here,” said Clare.

“Clare,” said Jem.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t see it before.”

“Didn’t see what?”

“I’m glad, Clare,” said Ramah drily, “that you’ve started to realize the obvious, but we are still, as always, deeply in need of a plan.”

At that moment, the door opened. Clare was expecting the Master, but it was a very small and frightened looking Dante. He took one look at Clare’s face and stepped backward. A very pissed-off looking Ramah caught his arm.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Don’t hurt me.”

“Then do something useful.”

He paused. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to tell us everything. I want you to explain why Master isn’t rushing in here and trying to cure Clare.”

“I’m really sorry,” said Dante, and he burst into tears. Ramah took him by the shoulders and shook until he stopped.

“Explain. Now.”

“Master doesn’t really have a cure.”