A Stranger in the Garden Read online

  Charles saw that there was a pot on the piano with no plant in it.

  “Earthworms,” Darwin said, following Charles’s gaze. “We are testing to see how they respond to vibrations.”

  Charles nodded.

  Gwen rose from the bench and peered down into the pot. She picked up a wriggling worm between thumb and forefinger. “I don’t think he likes it much, Granpapa,” she said, eyeing her victim. Charles was reminded of nothing so much as the Grue sizing up a human before he struck.

  “That’s a good observation, dear. Put the little fellow back,” Darwin said. He sounded tired and sad.

  It would be so easy, the Grue said.

  Charles tried hard to ignore him.

  Ignore me at your peril. Without me, you are nothing!

  Charles moved toward the piano. The worm wriggled on top of the dirt, seeking a way back to his subterranean dwelling.

  “What do you like about them?” Gwen asked. She had black eyes that snapped much like Lucy Virulen’s. She tilted her head, and her little snub nose turned up charmingly, so like someone Charles had once known.

  An image wavered before him, like a warped mirror. His mother snatching a tiny pert-nosed baby away from him, shouting, “Don’t bother the baby, Charles!”

  That is not important, the Grue said, dismissing the memory. Gain this little one’s trust. We will need her.

  “Gwen, don’t pester the man,” Darwin said.

  “It’s all right, sir,” Charles said. “I like them because they keep the world going. Without them we’d likely have nothing. Your grandfather said so once, I think,” he told Gwen.

  “So I did,” Darwin said. He stood and made his way over to Charles and Gwen, grunting with every step. “I didn’t think many people had read that, though.”

  “I did. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written, sir.” It wasn’t a lie. Charles had found and read all the Saint’s works in the Archives long ago. The Architects had put them off as dogma not worth reading, but Charles had understood them for the treasure they were. Reading them was partially what convinced him that the Grue’s tales were true. There had been another world where Science—real Science—had won the hearts of men. A world where a clever boy might make something of himself without being ostracized, or worse, for what he was. A world where magic did not exist.

  Charles had believed in that world and longed for it with all his heart. When he had been thrown out into the streets by his father, he’d tried cutting the magic out, tried bleeding himself dry. That was how the Architect had found him. He’d taught Charles to embrace his magic, to use it. He’d hoped Charles would use it for good, but Charles had been too bent on power.

  And then came the Grue. Now Charles stood in the world he’d only imagined, before the man he’d most admired in his boyhood. His dreams had come true. Except they hadn’t.

  “The other one said the same thing long ago when I had jungle fever. She said she’d followed every step of my career. She even tried to take credit for my voyage to South America.”

  The Grue made Charles shake his head. “I am not who you think I am.”

  “Aren’t you?” Darwin said, his eyes searching Charles’s face.

  “Who do you think he is, Granpapa?” Gwen piped up.

  They both looked down at her. She was watching them intently, and the intelligence in her scrutiny was almost disturbing. She was certainly Darwin’s granddaughter.

  “Let us take this outside,” Darwin said. “We’ll continue this conversation at the Sandwalk.”

  Perfect, the Grue said.

  Charles nodded.

  Gwen took Charles’s hand. “Come along, sir. Grandpapa will want to show you his carnivorous plants, I’m sure. They’re the pride of his collection. Brought to him from all over the world!”

  A world where people collected plants instead of fairies. A world where the forbidden music of Mozart was played in parlors. Charles still did not know quite how to adjust.

  Darwin alerted Turnbull, who had been hovering nervously behind the door. Turnbull whispered that he would send a man to follow behind them, but Darwin suppressed him.

  “All will be well,” Darwin said.

  Turnbull fetched coats for Darwin and Gwen. Charles had nothing but what he had appeared with—a garishly embroidered frock coat—and thus they stepped out together into the autumnal chill.

  After the brief spot of morning sun, the drizzly gloom was returning. The Grue was gleeful.

  These things are best done when the fog is heavy, he said.

  They first visited the hothouse, which was filled to bursting with every kind of carnivorous plant imaginable. Gwen had not been joking. Hundreds of disembodied red throats hung suspended above their heads, open to any vagrant insects that wandered near. The humid crush of the air and strange plants made the Grue gibber with excitement. They reminded him of the place of his birth.

  Home.

  Charles swallowed every word the Grue wanted him to say and managed only to nod when Gwen pointed to a pitcher plant above them and said, “That one only eats shrew droppings where it comes from. But Granpapa has trained it to eat the droppings of mice instead.” She pointed to a cage where two field mice waited for the corn kernels Darwin sprinkled through the bars.

  Charles cleared his throat. “A very efficient system.”

  Gwen took his hand and pulled him toward the end of the house. “Come see the sundews. They’re my favorite!”

  He leaned over a plant with dew-tipped stems and Gwen did the same from the opposite side of the bench. The preternatural green of the plant glowed like mythfire in her dark eyes.

  He remembered then. Somehow, he broke through the smothering horror of the Grue’s control, as if he’d flown up through clouds and finally found the sun.

  Catherine. His little sister with her patched bonnets, that secretive little smile, the way her eyes snapped above that upturned nose just like Gwen’s. He remembered how they would go down among the mudlarks on the riverbanks seeking treasures together.

  He remembered the day she said, “Find me something with magic, Charles. Find us a treasure that will make us free.”

  He’d tried. He’d sent the magic forth. But something had gone wrong. Something always went wrong before the Grue. The searching tentacles snapped back. . . .

  He realized then that Gwen had been talking to him, and he looked at her again with the Grue’s intense hunger. “It lures the insects in with honey-sweetness,” she said. “And then”—she clapped her hands together—“it catapults them into a trap, like so!”

  A plant after my own heart, the Grue murmured.

  You have no heart, Charles thought back at him.

  Neither do you. Do what must be done and be quick about it. This fog provides us the perfect opportunity.

  “I should like to see more of your estate, sir,” he said to Darwin. “That is, if you’re willing to show me.”

  Darwin nodded and escorted them out. He took them to the place he called his Sandwalk, a gravel path through privet and boxwoods, overlooking a meadow on one side and woven with ancient trees and mistletoe on the other.

  “The Light Side and the Dark Side,” Gwen said, gesturing. She grabbed Charles’s hand again and pulled him forward.

  He looked down at her. “Which side will we walk on?”

  Gwen tilted her head as she gazed up at him. “I think the Dark Side suits you better. Don’t you think so?”

  “Most assuredly,” he murmured.

  Darwin held up a hand when Gwen reached for him. “You go on ahead, dear. I would like to talk with Mr. Waddingly alone for a bit. Don’t go too far, please.”

  Again she regarded them with the piercing stare of a bird. Then she nodded and was off down the Dark Side in the span of a wink.

  “I wanted to speak to you where only the trees can hear us,” Darwin said.

  Charles waited. The Grue was encouraging him to seize the Saint again.

  “Before you even t
hink of harming me,” Darwin said, “I have protection.” He pulled a chain from under his collar. From it hung a tiny vial filled with dark liquid. “I take this every day. It is made of the holy waters of Malvern and several proprietary herbs. My blood is rife with it. You would not enjoy me anymore.”

  The Grue snarled within at the mention of Malvern. A memory surfaced of a circle of beings of light forcing a dark man into a pool of bubbling water. Charles shook his head. “I think there’s some mistake. . . .”

  “There can be no mistake!” Darwin said. “I saw you when you appeared in my garden. It was just the same as when the Shining One appeared to me in the jungles of South America. I was surprised you did not offer me the same bargain.”

  “What sort of bargain?” Charles asked warily.

  “She wanted to be returned to her homeland. She had been exiled. In exchange for her passage, she promised me understanding. She promised the ability to comprehend the vast scheme of evolution, that all the stumbling blocks I’d met in my life’s work would come clear.”

  Charles listened with fascination. The Grue was silent. This was apparently a development he had not anticipated.

  “I did what she asked. It seemed a small price to pay for the knowledge she gave me. But a parasite, as any good scientist knows, often weakens the host. I just did not expect how much I would be weakened. I was ill unto death by the time we arrived back in England.” Darwin paused, looking out across the fog-ridden fields.

  “I have never told any of this to anyone. It is peculiar that the first one I would tell would be another of your kind,” Darwin finally said.

  “I am listening,” the Grue said through Charles’s lips.

  “So, I am correct. I recognize the timbre of that voice.” Darwin looked at Charles and smiled ruefully. “I thought perhaps I’d gone mad when I saw you. What do you want with the boy?”

  “The same that my kinswoman wanted from you—safe passage,” the Grue said.

  “But it is never safe, is it?” Darwin said. “When I returned, she spied my beloved daughter Annie. And instead of doing as she’d promised, she took up house in my Annie. I took her to Malvern. The water cure there has always helped me in the past. But it was too late for her. Annie died and was buried there.”

  The Grue was silent. He did not care.

  “Since then, I have been watchful. I have protected my other children as best I could. But I worried that there were more of you and that one of you might find me again.” Darwin stepped closer to him. “Why have you come? I have nothing more to give! You have taken my youth, my health, and my most beloved child—is that not enough?”

  The Grue smiled. “Tell me what became of my kinswoman, and I shall leave you in peace.”

  Charles noticed he did not mention anyone else. Gwen was still fair game. He found himself wanting to warn Darwin, but the Grue had complete control over him. He could no more speak of his own volition than he could run away and hide.

  “She is buried yonder,” Darwin said, pointing with his cane toward the standing stones that loomed in the mist.

  Charles looked down the path that began at the hedge and meandered to the crown of the hill. He could see Gwen’s woolen stockings and the red ribbon in her hair flashing like a semaphore.

  The Grue pushed him after her, and he quickly left Darwin shouting behind him in the fog.

  Yessssss, the Grue hissed. She will lead us to Her. Yes!

  Who are you talking about? The Grue never spoke her name, and it was maddening.

  You will see. Do as I bid, the Grue urged.

  Gwen danced ahead down the path. Her pinafore was soaked with the damp, but Charles could not feel the chill. He was filled with the Grue’s heat. Somewhere far behind, Darwin shouted for both of them, his voice echoing in the stillness.

  The stones rose out of the mist, and some of them seemed to have faces. Lithads, they were called back home. They were like dryads, except that they lived in stone.

  As Charles took the last step into the ring, he could feel the magic boiling up through the soles of his boots and winding up his legs. Darwin’s shouts were abruptly silenced.

  Home.

  The Grue had him completely. With that knowledge came the realization that until this moment he had been thinking for himself, that he had had his own memories. Was it possible to be free?

  Quiet, the Grue said. Prepare the sacrifice.

  Gwen was looking at some lichen on the stones and babbling about how it reminded her of all her Granpapa’s work on barnacles.

  Charles tried to say her name, but all that left his mouth was, “Come here, child.”

  He could see very clearly where Darwin must have buried the one the Grue sought. It was just under a ledge that was low to the ground. The ledge was actually the lintel on a door sunken deep into the earth. No one else could have recognized it, but the Grue did.

  The time is right. The time is right. She will be mine.

  Charles didn’t know if he was talking about Gwen or the woman he had crossed worlds to see again. Charles had begun to doubt her existence, but the fact that Darwin had experienced the same kind of wretched possession gave him pause. The magic here was different, but it clearly survived in pockets of wilderness like this. It was dark and wild and strange, just like the Grue.

  Gwen came over to Charles.

  “Sit here,” Charles said. His voice was not his own, but the Grue’s—that dead, cold voice that had traveled the void between worlds.

  Gwen glanced at him. “Are you feeling well, sir? Your voice—”

  “I am perfectly well,” he said. “More than you can possibly imagine. Now sit and do not speak further.”

  She sat, the damp edges of her pinafore flopping against her woolen stockings.

  Magic gathered in the stones. Beneath Charles’s feet came the murmuring of voices—the Grue’s long-lost kin. One voice in particular moaned for blood, the voice of the woman Darwin had buried here.

  “Have mercy,” Charles whispered, surfacing to himself for only a moment. He did not know why he asked for it when he had never asked before. But he thought he knew now what the Grue intended, and for some reason, it felt like too much to bear. He was tired of dealing only in death.

  It matters little whether she is asleep or awake, the Grue said. Make her sleep if you are too cowardly to look into her eyes.

  “Charles . . .” He heard his mother’s voice as if he was lost again in yesterday.

  Do it, the Grue snapped.

  Charles pulled the garden shears he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying from his coat pocket. They were small and neat, the sort used to trim off small roots. They were also extremely sharp.

  Your blood first, the Grue said. That is the way this begins.

  He turned away from Gwen. He didn’t feel the stab at first, but then the black blood flowed from his left ring finger. The Grue had poisoned his blood with his magic.

  He bled steadily onto the earth while Gwen hummed to herself behind him. Soon, the drops formed ripples. The ripples opened into a door with stairs that led down.

  He used the blood to weave sleep around Gwen. She curled up on her side like a child in the womb, her knees tucked up under her, her petticoats peeking out from under her skirts. One untied bootlace trailed over the edge of the stone.

  Corinna. Corinna. Corinna. The Grue chanted Her name at last. There was power and pleading, revenge and despair in that voice. And love. Above all things, there was so much love and yearning that Charles fell to his knees with it.

  Who would have guessed a creature of such immense evil could love another so fiercely?

  Charles had never known such love in all his life, except…

  This is not about you. I will rid myself of you in short order, the Grue growled.

  He called her name again. Nine times he called while Charles’s blood flowed.

  He couldn’t be sure when the light began or whether it was a trick of the fog, but soon enough a woman stood
before him. He could barely make out her face. She was like the moon and water and mirrors all at once. A billion stars concentrated into a single being.

  “Great Goddess,” she whispered, looking down at Charles. He couldn’t look directly into her face. “You poor wretch!” she said to him.

  Now, the Grue said. She will not be able to resist what you offer her. Now!

  Charles lifted his still-bleeding hand. Her eyes fell on it and she sighed. Her longing matched the Grue’s.

  “It has been long since Darwin buried me here. It’s been even longer since last I truly feasted,” she said.

  Charles leaned forward, ready to plunge the shears into Gwen’s neck. The Grue was nearly insensible with joy. With this, he believed he would open the way to have his revenge on Corinna. His long quest was almost ended. He would have her again, down there in the dark, and she would be his slave.

  Then her hand was around Charles’s wrist. Her touch seared like ice. “By whose magic do you summon me from my sleep?”

  She reached down and pulled Charles’s chin upward so that she could see into his eyes. He tried not to meet her gaze. The Grue did not want him to.

  She hauled Charles to his feet. They were almost face to face. Her scent was like the pure breath of stars.

  “Who hides within your skin? There is a resonance, a memory . . .” She trailed off.

  The Grue realized the game was up.

  “Corinna.”

  Her gaze practically burned through Charles’s eyes clear to the back of his skull. He cried out with the pain of it, but even that did not deter her.

  “MacDougal,” she said in wonder and disgust.

  She brought Charles’s face so close he feared she would bite him. But the Grue subsumed his fear and took his voice.

  “Yes. I am here again.”

  “You have broken free of all the bonds that held you. Despite our threats, despite your own vows, you have come here again.” She dropped Charles at her feet in utter revulsion. “You promised,” she said, looking down. Her eyes were midnight blue, like the inside of a sea cave.

  “What did I promise you? Do you remember?”