A Stranger in the Garden Read online

  “Aye,” she said. “You promised to go into exile or else be slain. You promised—”

  “That is not what I promised and well you know it,” the Grue said through Charles’s lips. “You alone heard my last words before all of you sent me from this world.”

  She clenched her jaw. “You promised me that you would return to have your revenge.”

  “You did not believe me.”

  She shook her head. “I did not think it possible. And then I too was cast forth for aligning with you, even though I had repented of it. I had more pressing issues to concern myself with.”

  “You should have come with me as I begged,” the Grue said. “We could have started anew in the land of our birth.”

  “You know I would never. You have sundered us from the Eternal Light with your darkness. Despite what you made me, I will not join you in it.”

  “And yet, you used Darwin for your own purposes, much as I did this boy,” the Grue said.

  “I was weak and foolish,” she said. “I have since learned my lesson.”

  “Not well enough, I think,” the Grue said. He was thinking of the innumerable things he would do once he forced her to take him back. Charles shuddered, almost slipped his control, but the Grue got him firmly in hand again.

  Do it, he said to Charles. She cannot resist me then. Charles’s gaze fell on Gwen, asleep on the stone.

  He lifted the shears up, aiming for the girl’s throat.

  Corinna’s hand was on him again, and her freezing touch shocked him enough that Charles was out of the Grue’s reach for just a moment. He was completely under her control. If he had thought the Grue’s powers were vast, they were nothing compared to hers.

  Her eyes were filled with sympathy. “He is a cruel master, is he not? He was ever so. You took on a burden far beyond any your kind should take.”

  “He offered me power,” Charles said through stiff lips. “Enough power that I could rid myself of the magic forever, if only I could just get here.”

  “Dealing with the devil is never a good idea,” she said. “You do not belong here. For better or for worse, you are grounded in the magic of Fairyland. Without it, you will wither and die, even as my people have. Earth magic is very different. It cannot sustain you, since you have been so long in Fairyland.”

  Charles felt the Grue shrieking impotently inside him. He lunged, but she caught him just before the shining blades dove into Gwen’s throat. With Corinna’s touch, the memories came flooding—the whipsnap of magic breaking Catherine like a doll on the riverbank, the trickle of blood from her mouth, her dead eyes following him everywhere. And his mother’s voice scolding him again, “Charles, don’t bother the baby!”

  “I killed her,” he whispered. “My sister died because of my magic.”

  “Yes,” Corinna said. “And that is why you keep trying to flee it, and become ever more entangled.” He looked into her eyes, trying to understand.

  The Grue was incoherent with rage. If he could have, he would have torn out through Charles’s skin and devoured Corinna. But he was cognizant enough to know that he was still far too weak to take her on directly. He had to wait for the moment when he could seize her down in the dark after her bloodfeast.

  “Magic is in you, as I have said. You can no more flee it than you can the death of your sister. The Grue may have suppressed that memory and turned it to his own ends, but the knowledge of what you did is still raw inside you. You do not care what you do because you think there is nothing worse. And you are correct. Nothing you will ever do will erase it or surpass it. But that does not mean you cannot attempt to redeem what you have done.”

  “How?” Charles whispered.

  “Take this girl back to her grandfather. Beg him to take you with him to Malvern. I think you are strong enough for the water cure there. It is anathema to our people, and will rid you of the Grue. You can begin again. But you must get back to your world. You cannot long be separate from the magic of your birth. And whatever you do, you must not give in to the Grue’s cries for blood.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because, Charles Darwin Waddingly, you have much good to do. And a mortal lifespan is a short time in which to do it. Now go, before my hunger overcomes my good sense.”

  She disappeared back down the stairs, and the earth folded closed behind her.

  Gwen woke slowly. She sat up, yawning, and rubbed her eyes. “What happened?”

  “You evidently took a nap while I was looking at beetles,” Charles said. He hid the shears back in his coat pocket.

  She slid down off the stone and took his hand. “You’re bleeding! Did something bite you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That is exactly what happened.”

  “Let’s get you back to Granpapa. He’ll know what to do!”

  And she skipped merrily back into the mist, none the worse for wear.

  The Grue was raging. Charles bit at his bloody finger, sucking at the blood to quiet him.

  I can make you devour yourself alive, the Grue said.

  And then what would become of you?

  His anger nearly blinded Charles. Before he knew it, he was chasing after Gwen. He snatched her up in his arms, the Grue’s teeth erupting in his mouth.

  I will not lose this one chance!

  Gwen screamed, kicking futilely at him. Fog beaded on her skin like the drops on the sundew’s leaves.

  Take her. Her blood will flow free and open the gates again, the Grue said.

  Charles couldn’t think anymore. He opened his jaws wide. The points of his teeth pressed against her warm throat.

  Thwack. The pain across his shoulders was so startling and intense that he loosened his hold on the girl.

  Thwack.

  His head blossomed into a white flower of pain before he slumped to the ground.

  When Charles woke, it was deep in the night and he was rattling around in a carriage, careening toward Saints knew where.

  Darwin was sitting across from him, watching him, his face barely visible in the moonlight that occasionally sliced through the carriage windows.

  Charles sat up slowly. His shoulders ached, and when he touched the back of his head, there was a great egg on it that made him wince.

  “I am sorry for your head, but I did what had to be done to save my Gwen,” Darwin said. “Hopefully, there is still time for you.”

  “Where are we going?” Charles asked.

  “To Malvern. They cured me there. Possibly they can cure you.”

  The Grue was awake and furious again. But he could do nothing.

  “I have given the boy a tonic,” Darwin said, raising his voice as if he needed to shout for the Grue to hear him. “You will not be able to do much of anything until it wears off.”

  Foam came out of Charles’s mouth instead of words, the exudate of the Grue’s rage. He twisted with such pain and frustration that Charles both feared he might die and wanted to die all at once.

  Darwin tossed a handkerchief, and it landed in Charles’s lap. He dabbed at his lips with shaking hands.

  The Grue turned in his guts, vicious in his hunger. “I will devour you before we arrive there,” the Grue whispered through Charles’s lips.

  Darwin leaned forward, his visage like a death’s-head in the moonlight.

  “Try it. I have been through this before, remember. I am well aware of what you can and cannot do at this moment.”

  Charles gritted his teeth. The Grue wanted to vomit on Darwin out of spite.

  EAT HIM.

  Charles put his hands under his legs on the bench seat. He clenched his fists to feel the hard wood against his knuckles. Pain kept him from losing himself utterly.

  “It is painful, I know. I have given you the tonic, but perhaps you would also prefer this?” Darwin took a little vial from a coat pocket.

  Charles tried to grasp it without faltering. The carriage jouncing around in the darkness made it hard enough, but the Grue would not rest at his p
owerlessness. He threw every memory he could against Charles—the deliciousness of the Sphinx, the power that filled his body when he had eaten the Wyverns. All the souls of the men and women he’d eaten, that he had trapped in the bell jar. The power and purpose of blood.

  Through it all, Darwin seemed not at all afraid, only sad. He reached over Charles’s trembling fingers and unscrewed the bottle.

  “Drink the laudanum,” he said. “It will all be better soon.”

  With Darwin’s help, Charles managed to open his mouth and shake the dark liquid down his unwilling throat. Everything was coming apart. Everything.

  Charles woke in an unfamiliar bed. A balding old man was bending over him. He was a bit more spry than Darwin, and he peered at Charles through his wire-rimmed glasses with mild curiosity.

  “I am Dr. Gully,” he said. “Do you remember being brought here?”

  Charles shook his head.

  “Mr. Darwin seems to think you have the nervous dyspepsia caused by some sort of parasite.”

  Charles didn’t say anything as Dr. Gully pulled back the coverlet briskly.

  “Remove your shirt, please. I would like to palpate your abdomen.”

  Charles did so slowly. Sometimes it took the Grue a little longer to wake, and Charles suspected that if they’d been drugged a long time—for he didn’t remember getting here or how long it had taken—that he might be sluggish.

  His sides were hollow, but his stomach was bloated, like a pregnant woman just beginning to show. The Grue curled there. Charles had worn such clothing that the Grue could not be seen, but now his presence was plainly visible.

  Gully pressed on the spot tentatively. “That is more than a mere parasite, son.”

  Charles shrank from his touch. Not only was it painful, but the Grue was awake and felt the hands on Charles’s skin. The Grue swam toward the hands, as if he would burst from Charles’s skin. Charles cried out with the pain before the Grue silenced him. Gully stepped back, adjusting his glasses in disbelief.

  But the Grue could not break free of the prison of flesh. Both he and Charles knew this.

  Corinna had been right. Without magic, without blood, the Grue was vulnerable.

  “Have you any family?” Dr. Gully asked.

  “No.”

  Gully pulled out a strange device, a scope of some sort, and looked into Charles’s eyes. He inhaled a bit sharply, but otherwise gave no sign of what he’d seen. He touched the skin at Charles’s throat, testing his pulses.

  “I must consult my partners before I can offer you the proper course of treatment,” he finally said. He folded up his instruments and replaced them in his black leather medical satchel. “I may bring them in to observe you. Are you amenable to that?”

  Charles nodded. He had no other choice.

  Gully departed. Someone came to feed Charles a fishy broth, which he regurgitated not long after the nurse left. The stench was abominable.

  The next person who comes into this room will be utterly consumed, the Grue threatened.

  Charles just settled himself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He thought of Catherine. For once, the Grue couldn’t take his memories away, painful as they were. Something had changed.

  It was well after sunset, from what he could judge, when Dr. Gully returned with a girl, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, and a thin gentleman with elegant mustaches and a monocle perched on his angular cheekbone.

  “This is Francine Lark and Nigel Gaylord. They will assist me in developing your treatment regimen,” Gully said.

  The doctor pulled back the coverlet again but did not lift Charles’s shirt in Francine’s presence. The bulge of the Grue was obvious, though.

  Nigel unwound a long golden chain from his palm. An arrow-shaped pendulum swung at its end. Charles recognized this sort of thing from the charlatans who used to practice under the Vaunting Bridge. Mesmerists.

  His lip curled.

  “Rest easy, sir,” Gaylord said. “And watch the pendulum swing in the candlelight.”

  Francine moved closer on his other side. He turned his head to look at her. She licked her lips nervously.

  “Is this your idea of magic?” the Grue growled through his lips. It seemed that even when the Grue had control of nothing else, he still had Charles’s tongue.

  Her eyes widened and she backed up a step.

  Dr. Gully’s voice was firm on the other side of the bed. “Look toward the pendulum, Mr. Waddingly. Francine is here to assist only. There is no magic involved here. Only the fine art of healing.”

  Charles looked back at the pendulum unwillingly. Gaylord’s eyes were blank, his posture unyielding. The only thing that moved was the pendulum, swinging in a golden arc between his fingers.

  Charles followed the fan of light until he was lost in it.

  He woke again to hear himself screaming Catherine’s name in a hoarse voice.

  Gaylord cupped the pendulum with one hand and it disappeared inside his palm again.

  Both he and Francine stared at him as if they wanted to say something but couldn’t quite form the words.

  “What did I tell you?” Charles asked.

  “Of a strange place called New London where a group of men called the Architects found you. And a Museum of Unnatural History”—here Gully looked at him over the rim of his glasses with raised brows—“and a being who possessed you . . .”

  “You think I’m mad,” Charles croaked.

  Gully shook his head. “Francine is a clairvoyant. She can see into matters of the realms beyond this one in ways most of us cannot. I think you believe that you are from this New London. I know that something untoward has infected you. Beyond that, it is not for me to judge.”

  Charles thought he had never met a wiser man.

  “And Darwin?” Charles asked. “What does he think of this? And where is he?”

  “Mr. Darwin guessed your condition admirably,” Gully said. “Right now, he is taking his own cure, which I developed for him long ago.”

  Charles nodded.

  Nigel peered at him through his monocle, and it made Charles oddly uncomfortable. It reminded him of something. Rackham. The dirty little hexshop owner from whom he had stolen the soul jar. His mouth tightened against the tears that threatened. Rackham had not been the first nor the last. Why his death of any of them should affect him so, Charles had no idea.

  “You are feeling things,” Francine said. “Human emotions. This is good. You must allow yourself to have them.”

  The Grue laughed and twisted in his belly until Charles cried out. “How about my insatiable lust for your flesh?” he snarled.

  Charles clapped his hands over his mouth. They were so thin the bones seemed to rattle within them.

  Her eyes widened a little, but she was growing accustomed to him. “That is the parasite within you talking. I know its voice. We will rid you of it.”

  He bit his fingers against the Grue’s retort almost until they bled.

  “He cannot withstand the full walking cure,” Nigel said. “But the rest of it, we should most certainly do.”

  “Tincture of wormwood and oak gall?” Gully asked.

  Gaylord looked at Charles again. “And the merest speck of hemlock. Followed by syrup of ipecac of course. We do not want to poison him.”

  “Poison?” Charles whispered.

  But they were not really talking to him. They bent their heads together and whispered. Even his senses, once so finely tuned by the Grue, could make out none of it.

  Finally, Dr. Gully turned and said, “We shall leave you now. To take advantage of the most healing energies, we will begin the treatment at dawn.”

  Francine gave him a sad, knowing look as they departed.

  It was a strange thing to realize how much he wanted to live when he had thus far been so bent on dying.

  The Grue had been listening. He warned Charles: You cannot remove me. I am part of you now. If you let them do this, you will die.

  Perhaps, Charles t
hought. But you will die too.

  It wasn’t the magic he needed to get rid of. It was the Grue. His first mistake had been in believing the Grue’s power could make magic more palatable. His greatest mistake was in believing the Grue could take it all away, and that when it was gone, his guilt over his memories would be gone too.

  Now that everything would be taken, Charles found himself terribly guilty and bitter. What had happened to New London because of his foolishness? Would he ever know?

  He remembered Vespa’s face as the Creeping Waste swirled over their heads. He hadn’t cared about the Heart. He’d cared about hurting her, because she’d had something he hadn’t. A father who loved her to distraction, who loved her so much that he had smothered her, trying to hide her gifts. No siblings to worry with. Being pampered and petted and spoiled.

  Charles had twisted Malcolm Nyx’s love and used it to turn him against his daughter. With the Grue’s silver tongue, he had convinced the Pedant that his daughter could not be salvaged. That if he truly loved her, the best thing he could do was offer her up to Science, so that she could be redeemed. Everything she’d done had played straight into his hands.

  He wondered if she was dead now, if there was even any world to return to. The Creeping Waste might have swallowed it all.

  But what if Vespa had succeeded? What if the Heart had been returned to the Heavenly Dragon? What then?

  The Grue laughed at his thoughts. She had no idea what she was doing. Rousing the Dragon will cause unimaginable turmoil.

  He sensed the ring of truth in the Grue’s voice and it made Charles shudder. More often than not, the Grue told the truth. It was just a truth no one wanted to hear.

  What do you mean? Charles thought. He didn’t want to fall into the trap of listening, but the burden of guilt for so many deaths was almost more than he could bear.

  What does it matter? You are never going back there.

  The Grue was playing coy.

  “Tell me!” Charles whispered out loud.

  All the magic will be thrown out of balance. You can see what happened as a result of your own dabbling.

  And the magic must be brought back into balance?