Sever (Chemical Garden Trilogy)

by Lauren DeStefano

  “If you’re looking for anything salvageable, you’re too late,” a faraway voice tells me. “Place was picked clean apart yesterday.”

  I say nothing, kneel down, and press my hand to a crumbled column of bricks. It’s warm—maybe from the sun, or maybe because it has somehow retained the heat of the flames. But I feel my brother there for just an instant, a rush of energy shooting through me, a sharp sideways pull as though he’s trying to get me to follow him.

  “Where are you?” I whisper.

  A hand touches my arm, and I flinch. There’s the hazy, sudden feeling of waking from a long dream.

  Cecily crouches beside me. “Are you okay?” she says.

  “My brother was here,” I tell her. “Right here. Just a couple of days ago.”

  She frowns. “You shouldn’t be running off by yourself,” she says, and tugs me to my feet. “We’re here to help you. You know that.”

  Linden catches up to us, gasping for breath. “What are you thinking, running off like that?” he says.

  I say nothing. I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.

  “Are you going to help or not?” a man snaps. “This isn’t tourist hour.”

  Cecily draws a breath, and I can tell she’s about to snap back something volatile, so I am quick to say, “Sorry. It’s just . . . ” My voice trails away. It’s just what? I expected to find answers here? Clues? I’ve only found more of what my brother left at our house: some charred remains, more evidence that he’s gone mad since deciding I’m dead.

  “We’re looking for someone,” Linden says. “One of the people who caused this explosion.”

  “If they’re smart, they’re gone for good,” the man says. “Are you helping or not?”

  “Wait,” a boy says. He’s a new generation and hardly taller than Cecily. “Dad,” he says to the man standing before us, “that’s the one we saw on the news. He’s that scientist’s son.”

  I see a light of recognition in the man’s eyes. Several others have heard this, and a circle has formed around us.

  And there’s silence, only silence. Linden and Cecily and I have orbited close together. It’s all we can do, because we know it’s too late to run.

  Linden tries to leave Cecily and me behind. When the man shoves Linden into the backseat of the rundown car, Cecily cries out and rushes after Linden, and he tries to pull the door shut. But this is not an option, and judging by the brute force used to throw us into the hot and stuffy car, I’d guess that the reward for Linden’s return is exorbitant. The exact amount of money a town like this would need to build a hospital or rebuild the lab my brother destroyed.

  “It’ll be okay,” Linden says. “I won’t let my father harm either of you.”

  He hasn’t been very good at this in the past, but I don’t say that.

  Cecily is pale and silent. I catch her glancing at her pocket, and through the fabric I can see the rectangular glow of the cell phone for an instant before she silently flips it shut. It’s no use; there’s no reception anyway.

  The man and his son are in the front seats, and the son is pointing a gun at us, which would intimidate me more if I didn’t suspect it was a pellet gun. I can see the CO2 cartridge. Rather, what unnerve me are the several cars following us on all sides. There is a village of people making sure we have no way to escape. I can’t imagine anything more unsettling.

  Until I see the Ferris wheel getting larger as we approach, and the cavalcade of cars stops right at the chain-link fence that surrounds Madame’s carnival.

  MADAME comes bursting through a wall of bodyguards like an actress through a stage curtain. Even from inside the car I can smell her perfume and the smoke ribboning off her cigarette. “Let me see them,” I hear her gleefully cry.

  She was expecting us, but how?

  When the man and his son get out of the car, Cecily looks at me, all eagerness, and there’s something she wants to say, but there’s no time. The doors open on either side of us. Madame is saying, “I’ve never seen his son in the flesh before. I’m sure he’s every bit as beautiful as his photo and then some.”

  The boy with the pellet gun is forcing us out of the car; Linden first, Cecily immediately behind him, and then me. And Madame’s gasp of astonishment and admiration when she sees Linden in person is cut short when she sees me, her hands still outstretched to touch Linden’s face. I recognize all her gaudy rings, her bun of gray hair that still has glimmers of blond.

  “Where is your servant boy, Goldenrod?” she says. “Don’t tell me you’ve returned to your husband here and left your servant boy jilted.”

  Cecily tries to wrap her arm around mine, but I move away. Madame hates affection. She sees love and wants to destroy it. I learned that the hard way.

  I don’t answer her question; instead I look beyond the chain-link fence, where curious eyes are blinking through the slit in the rainbow tent.

  “It’s all right,” Madame singsongs. “Dear one, I won’t hurt you. All the trouble you’ve cost me will be paid for in triplicate. Have you any idea the reward being offered for your safe return? Your photo and name aren’t even mentioned on the news. That’s how desperately Vaughn would like to keep you a secret. Wouldn’t want someone else to snatch you up.”

  I look at Linden and see the way he’s staring at her, like she means something to him. He doesn’t seem at all afraid. I wonder if he’s thinking what I thought when I first met Madame, that something is oddly familiar about her.

  Madame exhales a cloud of smoke. Cecily stifles a cough, and Madame snaps to attention, grabs her face, and stoops to her eye level. They stare at each other for a long while, Cecily’s eyes dulled of any emotion or fear. The night she lost the baby, she drowned in the sleepy gray waters of death and then swam scissor-kicking from its depths in defiance. Madame holds no power over her.

  “You aren’t much,” Madame says. “Maybe once puberty sets in.” She stands upright again, clapping, spurring her bodyguards into action. “Out of my way,” she’s telling them. “Someone make tea for our guests while I contact this beautiful boy’s father.”

  “Your father and I go way back, Linden,” Madame says. She has not used a single fake accent since we arrived. “Back in our school days, you could say we had something of a fling.”

  We’re sitting on colored cushions in the peach tent where Gabriel and I were made to draw in a crowd. The gilded cage is still in place, and judging by the rumpled sheets inside it, I’d guess Madame has found new performers.

  “And then a lover of mine became his colleague,” Madame goes on, pouring tea into a quartet of teacups on a box crate table. “I see you’ve grown to have his charm, haven’t you? Even if you are a man of few words.”

  She looks at Cecily, and her face dulls with disappointment. Perhaps she expected Vaughn’s son to have a more glamorous wife. But she sees Cecily’s ring, then Linden’s, and her eyes brighten again. Though my sister wives and I had unique patterns on our wedding rings, they’re of a similar design—vines and flowers etched in an endless loop—and Madame very much admired mine. Now she sees that I’m not wearing it.

  “Where’s your servant boy?” she asks me again. She begins polishing her silver pistol; it’s studded with fake emeralds. I don’t know if she means to threaten us. Probably not. In Madame’s world it is perfectly normal to admire a lethal weapon over tea.

  I speak my first word to her in months. “Gone.”

  “He was too weak for you anyway,” Madame says. “You would have been better off staying with your husband.” She smiles at Linden. Something has changed in his eyes, and she knows she’s hurt him. That pain isn’t enough, though. She must say something more. “When she first described you, I admit I pictured more of an impotent beast. She certainly didn’t put you in a very flattering light. Drink your tea, all of you. I have a thing or two to tend to. Maybe you’ll be chattier when I return.”

  She stands, skirts billowing a
round her, jewelry clattering as she makes her exit. And as usual I can see the silhouettes of her guards just outside the tent. Cecily and Linden see them too.

  Cecily reaches into her pocket and stares at the face of the phone, distressed. “Nothing,” she mutters, tucking it back. “You and your stupid broken junk, Reed.”

  Linden looks as though he’ll be sick.

  “There must be a way to use phones here,” Cecily says, quietly so the guards won’t hear. “How else could this crazy lady have gotten in touch with your father?”

  “One of her guards is an inventor,” I say. “I’m sure he worked something out.”

  Not that it matters. We’re here now, and Vaughn is on his way, and he’s bound to be less than merciful with us.

  Cecily stares at the steam rising from her teacup.

  “Don’t drink that,” I tell her.

  She only stares at it, and her eyes start to fill with tears, because despite all the strength she has mustered and the brave face she’s put on for Madame and even the way she stood up to Vaughn, she is still frightened.

  Linden places his finger under her chin and coaxes her to look at him. “I won’t let my father hurt you,” he says.

  Her voice is small when she says, “Do you still love me?”

  “What a silly question,” he says. “Of course I do.”

  I stare at the dirt floor, trying to erase these sudden memories of Gabriel. We were the Lovebirds, the illusion that Madame sold to her customers who crowded outside our golden cage. We were mesmerized by the smoky air, delirious from Madame’s opiates, and as a result all my memories are feverish. But no matter how painful they are, I can’t be rid of them. I can’t forget his fingertips moving up my bare arms, all the hairs on the back of my neck rising with expectancy when he swept my hair away and kissed me.

  I don’t know if it was love or if it was illusion. I don’t know if there’s ever a way to be certain.

  Madame returns, her jewelry like plastic bells announcing her approach. She’s holding something swaddled in a silk scarf.

  Cecily swipes her wrist across her eyes, tears all gone.

  “I met you once, when you were a little boy,” Madame tells Linden. “You probably don’t remember. My lover and I used to travel with our little girl. Back then we thought it would be good for her to see the world. You played with her one afternoon, when you were both just toddlers.”

  She unfolds the scarf in her hands, and I can see now that it has been protecting a picture frame. In my time here Madame confided in me that she had a daughter, but I never saw a picture. I assumed she didn’t keep one, after all she said about how stupid it had been to love her. But now she stares longingly at the picture, and there’s a smile on her neon-pink-painted lips before she hands it to Linden.

  “This is my daughter,” she says. “My Rose.”

  We all stop breathing. Cecily huddles close to Linden and stares at the picture he’s holding. Linden’s mouth is open, lower lip trembling just enough—just enough to register his shock. If not for that tremble, I would think he had no reaction at all. His eyes are green stones, his body a statue.

  I feel as though I’m moving in slow motion when I inch closer to Linden so that I can get a better look at the picture as well.

  There was a photo in Rose’s bedroom. One afternoon she took it off the wall and handed it to me. She was dying then, face painted up like a perfect china doll, lying in a bright sea of June Bean wrappers. The photo was of her and Linden as children in the orange grove. I remember how bright and healthy her smile was.

  The little girl in Madame’s picture is slightly younger, and rather than the toothy smile given in the orange grove, this one is slight, a coy little grin for the photographer. She’s sitting on a merry-go-round horse.

  I recognize that merry-go-round.

  But more importantly, I recognize that little girl. She grew up and became Linden’s bride.

  Linden sweeps his thumb across the little girl’s face, for a second covering it entirely.

  Madame is perplexed by his somberness.

  “Is this a trick?” he says. “I don’t believe my father would be this cruel.”

  “A trick?” Madame says.

  Linden opens his mouth, but his eyes are still on Rose’s young face. Younger in this picture than when he was betrothed to her when she was eleven and he was twelve.

  “Remind me,” I say to Madame. “What happened to your daughter?”

  Madame bristles. There’s a moment of pain in her eyes, but she hides it quickly. She snatches the picture from Linden’s hand, and he loses his wife all over again. He watches her go, watches her get wrapped hastily in cloth and be crushed between Madame’s jeweled fingers.

  “She was murdered,” Madame says. “Just as well. She was too good for this world.”

  You children are flies. That’s what Madame said to me that day when she led me through her carnival.

  You are roses. She told me that she had a daughter with hair that was every shade of yellow, like mine.

  You multiply and die.

  “She wasn’t murdered,” Linden says. “She was my wife.”

  THERE WAS A little girl once who was very much adored.

  Her existence was an act of carelessness, for Madame and her lover never intended to have a child, and in fact they had a long discussion about terminating the pregnancy. It seemed too emotional a venture to raise a child that would die on its twentieth or twenty-fifth birthday.

  But neither Madame nor her lover could bring themselves to terminate the pregnancy. They decided that a short life would be better than none at all. And they would shower her with all the things a child could ask for. They would travel to every corner of the country, and they would fill her short years with a hundred years’ worth of experience.

  As a result their daughter grew to be fearless. She played among the tents and talked wildly about the ocean and the sky. She had dreams of leaving the country. If the rest of the world were destroyed, she wanted to visit the graves of the other countries. She wanted to start at one end of the world and sail all the way around until she came back again.

  Madame blames herself for this. She raised her daughter to be discontent in this carnival of dying and broken girls. When Rose’s father left on research endeavors, Rose pleaded to go along with him, and he most always relented. When Rose was eleven, he took her to the coast of Florida, where he would be meeting with several colleagues. Vaughn Ashby was among them.

  “She was supposed to build sand castles on the beach and put her toes in the ocean,” Madame says.

  “What happened?” Cecily asks gently. She reaches for her teacup, but I put my hand on her wrist to stop her. Even if Madame is being civil, I don’t trust anything she serves us.

  Madame strokes the cloth-swaddled edges of the picture frame.

  “There was a car bombing,” Madame says. “I was told it was caused by pro-naturalists who opposed the research being conducted. I was told my lover and daughter were killed.”

  She looks at Linden now. He’s so small and weary, and I worry that he’ll collapse, but he doesn’t. He says, “Rose thought that her parents were killed in that explosion. She thought that her mother met up with her father and that they died on their way to her. She had nightmares for—always. She always did.”

  “I can’t help noticing”—Madame’s voice is dry and lacking emotion, but ripe with expectancy—“that you are referring to her in the past tense.”

  Linden cannot speak. He only looks, bleary-eyed, into his teacup.

  “Rose has been gone for a year now,” I say.

  “When she would have turned twenty, then,” Madame says. “I let hope get the better of me for a moment.”

  “I—excuse me,” Linden blurts, and before any of us can stop him, he’s on his feet and stumbling through the slit in the tent, and Madame is yelling for her guards not to shoot, to keep the fences closed but to let him go wherever he pleases.

 
Cecily runs after him.

  Madame looks at me, and I see a rare moment of humanity about her face. I see her brown eyes, and I understand now why she seemed so familiar to me when we first met several months before.

  “Rose looked like you,” I say.

  During my time at this carnival, I was subjected to Madame’s whims, treated like one of her girls. But not exactly. She put the pill down my throat but she never forced me to go quite as far as the other girls when I was with Gabriel. I never had to forfeit my virginity. Maybe that was her way of not sullying the image of her daughter. Maybe she still loved her after all.

  Madame’s mouth opens and shuts several times. She turns the picture frame over and over in her hands and says, “Vaughn asked me about arranging a marriage between our children. But I thought it would be a waste of time. Vaughn said that we could have grandchildren, but—burying Rose was going to be hard enough. I didn’t want more children to bury.”

  This is the real Madame. I can see why she hides herself in accents and gems and exotic perfumes. I can see why she’s grown to hate anything to do with love. She isn’t evil or corrupt the way that Vaughn is. She’s broken. Only broken.

  “You remind me of her,” Madame says. “Not just your hair and your face. You’ve both got that restlessness. Your eyes are somewhere else.”

  “I only knew Rose a little, toward the end,” I say. “But she wasn’t unhappy. She and Linden loved each other very much.”

  “All those years wasted,” Madame says, and her voice is venomous. “I could have had her for nine more years. I could have said good-bye.”

  This is a woman who imprisoned me, who drugged me and betrayed me and nearly murdered a little girl right in front of me. And yet I believe that her grief is sincere. I believe that she loved her daughter. I don’t hate her anymore.

  “Vaughn lies,” I tell her. “He took me away from my family too. He’s the one I was running away from, not Linden. Linden would never hurt anybody.”

  “He was always off,” Madame says. “That Vaughn. Always trying to save the world, never mind what it cost. He has always believed he would cure the virus.” She stares past me for a long time, and then, hesitantly, she asks me, “Did Rose have any children?”