Sever (Chemical Garden Trilogy)

by Lauren DeStefano

  There are several machines surrounding a bed, all of them with wires leading to a still body that breathes rhythmically. Colored fluids jolt back and forth through IV tubes. His skin is gray. His skin is gray, and my brain won’t register what this is. Won’t accept that this is happening, that the boy on that bed is the very same to give me my first kiss, and to show me the atlas with a river that has my name.

  Gabriel. I rush to his side.

  But there’s nothing that my presence here will do. He doesn’t feel it when I sweep my hand along the length of his face. He doesn’t even know that I’m here.

  “What have you done to him?” I say.

  “He’s seen my most valuable research. I couldn’t very well let him run loose.”

  “How long has he been here?” My fingers make a fist around the bedsheet.

  “Oh, goodness,” Vaughn says, like it’s a chore bothering to try to remember. “However long you were here. You wouldn’t have known he was with you on the drive back home; you slept like the dead the whole way. He’s fine, though, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s an induced coma, easy enough to undo.”

  “So undo it,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “I’m certain that once he awakens, we can all be one big happy family again,” Vaughn says. “Once my son is home, of course.”

  “Rowan,” I whisper. It used to be that a whisper would have him sitting bolt upright. The slightest noise would send him into high alert. But Vaughn’s treatments have changed him. I crawl onto the mattress beside him and shake his shoulder. “Rowan.”

  He winces, and it takes a few seconds for the sleep to leave his eyes, and then concern takes over. He sees that I’m rattled. “What is it?”

  “I have to go,” I say.

  He sits up. “Go? Go where?”

  “I have to find my ex-husband.” Ex-husband. The word sounds too strange and simple to tell the whole story.

  “Are you worried about something happening to you?” he says. “I’ll go with you.”

  Right now that would be the only thing to comfort me. But I shake my head. “You can’t. House—” I hesitate. What do I call the man who’s at the root of all this? Housemaster Vaughn? Dr. Ashby? But in the end it sounds strange to say it any other way than how I was taught. “Housemaster Vaughn says that you need to stay here and rest so he can monitor your progress.”

  “That’s crazy. I feel fine,” he says. “I’ll talk to him—”

  “No,” I say. “Just do as he asks. Please.”

  I can’t raise my eyes to meet his. I can’t let him see that there are things I want to say to him, if only I trusted the privacy of these walls. I can’t let him see that I’m being manipulated. I can’t do anything to jeopardize Gabriel’s safety.

  But Rowan already knows something is up.

  He puts his hand on my shoulder and stares me down until I raise my eyes. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asks.

  Yes. A million times yes.

  “I’ll be all right. Housemaster Vaughn is sending his driver with me. He wants to supervise you and make sure you’re all right.” What I don’t tell him is that Vaughn wants to allow me as much time as possible to convince his son and daughter-in-law to return to his clutches, and that I have to do as he says or Gabriel won’t ever open his eyes again. “I’d feel better if you stayed here and rested. Besides, as you’ve pointed out, Housemaster Vaughn is doing so much for the both of us. We should trust him, right?”

  Rowan falls back against the pillow. “I don’t trust anyone,” he says. “Except for you.”

  It hurts to breathe. “Trust me, then,” I say.

  “Always,” he says.

  He knows something is wrong.

  I can tell, or maybe I’m just wishing.

  “RHINE!” Cecily bursts through two of Madame’s guards and throws her arms around me, and we go spinning from the force. “Jared told us what happened. How could you run away and leave us? We were so worried!”

  She’s perfumed like one of Madame’s girls, but without all the stench and decay. She’s wearing a sequined dress that’s too big for her, and blue eye shadow that drowns her eyes in their sockets. Costume beads are dripping from her neck.

  All I can think as she’s hugging me and telling me she missed me is that I don’t want to force her back to the mansion. I don’t want her to have to face the man who murdered our sister wife and quite possibly caused Cecily’s brutal miscarriage. I’m working up the courage to assure her that I’ll go with her back to the mansion, that I’ll keep her safe. I’m trying to find the words, but all I’m finding is guilt. If anything happens to Gabriel, it will be my fault. If anything happens to her, it will be my fault.

  When we break apart, she blinks and her eyes disappear and reemerge in all that blue. “You’re wearing your green skirt,” she says. “You went back there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I blurt, just to be done with it. “He wants to meet us at Reed’s, so we can collect Bowen and Elle.” We’re standing at a distance from Madame, who is watching us between a curtain of guards but not approaching. She’s far enough away that she won’t hear us, and Vaughn’s limo is idling out of sight while the driver waits for me. We’re alone, away from the possibility of being overheard or recorded, and it may be the only chance that I get to tell Cecily the truth about Gabriel and what I saw in Hawaii, the frightening, amazing reality that there’s more life out there than we were taught to believe.

  I want to. I’m so desperate to tell someone, even if it’s my little sister wife, who is as powerless as I am. But I know that I can’t. She knew my secrets once before, and the consequences were devastating. This secret is too precious. I can’t.

  “Housemaster Vaughn caught up with me after I found my brother,” I say. “My brother is back at the mansion now. It’s a long story, and I’d like to tell you about it, but—”

  “You’ve come to convince me and Linden to go back home, haven’t you? It’s okay. I thought about it, and Linden and I talked it through, and we can’t go on like this—running away and leaving Bowen behind. The best thing for us to do is go home.” She hugs me again. She’s abuzz with energy; I can’t remember the last time she seemed this happy. “I’m so glad you came back,” she says, and now she’s pulling me toward Madame’s carnival and calling out for Linden.

  Madame grabs her by the back of the dress as we pass by. “Keep it down, child!” she growls in what I think is her Russian accent. “You want to wake up my girls?” I don’t know that I’ve ever heard her call someone “child” before. Usually it’s “stupid girl” or “worthless.”

  “And take off that dress,” she says. “You’re too scrawny. You’re dragging it in the dirt.”

  Cecily fusses with the skirt, indignant but still in high spirits. I’d expected it to take more convincing to get her to return to the mansion, but it seems that Linden talked her into it before I returned. Stubborn as she is, she’ll always be devoted to him.

  We find Linden at the merry-go-round, and I begin to suspect that Cecily’s willingness to return to the mansion has a lot to do with her wanting to take him as far from memories of Rose as she can. Or maybe she’s willing to pretend his father isn’t what she knows him to be, because then at least Linden can still have a father at all.

  He sees my reflection in the metal at the heart of the structure. “Jared told us you found your brother,” he says. “I’m glad.”

  “Thanks,” I say, my voice as hollow as his. We always seem to be feeling the same way. “Your father sent the car for us. He’s hoping you’ll come home.”

  That gets him to turn around. His eyes are dead. He looks as though he hasn’t slept at all while I’ve been away. “Is he? Cecily, you should return that dress and those things, then.”

  Cecily knows she’s being dismissed, and for once she goes without incident.

  Once she’s gone, he struggles to speak, but the words don’t come.

  “I’ve learned some th
ings about my parents too,” I say. “Things I don’t like very much.”

  “I used to read about the twenty-first century when I was younger,” he says. “I wanted to know about things like cancer and muscular dystrophy and asthma. I wanted to know what could be so awful that we were so desperate to be rid of it. Did you know that the treatment for cancer was toxic? Parents would rather poison their children if it might save them than do nothing if it meant watching them die. I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve been thinking about what you said about that poem and how hundreds of years ago people still must have questioned why they were here. I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that’s what being a parent is supposed to feel like.”

  “Is that how you feel about Bowen?” I ask. “Would you hurt him if you thought it would help him?”

  “I’ve never had to make a decision like that,” he says. “Somehow I can’t bring myself to imagine it.”

  “Maybe it is desperation,” I say. “Maybe we can’t let things fall apart without trying. We can’t let go of the people we love.”

  He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. “Sometimes we can,” he says.

  Linden follows after Cecily, and I tell him I’ll be there soon. I know we won’t be coming back here, and there’s someone I need to see before we leave.

  I find her in the green tent, elbow-deep in a barrel of orange dye. Cloths are dripping from a clothesline onto her hair.

  “You know,” Lilac says, not looking up, “I’ve seen all kinds of foolish girls, but none so foolish they’d come back here if they got away.”

  Her dark skin is victim to the green tint. Her eyes are heavy with silver dust to match her frosty lips.

  “I never stay gone, it seems,” I say.

  She laughs, holding up a square of tattered cloth and hanging it on the line. “So that boy is the tyrant you were trying to escape, huh?”

  “It’s not as simple as all that,” I say. Her wry grin makes me uneasy. “He wouldn’t have hurt me, but that’s not enough of a reason to stay where I’m not meant to be.”

  “You didn’t want to be a pretty thing on a shelf,” Lilac says, plunging a little girl’s dress into the barrel. Madame must be going through an orange phase. She likes the children to match as they do her bidding. “I get it. My husband wasn’t a tyrant either. Not bad-looking, either, as first generations go.”

  Lilac was married. This doesn’t surprise me as much as I’d have suspected. I knew that she was stolen off of the street, and like Claire and Silas I’d assumed she was sold into prostitution. But it would make sense that she was sold as a bride. She’s a work of art; her teeth are straight; her eyes are sultry; she’s intelligent. She’s a commodity in a sea of broken girls.

  “I stuck around for years,” she says. “I didn’t think I’d have a chance running away. I would have stayed until the end if it wasn’t for Maddie. Something wasn’t right even when she was in the womb. My husband wanted to have her destroyed as soon as we found out; he thought we could start over right away, have a baby that wasn’t screwed up. So I left. Figured it was worth a shot.”

  “You knew I’d get her back to New York,” I say. “Didn’t you?”

  “I hoped.”

  Hope, that risky, illustrious thing. It should have gone extinct by now, but we keep it alive. The girls who disappear but find themselves still breathing. The girls who will make it home. The girls who won’t. We hope for things we may not get to see, and we hold on with both hands because it’s one of the few things that can’t be stolen from us.

  “She made a friend there,” I say. “I think she’s happy.”

  Lilac wrings out the little dress, orange dye leaking like blood through her fingers. “I’m glad,” she says.

  I want to suggest that Lilac leave here while Madame is showing some humanity, but I think better of it. Lilac gives no indication that she plans to leave. She’s rooted to that spot, dyeing cloths to set the atmosphere for Madame’s latest whim.

  She doesn’t meet my eyes, and I suspect her skin is going sallow under all that makeup. I suspect her days are drawing to a close. So all I say is, “I spent some time with your family. They’d want you to know that you’re still very loved, Grace.”

  At the mention of her real name, she pauses. Only for a moment, though, and then she kneads the fabric in the dye with vigor. “Thank you for seeing Maddie home,” she says. “I hope you find what it is you’re looking for. Take care of yourself, Rhine.”

  Her eyes are misting. I can tell she doesn’t want me to see.

  “Take care,” is all I say.

  Cecily and Madame are standing by the gate, holding both of each other’s hands and talking in low voices. I find Linden standing at a distance, staring back at the Ferris wheel. “It is pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” he says. “You look at it and you can almost hear all the laughter from another time.”

  “I think so too,” I say.

  When Cecily sees Linden and me, she breaks away from Madame and waves. The blue has been scrubbed from her eyelids, rendering them gray.

  “What are they talking to each other about?” I say.

  “They’ve become friends,” Linden says. Usually he’s protective of Cecily, but he hardly sounds interested. He hardly even sounds like he’s awake. His heart is broken, and only Rose would know how to mend it.

  As we’re walking toward the limo, Cecily shows me the fuchsia silk purse Madame gave her; it’s fat with cosmetics. I don’t know what to make of her high spirits; maybe it has something to do with the anticipation of being reunited with Bowen. He’s all she can talk about on the drive home. She rests against Linden and dangles the purse over her head and checks off the things she misses the most about her son. His curls. His laughter. The colors in his hazel eyes that are different every day. She wonders if he has started to crawl while she was away.

  Linden is watching my struggle to stay awake. I’ve disembarked from an airplane, discovered Gabriel in the place of nightmares, lied to my brother, and traveled from Florida to South Carolina. My mind is furious and awake, but my muscles will no longer oblige. The world is going in slow motion. Voices are muffled and far away. I hear Linden saying what sounds like “Come here,” and I feel my cheek settling against his knee, and then everything in the world is gone.

  A bump in the road startles me awake. The limo is taking us down all the back roads I’ve come to recognize. When we stop in front of Reed’s house, the driver’s voice comes through an overhead speaker to tell us that Housemaster Vaughn has requested that we wait for him here. He’s tied up with an important project and cannot be disturbed until evening.

  I wonder if the project is Rowan or Gabriel.

  Cecily opens her door the moment it comes unlocked, and she’s running for the front door calling out for Elle and Reed.

  My muscles are stiff, and Linden patiently waits for me to stumble outside before following suit. He closes the car door behind us and waits for the limo to drive away, before turning to me. “Feeling all right?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “You’re lying.” He pushes the hair back behind my shoulder, his knuckles brush against my neck, and I don’t know how I’m still standing. I want to fall into his arms. I want to tell him everything. My body aches and my heart is sick, and yet I’m excited about what I’ve seen. I’m excited to think that there could be a world better than what has been promised to us, and at the same time I’m frightened.

  I want to take him with me. I want him to see that there’s more to our lives than dying and being saved.

  “Linden?”

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “There is something I’d like to show you, when I’m able. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you about it now.” I look down at the grass drifting against our ankles, full of colorful weeds. “Unt
il then you might think I’m crazy to say this, but I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. I really am glad we were born. I can’t imagine anything more important than being alive.”

  I venture to look at him, and he’s not quite smiling. “You need sleep,” he says.

  He doesn’t believe me, but that’s okay.

  You’ll see, Linden. You’ll see cities breathing and changing color at all the different times of day. You’ll see what the world used to be and what it will be. You’ll believe me then.

  There’s a loud crack like a gunshot. We turn in the direction of the sound. Another crack, and another. “Come on,” Linden says, and we run after the sounds that lead us behind the house, where Reed is taking an axe to his giant shed.

  “Uncle Reed?” Linden says.

  Reed stops when he sees us, and waves. “Hey!” he says. “You’re back! Come over and help me with this.”

  “What is this?” Linden asks.

  “The plane is ready to fly,” I say, daring to feel excitement.

  “Damn straight, doll. There are axes in the other shed.”

  Cecily comes out of the house, Bowen straddled to her hip. “What’s all the noise? What’s going on?” she says, handing the baby to Elle.

  “We’re going to fly, kid,” Reed says, and hammers the axe into the shed again, causing it to shudder.

  I can’t tell if Linden disapproves of what we’re doing, but he joins in anyway. It goes on for what feels like an hour, until we’re sweating and gasping, and it’s a wonder that it’s taking so long to destroy this thing, when it was hardly stable enough to stand on its own in the first place.

  Reed says, “One more push and I think we’ve got it, kids. Make it count.”

  With the last of our strength, we push our bodies against the same wall. Cecily’s feet are slipping in the grass, and she kicks to keep herself from falling.

  I’ve seen plenty of destroyed buildings in my life, but I’ve never seen them actually coming down in such a way. It’s astounding the way the shed slants in one direction like a page that’s closing. Linden pulls Cecily and me away, and we watch as the walls crack and splinter around the shape of the plane. Pieces fall amid clouds of dirt and dust.