The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  They’d been there for six months when I got there, with Lyonette running careful interference between Maggie and the rest of our little world, and fortunately the Gardener seemed more amused than anything else with Maggie’s need for special attention.

  At least until he wasn’t.

  I was there when that change began, and there was no more Lyonette to run interference.

  Every so often, the Gardener felt the urge to dine with us en masse, like a king with his court. Or, as Bliss put it, the Sultan with his harem. He had Lorraine inform all of us during breakfast that he’d be there for dinner that night, I suppose so we could take extra effort with our appearances.

  That afternoon found me in Danelle’s room with a bowl of water in my lap so I could carefully rewet her hair each time I needed to run the brush through it. She sat in front of me on the bed twining ribbons through sections of Evita’s hair before she twisted them up into a mass on the back of her blonde head. For Danelle, I braided small sections of hair to drape between two high buns, and others to fall down her back. They were too thin to obscure the wings, but they were her small defiance. Hailee sat behind me doing something with brush and pins, while Simone stood behind her with ribbons and twists and oil.

  I’d never gone to a school dance, but it might have looked like we were preparing for something like that, something fun and wonderful, something to look forward to, and at the end of the evening you’d have a whole set of memories to cherish. Not so much here in the Garden. With the presence of the water and the chance for spilling, none of us were wearing more than underwear, and no one was giggling or chattering like girls off to a dance probably would be.

  Lena walked in, still dripping from a shower—or a dip in the pond, knowing her—and dropped onto the floor. “She says she’s not going.”

  “She’s going,” sighed Danelle. I finished the last braid and let it drop against her back.

  “She says she’s not.”

  “We’ll take care of it.” She patted the back of Evita’s head and slid off the bed with the brush. “Sit up.” She sank to her knees behind Lena, who promptly obeyed.

  It should have been the end of it, especially once Danelle got to Maggie’s room, but as the rest of us dressed and gathered in the hallway, we could hear them arguing. Something shattered against a wall, and a minute later a pink-cheeked Danelle stalked out. Only parts of the handprint showed through the red and purple wings. “She’s getting dressed. Let’s go.”

  The Gardener wasn’t yet in the dining room when we arrived, two by two like Madeline and her classmates. Danelle and I hung back to let the others enter, twitching dresses to hang correctly, fixing a pin here or there. When they were all in and seated, I leaned against the wall.

  “Is she actually getting dressed?”

  She rolled her eyes. “God I hope so.”

  “I think I’ll go make sure of that.”

  “Maya . . .” She stopped, then shook her head. “Never mind, go ahead. You do you.” Danelle had shaken off her post-suck-up apathy in order to help me after Lyonette went into glass. I hadn’t figured out how to tell her how grateful I was.

  Maggie wasn’t getting dressed. As a matter of fact she was quite busy trying to stuff all of her clothing—which she shared with her twin—down the toilet. She flinched when I cleared my throat from the doorway, then panted with exertion as she defiantly met my eye. She had the same dark blonde hair as the Gardener and Avery, currently in a mess about her face. With her hazel eyes and strong nose, she could easily have passed for his daughter.

  Which, you know, ew.

  “I’m not going.”

  “Yes, you are, because you are endangering your sister.”

  “And she doesn’t endanger me every time she waltzes in with things that could kill me clinging all over her?” she demanded.

  “Allergies are not the same as pissing off the Gardener, and you know it.”

  “I’m not going! I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!”

  I slapped her.

  It made a ringing sound in the small room, the skin immediately pinking up around the impact. She stared at me, tears filling her eyes as she clutched her cheek with one hand. Avery wasn’t allowed to touch her because of the allergies, so I doubt she’d ever been slapped before, however quick she was to do it to others. As long as she was shocked into stillness anyway, I grabbed her hair and pulled it into a knot high on her head, securing it with a few spiral pins.

  I got a good grip on her upper arm and hauled her into the hallway. “Come on.”

  “I’m not going,” she sobbed, and scratched at my hand and arm. “I’m not!”

  “If you could have been the least bit mature, you could have been dressed and calm and this would have all been over in an hour or so, but no, you had to be a spoiled little princess about it, so now you get to be naked and worked up and you get to explain to the Gardener why you would disrespect him in such a way.”

  “Just tell him I’m sick!”

  “He already knows you aren’t,” I growled. “Lorraine would have told him, or didn’t you think it was strange that she checked in on everyone through the afternoon?”

  “That was hours ago!”

  “You got all the allergies and Lena got all the brains,” I muttered, and blew a stray hair out of my mouth. “Magdalene, please try not to be a complete idiot. It’s one meal. Your food will still be prepared separately, and we’ll still sit you down at the far end of the table away from everyone else’s plates.”

  “Why don’t any of you understand?” She tried to kick at me, and when that didn’t work, she tried to drop to the ground. I just kept dragging her after me until the friction on her side made her struggle back to her feet. “I could get really sick! I could die!”

  That was it.

  I turned and slammed her against one of the glass display cases, her head between the open wings of ink. The girl had been there before Lyonette, before the one who welcomed Lyonette, and none of us knew her name, only that she was a Gulf Fritillary, and what a fucked-up thing to know. “If you don’t join us for dinner, you will die, and so will your sister. Get a fucking clue.”

  She started crying harder, great big heaving sobs and gobs of snot. Disgusted, I renewed my grip on her arm and got around the corner.

  The Gardener stood in the doorway to the dining room, his arms crossed over his chest and a faint frown on his face.

  Fuck.

  “Is there a problem, ladies?” he asked.

  I glanced at the naked, sobbing Maggie and the bright-pink handprint on her cheek, as well as the beginnings of what would probably be a charming bruise on her arm where I gripped it. “No?”

  “I see.”

  Unfortunately, he did. He watched all through dinner, sitting at the end of a table between me and Danelle, as Maggie picked at her specially prepared plate without eating a single bite. He watched as she refused to enter the conversation, or even answer things put directly to her. He watched her roll her glass of ice water across her cheek—while Danelle simply pretended her own swollen cheek didn’t bother her—watched how she curled into herself as far as the table would allow to hide her nakedness.

  As we sat a little awkwardly over cheesecake and coffee, he cleared his throat and leaned close to me. “Was the slap really necessary?”

  “Yes, to calm her down.”

  “That was calm?”

  I considered the best way to answer. I didn’t want to screw Maggie—Lena, really—over, but I didn’t want to get screwed myself, either. “Calmer.”

  All he did was nod, and when I looked at Danelle and saw the grim resignation in her eyes, my stomach sank.

  “How long?” Eddison asks.

  “Another two weeks,” she murmurs. “You know that saying, what is seen cannot be unseen? After that evening, he always had this frown when he looked at either of the twins. Then one night the walls came down. Two days later, they were placed immediately to the right of the dining room.�
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  Victor hands her the stack of hallway photos. A minute or so later, she hands it back with a different picture on top. “Together?”

  “In death as in life,” she agrees grimly.

  Side by side in the same case, the twins are positioned closely together, their inner hands linked between them. “Swamp Metalmarks,” the girl adds as he traces a finger over the mottled orange and copper wings. One has her head resting against the other’s shoulder; her sister’s head rests against hers. They look . . .

  “They never got along that well when they were alive.”

  She takes the stack of photos from the hallway, sifting through them with an unreadable expression. After a moment, she starts sorting them into two stacks in front of her. When she’s done, the one on the left is far taller. She slides it to the far edge of the table, then lays her hands over the shorter stack, fingers laced together.

  “I know these girls,” she says quietly. Her face is still impossible to decipher. “Some of them not very well, and some of them were like pieces of my soul, but I knew them. I knew the names he gave them. And after Lyonette introduced us to Cassidy Lawrence, introduced us to the part that could live on after Lyonette went into the glass, others used the hours before death to introduce us to the names they’d had before.”

  “You know their real names?”

  “You don’t think that at some point the Butterfly names became real?”

  “Their legal names, then.”

  “Some of them.”

  “We could have been notifying their families by now,” says Eddison. “Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

  “Because I don’t like you,” she says bluntly, and he yanks the photos out from under her hands.

  The girl cocks an eyebrow. “You really believe knowledge brings closure, don’t you?” she asks. She might be incredulous, or mocking; Victor isn’t sure. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

  “The families deserve to know what happened.”

  “Do they?”

  “Yes!” Shoving back from the table, Eddison starts pacing before the one-way mirror. “Some of them have been waiting for decades to get word of their loved ones. If they can just know—know that they can finally give up . . .”

  Her eyes track him back and forth across the small room. “So you never heard.”

  “What?”

  “Whoever went missing. You never heard.”

  Victor curses under his breath at his partner’s stricken face. Oh, the girl is good, he can admit that. Not that it’s hard to irritate Eddison, but to really get under his skin? “Go see about getting some food delivered,” he orders. “Take a few minutes.”

  The door slams behind Eddison.

  “Who was it?” asks Inara.

  “Do you really think it’s any of your business?”

  “How much of what you’ve asked me is really any of yours?”

  It’s not the same, and they both know it.

  “I don’t believe the knowledge helps,” Inara says after a moment. “If my parents are alive, if they’re dead, it doesn’t change what happened way back then. It stopped hurting a long time ago, as soon as I accepted that they weren’t coming back.”

  “Your parents chose to leave,” he reminds her. “None of you chose to be kidnapped.”

  She looks down at her burned hands. “I guess I don’t see the difference.”

  “If one of Sophia’s girls was kidnapped, do you think she’d ever rest until she knew?”

  Inara blinks. “But how does it help? To know they’ve been dead for years; to know they were raped and murdered and then violated further in death?”

  “Because then they no longer have to wonder. Don’t you think the girls in the apartment worried about you?”

  “People leave,” she says with a shrug.

  “But you would have gone back if you could,” he hazards.

  She doesn’t answer. Has it ever occurred to her to go back? That she could?

  He sighs and rubs tiredly at his face. This isn’t a debate either of them can win.

  The door smacks against the wall as it opens too quickly, and Eddison stalks back in. Victor swears under his breath and starts to rise, but Eddison shakes his head. “Let me go, Vic. I know the line.”

  Crossing that line in college got the FBI interested in hiring him; crossing it a few times since has gotten him in trouble. Beneath the remnants of red-faced fury, though, Victor can see calm determination. It’s enough for Victor to sit back down. Just in case, he stays on the edge of his seat.

  Eddison walks around the table so he can lean over Inara. “As you like to say, here’s the thing: most people are missed. I’m sorry that you had such a shitty family. I am. No child deserves to grow up that way. I am sorry no one missed you, but you don’t get to decide for all those other girls that no one’s missing them.”

  He sets a picture frame on the table; Victor doesn’t have to look to know what the frame holds.

  “This is my sister, Faith,” says Eddison. “She disappeared when she was eight, and no, we never heard. We don’t know if she’s alive or dead. Twenty years my family has searched and waited for word. Even if we’d found her body, at least we’d finally know. I’d stop looking at blondes in their late twenties and wondering if one of them is Faith, if I’m walking right by her and don’t know it. My mother could stop updating the website she hopes Faith will stumble across. My father could take the reward for information money he’s been saving all these years and fix the house that’s falling down around them. We could finally put my sister to rest and let her go.

  “Not knowing is crippling. It will take a long time to get those girls out of the resin, even longer to make positive IDs. Too long. You have the chance to give these families peace. You have the chance to let them finally grieve and move on with their lives. You have the chance to give these girls back to their families.”

  The little girl in the picture is wearing a pink glitter tiara and a Ninja Turtle costume—complete with eye mask and pink tutu—and holding a Wonder Woman pillowcase in one hand. A much younger Eddison holds her other hand, smiling down at her. He’s not in a costume, but the girl grinning back at him with two bottom teeth missing doesn’t seem to care.

  Inara touches the child’s glass-covered smile. She touched Lyonette’s photo that way. “He took pictures of us,” she says eventually. “Front and back, once the tattoos were done. If he took them, he must have kept them. Not in his Garden suite—I looked once—but Lyonette thought he probably put them into some kind of book, to keep him company when he had to be away from the Garden.” She studies the photo another moment, then hands the frame back to him. “Lotte was nearly eight.”

  “I’ll call CSU,” Eddison tells Victor, “have them check the house again.” He carefully tucks the frame under one arm and leaves the room.

  The silence that follows is broken by Inara’s soft snort. “I still don’t like him.”

  “You’re allowed,” Victor says with a laugh. “Did Desmond ever see this book?”

  She shrugs. “If he did, he never mentioned it.”

  “But at some point he discovered the true nature of the Garden.”

  “At some point.”

  The first time Desmond used his new codes was after midnight on a Thursday. Well, technically Friday. It was a week or so after his father finally programmed him into the security system, a week of visiting only with his father, of not asking questions even when his father had walked away. Three weeks now he’d known of the Garden, but not the real one.

  I’d spent most of the day secluded in Simone’s room, helping her with cold cloths and glasses of water as she suffered through constant nausea and vomiting. It was the third day in a row and we’d thus far managed to keep it from Lorraine, but I wasn’t sure how long that could last. Between the nausea and some specific points of tenderness, I had the bad feeling Simone was pregnant.

  It happened sometimes, because no contraception is compl
etely foolproof, but it always meant another filled display case and a temporarily empty room. I don’t think Simone had realized her condition yet. She thought Avery had brought the flu back into the Garden. She was finally asleep, one hand pressed against her stomach, and Danelle had promised to stay with her until the morning.

  The smell of sour, stale vomit clung to me, strong enough to make me semi-nauseated as well. I’d long since earned the privilege of turning my shower on whenever I wanted, but the idea of being stuck in another little room was almost physically painful. I stopped by the room just long enough to shove my dress and underwear down the laundry chute—far too narrow for a person to fit through, as Bliss had informed me—and went out into the Garden itself.

  At night the Garden was a place of shadows and moonlight, where you could more clearly hear all the illusions that went into making it what it was. During the day there was conversation and movement, sometimes games or songs, and it masked the sound of the pipes feeding water and nutrients through the beds, of the fans that circulated the air. At night, the creature that was the Garden peeled back its synthetic skin to show the skeleton beneath.

  I liked the Garden at night for the same reason I loved the original fairy tales. It was what it was, nothing more and nothing less. Unless the Gardener was visiting you, darkness in the Garden was the closest we got to truth.

  I stepped through the echoing cave and into the falls, letting the water pour over me and wash away the sourness of sickness and coming death. It was just strong enough to beat at muscles sore and tired from three days of bending over someone, of perching on an uncomfortable stool and expecting every second for Lorraine or the Gardener to come investigate. I let the water pound that away, then used the mist-dampened rocks to haul myself up to the top of the cliff and the sun rock. I wrung most of the water from my hair and then lay back with closed eyes, sprawled inelegantly over the rock with its trace of sun warmth left over from the day. Breath by breath, I could feel my muscles slowly relax.

  “Direct, but not very modest.”

  I sat up so fast something seized in my back, and I spent the next several minutes swearing at people who couldn’t give proper warning. Desmond stood on the path five or ten yards away, hands shoved deep in his pockets, craning his neck back to stare at the glass tiles of the greenhouse roof.