The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  Or would they have both frozen?

  Shifting until his back hit the wall, Desmond gently tugged at me until I was almost sideways between his legs, my cheek pressed against his upper chest so I could nearly hear his heart beat. I timed my still-shaky breaths to that, feeling how it jumped and skipped whenever I moved. He didn’t have his brother’s stocky frame, the obvious threat of muscle, nor his father’s wiry strength. He was slender like a runner, all lean angles and long planes. He hummed softly, something I didn’t recognize and couldn’t properly hear pressed against his chest, but his fingers brushed against my skin in the shape of piano chords.

  We sat in the damp, dark cave in clothing soaked from the waterfall, clinging to each other like children against a nightmare, but when I fell asleep, the nightmare would still be there. When I woke up, the nightmare would still be there. Every day for three and a half years, the nightmare would always, always be there, and there was no comfort against that.

  For a few hours, though, I could pretend.

  I could be the little match girl and strike my illusions against the wall, lost in the warmth until the glow faded and left me back in the Garden.

  “They weren’t just fellow captives, were they?” Victor asks after giving her a moment to collect herself. “They were your friends.”

  “Some of them are friends. All of them are family. I guess that’s just what happens.”

  Sometimes it was hard to make yourself get to know other people. It would just hurt more when they died, or hurt them when you died. Sometimes it was hard to believe it was worth that pain. At the heart of the Garden, though, was loneliness and the ever-present threat of shattering, and connecting with the others seemed the safer of two evils. Not the lesser, necessarily, but the safer.

  So I knew that Nazira was even more worried about forgetting than Bliss. She was an artist, and she filled sketchbook after sketchbook with her family and friends. She drew outfits she’d loved, her home and school, the little swing set in the city park where she’d gotten her first kiss. She drew them over and over, and panicked if the details changed or got fuzzy.

  There was Zara the Bitch, and when Bliss names you that, you know you’re an unholy terror. Bliss was generally scathing and intolerant of bullshit; Zara’s default setting was mean. I appreciated that she didn’t buy into the illusion, but she made things hell for those who needed to cling to it. Like Nazira, who believed that as long as she didn’t forget anything from before, she’d see it all again. Not a week went by that I didn’t break up a fight between them, usually by dragging Zara to the stream and shoving her in until she cooled off. She wasn’t a friend, but in quiet moments, I liked her. She loved books like I did.

  Glenys ran and ran and ran, endless laps around the halls, until the Gardener ordered Lorraine to give her twice as much food as the rest of us. Ravenna was one of the few with an MP3 player and speaker, and she’d dance for hours. Ballet, hip-hop, waltz, tap without shoes, all the classes she must have taken for years, and if you walked by her, she’d grab your arm and pull you in to dance with her. Hailee loved doing everyone’s hair, and could make the most fantastic arrangements, and Pia wanted to know how everything worked, and Marenka did gorgeous cross-stitch. She even had a tiny pair of super-sharp embroidery scissors that the Gardener required her to wear on a ribbon around her neck so no one could use them to hurt themselves. Adara wrote stories, and Eleni painted, and sometimes Adara would ask Eleni or Nazira to illustrate scenes for her.

  And there was Sirvat. Sirvat was . . . Sirvat.

  She was hard to know.

  It wasn’t just that she was standoffish, which she was, or quiet, which she was. It was that you never knew what the hell was going to come out of her mouth. She was Lyonette’s final introduction. Lyonette asked me not to help with that one, because Sirvat was just that strange, and neither Lyonette nor I could guess what my reaction would be. So the first time I met her was after her wings were done. She was sprawled along the stream bank, face in the mud, with Lyonette staring at her in utter confusion.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She didn’t even look at me, half of her pale brown hair clumped with mud. “You can die from water more ways than drowning in it. Drinking too much is as lethal as not having any.”

  I glanced over at the perplexed Lyonette. “Is she actually suicidal?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She wasn’t, most of the time. We learned that was just Sirvat. She identified flowers we could theoretically eat to kill ourselves, but ate none herself. She knew a thousand different ways a person could die, and had a fascination for the girls in glass that none of us wanted to understand. She visited them almost as much as the Gardener did.

  Sirvat was a queer duck. I honestly didn’t spend much time with her, and she didn’t even seem to notice, much less mind.

  But most of us knew each other. Even when we chose not to share our lives from before the Garden, there was an intimacy to our company. For better or worse—almost always worse—we were Butterflies. Irrevocable common ground.

  “And you mourned each other.” It isn’t a question.

  Her mouth tilts. It isn’t a smile, not even a grimace, just an acknowledgment that some kind of expression should be there. “Always. You never had to wait for someone to show up in the glass. You mourned them every single day, as they mourned you, because every day we were dying.”

  “Did Desmond get close to any of the other girls?”

  “Yes and no. In time. It was . . .” She hesitates, eyes darting several times between Victor and her damaged hands, before sighing and clasping her hands in her lap, out of sight under the table. “Well, you have to know it was complicated.”

  He nods. “What did his father think?”

  The day after Simone went into the glass—not that we saw her, with the walls still down—the Gardener brought me back to his suite for a fancy private dinner. So far as I could tell without specifically asking, I was the only one he brought in there. I suppose it should have been flattering, but I only found it unsettling. The conversation stayed light. He didn’t mention Simone at all, and I didn’t bring her up because I didn’t want to know the worst of it. The only mystery this place had left was how he killed us.

  When dessert was finished, he told me to take a seat with a fresh glass of champagne and relax while he cleaned up. I chose the recliner rather than the couch, popping the footrest up and arranging my long skirt to cover even my feet. I could have presented at an award show in that dress, and I wondered just how much money he sank into the Garden and our upkeep. He had something classical playing on an old-fashioned record player, so I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the deep padding.

  The thick carpeting in the suite muffled his footsteps, but I could still hear him return. He stood over me for a time, just watching. I knew he liked to watch us sleep sometimes, but it was somehow creepier when I was awake.

  “Did Desmond upset you the other night?”

  My eyes snapped open, which he seemed to take as his cue to perch on the arm of the chair. “Upset me?”

  “I was looking over some of the footage and saw you pushing him away. He followed you into the cave but there are no cameras in there. Did he upset or hurt you?”

  “Oh. No.”

  “Maya.”

  I managed a small smile, for his sake or my own I wasn’t sure. “I was upset, yes, but before Desmond arrived. I had a panic attack. I’d never had one before so I didn’t know what to do, and I misconstrued his arrival at first. He helped me through it.”

  “A panic attack?”

  “If after a year and a half, that’s my strongest reaction, I don’t think it’s particularly alarming, do you?”

  He returned the smile, warm and sincere. “And he helped you?”

  “Yes, and stayed with me until I was calm.”

  He had stayed with me through the night, even when we heard two isolated doors open, when we heard h
is father walk the hallways with a sobbing Simone. Sometimes he liked a final fuck before killing a girl; better in her room than in those secret rooms, I guess. Des stayed with me until the morning, when all the doors lifted and the other girls filtered into the Garden to cling together against the painful loss that he didn’t understand, because he didn’t know she was or would soon be dead. Did he think she was just being kicked out? Or taken for an abortion?

  “My younger son can be hard to know.”

  “Meaning you can’t read his reaction to us.”

  He laughed and nodded, sliding down next to me in the chair. One arm came around my shoulders, arranging my head against his chest, and for a moment we could have been any two people cuddling together for a movie.

  Except, if we had been any two people, my skin probably wouldn’t have been crawling.

  It certainly never crawled with Topher, or when we all piled onto Jason or Keg’s couches, or any of the other boys from work. Intimacy with the Gardener was as much an illusion as the wings he carved into our backs; it didn’t make anything real.

  “He doesn’t like talking about it with me.”

  “Given that we are a sort of harem, I don’t imagine most young men would be comfortable discussing this with their fathers. You might ask your parents for tips on how to approach someone, or what to do for a first date, but the sex thing is usually verboten even when there isn’t the question of willingness.”

  And it was another reminder that we weren’t just any two people, because all he did was laugh and turn my head to kiss me. It occurred to me that I could go to his private kitchen en suite and pick up a knife to drive through his heart. I could have killed him then and there, but what stopped me was the thought that Avery would inherit the Garden.

  “Avery was all excitement when I first introduced him to the Garden. He talked about it whenever we were alone. Perhaps a father doesn’t need to know that many details about his son. But I can’t see that Desmond has done anything more than look around.”

  “Does that disappoint you?” I asked neutrally.

  “It puzzles me.” His hand traveled up my arm to the back of my neck, where he tugged at the tie of my dress. The black silk pieces came loose in his fingers and he watched them slither down my collarbones to my waist, leaving my breasts bare. He lightly traced one nipple as he spoke. “He’s a healthy young man surrounded by beautiful women, and I know he isn’t a virgin, yet he doesn’t avail himself of the opportunities.”

  “Perhaps he’s still adjusting.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps variety isn’t what appeals to him.” He lifted me slightly in the chair so he could shift under me, giving himself better access to my breasts and pushing my dress over my hips to my thighs. “He looks for you when he comes, even if he doesn’t find you.”

  “Apparently I’m a very direct sort of person,” I said dryly, and he chuckled.

  “Yes, I can see why he would put his questions to you. What would you do, if he came to you as I do?”

  “I assumed that, as with you and Avery, we were to do whatever was asked of us. Was that incorrect?”

  “So you would let him touch you?” He bent his head to my breast, lips moving against sensitive skin. “You would let him take his pleasure with you?”

  Desmond wasn’t his father.

  But he was his father’s son.

  “Unless you tell me otherwise, I do what’s asked of me.”

  He groaned and tugged the dress completely off, dropping it to pool in a black puddle by the chair, and as his mouth and hands turned my body traitor, not a word was said except for my name, over and over, harsh cries against the silence.

  There are some qualities—some incorporate things, that have a double life . . . There is a two-fold Silence—sea and shore—body and soul. One dwells in lonely places.

  He took me again and again that night, in the chair, on the carpet, in the king-sized bed, and I recited everything I could remember, even drink recipes, but long before the morning came, I’d run out of words and felt the poison seep through the cracks into my soul. I’d gotten used to the sick feeling that came with letting the Gardener fuck me, but I’d never get used to the nauseating pain that came of letting him believe he loved me.

  When he finally escorted me back to my room, he sat on the edge of my narrow bed and settled the blanket around me, stroking the hair back from my face and giving me a lingering kiss. “I hope Desmond comes to realize what an extraordinary young woman you are,” he whispered against my lips. “You could be so good for him.”

  After he left, I got out of bed and stood in my shower, scrubbing at my skin until it was raw because I just wanted to pretend that I could slough away the feeling of his touch. Bliss found me there, and with unexpected tact, she didn’t say a word. She helped me rinse off the last of the soap and conditioner and turned off the water, toweling my hair as I dried off the rest of me, and when my hair was brushed free of tangles and bound back in a neat braid, we curled together under the blankets.

  For the first time, I understood why she’d think about jumping.

  For the first time, those extra years didn’t seem worth the negligible possibility of escape.

  For the first time in a year and a half, I felt every drag of the needle across my skin as my prison was inked into my body. If I’d never been much for hope, neither had I been much for despair, but I could feel it choking me with every memory. I took a deep breath, listening to the echo of Desmond’s voice in the cave, and let that remind me to keep breathing so that even Bliss, who saw me through things the others never even imagined I felt, wouldn’t see just how fucking scared I was.

  In terror she spoke, letting sink her wings till they trailed in the dust—in agony sobbed, letting sink her plumes till they trailed in the dust—till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

  But my wings couldn’t move and I couldn’t fly, and I couldn’t even cry.

  All that was left to me was the terror and the agony and the sorrow.

  Victor leaves the room without a word.

  A moment later, Yvonne steps into the hall from the observation room, handing him two bottles of water. “Ramirez called with an update,” she reports. “The girls in more delicate condition are stabilizing. They still want to talk to Maya before answering too many questions. Senator Kingsley is starting to lean on Ramirez to get to Maya.”

  “Shit.” He scrubs at his cheek. “Can Ramirez keep her leashed in the hospital?”

  “For a little while. She’s negotiating between the senator and her daughter. She figures she can get a few hours out of that with everything else going on.”

  “All right, thanks. Let Eddison know when he gets back?”

  “Will do.”

  Politicians are like child services, he thinks. Ultimately useful, but a pain in the ass all the way there.

  He returns to the interrogation room and hands Inara one of the bottles.

  She accepts it with a nod, unscrewing the cap with her teeth rather than her tender hands. Half the bottle disappears before she puts it down, her eyes closed. One finger traces patterns on the metal surface of the table as she gathers herself for the next question.

  He watches the motion, his gut clenching when he realizes that what he thought were nonsense symbols prove to be butterfly wings, traced again and again into the metal like a reminder of what brought her here. “I’m running out of time to protect you,” he says finally.

  She just looks at him.

  “Powerful people want to know what happened. They’re not going to have my patience with you, Inara, and I have been very patient.”

  “I know.”

  “You need to stop dancing around this. Tell me what I need to know.”

  For a while, the Gardener just had to continue being baffled by his younger son. Desmond came to the Garden regularly, but he didn’t touch anyone past a hand to help them up.

  And he brought his textbooks.

  During the days, I stayed w
ith the newest arrival, an exquisite creature of Japanese descent. During the nights, Danelle stayed with the sleeping girl and I sat up on the cliff, clinging to the illusion of space. Desmond frequently joined me there, and the first few times we sat in silence, each of us lost to our own reading. It had been a long time since I could sit with a male and not feel actively threatened. Not safe, precisely, but not threatened. We talked about his studies, sometimes. Never about the Garden. Never his father.

  I hated him, I think, for refusing to put the pieces together, but I didn’t show it. The Gardener was never going to let us go, and Avery was too dangerous to try to influence. I wasn’t sure Desmond was hope, but he was the closest thing to it that I could see.

  I wanted to live, and I wanted the other girls to live, and for the first time, I wanted that myth of the escaped Butterfly to be true. I wanted to believe I could get out without ending up in glass or the riverbank.

  Then one night Desmond brought his violin.

  The Gardener had told me his son was a musician, and I’d seen the way his fingers silently played chords against books, against rocks or knees or any available surface when he was thinking. It was like he translated his thoughts into music so they could make sense.

  I was lying stomach-down on the rock with my book and an apple in front of me, keeping an eye on three of the girls down in the main Garden. They were neck deep in our small pond, splashing at each other as best they could, and I knew the sensors had to have alerted the Gardener that someone was in the water, but all they had to do was play long enough for him to get comfortable and move on to something else. He wasn’t present in the Garden that night—he’d mentioned something about a charity function with his wife when I came to escort the new girl back to her room after the first tattoo session—but I didn’t doubt he had a way to watch us if he wanted to. Eleni and Isra had been there three and four years respectively, generally past the point of foolishness, but Adara had arrived only two months or so before me. She mostly held up well, but every now and then she sank into severe bouts of depression that were nearly crippling. They were clinically based, and without her meds I was surprised they weren’t more frequent, but we tried to make sure she wasn’t left alone during these episodes. She was mostly through the latest of them, but her mood still teetered.