A Stranger in the Garden Read Free Page A

where a clever boy might make something of himself without being ostracized, or worse, for what he was. A world where magic did not exist.
    Charles had believed in that world and longed for it with all his heart. When he had been thrown out into the streets by his father, he’d tried cutting the magic out, tried bleeding himself dry. That was how the Architect had found him. He’d taught Charles to embrace his magic, to use it. He’d hoped Charles would use it for good, but Charles had been too bent on power.
    And then came the Grue. Now Charles stood in the world he’d only imagined, before the man he’d most admired in his boyhood. His dreams had come true. Except they hadn’t.
    “The other one said the same thing long ago when I had jungle fever. She said she’d followed every step of my career. She even tried to take credit for my voyage to South America.”
    The Grue made Charles shake his head. “I am not who you think I am.”
    “Aren’t you?” Darwin said, his eyes searching Charles’s face.
    “Who do you think he is, Granpapa?” Gwen piped up.
    They both looked down at her. She was watching them intently, and the intelligence in her scrutiny was almost disturbing. She was certainly Darwin’s granddaughter.
    “Let us take this outside,” Darwin said. “We’ll continue this conversation at the Sandwalk.”
    Perfect, the Grue said.
    Charles nodded.
    Gwen took Charles’s hand. “Come along, sir. Grandpapa will want to show you his carnivorous plants, I’m sure. They’re the pride of his collection. Brought to him from all over the world!”
    A world where people collected plants instead of fairies. A world where the forbidden music of Mozart was played in parlors. Charles still did not know quite how to adjust.
    Darwin alerted Turnbull, who had been hovering nervously behind the door. Turnbull whispered that he would send a man to follow behind them, but Darwin suppressed him.
    “All will be well,” Darwin said.
    Turnbull fetched coats for Darwin and Gwen. Charles had nothing but what he had appeared with—a garishly embroidered frock coat—and thus they stepped out together into the autumnal chill.
    After the brief spot of morning sun, the drizzly gloom was returning. The Grue was gleeful.
    These things are best done when the fog is heavy, he said.
    They first visited the hothouse, which was filled to bursting with every kind of carnivorous plant imaginable. Gwen had not been joking. Hundreds of disembodied red throats hung suspended above their heads, open to any vagrant insects that wandered near. The humid crush of the air and strange plants made the Grue gibber with excitement. They reminded him of the place of his birth.
    Home.
    Charles swallowed every word the Grue wanted him to say and managed only to nod when Gwen pointed to a pitcher plant above them and said, “That one only eats shrew droppings where it comes from. But Granpapa has trained it to eat the droppings of mice instead.” She pointed to a cage where two field mice waited for the corn kernels Darwin sprinkled through the bars.
    Charles cleared his throat. “A very efficient system.”
    Gwen took his hand and pulled him toward the end of the house. “Come see the sundews. They’re my favorite!”
    He leaned over a plant with dew-tipped stems and Gwen did the same from the opposite side of the bench. The preternatural green of the plant glowed like myth fire in her dark eyes.
    He remembered then. Somehow, he broke through the smothering horror of the Grue’s control, as if he’d flown up through clouds and finally found the sun.
    Catherine. His little sister with her patched bonnets, that secretive little smile, the way her eyes snapped above that upturned nose just like Gwen’s. He remembered how they would go down among the mudlarks on the riverbanks seeking treasures together.
    He remembered the day she said, “Find me something with magic, Charles. Find us a treasure that will make us free.”
    He’d tried.