The Chemical Garden Series Books 1-3: Wither, Fever, Sever

I don’t know much about traditional weddings; I’ve never attended one, and my parents, like most couples at that time, were married in city hall. With the human race dying off so young, hardly anybody gets married anymore. But I suppose this is how it used to be, more or less: the waiting bride, the music, the groom in a black tuxedo approaching. Linden, the House Governor, my soon-to-be husband, is led to us on the arm of a first generation man. Both of them are tall and pale. They part at the gazebo, and Linden takes the three steps that lead him to us. He stands at the center of the carpet circle, facing us. The little redheaded one winks at him, and he smiles adoringly at her, the way a father might smile at his young daughter. But she’s not his daughter. He intends for her to carry his children.

I feel nauseous. It would be defiant enough just to vomit on his polished black shoes. But I haven’t eaten any of the food Gabriel has brought me since my first day here, and vomiting won’t win me any favoritism. My best chance at escape will be to earn Linden’s trust. The sooner I can pull that off, the better.

The man in white robes begins to speak, and the music fades to a stop.

“We are gathered here today to join these four souls in this sacred union, which will bear the fruit for generations to come …”

As the man speaks, Linden looks us over. Maybe it’s the candlelight, or the mellow evening breeze, but he doesn’t seem as menacing as before, when he selected us from the lineup. He’s a tall man with small bones that make him seem almost frail, childlike. His eyes are a bright green, and his glossy black curls hang like thick vines around his face. He is not smiling, and not grinning the way he did when he caught me running in the hallway. For a moment I wonder if he is even the same man. But then he opens his mouth, and I see the glimmer of gold in his teeth, way in the back molars.

The domestics have stepped forward. The man in white has stopped talking about how this marriage will secure future generations, and now Linden is addressing us each by name. “Cecily Ashby,” he says to the little bride. Elle opens her clasped hands, revealing a gold ring. Linden takes this ring and places it on the small bride’s hand. “My wife,” Linden says. She blushes and beams.

Before I can process what’s happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger. “Rhine Ashby,” he says. “My wife.”

It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. Let him call me his wife, but once I’m on the other side of the fence, this silly little ring will mean nothing. I am still Rhine Ellery. I try to let this thought sink in, but I’ve broken into a cold sweat. My heart feels heavy. Linden catches my eyes with his, and I meet his stare. I won’t blush or flinch or look away. I won’t succumb.

He lingers a moment, and then he’s on to the third bride.

“Jenna Ashby,” he says to the next girl. “My wife.”

The man in white says, “What fate has brought together, let no man tear asunder.”

Fate, I think, is a thief.

The music starts up again, and Linden takes each of our hands long enough to guide us down the steps, one at a time. His hand is clammy and cool. It’s our first touch as husband and wife. As I move, I try to get a good look at the mansion that has imprisoned me these past few days. But it’s too massive, and I’m standing too close to see more than one side of it, and all that register are bricks and windows. I think I see Gabriel, though, for a moment as he passes one of the windows. I recognize his neatly parted hair, his wide blue eyes watching me.

Linden leaves us after that, disappearing somewhere with the first generation man he’d approached with. And the brides are herded back into the mansion. There is ivy growing along it, though, and just before I’m inside, I reach out and grab a small piece of that leafy green plant and close it in my fist. It makes me think of home, even if ivy no longer grows there.

Back in my bedroom I hide the ivy in my pillowcase before Deirdre begins fussing over me. She helps me out of my wedding gown, which she folds neatly, and then begins to spray me with something that at first attacks my senses and makes me sneeze, but then recedes into a pleasant rosy scent. She makes me sit on the ottoman again and opens the makeup drawer. She scrubs my face clean and begins again, this time painting me in dramatic reds and purples that make me appear sultry. I like it even better than the earlier look; I feel like my anger and bitterness have been manifested.

I’m dressed in a fitted red dress that matches the color of my lips, with black lace around the collar and capped sleeves. The dress only falls to about midthigh, and Deirdre tugs at the material to be sure it drapes properly. While she’s doing this, I step into yet another pair of ridiculous heels, and stare at myself in the mirror. Every curve of my body protrudes through the velvet material—my breasts, hipbones, even the ghost of ribs. “It’s a symbol that you’re no longer a child,” she explains. “That you’re ready for your husband to come to you at any time.”

After that I’m led to the elevator and down more hallways, until we reach a dining hall. The other brides are dressed in black and yellow versions of my outfit, respectively. All of us are wearing our hair down now. I’m seated between them at a long table beneath crystal chandeliers. Cecily, the redhead, is looking excited, while Jenna, the dark-haired one, seems to be coming out of her melancholy. Under the table her hand brushes mine, and I’m not sure if it’s accidental.

We all smell like flowers.

Bits of glitter still fall from Cecily’s hair.

House Governor Linden arrives, with the first generation man again. They make their way to us, and Linden raises each of our hands to his lips for a kiss, one at a time. Then he introduces the man, his father, as Housemaster Vaughn.

Housemaster Vaughn also kisses our hands, and it takes some effort for me to keep from squirming at the feel of his lips, which are papery and cold. It makes me think of a corpse. As a first generation, Housemaster Vaughn has aged well; his dark hair has only sparse flecks of gray, and his face is not horribly wrinkled. But his skin is a sickly pallid shade that would make even Rose appear vibrant by comparison. He does not smile. Everything about his touch is chilled. Even Cecily becomes subdued by his approach.

I feel a little better when Linden and Housemaster Vaughn are seated at the opposite end of the table, with Linden facing us and Housemaster Vaughn at the head. We brides sit in a row beside one another, and the other table head is left vacant. I suppose it’s where Linden’s mother would have sat, but since she’s not here, I assume she’s dead.

When Gabriel enters the room balancing a stack of plates and utensils, I find that I’m relieved by his presence. I haven’t spoken with him since last night, when he limped out of my room. I’ve been worrying that my actions led to his punishment, and that Housemaster Vaughn will decide to lock him in a dungeon for the remainder of his life. My worries always lead to dungeons; I can’t imagine a worse thing than to be imprisoned for the rest of one’s life, especially with so few years to enjoy what little there is.

Gabriel seems well enough now, though. I look closely for signs of bruises beneath his shirt, and find nothing. His limp is gone. I try to catch his gaze, hoping to give him a sympathetic or apologetic look, but he doesn’t raise his eyes to me. Four others in the same uniform follow him in, with pitchers of water, bottles of wine, a cart of extravagant foods—whole chickens basting in caramel sauces, pineapples and strawberries cut and shaped like pond lilies.

The door to the dining room is propped open as the attendants come and go. I wonder what would happen if I ran—if Gabriel or one of the others would stop me. But ultimately it’s my fear of what my new husband might do that keeps me in place, because surely if I ran, I wouldn’t make it far before I was caught. And then—what? I’d be locked in my room again, probably, forever marred as the one who can’t be trusted.

So I stay, participating in a conversation that is strained and sickeningly pleasant. Linden doesn’t talk much himself; his mind seems to be elsewhere as he brings spoonful after spoonful of soup to his mouth. Cecily smiles at him, and she even drops her spoon, I think, just so he’ll look at her.

Housemaster Vaughn is talking about the hundred-year-old gardens and how sweet the apples are. He even makes fruits and shrubbery sound ominous. It’s his voice, low and raspy. I notice that none of the help looks at him as they bring new dishes and clear away the old.

It was him, I think. He’s the one who hurt Gabriel yesterday when my door was left unlocked. Even with his smiles and harmless chatter, I can sense something dangerous in him. Something that hinders my appetite and drains the color from Deirdre’s pleasant face. Something, perhaps, more dangerous than heartsick Governor Linden, who stares past us, lost in love with a woman on death’s door.

I languish on the bed in my white slip while Deirdre rubs my sore feet. I might stop her if I weren’t so exhausted and her touch weren’t so relaxing. She’s kneeling beside me, so light that she scarcely even makes a dent in the fluffy comforter.

I lie on my stomach, hugging a pillow, and she begins to work my calves; it’s just what I need after so many hours in those high heels. She has lit some candles too, filling the room with the warm scent of obscure flowers. I’m so relaxed that I just let the words come out, so beyond worrying about being classy at this point, “So how does this wedding night work? Does he choose us in a lineup? Drug us with sleeping gas? Pool the three of us into one bed?”

Deirdre does not seem offended by my crassness. Patiently she says, “Oh, the House Governor won’t consummate his brides tonight. Not with Lady Rose …” She trails off.

I push myself up just enough to look over my shoulder at her. “What about her?”

A tragic look is on Deirdre’s face, her shoulders moving as she rubs my sore legs. “He’s very in love with her,” she tells me wistfully. “I don’t believe he’ll visit any of his new brides until she has passed on.”

It’s true that Governor Linden doesn’t come into my bedroom, and after Deirdre has blown out the candles and is gone, I eventually drift off to sleep. But in the early hours of the morning, I’m awakened by the turn of the doorknob; in recent years I’ve become a very light sleeper, and without any sleep-inducing toxin in my system, I’ve returned to my usual alertness. Still I don’t react. I wait, eyes wide open, watching my door open in the darkness.

The curly hair of the shadowy figure identifies Linden for me.

“Rhine?” He says my name for the second time in our short marriage. I want to ignore him and pretend that I’m still asleep, but I think the terrified pounding of my heart must be audible across the room. It’s irrational, but I still think a creaking door will mean Gatherers coming to shoot me in the head or steal me away. Besides, Linden has seen that my eyes are open.

“Yes,” I say.

“Get up,” he says softly. “Put on something warm; I have something to show you.”

Something warm! I think. This must mean he’s taking me outside.

To his credit, he leaves the room so I can get dressed in private. The closet illuminates when I open it, revealing rows of more clothing than I bothered to notice earlier. I choose a pair of black pants that are warm and fleecy, and a sweater that has pearls worked into the knit—Deirdre’s handiwork, no doubt.

When I open the door—which is no longer locked from the outside as it was before the wedding—I find Linden waiting for me in the hall. He smiles, loops his arm through mine, and leads me to the elevator.

It’s distressing how many hallways make up this mansion. Even if the front door were left wide open for my escape, I’m certain I’d never be able to find it. I try to make a note of where I am: a long, plain hallway with a green carpet that looks new. The walls are a creamy off-white, with the same kind of generic paintings that are in my bedroom. There are no windows, so I can’t even tell that this is the ground floor until Linden opens a door and we’re on the path to the rose garden, down the same familiar hallway of bushes. But this time we pass the gazebo. The sun has yet to come up, giving the place a subdued, sleepy feel.

Linden shows me one of the fountains, which trickles into a pond populated by long thick fish that are white, orange, and red. “Koi fish,” he tells me. “They’re originally from Japan. Heard of it?”

Geography has become such an obscure subject that I never encountered it in my brief years of schooling, before my parents’ deaths forced me to work instead. Our school was held in what was once a church, and the students barely filled out the first row of pews in full attendance. Mostly we were the children of first generations, like my brother and me, who had been raised to value education even if we’ll die without a chance to use it. And the school had an orphan or two with dreams of becoming an actor, who wanted to learn enough reading to memorize scripts. All we were taught of geography was that the world had once been made up of seven continents and several countries, but a third world war demolished all but North America, the continent with the most advanced technology. The damage was so catastrophic that all that remains of the rest of the world is ocean and uninhabitable islands so tiny that they can’t even be seen from space.

My father, however, was a world enthusiast. He had an atlas of the world as it appeared in the twenty-first century, with full-color images of all the countries and customs. Japan was a favorite of mine. I enjoyed the painted geishas with their penciled features and puckered lips. I liked the pink and white cherry blossom trees, so unlike the meager things that grow in fences along the Manhattan sidewalks. The whole country of Japan seemed to be one giant color photo, glossy and bright. My brother preferred Africa, with its floppy-eared elephants and its colorful birds.

I imagined the world outside North America must have been a beautiful place. And it was my father who introduced that beauty to me. I think of these long-gone places still. A koi wriggles past me and disappears into the depth, and all I can think is that my father would have been so happy to see it.

The grief of my father’s loss is so sudden that my knees nearly buckle under the weight of it; I force tears back down my throat, past the lump that’s forming there. “I’ve heard of it,” is all I say.

Linden seems impressed. He smiles at me, and raises his hand as though to touch me, but then changes his mind and continues walking. We come to a wooden swing that’s shaped like a heart. We sit for a while, not touching, rocking slightly and staring at the horizon over the edges of the rosebushes. The color comes slowly, bits of orange and yellow, like with Deirdre’s makeup brush. Stars are still visible, fading away where the sky blushes with fiery color.

“Look,” Linden says. “Look how beautiful it is.”

“The sunrise?” I ask. It is lovely, but hardly worth getting out of bed so early. I’m so used to sleeping in shifts, taking turns keeping watch with my brother, that my body has been trained not to waste whatever sleep it can get.

“The start of a new day,” Linden says. “Being healthy enough to witness it.”

I can see sadness in his green eyes. I don’t trust it. How can I, when this is the man who paid the Gatherers so he could have me for the last years of my life? When the blood of those other girls in the van is on his hands? My sunrises may be limited, but I will not view all the rest of mine as Linden Ashby’s wife.

It’s quiet for a while. Linden’s face is lit up by the early sun, and my wedding band burns in a twist of light. I hate the thing. It took all my willpower last night not to flush it down the toilet. But if I’m to earn his trust, I have to wear it.

“You know about Japan,” he says. “What else do you know about the world?”

I will not tell him about my father’s atlas, which my brother and I hid with our valuables in a locked trunk. Someone like Linden has no need to lock anything precious, except for his brides. He would not understand the madness of poorer, more desperate places.

“Not much,” I say. And I feign ignorance as he begins to tell me about Europe, a tower clock called Big Ben (I remember the image of it glowing at twilight amidst a London crowd), and extinct flamingos whose necks were as long as their legs.

“Rose taught me about most of these things,” he admits, and then, just as the sunlight is awakening the reds and greens of the garden, he looks away from me. “You may go back inside,” he says. “An attendant will be waiting to take you up.” His voice catches at the end, and I know that now is not the time to sit and pretend to adore him. I find my way back to the door, leaving him to his new day so he may think of Rose, whose sunrises are numbered.

In the days to follow, Linden barely acknowledges his brides. Our bedroom doors are unlocked and we’re mostly left to ourselves, allowed to wander about the floor, which has its own library and sitting room, but not much else. We aren’t permitted to use the elevator unless he invites us to dinner, which happens rarely; usually our meals are brought on trays to our bedrooms. I spend a lot of time in an overstuffed chair in the library, thumbing through brilliant pages of flowers that no longer grow in this world, and some that can still be found in other parts of the country. I educate myself on the polar ice caps, vaporized long ago by warfare, and an explorer named Christopher Columbus who proved the earth was round. In my prison I lose myself in the history of a free and boundless world that’s long dead.

I don’t see my sister wives often. Sometimes Jenna will take a couch beside me and look up from her novel to ask me what I’m reading. Her voice is timid, and when I look at her, she flinches like I might hit her. But beneath that timorousness there’s something more, the remains of a broken person who had once been assured, strong, brave. Her eyes are often bleary and misting with tears. Our conversations are measured and brief, never more than a sentence or two.

Cecily complains that the orphanage didn’t do a good job teaching her to read. She’ll sit studiously at one of the tables with a book and sometimes spell a word out loud, waiting impatiently for me to pronounce it and sometimes tell her what it means. Though she is only thirteen, her favorite reads are all about childbirth and pregnancy.

But for all her shortcomings, Cecily is something of a musical prodigy. I can hear her sometimes as she plays the keyboard in the sitting room. The first time, I was drawn to the threshold well past midnight. There she sat, this tiny body with flame red hair, trapped in a hologram of flurrying snow that was projected from somewhere on the keyboard. But Cecily, who is so dazzled by the false glamour of this mansion, played with her eyes closed. Lost in her concerto, she was not my little sister wife in a winged dress, or the same girl who throws silverware at the attendants who cross her on the wrong day, but rather some otherworldly creature. There was no ticking time bomb inside of her—no indication of this horrible thing that will kill her in a few short years.

She’ll play more clumsily in the afternoons, tapping the keys in nonsensical patterns to amuse herself. The keys won’t work unless one of the hundreds of hologram slides is inserted into the keyboard to accompany the music: rushing rivers, a sky full of glittering fireflies, speeding rainbows. I have never seen her use the same hologram twice, and yet she scarcely acknowledges any of them.

There’s no shortage of illusions in the sitting room. The television can, at the press of a button, simulate a ski slope or an ice rink or a racetrack. There are remotes, steering wheels, skis, and a whole assortment of controllers to replace the actual world. I wonder if my new husband grew up in this way—trapped within this sprawling mansion, with only illusions to teach him about the world. Once when I was alone, I tried my hand at fishing, and, unlike with the real thing, I excelled at it.

In my abundance of time alone, I’ve wandered the entire length of the wives’ floor several times, from Rose’s bedroom on one far end of the hall, to the library on the other. I’ve inspected the vents, which are bolted to the ceiling, and the laundry chutes, which are too small to fit anything larger than a small load of laundry. None of the windows budge, except in Rose’s room, which is always occupied by her.