A Stranger in the Garden Read Online Free

The water cure there has always helped me in the past. But it was too late for her. Annie died and was buried there.”
    The Grue was silent. He did not care.
    “Since then, I have been watchful. I have protected my other children as best I could. But I worried that there were more of you and that one of you might find me again.” Darwin stepped closer to him. “Why have you come? I have nothing more to give! You have taken my youth, my health, and my most beloved child—is that not enough?”
    The Grue smiled. “Tell me what became of my kinswoman, and I shall leave you in peace.”
    Charles noticed he did not mention anyone else. Gwen was still fair game. He found himself wanting to warn Darwin, but the Grue had complete control over him. He could no more speak of his own volition than he could run away and hide.
    “She is buried yonder,” Darwin said, pointing with his cane toward the standing stones that loomed in the mist.
    Charles looked down the path that began at the hedge and meandered to the crown of the hill. He could see Gwen’s woolen stockings and the red ribbon in her hair flashing like a semaphore.
    The Grue pushed him after her, and he quickly left Darwin shouting behind him in the fog.
    Yessssss, the Grue hissed. She will lead us to Her. Yes!
    Who are you talking about? The Grue never spoke her name, and it was maddening.
    You will see. Do as I bid, the Grue urged.
    Gwen danced ahead down the path. Her pinafore was soaked with the damp, but Charles could not feel the chill. He was filled with the Grue’s heat. Somewhere far behind, Darwin shouted for both of them, his voice echoing in the stillness.
    The stones rose out of the mist, and some of them seemed to have faces. Lithads, they were called back home. They were like dryads, except that they lived in stone.
    As Charles took the last step into the ring, he could feel the magic boiling up through the soles of his boots and winding up his legs. Darwin’s shouts were abruptly silenced.
    Home.
    The Grue had him completely. With that knowledge came the realization that until this moment he had been thinking for himself, that he had had his own memories. Was it possible to be free?
    Quiet, the Grue said. Prepare the sacrifice.
    Gwen was looking at some lichen on the stones and babbling about how it reminded her of all her Granpapa’s work on barnacles.
    Charles tried to say her name, but all that left his mouth was, “Come here, child.”
    He could see very clearly where Darwin must have buried the one the Grue sought. It was just under a ledge that was low to the ground. The ledge was actually the lintel on a door sunken deep into the earth. No one else could have recognized it, but the Grue did.
    The time is right. The time is right. She will be mine.
    Charles didn’t know if he was talking about Gwen or the woman he had crossed worlds to see again. Charles had begun to doubt her existence, but the fact that Darwin had experienced the same kind of wretched possession gave him pause. The magic here was different, but it clearly survived in pockets of wilderness like this. It was dark and wild and strange, just like the Grue.
    Gwen came over to Charles.
    “Sit here,” Charles said. His voice was not his own, but the Grue’s—that dead, cold voice that had traveled the void between worlds.
    Gwen glanced at him. “Are you feeling well, sir? Your voice—”
    “I am perfectly well,” he said. “More than you can possibly imagine. Now sit and do not speak further.”
    She sat, the damp edges of her pinafore flopping against her woolen stockings.
    Magic gathered in the stones. Beneath Charles’s feet came the murmuring of voices—the Grue’s long-lost kin. One voice in particular moaned for blood, the voice of the woman Darwin had buried here.
    “Have mercy,” Charles whispered, surfacing to himself for only a moment. He did not know why he asked for it when he had never asked before. But he thought he knew now what the Grue intended, and