The Shepherd of Weeds (15 page)

She entered her father’s Mind Garden as only she knew how—at his insistence. Gone were Jalousie, the wolves, the ailing Rue. Before her, a veil of drifting shadows fell away.

The first thing Ivy noticed about the Mind Garden this time was its size. It had grown with Verjouce’s power, the ruined earth stretching as far as her eye could see, a festering plot of velvety scourge bracken growing in Vidal Verjouce’s imagination. The folly—a small circular building with a peaked roof, at one time meant for doves—still stood to one side, but it had the decrepit air of the lost and abandoned. To the other side now stretched a lonely sea, calm and gray, a mirrored pool of the roiling sky. A slight wave lapped at the slick shore.

The Garden was silent, muffled, save for an occasional dripping and the buzz of some insect in the distance. Yet it was an oppressive sound, somehow overripe and objectionable. Gnats descended upon her, swarming her face and arms, and a chill ran up Ivy’s neck. A loud droning followed, the clicking of millions of glassine wings. The air around her was now filled with shimmering, flying creatures.

Bettles
, Ivy realized.

Recently in Caux, bettles had been prized as talismans to ward off poison, before they all hatched when the Deadly Nightshades were overthrown. She had had one of the rare creatures, a red one—a thing of beauty. But these things before her now, they were shades of morose grays and browns, dull and stupid—colliding in midair like drunken flies.

Like everything in the ever-changing Mind Garden, these bettles were the product of her father’s twisted mind.

She gathered her courage.

The last time she found herself here was on a detour to Pimcaux; her father had interrupted the journey and she had been separated from Rowan. Verjouce had been a horrible specter to behold: limited only by his own imagination, he had refashioned his eyes, and Ivy saw at once that they were
her
eyes, too, a family resemblance. Her father had hoped to lure her to his side, offering Ivy the power that came along with the despicable weed. He would not give up.

Ivy could see just to what extent her father’s powers had grown. Her heart sank at the endless, bleak lake that mirrored the foul clouds. It was new, and infinite. The waves left an unpleasant foam on the dark shore, and staring out, she could see nothing at all—a vague and distant place where sea met sky.

Turning, Ivy noticed some activity unfolding behind the folly.

A gardener was tending to something in the dirt, in uneven rows. She approached on a path of jagged slats, avoiding the eerie folly as best she could. A topiary rose off to her right, great hedges rearing, fashioned to grow into the shapes of beastly creatures.

Ivy peered closer at the gardener’s project. He was on his knees now, piling the sludgy earth up around a small hill by hand. From the center grew a thin, bald stalk that thrashed uncooperatively when the man attempted to water it. Something about the plant made Ivy shiver, and in a moment she was to know why.

The gardener felt his way to the next hill and stood above it with a long shovel. The man turned over the earth unceremoniously, even roughly, and reached down and gave a harsh yank. An unearthly screeching filled the air and Ivy gasped—the gardener was appraising a handful of black fur. Ivy stared, and then a wave of revulsion overtook her. In his hand he held a small, chittering monkey—as black as ink with small horn buds growing at its temples. The thing swung about angrily from the gardener’s fist, upside down. When it turned to her with its yellow eyes, Ivy found herself running blindly.

The menacing topiary reared upon her, the path switchbacking between one macabre beast after the next. Horrid, hissing vultures with beaks of thornbush jutting from the earth. Impossibly large salamanders with forked tongues curled about
winged serpents—suddenly alive, each and every one of them—but made of twig and leaf. Lurid half creatures strained as Ivy rushed by, pulling at their roots in a vain attempt to grasp the girl. Again Ivy felt the world ripple, as if the fabric of life were unraveling.

She continued to run—a brief flash of something catching her eye ahead. The swish of a tail—the matted, dingy tail of a creature she knew at once: Six, the cat, a familiar friend from her travels to Rocamadour. Could it be? He had come with her to her father’s Mind Garden once before. She chased the vision until she realized he was gone.

Ahead—a dead end.

But something was there, on the ground. Ivy frantically swept her hair from her face and peered down.

It was Rue’s
Field Guide
! Ivy saw a few of the flattened botanical specimens jutting from its pages, springtime blooms: a pale wisp of an early violet, some wake-robin. But as she leaned to pick up the book, clutching the welcome sight to her chest, the distant chittering of the tiny monkey grew louder, its voice one of many now, overwhelming her. Axle’s book slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground, the pages fanning out, open. A dank wind off the lake played about them, turning them quickly.

The book was blank.

Gone were Axle’s reassuring script, his carefully assembled advice, his comforting and informative charts and illustrations.
In their place on every page, a new message. A raised seal, the unmistakable image of a skull and crossbones. And one word.

Ivy sank to her knees beside the book.

She felt her father before she heard him.

Your beloved book!
Vidal Verjouce cackled, his voice rough and dry from the depths of his throat.
When you need it most, it fails you
.

vy stood back in the upper floor of Jalousie, blinking in the dim light. Lumpen Gorse greeted her at first with a great look of confusion upon her sturdy features, followed by a wash of relief at Ivy’s appearance.

“That was somethin’.” Lumpen wiped her brow. “There you were, plain as day. And then … gone! This happen often? Next time, I could use a warnin’.”

Ivy nodded, struggling against the murkiness of the Mind Garden that had followed her here. She was shivering uncharacteristically with cold.

Rue was lying still, very much as Ivy left her, and it seemed that she had been gone but for a minute on her awful trip. But the carpet that enshrouded Rue suddenly begged to be admired, and Ivy’s eyes fell upon it as if for the first time. The
smell of mildew was overpowering. It was as old as the hills, this tattered thing, but where it was not frayed or threadbare, it still possessed a surprising amount of intricate detail to its weave. It had been well made by expert hands, and depicted some sort of scenery, Ivy could see. She smoothed its bumps and ridges as best she could, trying to make sense of the dark palette of wool.

“Lumpen,” Ivy called. “Help me unwrap Rue.”

Ivy was pulling at the carpet, while trying not to disturb her friend.

“No, child! She’ll chill.”

“Please, just do it—” With growing concern, Ivy moved quickly. Images of her return from Pimcaux through the thorn door were swimming before her eyes, and a new, terrible realization was forming. Before waking at Mrs. Mulk’s, Ivy had been standing in Underwood with her friend Rowan, admiring the transformation of the underground retreat.

What Ivy had mistaken for a mere carpet around Rue was in fact a
tapestry
—a very famous, and very dangerous, tapestry. One in league with her father. The last time she had seen it, it was hanging in Underwood with its less lethal counterparts.

It was one of seven, made by four beauties for a lone king, the darkest of the garden sequence, a nightscape. Made of threads cast from the blackest ash, the thickest tar, the deepest moonless night. The woolen clouds swirled about the sky in
an unfriendly manner, and the entire copse was surrounded by a very ornate, very imposing wrought-iron fence. One that was utterly familiar, choked with weeds.

And now, standing before it, Ivy finally recognized it.

It was of a dark and twisted garden scene, an eerie lake, fanciful hedgerows. A folly. She had, in fact, just returned from there.

Her father’s Mind Garden.

As they ripped the tapestry from Rue’s body and pulled her free, a throaty cackle, the rasp of flint striking deadwood, filled the air. It was her father’s laugh—and it grew stronger, rattling the old windows. The well keeper hauled Rue away from the iron bed.

Lumpen had been right: Rue was just a wisp of a thing. But her eyes fluttered open, and, seeing Ivy, Rue managed a smile.

The tapestry lay discarded in a pile upon the floor, and Ivy and Rue—shielded by Lumpen’s generous figure—retreated to the back wall, watching the muddle of wool, for it was bulging and heaving. It ballooned, a bloated tangle of weave. It collapsed upon itself, flat, and then resumed its strange behavior. There was a disgruntled scratching from beneath its folds, and then again another attempted exit. A deep, unearthly growl.

“What
is
that?” Rue gasped.

Ivy shook her head, unwilling to guess at what further horrors her father was capable of. And then, the inevitable.

Whatever it was beneath the Mind Garden tapestry was now free, and hurtled into the low light of Jalousie with a tremendous
yowl
. It arrived with such fury that it seemed as if the creature were ejected from its hiding spot by some force greater than its own. The thing was giant and matted, a flash of dirty fangs. A filthy specimen.

It looked hungry.

“Six!” Ivy shrieked at the enormous cat. “Six—it’s me, Ivy! Here, kitty, kitty …,” she called.

Alas, Six was not the only curiosity hidden beneath the ancient tapestry. For as Six shook his mane in an attempt to recover some dignity, the tapestry bulged and quivered again, this time with genuine ferocity. Six abandoned his preening and, in a truly alarming display of savagery, the cat turned—his tail electrified, his spine arched, hissing fiercely.

From the depths of the discarded clump of wool poured forth an army of black, iridescent scorpions, clicking their pincers and turning the stone floor into a dark and seething sea. But the scorpions were not the last of Vidal Verjouce’s gifts. For emerging now with their gleaming yellow eyes and high-pitched chatter were his inky disciples—teams of tiny monkeys. They easily climbed the mantel, skittering up the peeling walls, swinging wildly on the chandelier. Several bounced
wildly on the old iron bed. The room was filled with their unearthly screeching.

Ivy was backed against the wall, watching with horror as the monkeys ravaged everything within their path—tearing at the curtains and gleefully shredding the ancient tapestry. They charged each other with their horn buds and whipped the air with their bald tails. They enjoyed themselves immensely at the expense of Jalousie.

And then Ivy felt it—a cool knob just behind her.

The unlikely group—Ivy, Rue, the sturdy well keeper, and the enormous cat—retreated through the double doors of the nobleman’s house to the small balcony beyond as the ink monkeys pounded their tiny fists and bared their awful teeth at them through the glass—the famous windows of Jalousie holding strong.

he sky was an anemic yellow, the winter sun having already set between the distant ridges. Pools of frozen water along the open fields reflected the heavens, small fragments of the sunset torn from above and left dying below—an effect that gave the spectator the unreal sensation that the broken earth had been mended by a madman.