Wither

As if on cue, my bedroom door opens, and I don’t know what to expect. Gabriel, beaten and limping as he brings me a meal; a parade of first generations coming to exfoliate, fluff, and perfume what’s left of my skin; a doctor with a needle and another scary table, this time on wheels. But it’s only Deirdre, carrying what looks to be a heavy white package in her tiny arms.

“Hello,” she says, in a tone that’s gentle as only a child’s can be. “How are you feeling?”

My answer wouldn’t be kind, so I don’t say anything.

She flits across the room, wearing a wispy white dress rather than her traditional uniform.

“I’ve brought your gown,” she says, setting the package on the dressing table and undoing the bow that was holding it together. The dress is taller than she is, and it drags luxuriously along the floor as she holds it up. It glitters with diamonds and pearls.

“It should be your size,” Deirdre says. “They measured you while you were out, and I made some alterations to be sure. Try it on.”

The last thing I want to do is try on what is clearly my wedding gown, just so I can meet House Governor Linden, the man responsible for my kidnapping, and Housemaster Vaughn, whose name alone made Deirdre go pale in the elevator. But she’s holding up the dress and looking so sympathetic and innocent about it that I don’t want to give her a hard time. I step into the gown and allow myself to be zipped in.

Deirdre stands on the ottoman at the dressing table to tie the choker for me. Her deft little hands make such perfect bows. And the gown is a remarkable fit. “You made this?” I ask her, not hiding my amazement. A blush spreads across her apple cheeks, and she nods as she steps down.

“The diamonds and the pearls take the longest time to thread,” she says. “The rest is easy.”

The dress is strapless, shaped like the top of a heart at my collarbone. The train is V-shaped. And I suppose, from an aerial view, I could be a satiny white heart as I make my way down the aisle. At least I can’t imagine a lovelier thing to wear on my way to lifelong imprisonment.

“You made three wedding dresses by yourself?” I say.

Deirdre shakes her head and gently guides me to sit on the ottoman. “Just yours,” she says. “You’re my keeper; I’m your domestic. The other wives each have their own.”

She opens a drawer in the dressing table, and it is lush with cosmetics and hair barrettes. With a rouge brush in her hand, she gestures to the buttons on the wall just above my night table. “Press the white one if you need anything, that’s how you can reach me. Blue is the kitchen.”

She begins to paint my face, blending and brushing colors onto my skin, holding my chin up to inspect me. Her eyes are serious and wide. When she’s satisfied, she starts on my hair, brushing and weaving it around curlers, and prattling on about information she feels will be useful to me.

“The wedding will be held in the rose garden. It goes in order of age, youngest first. So there will be a bride before you and a bride after. There’s the exchange of vows, of course, but the vows will be read for you; you won’t be required to speak. Then there’s the exchange of the rings, and let’s see what else …”

Her voice trails off, into a sea of description; floating candles; dinner arrangements; even how softly I should speak.

But everything she says blurs into one hideous mess. The wedding is tonight. Tonight. I have no hope of escaping before it occurs; I haven’t even been able to open a window; I haven’t even seen the outside of this wretched place. I feel sick, winded. I’d settle for being able to open the window not to escape but to gasp in the fresh air. I open my mouth to take a deep breath, and Deirdre pops a red candy into my mouth.

“It’ll make your breath sweet,” she says. The candy dissolves instantly, and I’m flooded with the flavor of something like strawberries and too much sugar. It’s overwhelming at first, and then it subsides, tastes natural, even settles my anxiety somewhat.

“There now,” Deirdre says, seeming pleased with herself. She nudges me so that I’m facing the mirror for the first time.

I’m stunned by what I see.

My eyelids have been painted pink, but it is not the obnoxious pink of the bathroom here. It’s the color between the reds and yellows at sunset. It sparkles as though full of little stars, and recedes into light purples and soft whites. My lips are done to match, and my skin is shimmering.

I look, for the first time, like I am not a child. I am my mother in her party dress, those nights she spent dancing with my father in the living room after my brother and I had gone to bed. She would come into my bedroom later to kiss me while she thought I slept. She would be sweaty and perfumed and delirious with love for my father. “Ten fingers, ten toes,” she would whisper into my ear, “my little girl is safe in her dreams.” Then she would leave me feeling like I’d just been enchanted.

What would my mother say to this girl—this almost-woman—in the mirror?

As for myself, I’m speechless. With her talent for color Deirdre has made my blue eye brighter, my brown eye nearly as intense as Rose’s stare. She has dressed me and painted me well for the role: I am soon to become Governor Linden’s tragic bride.

I think it speaks for itself, but in the mirror I can see Deirdre behind me twisting her hands, waiting to hear what I think of her work. “It’s beautiful,” is all I can say.

“My father was a painter,” she says with a hint of pride. “He tried his best to teach me, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good. He told me anything can be a canvas, and I suppose you’re my canvas now.”

She says no more about her parents, and I don’t ask.

She touches up my hair for a while, which has been curled into ringlets and pinned back with a simple white headband. This goes on until the watch on Deirdre’s wrist begins to beep. And then she helps me into my un-sensible high heels and carries the train of my dress down the hallway. We descend in the elevator and weave through a maze of hallway after hallway, and just when I’m beginning to think this house has no end, we come to a large wooden door. Deirdre goes ahead of me, opens the door just barely, and pokes her head in. She appears to be talking to someone.

Deirdre steps back, and a little boy peers out at me. He’s her size or close to it. His eyes sweep across me, head to toe. “I like it,” he says.

“Thank you, Adair. I like yours, too,” Deirdre says. There’s such professionalism in her young voice. “Are we almost ready to begin?”

“All ready here. Check with Elle.”

Deirdre disappears behind the door with him. There’s more talking, and when the door opens, another little girl peers out at me. Her eyes are big and green; she claps her hands together excitedly. “Oh, it’s lovely!” she shrieks, and then disappears.

When the door opens again, Deirdre takes my hand and leads me into what can only be a sewing room. It’s small and windowless, cluttered with bolts of fabric and sewing machines, and everywhere ribbons drip from shelves and lay strewn across tables. “The other brides are all ready,” Deirdre says. She looks around herself to be sure no one else can hear, and then whispers to me, “But I think you’re the prettiest.”

The other brides stand in corners of the room opposite each other, being fussed over by their domestics, all of whom are dressed in white. The little boy, Adair, is straightening the white velvet bodice on a willowy bride with dark hair, who stares despondently at her shoulder and does not seem to mind being prodded.

The little girl, whom I presume to be Elle, is adjusting pearl barrettes in the hair of a bride who could not tip the scale above a hundred pounds. This bride has her red hair done up in a beehive, and her dress is white with just a slight glimmer of rainbow hues when she moves. The bodice has big translucent butterfly wings in back that seem to be hemorrhaging glitter, which I realize is some sort of illusion, because none of this glitter ever touches the ground. The bride is wriggling uncomfortably in her bodice, though, a bit too small to fill in the chest of it.

On tiptoes the redhead wouldn’t even reach my shoulder; she is clearly too young to be a bride. And the willowy girl is too forlorn. And I am too unwilling.

Yet here we are.

This dress is so comfortable against my skin, and Deirdre is so proud, and here I stand in the room where I suppose my wardrobes are to be constructed for the rest of my life. And all I can think of is how I can escape. An air duct? An unlocked door?

And, of course, I think of my twin brother, Rowan. Without each other we are only half of a whole. I can hardly stand the thought of him all alone in that basement at night. Will he search through the scarlet district for my face in a brothel? Will he use one of the delivery trucks from his job to look for my body on roadsides? Of all the things he could ever do, of all the places he could ever search, I am certain he will never find this mansion, surrounded by orange groves and horses and gardens, so very far from New York.

I will have to find him instead. Stupidly, I look to the too-small air duct for a solution where there is none.

The domestics summon each of us brides to the center of the room. It’s the first time we’ve been able to look at one another, really. It was so dark in that van, and then we’d been too horrified to do anything but keep our eyes forward when we were assessed. Add the sleeping gas in the limo, and we’re still perfect strangers.

The redhead, the little one, is hissing to Elle that her bodice is now laced too tight, and how can she be expected to stay still during the ceremony—the most important moment of her life, she adds—if she can hardly breathe?

The willowy girl stands beside me, saying and doing nothing as Adair perches on a stepladder and dots her braided hair with tiny fake lilies.

There’s a knock on the door, and I don’t know what I’m expecting. A fourth bride, perhaps, or for the Gatherers to come and shoot us all. It’s only Gabriel, though, holding a large cylinder and asking the domestics if the brides are ready. He doesn’t look at any of us. When Elle tells him we’re ready, he lays the cylinder on the ground, and with a mechanical whirr it somehow unrolls a long red carpet that stretches out into the hallway. Gabriel disappears into the shadows.

Strange music begins to radiate, seemingly from the ceiling tiles. The domestics arrange us in a row, youngest to oldest, and we begin to march. It’s amazing how in sync our footsteps are, for having no practice and considering we were all dragged to this place in unconscious heaps after the time spent in that van. In a few minutes we’ll be sister wives. It’s a term I’ve heard on the news, and I don’t know what it means. I don’t know if these girls will be my allies or enemies, or if we’ll even coexist after today.

The bride in front of me, the redhead, the little one, seems to be skipping. Her wings flutter and bounce. Glitter swirls around her. If I didn’t know better, I could swear she’s excited about all this.

The carpet leads to an open door to the outside. This is what Deirdre called the rose garden, which is abundantly clear by the rosebushes that make up the high walls around us. They are an extension of the hallway, really, and despite the open sky overhead, I feel no less trapped than I did inside.

The dusk sky is full of stars, and absently I think that back home I would not dream of being outside at this hour. The door would be bolted, the noise trap laid out in the kitchen. Rowan and I would be having a quiet dinner and washing it down with tea, and then we’d watch the nightly news to see about available jobs and to update ourselves on the state of our world, hoping dismally that one day there might be a positive change. Since the old lab exploded four years back, I’ve been hoping a new lab will replace it, so that pro-science research jobs will be created, and so that someone can discover an antidote; but orphans have made a home for themselves in the ruins of the old lab. People are giving up, accepting their fate. And the news is nothing but job listings and televised events put on by the wealthier class—House Governors and their sad brides. It’s supposed to encourage us, I guess. Give the illusion that the world isn’t ending.

I don’t have a chance to feel the oncoming wave of homesickness before I’m nudged into the clearing at the end of the rosebush hallway and made to stand in a semi-circle with the other brides.

The clearing is sudden and gaping, and a relief. The garden at once becomes enormous, a city bustling with fireflies and little flat candles that seem to be floating in place—I think Deirdre called them tea lights. There are fountains trickling into tiny ponds, and I can see now that the music is somehow being amplified from a keyboard that plays itself, the keys lighting up as the notes radiate out, sounding like a full band of strings and brass. I know the melody; my mother used to hum it: “The Wedding March,” the theme of weddings back in her own mother’s day.

I’m led to a gazebo at the center of the clearing with the two others, where the red carpet becomes a large circle. There is a man beside us in white robes, and the domestics take their places opposite us, their hands clasped in front of them as though in prayer. The youngest bride giggles as a firefly spirals before her nose and disappears. The oldest bride stares into space with eyes as gray as the evening sky. I just do what I can to not stand out, to blend in, which I suspect is impossible if the Governor has taken a liking to my eyes.

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.