Salamander

Chapter Eighteen: The Garden

Chapter Eighteen

I had almost expected for the scientist’s home to be inside the city, due to the details he had given us earlier: I am just a middle-class, average person. But his home proved him to be far below middle-class. In fact, it seemed to me that he was living in a space that would make him almost a peasant. Not only that, but his home was located outside the city, not inside, like he had inquired earlier. The house was located in a small patch of trees in which he had taken a liking to call a “forest”, though it was barely even that. Apparently wherever the trees in the “forest” ended, that marked the border of his owned land. This was all to the far side of the clearing, the one with the dozens of hundreds of windmills. One of these windmills, in fact, was so close to the scientist’s home (though it was more of a rickety cottage) that its propellers would graze the chimney, giving of a soft, eerie scratching noise.

            Lance looked at the cottage, obviously unimpressed. He paused for a moment, huffed, and continued to follow the scientist. He might’ve been giving up on the snide remarks, or at least that’s what I liked to think. Or perhaps he was thinking thoughts so cruel that even he wouldn’t dare to say them out loud.

            “I think it’s . . . charming,” Mariam murmured to me.

            I chuckled. “Almost reminds me of my house.” I looked down. “My old house, rather.”

            Mariam didn’t say anything, but I could almost sense the homesickness she must have been feeling, for I shared it, despite the unhappy memories that my hometown had held. “We’re not going to be gone forever,” she said reassuringly.

            I smiled. “You aren’t, but me . . .” I exhaled sharply. “I don’t know if I want to go back.”

            “I don’t blame you.” Mariam crossed her arms, shivering against the cold, morning air. “You’ve been through a lot back there.”

            I cleared my throat, hesitating to ask her the question that had been on my mind ever since her father had treated me like some monster. “I have to ask you . . . do you . . . look at me different?” She stopped in her tracks and looked at me quizzically. “I mean, do I scare you, because of what I did?” My stomach began to ache when I remembered the horrible thing I had done. “Did I lose my innocence? Do you . . .” My eyes began to water. “. . . do you think I’m an abomination?” I looked down in an attempt to hide my tears, but when I felt a pair of hands upon my shoulders, I looked up and saw a reassuring face – Mariam’s face.

            “Alan, I’ve told you time and time again, I don’t blame you for what you did.” She gave me an encouraging nod, but when I didn’t return it, or even give her a smile to know that her words made me feel better, she frowned and struggled to meet my eyes. I kept glancing away, unable to look at a girl while I was gazing through a veil of wet tears. “Alan, listen to me.” At that I looked straight into her eyes, for I heard her mother’s voice; her mother’s calm yet stern tone. “There are murderers in this world, people who do great evil for sociopathic reasons.” She leaned in and her eyes expanded. “If you even think you’re one of those people, that’s a good sign that you aren’t.”

            “What?” I mumbled.

            “People who do great evil probably can’t even tell that they are sociopaths – that’s just the way they think. They don’t question what they do, or why they do it.” She bit her lips as she pondered for a moment. “It would be like me questioning why I wear a dress every day. To some people dresses may be evil, but to me they aren’t. My point is that the fact that you are questioning what you did means that that isn’t who you are, Alan. It isn’t.”