Read Online Wither by Lauren DeStefano - Free Book Online Page B

Cecily’s domestic, Elle, comes bursting into the room. “ There you are,” she cries at Gabriel. “You need to hurry to the kitchen and bring Lady Rose something for her cough.”
    I can hear her coughing now, at the end of the long hallway. It’s become such a fixture in this place that I don’t always notice it. Gabriel hurries to his feet, and I close the book, make a motion to follow him out. “Don’t,” he says, stopping me at the doorway. “It’s better if you stay in here until this passes.”
    But past his shoulder I can see an unusual chaos.
    Domestics are scrambling past one another. First generation attendants are coming out of the elevator carrying all sorts of bottles, and a machine that resembles the humidifier my parents put in my bedroom the winter I caught pneumonia. But there’s an air of futility about it all, and Gabriel senses it too. I can tell by the look in his eyes.
    “Stay here,” he says. But of course I follow him into the hallway. And it’s so frightening out here that I want to follow him into the elevator, which probably isn’t allowed, but I’m beyond caring about that. The domestics freeze in place; the attendants are left holding blankets and pills and breathing machines. Linden is kneeling by Rose’s bed with his face buried in the mattress.
    He’s holding the long white stem of her arm, and I follow it up to her body, which doesn’t move and doesn’t breathe. Her gown, her face, is splattered with blood she must have been coughing up as she made those horrible sounds. But now an eerie silence fills the floor. It’s the silence I imagine in the rest of the world, the silence of an endless ocean and uninhabitable islands, a silence that can be seen from space.
    Cecily and Jenna come out of their bedrooms, and it’s so quiet that we hear the strangled noise in Linden’s throat. “Go away,” he murmurs. Then louder, “Go away!”
    It’s not until he smashes a vase against the wall that we all scatter. I end up on the elevator with Gabriel, and when the doors close behind us, I’m grateful.
    There’s nothing for me to do but follow Gabriel to the kitchen; I’d get lost going anywhere else. I sit on a counter, nibbling on grapes while the cooks and the servers talk as they go about their work. Gabriel leans against the counter beside me, polishing silverware. “I know you were fond of Rose,” he whispers to me, “but you won’t find much love for her down here. She gave the staff a hard time.”
    As if in affirmation, the head cook shrieks, “My soup isn’t hot enough! Oh, now it’s too hot!” and makes dramatic spitting noises as a few others burst into a riot of laughter.
    I won’t deny that this is painful to hear. I have witnessed Rose’s wrath on the help, but she never once raised her voice to me. Here in this place of syringes, sullen Governors, and looming Housemasters, she has been my only friend.
    I say nothing, though. Our bond was a private thing, and none of these people, laughing at her expense, would understand anyway. I begin to pick grapes from the vine and turn them in my fingers one at a time before setting them back into the bowl. Gabriel steals glances at me as he works, and for a while it’s like that, with the rest of the kitchen chattering loudly, a million miles away. And upstairs, Rose is dead.
    “She always had those candies,” I say wistfully. “They make your tongue change colors.”
    “They’re called June Beans,” Gabriel says.
    “Are there more of them?”
    “Sure. Tons,” he says. “She’d have me order them by the crate. Here . . .” He leads me to a pantry between the built-in refrigerator and the wall of stoves. Inside there are wooden crates overflowing with the shimmering wrappers in every color. I can smell their sugar, the artificial dyes. She ordered them, and here they wait to be poured into her crystal bowl and savored.
    My longing must be all over my face, because Gabriel is putting some of them