The garden was about a month old, and it was already not entirely Alaric’s anymore.
Dara had taken over the garden with the same quiet thoroughness she seemed to bring to everything.
On her first morning, she showed up for breakfast and asked about the rocky patch behind the house.
He told her it wasn’t much.
Then she vanished for hours with a trowel he didn’t know he had.
When he finally went to see what she was doing, she had cleared a small square of soil and was sitting in the middle of it, hands pressed to the dirt, eyes closed, as if listening for a heartbeat.
A green shoot had come up between her fingers.
She had opened her eyes when she’d heard him stop on the path.
Looked at the shoot.
Looked at him.
Said in a deadpan that he was beginning to understand was just her actual voice, “I think it’s that thing.” “The thing.” “That I do.” “I see.” “It used to only happen when I was scared.” “And now.” “Now it happens when I sit down.” “Huh.” That was a few weeks ago.
The shoot had turned into a sprout, then into a small leafy plant he wouldn’t have been able to name on a quiz.
Somehow, it had gathered a few other leafy friends.
Now, tomatoes were starting to grow.
One plant might be a squash.
Dara had lined up herbs along the southern edge, labeling them with little wooden tags she’d carved using his pocketknife.
Her handwriting was small, careful, and slanted right, with t’s crossed in a neat double-stroke.
It looked like she’d taken pride in her handwriting since elementary school and never let go of the habit.
It was a working garden.
He hadn’t built the garden or planned it.
All he’d really done was put up the house at the wrong angle to the southern light, by accident.
That mistake left the back of the house in good sunlight for most of the day.
He sat at the edge of the garden on a Tuesday morning.
The dry voice in his head pointed out that it was Tuesday again—almost all his visitors seemed to come on Tuesdays.
He was working through emails on his laptop at a folding camp table when he saw someone coming down from the sky.
He’d heard something approaching about a minute earlier, though he didn’t recognize it at first.
The sound of a man flying alone, without a vehicle, wasn’t something he’d ever had to identify.
It was quiet, but not silent—just wind and the soft movement of a body through the air.
At first, he thought it was a large bird coming in.
The figure landed on the rocks at the edge of the causeway.
Erik Lehnsherr straightened, brushed his coat with two efficient passes of his hands, and stepped through the gate, past the sign with the please be welcome line, without commenting on either the sign or the line.
Alaric watched him come up the path.
He did not get up.
In the past few weeks, he’d decided that when important visitors arrived, he would stay seated.
It started with Fury and continued with Xavier.
He hadn’t quite figured out why, but the dry voice in his head offered a reason: standing for them suggests you think they’re above you.
You’re not above them, and you’re not below them.
You sit because this is your home, and they are guests, and in a well-run house, guests shouldn’t have to find their own chairs.
So he sat.
He closed the laptop.
He waited.
Erik arrived at the edge of the garden.
He stopped and looked at the garden, studying it closely.
Alaric noticed a subtle tension in his posture—Erik stood very still, as if he’d seen something unexpected and was quickly rethinking his approach.
“Mr.
Vane.” “Mr.
Lehnsherr.” A pause.
“You knew I was coming.” “I knew somebody was coming.
Someone usually comes on Tuesdays.
I didn’t know it was you.” “Tuesdays.” “It’s a strange pattern.
I haven’t decided yet whether to take it seriously.” A faint smile crossed Erik’s face, disappearing almost immediately.
He gestured to the second camp chair, the one Alaric had set up earlier out of habit.
“May I sit?” “Please.” Erik sat.
Folded his hands in his lap.
Looked out over the garden.
“You did this.” “No.
The young woman at the house did this.” “She’s the green one.” “She’s Dara.” “Charles told me.” “I figured he had.” “You don’t object to that.” “To Charles, telling you about Dara?
Of course not.
He didn’t tell you anything I wouldn’t have told you if you’d asked.” “You wouldn’t have offered it unprompted.” “I wouldn’t have offered the helicarrier story to him unprompted, either.
He asked.
I answered.
The asking was the work.” Erik nodded, slowly, the way a man nods when he is updating his sense of someone he had thought he understood.
Alaric let him update.
“Coffee?” “Please.” He went inside, brought out the coffee, and set a mug in front of Erik.
When Erik took a sip, his eyebrows lifted for a moment—just enough for Alaric to notice his surprise at how good the coffee was.
It was the same reaction Fury had shown a few weeks earlier.
“The kitchen-temperature law,” Alaric said, lightly.
“You declared one.” “I did.” “What does it do?” It does whatever you’d want a kitchen-temperature law to do, if you could make one.
Water boils at the right temperature for what you’re making.
Food finishes cooking when it should.
Leftovers stay warm while you’re still eating.
Nothing dramatic—just a kitchen that works a little better.
“You declared a quality-of-life law.” “I did.” “That’s not what I expected.” “What did you expect?” “Defenses.
Borders.
The mechanisms by which you keep the world out.” I did those first.
I declared the kitchen law on the second day.
I’d been on the island twenty hours when I decided that what I wanted, more than anything, was a better cup of tea.
So I made one.
Erik met his eyes.
“Mr.
Vane,” he said.
“Got it.” “I’ve come a long way today.” “I know.” “I had an argument prepared.
I had been preparing it for some weeks.” “You’ll need to give me a minute.
That’s shifted my argument a bit.” Alaric, despite himself, laughed.
He laughed.
By his count, it was the fifth time.
He’d stopped keeping track after the seventh.
This would be his last quiet count.
Erik’s mouth formed that line again, and this time it stayed a little longer.
Then he set his mug down and said, with dry dignity, “I’ll recover.” “Take your time.” He took his time.
He sat for a full minute, looking out over the garden.
At the far corner, Dara appeared with a basket and a pair of clippers, quietly snipping herbs with focused, careful movements.
Her posture and pace showed she knew Erik was there, but she stayed absorbed in her own work, making it clear she had chosen not to intrude or greet him yet.
When Erik spoke again, he had found the argument.
“You’ve power,” he said, “that no one can take from you.” “That isn’t strictly accurate.
There are probably several beings in the universe capable of taking it from me.
I’ve just been lucky enough not to meet any of them yet.” “Within the human frame.” “Within the human frame, yes, I’ve some power that the human frame can’t easily take.” “You’ve used it to build a garden.” “I’ve used it to build a house.
The garden built itself.
The young woman at the house contributed a lot to the building.” “You’re being deflective.” “I’m being precise.
I’d rather not take credit for things I didn’t do.” “Mr.
Vane.” “All right.
Yes.
I have power.
And I’ve used it for things that, in your view, are smaller than what the power could be used for.” “That’s closer to my position.” “And your position is.” “That a man with what you’ve is being asked, by history, to build something more than a garden.” Alaric thought about that.
He thought about it patiently, the way he did with anything someone older and more experienced had taken time to say.
He was learning that Erik wasn’t stupid.
Erik wasn’t even wrong, at least not in the simple way others sometimes were.
Erik had spent decades thinking about these problems, and what he said came from a lifetime of work.
Alaric knew it would be a mistake to dismiss him.
He set his mug down.
“I disagree,” he said, “but I want to disagree carefully.” “By all means.” I think the danger of what I’ve is this: The more I use it, the more it’s for itself.
The bigger I make this, the more it looks like something built for me.
The more it looks like that, the more likely someone will come take it from me—by killing me—because there isn’t another way.
The moment I’m dead, every law I’ve spoken stops working.
That means the bigger I make this, the more people I’ve invited to come kill me, and the more people around me whose lives stop being protected on the day of the killing.
“You’re describing a structural problem you haven’t yet solved.” “I’m.” “You acknowledge that the problem must be solved.” “I do.” “Then we’re not, perhaps, as far apart as I was prepared to argue.” “I think we’re still pretty far apart, but I think you’re right that the position I’m in isn’t stable.
I think you’re wrong about what to do about it.” Erik considered him.
“Which is?” “You want me to scare them off—be more dangerous than my killers.” “In essence.” “And I’d like to build the answer by being something other than killable.” “Those sound similar.” “They’re not similar at all.
The first one is a fortress.
The second one is a structure.
A fortress depends on the man inside it.
A structure doesn’t.” “And you believe you can build a structure.” “I believe I can try.
I don’t yet know how.
I’ve been working on it.
I’m not yet claiming to have solved it.
I’m claiming to be aware of the problem and to be looking for the answer in a different direction than you’ve been looking.” Erik was quiet for a while.
He drank his coffee.
He looked out at the garden, where Dara had moved to the tomatoes and was, with the unselfconscious focus of a person doing one careful thing at a time, removing a small caterpillar from a leaf.
“You’ve power,” Erik said, almost as if to himself, “that no one can take from you.
You’ve used it to build a garden, and to house a teenager, and to ask Charles philosophical questions over tea.” “Yes.” “That’s either sainthood or stupidity.” “Could be both?” A pause.
“Coffee?” He offered before he’d really decided to.
It was a small, dry way to shift the conversation, softening Erik’s words without brushing them off, and offering a refill instead of an argument.
Erik watched him.
For a long moment, the most careful look Alaric had received since Xavier had read him with the wheelchair stopped at the gate.
Then Erik held out his mug.
“True.” “Sure.” He poured.
Erik stayed for two hours, and Alaric stayed seated most of the time.
Their conversation went as far as it could for now.
Dara passed by a few times with her basket.
Erik nodded politely at her, and Dara nodded back, but neither spoke.
Watching them, Alaric realized Dara had made up her mind about Erik in her own way, and he’d find out what she thought when she was ready to tell him.
When Erik finally stood to go, he did so without ceremony.
“Mr.
Vane.” “Mr.
Lehnsherr.” “I’ve come a long way for an argument I didn’t get.” “I’m sorry.” “You’re not sorry.” “I’m not, no.
I’m glad we talked.
I’m sorry the argument didn’t land where you wanted it to land.” “It will.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, I’ll come back.
I haven’t finished thinking about you.
When I’ve finished, I’ll come back, and we’ll continue.” “You’re welcome.” “You say that the way you mean it.” “I do.” Erik nodded once, slowly.
“Goodbye, Mr.
Vane.” “Goodbye.” He walked to the gate.
Alaric watched him cross the causeway.
Halfway across, Erik lifted into the air, with the same quiet displacement as before, and rose up against the late morning sky in a slow arc that took him out across the water in the direction of somewhere Alaric did not, just then, particularly want to picture.
He stayed at the table.
After a while, Dara appeared at his elbow with the basket.
“Tomatoes are ready,” she said.
“We can have them with lunch.” “All right.” “That was Magneto.” “I figured.” “Cool.” She walked back toward the house with the basket in the unhurried way she walked everywhere.
Alaric sat at the camp table and watched Dara walk away, then looked at the empty sky where Erik had gone, and at the garden he hadn’t built, with the fence he hadn’t put up and the tomatoes he hadn’t planted.
In the country he’d founded six weeks ago, things had decided what they were going to be without really asking him.
He picked up his phone and opened the journal app.
Lately, he’d been keeping a digital backup along with his paper journal, just in case the worst day of his life was the day a lantern flame found the leather-bound notebook.
He tapped to today’s entry.
Erik came.
We argued.
Neither of us won.
He will be back.
Dara called him cool.
She is going to be the most dangerous one of us.
He saved.
He closed the laptop.
He stood up.
The smell of basil drifted in from the kitchen.
The wind off the water was light and warm, and the sun hit the garden just right, making it glow the way gardens do at the end of a long, good morning.
He went inside to help Dara with lunch.