Gallant

Olivia wakes from a dream of her mother to the sound of someone screaming. She runs from her room and finds that it’s Matthew. Edgar and Hannah have tied Matthew to the bed as he screeches in his sleep. Hannah feeds him a cloudy liquid and Edgar, seeing Olivia in the doorway, tells her that Matthew is just dreaming and that she should go back to bed.

This chapter begins with a journal excerpt in which Grace says that she gets no rest while sleeping because of the dreams.

The next morning, Olivia asks Hannah about the curious sculpture. Hannah doesn’t know anything about it but says Matthew might. Olivia goes out to the garden and asks Matthew in writing what happened to his father; as Matthew balks at the writing, Olivia realizes he can’t read. Matthew explains that he has a learning disability. Olivia instead draws Arthur Prior, and Matthew will only tell her that he died and that she doesn’t need to know more. Matthew then asks her if she’s being visited in her dreams yet; disturbed and confused, Olivia leaves.

Olivia goes to the garden wall and, for the first time, sees a locked door in the wall. When she tries to see between the wall’s rocks, she spies a field beyond. Before she can open the door, Edgar calls her back to the house asking for help with a ladder.

Later that night, Olivia discovers a second journal under her bed—one that’s identical to the first, except its cover is red, not green. The journal is clearly in her mother’s writing, but the illustrations inside are different—they are more similar to the way Olivia draws than to the illustrations in the first journal. The second journal narrates Grace’s journey beyond the garden wall, where she meets Death but is aided in her escape by a tall “shadow.” After she gets back to Gallant, she leaves notes for the shadow and, eventually, he writes back. The entries after this have been ripped out, leaving only fragments of sentences Olivia can’t make sense of.

This chapter begins with a journal excerpt in which Grace is comforted by the idea that “you” is haunting her.

Olivia dreams of Arthur, running through the garden, screaming at an unseen presence. He says that he can make the nightmares stop. He shoots himself in the face. Olivia, disturbed, wakes and goes downstairs to find Matthew playing the piano. Matthew explains that he could sleep and that playing is sometimes the closest he can come to resting. He had a younger brother, Thomas, who was never able to get the hang of playing. Olivia stays with Matthew for the rest of the night and listens to him play.

The next morning, Olivia spends time studying her mother’s journals. She tries to make sense of the idea that the tall shadow—whom she deduces must be her father—had somehow written back to Grace. As she looks at the journals side by side, she notices how different the two illustration styles are. She realizes that the drawings in the second journal, which are neat and precise like her mother’s handwriting, must belong to her mother while the incongruous sketches in the first journal were made by her father.

The contents of Grace’s first journal appear at this juncture in the novel. In it, Grace writes to the tall shadow in the days after her escape from the other side of the wall. She wonders why he stays on that side of the wall and whether or not he’d escape, too, if she helped. The shadow does escape and conceives Olivia with Grace. As Olivia grows inside Grace, both Grace and the shadow grow emaciated and weak. The shadow turns to ash entirely before Olivia is born, leaving behind a “cursed” molar that Grace says came from “his mouth” (178). Grace destroys the molar. After Olivia is born, Grace’s writing becomes more frantic, often employing strikethrough, as she starts to address Olivia. She tells Olivia that she will be safe as long as she stays away from Gallant.