Chapter 182
The crew sitting in a loose ring on the black rock, silent. In the middle, facing each other, Kompis and Ögar, knee to knee. Mingus lying across Kompis's feet. The lantern-children gathered behind Ögar.
her long hands folded, very gentle.
behind Kompis, unable to keep quiet.
nodding once. His hands are shaking. He puts one of them on Mingus's head, and they stop.
rising to the black-green blindfold. Untying it.
Under the blindfold, no iris, no pupil: two silver coins, pure reflection. And round each eye-socket, rose script (Envy) running down her cheeks like old tear-tracks, glowing. In each coin, tiny, a reflection of Kompis's face.
The whole spread drawn in silver-grey line, no colour: a vision.
Kompis's death. A house on fire, somewhere, soon. Flames pouring up a doorway. A roof beam coming down, already halfway. And in the doorway, Kompis: not much older, a little grey in the beard, smoke-blackened, on his knees, his own hand held out of the doorway, reaching for something outside the frame. Exactly as he remembers his brother's hand.
And in his other hand, a gun he doesn't own: short, dark, double-barrelled, a sawn-off shotgun with an old knife-blade worked into its stock.
And the soul inside the gun, a small faint shape of light in the steel, has turned, and is looking at him: a small boy's face, five years old, gap-toothed, eyes wide.
silver line, looking up at vision-Kompis with an expression of total trust.
(No balloon.)
present day, eyes locked on Ögar's silver coins, his face twisting with effort, straining to see.
(He doesn't. The face is a stranger's. Mörda took it.)
(The choice.)
frozen in the beat, not choosing. Staring at a child's face he can't remember. Not moving. Not picking anything up. Not reaching. The beat passes.
The roof beam coming down. The doorway closing in fire. The small face in the gun still looking up at him.
(The panel goes white.)
present day, and her body stops. Her heart. Her breath. For one beat she is dead, with him, in the doorway. Her head tips back.
And from each of her silver eyes, a silver coin rolls free, down her cheek, and falls.
Ögar collapsing sideways. Pim and the lantern-children catching her. Kompis lurching forward on his knees, gasping, as if he'd come up from under water. The blindfold lying on the rock.
her heart restarting with a shudder, her silver eyes blinking, fumbling for the blindfold, tying it back on with shaking hands.
white, staring at nothing.
his hand going to his chest, where the memory isn't. The door in his head.
crouching beside him. He doesn't say anything clever. He just puts his forehead against Kompis's temple and leaves it there.
Later. The crew scattered quietly along the ledge, nobody talking much. Rougeina sharpening a blade she's already sharpened. Öde reading her arms aloud, softly. Isa sitting perfectly still next to Kompis, counting his heartbeats without telling him. Mingus asleep across his feet.
a beat late, as always.
curled up asleep against the Pillar's stone at the end of the ledge, her lantern beside her. She's smiling in her sleep. Her lips moving.
hearing it, his head jerking round.
Above her, in the air, a ripple, like heat over a road, or a doorway opening in the dark. Through it, faintly, a summer sky.
Something steps out of it: a bare grey foot that doesn't quite touch the ground, frost forming where it hovers. Then a hem of grey night-gauze. Then a hand with long fingers.
stepping out of the sleeping girl's dream onto the ledge. Thin as smoke, grey-skinned, her long black hair floating as if underwater. Her wide, red-rimmed eyes are open and softer than they were. Behind her, half in the dream, the head of a shadow-horse, breathing frost.
MÖRDA · K-IV SHAPED · Scalelist: — (Sömnen is not counted)
looking straight at Kompis. For a creature of nightmares, she looks almost shy.
getting to his feet, slowly, his heart hammering.
one long grey hand resting lightly on the sleeping freckled girl's hair.