Chapter 355
touching the back of Kompis's head as he runs. Lightly. Like a hand on a child's hair.
mid-stride, his eyes going wide. Not falling. Not hurt. Something going out behind his eyes, small and warm, like a lamp in a far window.
The dream-cabin he built in Sömnen out of every warm thing he had, the one he's been adding to his whole life: the fire, the rug, a boy's drawing pinned to the wall, a second bowl, a window he'd been about to put in, a chair half built for a brother who'd be older now. Unfinished. Still being built.
and grey letters writing themselves across it, slow, final:
DONE.
And the dream completing: every half-built thing in it snapping finished all at once (the window, the chair, the drawing framed), and then the whole panel closing like a book. And going white.
still running, stumbling, tears suddenly on his face without knowing why.
beside him, seeing the boy's face. Seeing the grey palm lift away from his hair. And the dog's warm brown eyes going gold.
(No balloon.)
The hollow round the cabin in Heartbeat, slow gold snow, rings of grey hunters closing on a boy and a girl in the middle of the field. And out of a golden retriever beside the boy, rising: a lion of blazing gold, mane like a sunrise, wide gold-feathered wings spreading over both of them like a roof, a scorpion tail of amber glass arched over its back, the same warm brown eyes.
The wings coming down round Kompis and Isa like the walls of a house. Home, attacked, and answered.
Grey palms striking the golden wings from every side. And finishing nothing. Palm after palm laid on gold feathers and doing nothing at all. The faint grey DONE forming beside each one and breaking like frost on a warm window.
under the wing, letting go of her hold at last, gasping, collapsing against the Manticore's golden side.
The Manticore walking, slowly, back through the hunters toward the rope ring, wings mantled over the boy and the girl, its amber tail sweeping hunters aside like a broom sweeping chess pieces off a board, never striking, only moving them.
at the rope, holding it up, careful, not breaking the line, as the golden beast ducks under it with two people under its wing.
Kompis and Isa on the porch steps under the cabin window. The Manticore curled round the porch, wings half open, tail arched, facing out at the hundreds of hunters at the rope. He guards. Emma on the line. Nagel's nail in the step, rust welling.
sitting on the step, a hand pressed over his eyes.
taking his hand away from his eyes, looking at the real cabin wall beside him. The real pine logs. The real window.
on Kompis's hip, its birch grip warm, a small voice from inside the gun.
in the porch step, between Kompis's boots. Rust welling thick round its head, and the iron pitting, flaking, the square head thinning.
looking down at the nail, at the rust bleeding from it.
The hunters at the rope, still, hundreds of them, facing a golden manticore. And above them, in the amber sky of Heartbeat, black square letters, writing themselves:
THIS PLACE IS UNFINISHED.
the next line:
IT WILL BE FINISHED.
The hunters, all of them, turning their palms down: not toward the cabin, not toward the crew. Toward the snow. Toward the ground of Heartbeat itself. And pressing. Hundreds of grey palms laid flat on the snowfield all round the ring.
under all those palms, and the realm's beat (the one Nagel pinned, the one that keeps coming again) straining. The pinned beat stretching, like a held note running out of breath.
and a crack running down its length. Rust pouring. The iron groaning.
his heart, the pinned beat in it, slowing: the same good beat, but longer each time, further apart, his face greying.
the Manticore, turning his great golden head to the boy, whining, his own heart slowing with Kompis's: the same beat.
on the line, grey strand after grey strand appearing in her hair as she holds the ring round a cabin whose world is being finished outside it.
The snowfield beyond the hollow going pale. The amber light dimming from the edges inward. The snow stopping in great widening rings. A realm, the realm that is the heartbeat, being finished all round one small cabin.
The fire inside. Going low. Not frozen. Dying down, the way a fire dies at the end of a long night: embers, a last flame.
on the porch, staring at the window. At the fire going low. At his best friend on the step with his hand on his chest. At the dying realm.
his good hand closing into a fist. And something knocking, inside his chest, at a door. A word, arriving.
cracking further, a flake of iron the size of a fingernail falling off it into the snow.
the glow behind the rust flickering, like a fire seen through a closing door.
A cabin in the snow at the centre of a realm going white, its window down to embers, a golden manticore curled round it, a ring of rope, a woman on the line, a girl on the steps, a boy with his hand on his slowing heart, a cracked nail in the step. And in the middle of it, standing up, a pirate with one dead arm, a word coming home inside him.
burning emerald-white, the ∞−1 over his head glitching gold, his mouth opening.