Chapter 55
One room of rough pine logs. A table, two chairs, a bed with a patchwork quilt, snow piled against the window. And a stone hearth, cold and black, full of old grey ash.
On one side of the cold hearth sits Kompis, the man, in his old hoodie, slumped in a chair, his eyes half-open and grey. On the other side, in the second chair, knees drawn up, sits Mörda, watching him with her red-rimmed, never-closing eyes.
almost gentle.
staring at the ash.
Between the two chairs, a trapdoor in the floorboards. Light flickers through its cracks, orange and moving: fire. Faint, from below, a boy's voice: LILLEBROR! A crash. Then again: LILLEBROR! A crash.
getting up slowly, every bone aching.
on the iron ring of the trapdoor.
He opens the trapdoor. Heat and orange light pour up. He climbs down into the fire.
Ash falls down. Sentinels stand frozen. The house burns. Young Kompis, eight, runs toward the doorway where a small faceless boy holds out his hand.
The roof comes down.
It jumps back. He runs again.
standing in the village street as his younger self runs past him for the thousandth time. He doesn't move to stop him.
mid-stride, reaching, and a big hand catches his wrist.
The man kneels in the ash and holds the boy back by the wrist. The boy fights, wild, kicking.
holding on.
sobbing, still pulling toward the door.
his own eyes streaming.
The roof of the burning house comes down. The doorway goes black. This time the scene does not jump back. The grey Subtick flicker starts, and the man holds the boy's wrist and doesn't let it.
pulling the boy into his arms. The boy stops fighting.
face buried in the man's hoodie, finally, finally crying instead of running.
The burning village goes still. The fire freezes in place like a painting of fire. The ash stops falling. The loop has stopped.
Mörda drifts down into the frozen village like smoke, her shadow-horse behind her. Her face is twisted, hungry, almost frightened.
still kneeling, holding his younger self, looking up at her. And for the first time he looks at her the way he looks at people: Lust-sight. Reading her soul.
Mörda as he sees her: a thin grey figure stitched all over with threads, thousands of them, all of them borrowed, running off into other people's sleep in every direction. And one thread of her own: very old, very thin, running from her chest down into nothing, where it's been cut. Frayed. A thousand years frayed.
flinching as if struck.
getting slowly to his feet with the boy holding his hand.
her face cracking open. A thousand years of no sleep in it.
He looks at the boy. The boy looks at him, and nods.
Kompis climbs the ladder out of the frozen village into the cold cabin, the boy's hand in his. Mörda follows, slowly, like a stray cat that doesn't believe the door is really open.
Kompis kneels at the cold hearth. He has no flint and no match. He puts his hands in the grey ash and closes his eyes.
eyes closed, dreaming on purpose, lucid now: building it, piece by piece, out of every warm thing he has.
A spark. Then a flame.
The hearth catches. Fire, real, warm, gold, crackling, the first warmth this cabin has ever had. The frost on the window melts. Outside, the snow keeps falling, softly, the gentle kind, the kind that's nice to watch from inside.
going to the door. He puts his hand on the latch. Click. Unlocked from the inside.
The crew stands on the snowy step: Vigolas, Rougeina, Smurjan, Trollmage, Drekk, Vaka with her lantern. They stare at him. He stares back.
looking past them at the vast golden dog lying across the valley, his chin on the snow and his eyes fixed on the door.
The sky-sized dog shrinks as he comes, a mountain, then a house, then a horse, then just a dog: a golden retriever, eighty pounds, tail going like mad. He trots past the crew's legs through the doorway, licks Kompis's hand once, and flops down on the rug in front of the fire with a huge contented groan.
They don't come in. Vigolas puts out an arm to stop Drekk. This is his place. They stand on the step in the falling snow and watch through the open door.
A small pine cabin. A fire burning gold in a stone hearth. Snow falling gently past the window. A golden dog asleep on the rug, paws twitching, chasing something happy. An eight-year-old boy sitting on the floor with his back against the dog, finally still.
And in the chair beside the fire, with her knees drawn up and her black hair no longer floating but simply falling around her shoulders, Mörda. Kompis has put the patchwork quilt around her.
Her red-rimmed eyes, which have been open for a thousand years, are closed. Her face is smooth and young and astonished.
Outside, across the whole valley, across the whole country of Sömnen, every Nightmare lies down in the snow, like dogs at the end of a long day, and goes still.
In the doorway, small, the crew watches. Vaka has her hand over her mouth.
sitting on the floor by the fire next to the boy, the dog's head in his lap. Peaceful. Wrecked. He turns to the boy with a tired smile.
reaching into memory, and stopping. His face changes.
looking up at Vigolas in the doorway, his voice very small.