15
“... down any second,” someone said, very quietly.
“I don’t care,” Denton snapped. He was only a little louder, but he sounded angry. “The rest of you get out and let me work, then.”
I couldn’t make out what was said in reply. Could I open my eyes? I experimented. They would only go up about halfway, but I could just make out the blurry shape of Denton crouched over my legs.
Legs? Yes, I had those, didn’t I? Could I move them?
I tried. My mistake became obvious when pain struck me like a bright light and everything went gray and floaty for a bit.
***
“... be ridiculous ...”
“I am telling you, if we move them, there’s a chance that bone will hit an artery and either they bleed out or I slap on a tourniquet and they probably lose the leg.”
I wondered who they were talking about. Not me, obviously. I was dead.
Though I admit, I hadn’t expected being dead to hurt so much. Clearly the priests had been lying to me.
“What do you mean?”
I cracked my eyes open again and saw Denton. He was looking very intently at something. No, someone. Oh, hello, Fragment. You’re here too .
I hoped this didn’t mean that they were both dead. That would be sad.
Fragment was writing something on his slate. I squinted but couldn’t read it.
“It just has to stay in place until we get Easton up top.”
Wait, they were talking about me?
Somebody else said something, but it sounded like a gnat’s buzz in my ears. Denton didn’t look away from Fragment. “You’re sure ? If it’s already plugging the artery and you accidentally dislodge it ...”
Fragment held up the slate. I really wished I could see what was on it. This was starting to sound important.
Buzz buzz buzz went the gnat. Christ’s blood, couldn’t people learn to speak up?
Denton’s expression was something I had never seen before, hope and horror in equal mixture.
“Do it,” he said. “Start with the lower one.”
Nothing seemed to happen for a little. Then my calf began to itch like the devil. The itch was interestingly distinct from the pain, and I didn’t like it at all.
I tried to reach down to scratch and Denton snarled, “Hold them down, you bastards—no, not like that! Do you want to puncture a lung?!”
Something pressed hard on my shoulder. I managed to turn my head a little and even through the glare of the headlamp, I’d recognize Angus anywhere.
“Hold on, youngster,” he said. At least I think that’s what he said. I could barely hear it, so I had to read his lips while not being able to quite focus my eyes. It might have been Hold on, chicken coop —the words are similar in Gallacian—but that seemed like an odd thing to call me.
My leg still itched.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Denton said. “Yes. Do the other one.”
The itching suddenly got about a thousand times worse. I tried to scratch again and then there were more hands holding me down and Denton barking orders and everything was terrible and if I could just scratch, I could deal with it, but no one had warned me that being dead would itch .
I tried to tell Angus about the itching, but he just patted my shoulder and didn’t seem to hear.
“Now,” said Denton. “As smooth as you can.”
The hands holding me shifted and now they were lifting me up, up toward the ceiling of the mine, and then through the ceiling and into the stone and the darkness.
***
“You,” Angus said, “are proof that God looks out for fools and drunkards.”
“I resent that,” I said. Actually I nearly yelled it, then had to consciously lower my voice. My hearing had mostly come back, but not all the way. Denton wasn’t sure if I’d ever get the rest back. “I am not a drunkard.”
Angus snorted explosively and helped me to my feet. I picked up my cane and began limping toward the back of the cavern, where Fragment was waiting.
It was Fragment who saved me when the firedamp ignited.
I would have suffocated long before they were able to drag me out, but the creature had made himself into a kind of tube and burrowed through the burning remains of Sentry until he could reach me and plaster himself over my nose and mouth.
He fed air through until they were able to clear the fallen rubble and pull me free.
Angus wasn’t wrong. I’d had God’s own luck.
Sentry’s body had shielded me from the worst of the firedamp explosion and the falling rock.
My injuries from fighting a monster and blowing up part of the mine amounted to a cracked rib, two admittedly nasty gouges in my left leg, and some burns on the side of my right hand.
And the possibly permanent hearing loss, which would at least pair nicely with my tinnitus.
Of all of it, the burns were the worst. Burns hurt like nothing else. Denton had done his best and was changing the dressings every day, but my little finger was already hardening into a crooked claw.
Oh well. At least it’s not my trigger finger, and it’s not like my handwriting could get much worse .
Sentry was truly dead. What hadn’t died in the blast was doused with lamp oil and set ablaze.
(Served him right for pretending to be a dog.) Angus, Fragment, and Ingold had swept the second floor of the mine while I was recovering.
They’d found another, smaller pocket of Sentry, and this time Fragment had overwhelmed it and taken its memories by force.
I had the impression that doing so was upsetting, but he had no body language to read.
Maybe I only hoped he found it upsetting.
TRYING TO BECOME A NEW WHOLENESS was Fragment’s analysis of Sentry. Perhaps even becoming large enough to destroy the wholeness slumbering peacefully below. Something between a city and a god, made up only of himself.
There were bones jumbled inside Sentry’s various bodies, some of them being used, most of them broken past all recognition. A ring had turned up in the second pocket, which Denton identified as Oscar’s.
Denton and Fragment had made their own peace.
Angus said that he thought it was in the hours when they frantically hauled away rubble, trying to reach me, while Fragment had been funneling air to keep me alive.
“He didn’t know what to do about the bleeding,” Angus had said, rubbing the stubble on his jaw.
“Pretty soon Denton was shouting orders at him like a raw recruit, and it stopped mattering that he was basically just a tube and a pair of hands writing on a slate. Then we actually got to you, but the ceiling was maybe about to come down. Denton really didn’t want to move you, but Fragment did something.
Must have worked because we got you up top without killing you, and then Denton started yelling that we were all useless except Fragment, and for god’s sake, just get out of his light and let him work.
” Angus had nodded then, clearly satisfied with the results.
It’s rare that you can mend relationships with an explosion, but I’ll take it.
(Ingold had to explain to me what Fragment had actually done, which was apparently to insert an incredibly thin layer of himself into the wounds with the bones stuck in them, then slowly thicken the layer until the bone popped out.
Then he plugged the holes with his own flesh until Denton could operate.
The thought made me a little queasy, but not nearly as queasy as seeing just how close one of those holes was to the big artery in my leg. No wonder Denton had been yelling.)
I reached the edge of the shaft, where Fragment stood waiting, with Ingold and—perhaps surprisingly—Roger beside him.
IT IS GOOD TO SEE THAT YOU ARE RECOVERING, ALEX EASTON.
“It’s good to be recovering.” I glanced down into the darkness. “I suppose this is goodbye, then?”
“We broke through the shell this morning,” Ingold confirmed.
PART OF ME WENT BACK AT ONCE, Fragment wrote. BUT I WANTED TO LEAVE ENOUGH TO SAY GOODBYE. He paused, tapping the chalk absently against the slate. AND TO THANK YOU.
“You, thank me?” I snorted. “You saved my life. Twice.”
AND YOU SAVED THIS FRAGMENT’S LIFE. TWICE.
“Well, then that probably makes us even.”
Fragment’s eyes were hidden behind the goggles, and perhaps even then, they would not have conveyed any information. The eyes are the window to the soul, they say. Did Fragment have a soul? I thought he probably did, and that was as much as I could say for any person I knew.
THERE IS NO DEBT IN A WHOLENESS, he wrote finally. I WOULD OFFER WHOLENESS TO YOU, IF SUCH WERE POSSIBLE. BUT I DO NOT THINK YOU WOULD WISH SUCH A GIFT.
“I’m afraid not,” I said, repressing my shudder at the thought.
Though I couldn’t help but glance at Ingold and wonder if he would pass up such an opportunity.
I took a step back and nodded to Roger. “You’ll be okay here? Errr ... both of you?”
Roger had elected to stay and guard the mine, “in memory of Mister Oscar.” (So he said, anyway.
I suspected that he was actually staying in memory of Thunder.
Despite our best explanations, I don’t think he truly believed that his dog had never really existed in the first place.) Regardless, Denton had offered to pay him a wage to watch over Hollow Elk and see that it remained undisturbed.
After we left, he would board up the entryway more firmly, with the help of . ..
Well, of the new Sentries. Which would contain Fragment within themselves, no doubt, as well as the rest of the wholeness. Fragment had been very clear that there must always be two in the future, to watch each other as well as the mine.
I HOPE WE WILL BE VERY WELL, ALEX EASTON.
“I’ll send books,” Ingold promised. “You’ll never be bored.”
Roger muttered something under his breath.
If I could have walked down into the mine without a cane, I still don’t know if I would have gone to see Fragment rejoin the wholeness.
It felt a little like death to me, poor singular creature that I am.
But the choice had been taken out of my hands, so Angus and I watched the trio’s lights dance as they made their way down the shaft.
We stood for a moment in silence and listened to the sounds of the mine breathing out, a slow, peaceful sound like a dreamer deeply asleep; then I began the long, slow shuffle back to the entryway.
Denton was waiting for me there, shadowed by the faithful Kent. “Have they gone down?” he asked.
I lowered myself onto a camp stool. Kent handed me a cup of coffee. “They have,” I said.
“Well. That’s good then.” Denton too had made his peace with what slept beneath the mine.
“And will you be able to go home, you think?” I asked. We had tickets for the train tomorrow morning, but as I knew well, there are ways that you can and can’t go home again.
Denton nodded slowly. “I still don’t like thinking that there’s things like that Sentry out there,” he said.
“But Fragment’s potentially a better surgeon than I’ll ever be.
” He shook his head. “I’ll get over the one, but probably not the other.
Every time I see a patient that could be saved if I could do what he did .
..” He shook his head again, a wry twist to his lips.
“Pretty sure that’ll haunt me to the grave. ”
“You could try to convince some of him to come with you,” I said. “Maybe he’d like to be a doctor.”
“And explain it to the nurses? No, thank you. Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, and we’re at least three over. Hell, I’m not that sure about Roger. I’m just hoping that if he talks, everyone will assume he’s drunk again.”
“You can always come back and check on things,” I offered.
“I expect to be doing so regularly. Fortunately, Elijah over at the camp has offered to contact me if it looks like Roger is ... ah ... taking his duties less than seriously. And of course the new Sentries will know how to send telegrams as well.” He leaned back.
“I admit, I didn’t expect to be tasked with taking care of something like this for the rest of my life, but I suppose someone had to do it. ”
“Who better?” asked Ingold, appearing out of the darkness. He dropped down next to the fire and accepted coffee from Kent. Denton put an arm around him, and he leaned into it with no trace of self-consciousness. “I certainly wouldn’t suggest the American government handle it.”
“Their record with things that aren’t ... ah ... part of their wholeness isn’t good,” Denton agreed.
“Christ’s blood,” I muttered, trying to picture it and failing utterly. “They’d probably try to send the poor bastards to Guam.”
“Did everything go ... eh ... ?” Angus made a grasping gesture with one hand that was probably meant to convey a creature rejoining its long-lost group mind. This was not a concept that lent itself to hand gestures. Nevertheless, Ingold nodded.
“I think so. At least there were no explosions.”
Everyone looked at me. I rolled my eyes. You blow up one mine shaft ...
“You’re welcome to stay with us in Boston for as long as you like,” Denton said. “Do some sightseeing. See more of America. Whatever you like.”
“I mean this in the nicest possible way,” I said, “but I think I have seen enough of America to last me for a while.”
“The parts outside of mine shafts are generally much nicer.”
“Mm. So you say.” I looked over at Angus. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Seems a shame to come all this way and not at least look around.”
I sighed deeply. “Fine. We can stay in America for a week or two. But I am not going into any more mines.”
“Sure,” said Denton.
“I don’t even want to go into a cellar.”
“That’s fine.”
“And if anything weird happens, I am getting back on the boat.”
Ingold grinned at me. “Come now, Alex, what are the odds of something else this strange happening in the next week?”
But that, as they say, is another story.