CHAPTER 45 #3
When the man held his hand out, Avelyn took it, because it would have been a kind of blasphemy not to dance.
The ghost dancers spun around them, and the man spun him, catching him when it was too fast and he was too dizzy.
It made them both laugh. Other hands and other boots, not real, crashed that bones-of-the-earth beat until he could feel it through the ground.
It was full of joy, like a reel, but there was something in it that was the same as the hymns for the King; sacred.
Magic.
Avelyn had known that given the right salt light, witches could do magic.
He knew the story about the witch in the time of the mammoth when the Bone People had stolen Hreod children, and she had tricked them into believing that they were only ravens dreaming of being people .
. . and so they were. He knew that uncontrolled magic was why catching sight of something frightening in the mine made it real.
But he had never known there could be anything like this.
It faded at last, and when it did, the dance had turned him so that he bumped back against the man’s chest. The man bent forward over him like a question mark, so that Avelyn could feel him still laughing through the muscles across his belly, fitted just against the small of his back.
It was such a good feeling. Avelyn let himself go still and looked back.
“Come up to the surface for a little while? You could always come back again, if you don’t like it.”
Anxiety flitted through the man’s eyes as they ticked past Avelyn and to the tunnel that led upward. “No. I shouldn’t.”
“You can’t stay here always,” Avelyn pointed out. “What happens if you’re lonely?”
The man laughed that half laugh again, as though Avelyn had said something much truer than he knew.
“Please.”
“All right,” the man said, and let Avelyn take his hand and lead him up to the silver door.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to say to his grandmother, or to the witch; Here, look, I found this extra person in the tunnels, I think we should probably give him a proper hot meal and put him by the fire with a fox to hug and someone to talk to so that he can remember what people are like and how being sane feels?
It was reasonable enough, but he had to admit it was unexpected.
He could already see his grandmother’s face.
She was generous, and it would be no bother to her to have one more person in the house, especially a sweet ranweth one, but she was going to look at him like she did whenever he rescued ducklings whose ducks had been eaten by pike.
It’s just going to die eventually, and even if it doesn’t, do you want a duck forever?
Avelyn actually had five or six forever ducks. He got ready to say that he would be happy to have a forever man-from-the-tunnels.
Once they were through the door, it wasn’t far to the Brocken seams—and his uncles, who were waiting right at the mouth of the tunnel, pretending to clean tools, but really looking for him.
“Avelyn!” It was a simultaneous joy-explosion and he was engulfed from both sides, and then they were both asking him how it had been and had it been hard, he had been a long time, had he seen anything, was he hurt, good, and . . . who is this?
Avelyn looked back and realized he hadn’t actually asked the man his name. The man had pressed against the wall, almost gone in the shadows. “Well, I found him in the tunnels, and I think he’s been there for a long time, so . . .”
He didn’t get any further.
His grandmother was coming, and her eyes were fixed on the man.
“Avelyn,” she said, very quiet. “What . . . is . . . that?”
“What?” he said, following her eyes and finding only the man, who was watching her back like a cat.
“What have you done?” she said. He had never heard her sound like that.
“I just wanted to show him—”
“Why do you think that’s a person?”
He bumped back against the wall. She never shouted at him, not like that, not like she was going to kill him. When he looked back, the man wasn’t there.
“Where is it?” she snapped, and other people stopped. “Where the fuck is it?”
Hagan caught Avelyn’s arm. “Run. Run,” he hissed, and then Hengest was pushing him too, and he saw despair in them, and how they were looking up ahead, to his grandmother, to the swing of the sledgehammer, and the support pillar, and then . . .
And then he was on the bridge at An El, and a tiny man was talking to him in English and putting a blanket around him, and Avelyn didn’t understand, but there was nobody else to go with, so in the end, not knowing what was happening or why, he let the tiny man tow him into the abbey and sit him down in an armchair, still salt-dusty, and after a long time his mind dredged up how to do English, and he found out that the tiny man’s name was Father Li. He didn’t say whose father.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Father Li said at last, once he had made Avelyn eat some bread and some soup.
Avelyn nodded slightly. “I was too proud,” he said, “so he killed them all.”
“Who did?” Li said softly.
“The King,” Avelyn said, dull. It was all happening to somebody else. He was just watching. It was like being at the performance of a bard you didn’t like, but you couldn’t leave because then that would be all anyone talked about. So you sat there and watched it.
Li only pressed his hand to Avelyn’s forehead. “I think you’re getting a fever. You’re delirious. Never mind, hey? There’s a new doctor just come today, though, so maybe he can have a look at you.”