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Authors: Isobelle Carmody
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showing blunt, naked gums. âYou canât run from what you are.â
I had gone over the great seas, saved and worked and done a few shady things before I got a librarianâs certificate. I thought I would educate myself the rest of the way. With the world in such a state, I wanted to get away from the beast on the rampage. I lost myself in books. I loved them, but in the end the oldest books began to smell to me like the cottage I was born in. The papers reeked of my motherâs dank tears and my fatherâs desperate rages; the words smelled of despair taken from the heart of trees of sorrow. I sensed the beast all about me as if he had come there and urinated over everything, marking his territory.
I smelled of the beast.
Only then did I understand what my granny had meant when she said I could not escape. She had not meant the beast would follow me, but that he was already everywhere. I had a wife and a child and friends when the beast slipped into me, and before he was done, I had lost them all. I did not care until he withdrew from me, leaving me limp and flaccid. Utterly spent.
For some days rain blurs the window like tears, and I do not bother to rise, knowing the boy will be kept in. But when the sun comes up again, I shuffle to the window and peer out in hope and dread. The boy is on the step, shining like a star, and there is an ominous thudding at my temples.
The young woman comes creeping along the street now, and she is almost on top of the boy before she seems to see him. Maybe she is on drugs. The boy asks something and her lips move. Perhaps she is saying: What are you doing out so early? or Why do you shine?
She points to the apartment above hers. That is where the beast lives , she is saying.
I can almost hear her words.
That is where the slayer of children and babies dwells. That is the blackener of womenâs eyes, the lip-splitter and wielder of lit cigarette butts. That is the dealer in broken arms and jaws and necks. That is the king of the bullies and brutes. That is where the lover of pain and bullets hides.
The boy shakes his head, and he turns to face my window.
He points to me. His eyes are like searchlights, fearless and innocent. There is the beast. Up there , he says. He is watching us now .
I start back from his terrible brightness, shivering with terror and hope, for perhaps at the uttermost end of all things, there is hope. If one can come who will see the beast and name it, perhaps it may be defied and driven back.
T HE L EMMING F ACTOR
T he music trilled and fluted, at once wooing and commanding, imperious and intoxicating. The notes were faint, but Sim strained his ears to catch the edge of each one. The tune reminded him of the smell of hot buttercups, of greengrass and the milky mothersmell of his blinddays. It reminded him of the first time he had held his baby brother against his chest. It reminded him of dusk when the light was so beautiful; it ached his throat.
He let the music possess him and fill him up with memories and dreams, because it stopped him thinking.
âI am so tired,â Rill said softly.
Sim gave the youngling a startled look, for Rill might as well have stolen the words out of his own head. Neither Rill nor his older sisterblood noticed Sim watching them.
âI am tired, too, Rill,â Kora responded softly. âBut we must keep going, for see how far behind we have fallen. What will happen if the song fades before we reach the end of the road?â
What indeed? Sim thought, but he could not make himself believe it would come to that. It had been promised that the second piping would gather up those who had been left behind in the first great exodus.
To be slow was not to doubt the Piper. It was not lack of faith.
Of course, Sim had not always believed in the Piper, though it shamed him to admit it. There was no proof he existed. Nothing tangible. Just rambling memories and half stories, passed on through generations,
I had gone over the great seas, saved and worked and done a few shady things before I got a librarianâs certificate. I thought I would educate myself the rest of the way. With the world in such a state, I wanted to get away from the beast on the rampage. I lost myself in books. I loved them, but in the end the oldest books began to smell to me like the cottage I was born in. The papers reeked of my motherâs dank tears and my fatherâs desperate rages; the words smelled of despair taken from the heart of trees of sorrow. I sensed the beast all about me as if he had come there and urinated over everything, marking his territory.
I smelled of the beast.
Only then did I understand what my granny had meant when she said I could not escape. She had not meant the beast would follow me, but that he was already everywhere. I had a wife and a child and friends when the beast slipped into me, and before he was done, I had lost them all. I did not care until he withdrew from me, leaving me limp and flaccid. Utterly spent.
For some days rain blurs the window like tears, and I do not bother to rise, knowing the boy will be kept in. But when the sun comes up again, I shuffle to the window and peer out in hope and dread. The boy is on the step, shining like a star, and there is an ominous thudding at my temples.
The young woman comes creeping along the street now, and she is almost on top of the boy before she seems to see him. Maybe she is on drugs. The boy asks something and her lips move. Perhaps she is saying: What are you doing out so early? or Why do you shine?
She points to the apartment above hers. That is where the beast lives , she is saying.
I can almost hear her words.
That is where the slayer of children and babies dwells. That is the blackener of womenâs eyes, the lip-splitter and wielder of lit cigarette butts. That is the dealer in broken arms and jaws and necks. That is the king of the bullies and brutes. That is where the lover of pain and bullets hides.
The boy shakes his head, and he turns to face my window.
He points to me. His eyes are like searchlights, fearless and innocent. There is the beast. Up there , he says. He is watching us now .
I start back from his terrible brightness, shivering with terror and hope, for perhaps at the uttermost end of all things, there is hope. If one can come who will see the beast and name it, perhaps it may be defied and driven back.
T HE L EMMING F ACTOR
T he music trilled and fluted, at once wooing and commanding, imperious and intoxicating. The notes were faint, but Sim strained his ears to catch the edge of each one. The tune reminded him of the smell of hot buttercups, of greengrass and the milky mothersmell of his blinddays. It reminded him of the first time he had held his baby brother against his chest. It reminded him of dusk when the light was so beautiful; it ached his throat.
He let the music possess him and fill him up with memories and dreams, because it stopped him thinking.
âI am so tired,â Rill said softly.
Sim gave the youngling a startled look, for Rill might as well have stolen the words out of his own head. Neither Rill nor his older sisterblood noticed Sim watching them.
âI am tired, too, Rill,â Kora responded softly. âBut we must keep going, for see how far behind we have fallen. What will happen if the song fades before we reach the end of the road?â
What indeed? Sim thought, but he could not make himself believe it would come to that. It had been promised that the second piping would gather up those who had been left behind in the first great exodus.
To be slow was not to doubt the Piper. It was not lack of faith.
Of course, Sim had not always believed in the Piper, though it shamed him to admit it. There was no proof he existed. Nothing tangible. Just rambling memories and half stories, passed on through generations,
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