this. There’d be more blood otherwise…”
“What is this,
CSI Hamster
?”
I let that ride. The girl was in shock.
“It also looks like they forced your locker – see these scratches here around the keyhole?”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Like you said, plenty of psychos about.”
“I didn’t say there were plenty. I said you were one.”
“You’re pretty cool,” I said, “for a girl who’s just found two mutilated bodies in her locker.”
And then I wished I hadn’t said it, because I saw that the stillness I had perceived was an illusion, and that she was trembling. I put my hand on hers. It was as cold as a corpse, and I felt a shiver run through me.
“What’s your name?”
“Zofia Novak.”
“Cute: a zed name. I like zed names.”
For the first time she smiled. It was the briefest smile, like a bird flying across a window.
“And you’re…”
“John. Not so cute.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” she said, and now we were both smiling.
“You’re new,” I said, in a harmless kind of way.
She gave me a slow, quizzical stare. She really was absurdly beautiful. There was no need for it. She could have shaved the top third off her beauty and still qualified as a goddess.
“There’s nothing new under the sun,” she said at last. “Don’t you realize we’ve all been here before?”
“We have?”
“The eternal recurrence.”
“The what?”
“Eternal recurrence. The universe is big enough and old enough for everything that happens to happen again. And again. And again. Death and rebirth. We’re all old news.”
Normally that was about the time I’d be laughing or at least walking away, shaking my head.
Except
… Recurrence, doubling, rebirth… Somehow it chimed with that feeling I’d had about the two worlds, the one made of light, the other of … whatever it was. As if the recurrence were folded back on itself. Wait, there was a word I remembered, half-remembered …
palimpsest
. Yeah, that was it. Back in the days when they used to write on parchment made from animal skins, they would sometimes scrape off the top layer of writing and start again. But the first layer would never be completely erased and would show through, and so you’d get the two texts almost blending together. Was that why those green eyes haunted me? Had they burned their way through from an older stratum?
Who was I kidding? The reason I didn’t walk away was that she was as pretty as a hummingbird chasing a butterfly around a rose.
I tried to think of something witty to say. It was no good; I had nothing in the tank. So I settled for raising an eyebrow, which had gotten me out of plenty of scrapes in the past. She took up the slack.
“But, yeah, new.”
“Where were you before?”
“Belmonte.”
“Nice school.”
Belmonte was an all-girl-private joint. Run by nuns.
“They expelled me.”
Well, if she looked like this when she was there, I wasn’t surprised that the good sisters kicked her out. But then I remembered something else.
“Wait … that was
you
?”
“They lied. It was all lies.”
“I believe you.”
The story had been all over the town. It even made the local paper. A girl, who couldn’t be named for legal reasons, had been expelled for practising black magic. It was absurd, of course. There were no details, just gruesome rumours. And now I thought about it, hadn’t there been something to do with animals…? Animals being …
sacrificed
? I felt a twinge of pressure behind my eye. But then I looked again at that lovely face and knew that she was incapable of anything cruel.
“They didn’t understand what I was… No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
It felt as though we’d been standing in a bubble, but suddenly I remembered that there was a real world out there and two dead guinea pigs under our noses.
“Maybe we’d better go and report this,” I said, waving my hand at her locker.
“No!” she said in a voice that suddenly burned
“What is this,
CSI Hamster
?”
I let that ride. The girl was in shock.
“It also looks like they forced your locker – see these scratches here around the keyhole?”
“Why would someone do that?”
“Like you said, plenty of psychos about.”
“I didn’t say there were plenty. I said you were one.”
“You’re pretty cool,” I said, “for a girl who’s just found two mutilated bodies in her locker.”
And then I wished I hadn’t said it, because I saw that the stillness I had perceived was an illusion, and that she was trembling. I put my hand on hers. It was as cold as a corpse, and I felt a shiver run through me.
“What’s your name?”
“Zofia Novak.”
“Cute: a zed name. I like zed names.”
For the first time she smiled. It was the briefest smile, like a bird flying across a window.
“And you’re…”
“John. Not so cute.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” she said, and now we were both smiling.
“You’re new,” I said, in a harmless kind of way.
She gave me a slow, quizzical stare. She really was absurdly beautiful. There was no need for it. She could have shaved the top third off her beauty and still qualified as a goddess.
“There’s nothing new under the sun,” she said at last. “Don’t you realize we’ve all been here before?”
“We have?”
“The eternal recurrence.”
“The what?”
“Eternal recurrence. The universe is big enough and old enough for everything that happens to happen again. And again. And again. Death and rebirth. We’re all old news.”
Normally that was about the time I’d be laughing or at least walking away, shaking my head.
Except
… Recurrence, doubling, rebirth… Somehow it chimed with that feeling I’d had about the two worlds, the one made of light, the other of … whatever it was. As if the recurrence were folded back on itself. Wait, there was a word I remembered, half-remembered …
palimpsest
. Yeah, that was it. Back in the days when they used to write on parchment made from animal skins, they would sometimes scrape off the top layer of writing and start again. But the first layer would never be completely erased and would show through, and so you’d get the two texts almost blending together. Was that why those green eyes haunted me? Had they burned their way through from an older stratum?
Who was I kidding? The reason I didn’t walk away was that she was as pretty as a hummingbird chasing a butterfly around a rose.
I tried to think of something witty to say. It was no good; I had nothing in the tank. So I settled for raising an eyebrow, which had gotten me out of plenty of scrapes in the past. She took up the slack.
“But, yeah, new.”
“Where were you before?”
“Belmonte.”
“Nice school.”
Belmonte was an all-girl-private joint. Run by nuns.
“They expelled me.”
Well, if she looked like this when she was there, I wasn’t surprised that the good sisters kicked her out. But then I remembered something else.
“Wait … that was
you
?”
“They lied. It was all lies.”
“I believe you.”
The story had been all over the town. It even made the local paper. A girl, who couldn’t be named for legal reasons, had been expelled for practising black magic. It was absurd, of course. There were no details, just gruesome rumours. And now I thought about it, hadn’t there been something to do with animals…? Animals being …
sacrificed
? I felt a twinge of pressure behind my eye. But then I looked again at that lovely face and knew that she was incapable of anything cruel.
“They didn’t understand what I was… No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
It felt as though we’d been standing in a bubble, but suddenly I remembered that there was a real world out there and two dead guinea pigs under our noses.
“Maybe we’d better go and report this,” I said, waving my hand at her locker.
“No!” she said in a voice that suddenly burned
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