Read Online We Will All Go Down Together by Gemma Files - Free Book Online
Authors: Gemma Files
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condition. For which, Sy found, he really couldn’t fault him.
“Funniest thing, though,” he told her, leaning a tiny bit closer. “Turns out, Locker Two? Whatever Abbott put in there next must’ve been
really
accidentally flammable, ’cause . . . the whole unit just went up, all of it, from the inside-out. Nothing left but ash.”
A slight pupil-flicker under half-slung lashes, making Sy wonder: what colour
were
those always-hidden eyes of hers, exactly, if he had to choose? Grey like smoke or steam? Silvered like a frosted window? Didn’t matter; he was glad enough to get a reaction of any sort.
Maybe next time, she’ll be awake enough I can tell her how I did it. If she doesn’t know, already.
And here there suddenly came a spark, the barest jolt, synapse-swift—so long since he’d felt that for anybody, it would’ve surprised him no matter who drew it. A stroke along the mental inseam, lizard-area flag automatically part-raised to meet it, no matter how the rest of the brain might scoff.
Bad idea,
he thought, knowing it was true. Knowing she’d agree, if she could: BETTER NOT SY emblazoning itself ’cross palm or cheekbone, coming up on wrist or calf like a blistered rose. NO VERY DANGEROUS VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOU BELIEVE ME. BETTER
(NOT)
And yet:
What the hell, lady. I’ve got at least half a say in this, don’t I?
So since he could, he reached across, took her slack hand in his, and squeezed it. Until he felt the pad of her thumb stroke his love-line, too slow and steady to misinterpret . . . and smiled.
HISTORY’S CRUST (1968)
| one: three witches
In what was once called Dourvale, just east of Eye and a few miles shy of the border where Scotland and Northumbria meet, they still tell this tale to fright their children away from strangers: How one day in winter, a small girl (no more than nine) sent to gather sticks by the brae-side did so, singing happily, until she looked up to see a darkness pass overhead, moving between her and the sun. It had somewhat of the seeming of a cloud, she later told her mother, but for the fact that it flapped in the wind the way a woman’s skirts—or more than one woman’s, perhaps—will do when set out on a line to dry, crisply, like the wings of some great bird.
As she stared up, squinting against the cold winter light which haloed it, this flapping darkness moved first westward, then lower, presently growing so distant it disappeared altogether. And sometime after that she saw three women come up out of the valley, arm in arm, laughing to each other; up through the gorse with neither hat nor coat to shield them, right into the teeth of a bitter wind that threw sharp fistfuls of snow at their faces.
The girl had never seen such different women in her life, and certainly not together. The first was young and ripe and lewd-looking, full-figured, with smooth red coils of hair held back by a pair of ivory combs chased in silver; she had a petticoat of crimson sateen and a gown of black wrought velvet, a French farthingale wide enough that she might lay her arms upon it and a wrought stomacher embroidered in red-gold thread to hold her waist in (though she seemed to have little need of such). Her cap was likewise of black velvet set with pearls, her full sleeves set out with wire and her hose of orange colour, with gay cork-heeled shoes of red Spanish leather that barely seemed to crush the grass she trod on.
At her elbow stepped another woman—pale as the first was fair, skin and hair like new moonlight. She went stay-less in the country style, an open gown of black fustian over a neat woolen smock the colour of yellow dust and an apron tying the whole together, like any farmer’s wife; her hands were raw and she wore wooden pattens with worn leather straps, thick with mud from clumping down unpaved lanes. The girl thought she looked kind, though her gaze was mournful and (on closer inspection) somewhat queer, being that she had varicoloured eyes
“Funniest thing, though,” he told her, leaning a tiny bit closer. “Turns out, Locker Two? Whatever Abbott put in there next must’ve been
really
accidentally flammable, ’cause . . . the whole unit just went up, all of it, from the inside-out. Nothing left but ash.”
A slight pupil-flicker under half-slung lashes, making Sy wonder: what colour
were
those always-hidden eyes of hers, exactly, if he had to choose? Grey like smoke or steam? Silvered like a frosted window? Didn’t matter; he was glad enough to get a reaction of any sort.
Maybe next time, she’ll be awake enough I can tell her how I did it. If she doesn’t know, already.
And here there suddenly came a spark, the barest jolt, synapse-swift—so long since he’d felt that for anybody, it would’ve surprised him no matter who drew it. A stroke along the mental inseam, lizard-area flag automatically part-raised to meet it, no matter how the rest of the brain might scoff.
Bad idea,
he thought, knowing it was true. Knowing she’d agree, if she could: BETTER NOT SY emblazoning itself ’cross palm or cheekbone, coming up on wrist or calf like a blistered rose. NO VERY DANGEROUS VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOU BELIEVE ME. BETTER
(NOT)
And yet:
What the hell, lady. I’ve got at least half a say in this, don’t I?
So since he could, he reached across, took her slack hand in his, and squeezed it. Until he felt the pad of her thumb stroke his love-line, too slow and steady to misinterpret . . . and smiled.
HISTORY’S CRUST (1968)
| one: three witches
In what was once called Dourvale, just east of Eye and a few miles shy of the border where Scotland and Northumbria meet, they still tell this tale to fright their children away from strangers: How one day in winter, a small girl (no more than nine) sent to gather sticks by the brae-side did so, singing happily, until she looked up to see a darkness pass overhead, moving between her and the sun. It had somewhat of the seeming of a cloud, she later told her mother, but for the fact that it flapped in the wind the way a woman’s skirts—or more than one woman’s, perhaps—will do when set out on a line to dry, crisply, like the wings of some great bird.
As she stared up, squinting against the cold winter light which haloed it, this flapping darkness moved first westward, then lower, presently growing so distant it disappeared altogether. And sometime after that she saw three women come up out of the valley, arm in arm, laughing to each other; up through the gorse with neither hat nor coat to shield them, right into the teeth of a bitter wind that threw sharp fistfuls of snow at their faces.
The girl had never seen such different women in her life, and certainly not together. The first was young and ripe and lewd-looking, full-figured, with smooth red coils of hair held back by a pair of ivory combs chased in silver; she had a petticoat of crimson sateen and a gown of black wrought velvet, a French farthingale wide enough that she might lay her arms upon it and a wrought stomacher embroidered in red-gold thread to hold her waist in (though she seemed to have little need of such). Her cap was likewise of black velvet set with pearls, her full sleeves set out with wire and her hose of orange colour, with gay cork-heeled shoes of red Spanish leather that barely seemed to crush the grass she trod on.
At her elbow stepped another woman—pale as the first was fair, skin and hair like new moonlight. She went stay-less in the country style, an open gown of black fustian over a neat woolen smock the colour of yellow dust and an apron tying the whole together, like any farmer’s wife; her hands were raw and she wore wooden pattens with worn leather straps, thick with mud from clumping down unpaved lanes. The girl thought she looked kind, though her gaze was mournful and (on closer inspection) somewhat queer, being that she had varicoloured eyes
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