[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

distant roar in my ears. I got to my feet, not sure which way to run. I could
more feel than see a wall to my right, but the fog was thick around me, and
there could have been miles of open space in any other direction, or a waiting
open pit.
God, Andy, hurry up with whatever you're doing.It would be nice to be saved in
the nick of time.
Maybe I could climb the wall. If Boioardo were to climb after me, I could drop
down on him. Even with twice my strength, he wasn't invulnerable. Given enough
of a start, if I could gain enough height, I might be able to land hard on
him, smash him to the ground, and crush him either to death or unconsciousness
before he could throw off the limitations of the flesh that he had assumed.
Yeah. Sure. And maybe I'd be elected fucking Queen of the May, too.
The fog thinned in front of me to reveal a series of niches, carved into the
wall, each of a different size.
There may have only been ten or so; there may have been hundreds, thousands,
vanishing off into the fog.
In the first one, in the niche right in front of me, was a pair of sneakers.
"Holy shit.
"
Page 151
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
They weren't just sneakers; they were my old sneakers, my first pair of
sneakers, or at least the first pair
I remembered.
Stash had always believed in buying irregulars, and had picked up a pair of
some famous brand PF
Flyers, maybe? that the manufacturer had rejected because of a sloppy seam
along the uppers. The sloppy seam was still there just a little crooked;
nothing important and so was the spot on the sole, just below the heel, where
somebody, probably Inspector 7, had neatly sliced off the little brand patch
when the sneakers had been rejected.
Same blue stripe along the rubber sole, same flat cotton laces, clean and
white like they had been the day they were new.
They reminded me of running fastfastfast on a hot summer day, of leaping over
low picket fences and scrambling through backyards not just when that damn St.
Bernard was chasing me, but because I was ten and it was summer, and that's
what you did when you were ten and it was summer.
In the next niche was a fountain pen, a real chubby-barrelled Shaeffer
fountain pen with the white dot on the clip, and I knew that if I took it
down, and took off the cap, it would write with the blackest of blue-black
ink, because that was the ink that was in it the day that Mom had given it to
me, the day that I
had brought home my first report card that was just Bs and As. How had she
known that I was finally going to bring home a decent report? Had she had the
pen waiting through most of my elementary school career?
Four As, and three Bs, the report card said; it was in the next niche, all
clean and waiting.
It takes longer to tell it than it did to live it; I don't think I'd stood in
front of that wall for more than a second, taking it all in.
My teddy bear was in the next niche: an ugly stuffed panda in black and dirty
white, one ear half torn off, glossy brown buttons from an old overcoat for
his eyes. He waited, lying patiently, the way he always had at the head of my
bed.
Bears are like that.
Boioardo had spoken of the Place Where Only That Which You Have Loved Can Help
You.
Now I understood. It was a capital-P Place in Ehvenor, yes, on the edge of
Faerie, surely, but it was also a small-p place in my mind.
I've lived some years now, and I've touched some things more than casually.
You run through enough summer days in an irregular pair of PF Flyers, and they
become part of you, not just for the few days and weeks and maybe months that
the shoes last, but for as long as there are hot summer days just after
school's let out, and as long as there are the tight, springy steps that you
can only take in a new pair of sneakers and as long as there are fences and
yards and dogs that surely can't be as big with teeth that can't be as sharp
in reality as in memory.
It was mine, forever.
My bear was here. No nightmares here, not with my bear waiting at the head of
my bed, ready to dispel a bad dream with its familiar warmth.
It was all mine. This was my place.
In the next niche was a jackknife. It didn't look like much, I guess, and it
was smaller than I remembered it, but the Scout crest had the same scratch on
it that it had always had.
My knife.
It was my knife, the one that Big Mike had given me, so many years ago, and it
was here, in my hand, the ripples cut into its plastic sides familiar under my
thumb.
Look: I know I had a fighting dagger at my waist, and I know that it gave me
Page 152
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
more reach. But that was just metal, just a tool.
This was my knife.
It had meant something to me, and it was here to help me. What was it that
Ahira had said? Something about how it's not just the people in our lives that
matter, about how we had best be careful what we make, what we use, because we
invest something of ourself with everything we touch.
And I know that a nonlocking jackknife is a silly weapon in a fight, so I
thumbed open the awl on the back, and held the knife hidden in my hand, just a
sliver of metal showing. One punch with it, and the awl could slice hard,
deep, through flesh and into Boioardo's eyes.
My knife.
Okay; bring on the demons.
Off in the distance, something roared, a sound both familiar and strange. Not [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]