Path of the Tiger, стр. 460
‘Well boy,’ he said in a heavily accented voice, ‘what are you waiting for?’
For a moment sheer confusion battered William’s panic-stricken mind, and as he stood, frozen with horror before the mighty lion, all he could do was to mewl in a helpless and pathetic tone,‘Wh-, what?’
The Indian man laughed jovially, his eyes crinkled around their edges with gleeful amusement, and then he spoke.
‘What? This, of course: run boy, run!’
William needed no further prompting. He spun on his heels and catapulted himself into a desperate sprint, his eyes bulging white in their sockets, his nostrils flared and his mouth wide open as he tried to suck in every available ounce of oxygen to fuel his suddenly pumping limbs. The massive cat tore along behind him, and William could feel the heat of its breath scalding the back of his neck with every step of his madcap flight.
‘Au-ro-ra, Au-ro-ra, Au-ro-ra!’ he gasped with every breath as he sprinted, as if somehow her name could spur extra strength into his spent muscles and more speed into his leaden limbs.
It was as he reached a sprawling set of stone stairs that led down into an open courtyard that the beast took him. From the top step William sprang into a hurtling leap, hoping to hit the floor below running, but as he was airborne an enormous weight smashed into him from behind. Suddenly his leap was taken farther and higher than any human legs could ever have propelled him – but this was because he was in the clutches of the lion, with its enormous paws wrapped around his torso and its dagger-sized claws puncturing their blades deep into his flesh. And then, as they both hit the stone floor with a ground-shaking impact, they began to roll in a fury of flying fur and spraying blood. As they came to a rest, the lion roared a blast of dragon-fire breath into William’s face, and it bit down onto his neck and shoulder with its gaping mouth, sinking its lance-point canines into his flesh and clamping down with all the force of a slamming-shut bear trap.
William struggled and fought with all his might, but against the titanic power of this beast, which was pinning him down with its four-hundred-kilogram weight and fearsome strength, he was utterly powerless.
This is it, I’m finally done for … I’m sorry Aurora … I’m so sorry my love. I hope that you can find happiness without me, and that we’ll meet up in the next life, somehow…
‘Aurora,’ he whimpered, flopping limply to the ground as the beast released him from its grasp. ‘Oh Aurora, Aurora, I’m dying my love, I’m dying…’
As the agony and the pain began to fade into the oblivion of unconsciousness, the image of Aurora was the final thing that entered his mind. Her presence, her heart, the very soul within her body; these were the last things William registered before he plunged headlong into a yawning abyss of intense darkness.
71
WILLIAM
‘He’s waking up.’
The dark-haired woman.
‘Not for long.’
The Russian man.
‘Sleep, young cub, sleep. Don’t fight it.’
The European man in the brown robe.
Stars. Too many stars. A gargantuan black void, infinite and insatiably ravenous, devouring suns and planets and galaxies and time itself. The great blackness at the centre of all existence, twisting and sucking in streaks of light, obliterating time, melting planets into liquefied ore. With gooey strands of white-hot molten rock hanging like comet tails in the wake of their flight paths, the planets and stars and other celestial bodies try, try and try to pull against the irresistible force of the great hole. Its gaping yawn, its vast maw now takes on colours; first it is a deep, dark purple, but then, as the giddying sensation of acceleration pulls progressively harder, it becomes violet, then crimson, then red, red, red, red … now it morphs into a great lion’s mouth, with the melting planets and collapsing suns melding themselves together into scimitar canine teeth, the drifting precreation matter solidifying into pink gums. The teeth begin piercing, rending, tearing into William, devouring his flesh, flaying off his skin and slicing through meat and bone and ripping his inner organs to pieces and PAIN PAIN UNBEARABLE PAIN OH GOD WILL THIS EVER STOP IT’S TOO MUCH TOO MUCH OH JESUS TOO GREAT AN AGONY TOO—
***
‘Will! Will, come play!’
‘Davy?!’
‘It’s lovely ‘ere, Will! Look at the trees! They’s all sorts o’ colours, all orange an’ red an’ yellow an’ brown! Let’s make a leaf pile Will! Let’s jump in it!’
‘But Davy, you’re … you’re no’…’
‘Stay here Will, stay in the forest wiff me. It’s so lovely ‘ere, Will, so much nicer than ol’ Goody-Goode’s! I don’t never ‘ave to climb up no flues no more! And you don’t need to neither! Just stay here an’ play!’
William looked at the ground beneath his feet and saw that it was an impossibly plush carpet of multicoloured autumn leaves. A warm zephyr scuttled through them and rippled their flame-and-earth-coloured mass, scattering them and juggling them atop its multilayered currents. Here one leaf danced a tarantella, there two waltzed in a dizzying spiral. A kaleidoscope of fiery hues, swirling chaotically through this great, many-pillared ballroom of trees, domed overhead by a too-blue sky, deep and rich in its saturation.
Davy stood smiling between two trees, his little arms and insubstantial torso wrapped against any wintry chill by a thick red jersey, while his stumpy legs were attired in chestnut corduroy. His feet, for so many years clothed only in caked mud and coal dust, were now clad