The Silenced Tale, стр. 41
“Because you are good, and kind, and compassionate,” I say, tucking my knuckles under my wife’s chin and lifting her head so that I may kiss her, comfort her. “Because you felt pity for the Deal-Maker.”
“Bilbo’s pity got half the armies of Middle Earth killed,” Pip says, disdainfully. “I should know better. Why did I do it? I’ve never been . . . been affected by the tropes in your world before. I thought I was immune to them.”
“You were never immune,” I correct. “Just aware.”
Pip pauses, digesting this. “And I missed this one.”
We are both thinking it, but neither of us is prepared to say it. Not out loud. Not yet.
But if we had left the Viceroy even the smallest ability to retain his magic . . . then, with the blood of a Deal-Maker, the blood of his mother, even the great archvillian may have been able to open a way to the Overrealm.
We do not speak on it further. Pip, I think, needs time to adjust to the idea that the Viceroy may be here. May have followed us here. She leaves for work subdued, and returns, grim, after her morning classes, determined to do her grading at home rather than in her office. That she skipped her daily workout at the school gym is cause for only mild concern. She is, I assume, still too sore to contemplate exercise.
I am glad she is here when she suddenly jerks back from the counter, where she’d been making a fresh pot of coffee, to stare at her hands in horror. Blood drips and pools around her feet, splashing against the tiles.
“Dear Writer!” I gasp when I see what has happened. I jump up from where Alis and I have been reading to Library in the living room and rush into the kitchen. Pip seems too numb from the shock to know what to do about the gore running in small rivulets down her fingers, so I push her toward the sink. “Pip, are you hurt? How did this happen? What broke?”
She makes no answer, and that’s when I realize that her eyes have rolled back in her head and she is having another fit. This one is smaller, more subdued, like the person wielding the magic on the other end of the tether can only cast small charms; a tether that seems to be connecting them more and more. I tuck myself behind my wife in case she faints on the spot, and turn on the taps.
When I rinse away the worst of the blood, I can see that the cuts are shallow, deliberate strokes, weaving and curling up her forearms. They are not quite of Bootknife’s handiwork, not so clean or artistic as he would have done, but are very similar all the same.
The cuts flare open and closed almost as soon as they’ve been made. Like flowers blossoming on her skin, the red gaps widen and shrivel into pink scars, which then flake away before ripping open again like hungry mouths, gasping for air, moist with crimson. The wounds are about the size of a quarter at their most distended, and they open in twos and threes, trailing up toward her elbow before snapping shut and a new wave begins. It is ghoulish and disgusting, and I cannot tell if Pip is in pain from them or not.
Alis clings to the little pillar that divides the kitchen and living room and watches with wide gray eyes, bottom lip trembling.
“Mama?”
“Mama’s going to be fine, sweeting,” I tell her.
“Help?”
“Absolutely. Can you go to the bookshelf and fetch your da The Wizard of Oz?”
“Yah!” Alis says, and trundles away to pick the book out of the pile her shelf on the bookcase always becomes.
With her safely out of the kitchen and away from us for a moment, I give Pip a hard shake, rocking her back against my chest. She blinks, convulsing a little, and a second shake has her lifting her head and looking around. She looks down at her arms.
“Fucking fuck,” she groans.
The gaps are all closed now, with none opening anew, but red lines run up and down her forearms. They look like nothing so much as scratches from a pet cat who got too playful. But the amount of blood on the floor, the counter, and still clinging to the sides of the sink, belays the idea that the cuts were ever inconsequential.
“Sit,” I tell Pip, and she staggers to a chair by the table. I wipe down her arms with a damp dishtowel, and then start mopping up the blood on the floor.
“’Ook, Mama,” Alis tells Pip from the doorway, holding up The Wizard of Oz.
“Sure is, babycakes,” Pip says lightly, but her voice is tight and raspy. “Come on up here and read it to me?”
Alis bounds over, flashing her dimples, and scrambles up onto Pip’s lap with her mother’s assistance. Pip winces and groans, but gets Alis settled, and together, they start to read the story. The cadence of the tale is familiar and soothing, and soon, my heart is back to its regular, staid rhythm. Alis loses interest in Oz and Munchkins as soon as I am finished cleaning the floor, and demands milk in both Mandarin and English, doubling, she thinks, her chances of getting it.
As I scrub my hands clean, and then prepare Alis her bottle, Pip dozes in her seat.
“It could be someone else,” I say after Alis is equally dozy in my arms, head resting on my shoulder as she sucks at her bottle. “It might not be him.”
“Come on,” Pip says, stirring and raising an eyebrow at me. She offers a disdainful, skeptical look. “Freckles, you’re smarter than that.”
“I’ll find him,” I vow. “I’ll work on Finnar tonight, and I will find him.”