The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [10]
"Orphan?"
He was suddenly shy. Lucy, turning, regarded him with a dazzling smile. Behind her, a whale rose to the surface and snorted, and a cloud of fine mist rose and fell in the air.
"I missed you," Orphan said, simply.
They stood and grinned at each other. The whale exhaled again, breathed, and disappeared inside the blue-green waters of the Thames.
"I hoped you'd come," Lucy said. Her eyes, he noticed, were large and bright, the colour of the water. Sun speckled her irises.
He said, "I'd follow you anywhere," and Lucy laughed, a surprised, delighted sound, and kissed him.
Later, he would remember that moment. Everything seemed to slow, the wheel of the sun burning through the whale's cloud of breath and breaking into a thousand little rainbows; a cool breeze blew but he was warm, his fingers intertwined with Lucy's, and her lips tasted hot, like cinnamon-spiced tea. He whispered, "I love you," and knew it was true.
He saw his face reflected in her eyes. She blinked. She was crying. "I love you too," she said, and for a long moment, the world was entirely still.
Then they came apart, the cloud of mist dispersed, blown apart by the breeze, and the sun resumed its slow course across the sky. Lucy, pointing at a bucket that stood nearby, said, "Help me feed the whales?" and Orphan, in response, purposefully grabbed the stillwrithing tentacles of a squid and threw it in an arc into the river.
A baby whale rose, exhaled loudly (the sound like a snort of laughter), and descended with its prey.
On the opposite bank of the river Big Ben began to chime, and the strikes sounded, momentarily, like the final syllables of a sonnet.
FOUR
Gilgamesh
And all the while his blind brown fingers
Traced a webbed message in the dirt
That said
Gilgamesh was here.
– L.T., "The Epic of Gilgamesh"
When they parted it was dusk, and the first stars were rising, winking into existence like baleful eyes. Orphan felt buoyant: and he was going to see Lucy again that night, at Richmond-upon-Thames, for the Martian probe ceremony. He'd promised he'd be there as soon as he saw Gilgamesh again. The truth was, he was worried about his old friend. He was the closest thing to a family Orphan ever had. Gilgamesh lived rough, and the years had not been kind to him. "Seven-thirty!" Lucy said as she kissed him a last time. "And don't be late!"
He walked the short distance along the embankment to Waterloo Bridge. He thought he'd talk with Gilgamesh, but when he reached the arches there was no sign of his old friend there.
Orphan called for him; his voice came back in a dreary echo. He went closer to the edge of the water. There was the small ring of stones where Gilgamesh's fire had burned. Cold ash lay between the stones, dark and fine. "Gilgamesh?" he called again, but all was quiet; even the sounds of the whales had died down, so that Orphan felt himself in a vast silence that stretched all around him, across the waters and into the city itself. "Gilgamesh?"
Then he saw it. An arc of dark spots, leading from the fire towards the river. He bent down and touched them with his fingers, and they came back moist.
He looked around him wildly. What had happened? Resting against the wall he found Gilgamesh's blanket. It was stained, in great dark spots, with a smell that left a metallic taste in the back of his throat.
But not blood.
Oil? Or, he thought for a moment, ridiculously – ink?
The blanket was torn. No, he saw. Not torn. Cut, with a sharp implement, like a knife… or a scythe.
He rolled the old blanket open, panic mounting. What had happened to Gilgamesh? The blanket was empty, but soaked in some dark liquid. Wide gashes opened in the dirty cloth like gaping mouths.
Orphan knew he should call the police. But what would they do? They had better things to do than worry about an old beggar, with the explosion at the Rose and the Ripper loose in Whitechapel. He stood up, pulling away from the blanket. His hands were smudged.
Orphan