The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [95]
Catherine smiled, but her face was sad. "Is it really so bad, here?" she said. "Did she hate it so much? Did she hate us so much?"
"If I could," Elizabeth announced, "I'd escape too."
"Hush, girl," Catherine said. She turned back to Orphan. "When I arrived at the Nursery, Mary was gone."
"But how?" He was tense now, his muscles feeling constricted and hard under his skin. He felt hot, then cold, as if the air itself kept changing around him. It was too much to take in. Was she really his mother? Could it be possible? And is that, then, where he came from, this squalid, sordid subterranean habitat, reeking of fungus and ash?
"I don't know."
"You must know!" He stood up, bunched his fists. He fought the tiredness that threatened to overwhelm him. He discovered that he no longer disbelieved Catherine. And that meant…
Realisation touched him like a cold hand. For though he had made it onto the island alive, and could pass through it undisturbed, he could never leave.
Like Mary, he was now a prisoner on the island.
The Bookman had never intended to give him back Lucy, he thought. He had never intended for him to leave.
"No," Orphan said, and louder, "I don't believe it."
Yet I have to believe, he thought. I have to believe this is part of the plan. I have to believe I will return, I will get Lucy back.
"How did she escape?" he said – shouted. Elizabeth backed away from him, but the old woman didn't stir, and looked up at him with a faraway look on her face. "I will show you," she said, "what I know. And perhaps the book could tell you more than it had ever told me."
"The book?"
"The book?" Elizabeth said, and there was genuine fear in her voice.
Orphan felt his thoughts slow down to a trickle; it was like he was swimming through thick, syrupy liquid. It was too much – he had gone too long without sleep, and his mind could no longer operate. Like an automaton, he thought. I need to shut down.
"Help me hold him!" He was dimly aware of Elizabeth and Catherine taking him by the arms and helping him down, and onto a mattress by the wall that smelled, rather pleasantly, of mushrooms.
"Sleep, William," Catherine said softly, and the last thing Orphan felt before falling into a deep black sleep was the touch of her hand as she gently stroked his head.
He was running through a landscape of pools and warm rocks, and the air was full of flies. In the distance he could see another figure running, yet as fast as he ran he could not catch up with it. Small lizards sunned themselves on the rocks and caught flies with their tongues. The flies were emitting a distinctly mechanical buzz.
He began to flap his hands. Somehow, it made sense. He felt air currents under his open palms, and was lifted in the air. He circled, slowly at first, rising higher. Below him, the island spread out like a treasure map. Thick forests grew out of the wound in the centre. The crater looked like an eye, with an improbable needle sticking out of it. It looked painful.
The figure he was chasing was still ahead of him, rising higher than him. He chased it, flapping harder, until he reached the edges of space. Blackness spread out before him, filled with stars. Below, the needle left the eye and rose into the air, impossibly thin. It went past him and disappeared into the void.
He stopped moving, and hung suspended in the thin air, on the edge of space. Ahead of him, the figure stopped too. It came closer to him, circling in orbit. They were like Earth and the moon, but growing closer, until he could see her face…
Then he was falling, falling hard, the air rushing past him and he screamed, and hit a hard surface, and woke up.
"Why 'William'?" he said.
"Mary always said that, if she had a son, she'd name him William," Catherine said. It was still twilight. It was always twilight in the tunnels.
"Call me Orphan."
"A wise man knows his own name," Catherine said.
"A wise man wouldn't be where I am now," Orphan said, and Catherine smiled, briefly.
"Do you know what happened