A Drop of Night(35)

Will is back. He makes a sound, a soft bark from somewhere in his chest. I think it was supposed to be a laugh. I wouldn’t even have known he was there otherwise. Kid moves like a ghost.

Jules glances at Will. “What? What did he say?”

“That he’s over two hundred years old,” I answer. I lean back against the fireplace. Look up at the ceiling, with its network of lines sketching out the Greek figures. I recognize Andromeda, Cygnus, someone who I think is Capricorn but looks like a minotaur. That gets me to thinking about the Theseus myth, young people being thrown into a labyrinth to feed a monster. But if they wanted to re-enact that one they got the numbers wrong: there are supposed to be seven of us. And Dorf didn’t sound like he wanted us to be food for that thing. He sounded like we were ruining his plans.

I sigh, still staring up at the ceiling. If this were a proper indie movie moment, I’d be doing my stargazing next to a spray-painted van, while on a road trip across Montana. I’d have guitar and a big old happy dog. I’d stare up at the endless night sky and feel small or something. Since this is my actual life, I’m looking at stipples of white paint on a ceiling and I’m thinking about being eaten alive by something called the butterfly man.

I ease my pant leg back over the cut. Glance up at Will. “Did you find anything?”

“No other doors out,” he says. “Lots of books on philosophy. And the chimney’s blocked about six feet up. And a clock.”

He hands me a little brass wind-up on two miniature clawed feet. It’s awesome looking, like it could run away giggling and ringing furiously every time you really didn’t want to wake up in the morning. I start winding it.

Perdu has turned his back on us again, crouching, mashing himself into the corner. He’s singing softly, under his breath:

Four blind mice, oh, four blind mice.

See how they run, oh, see how they run.

They all ran after the farmer’s wife,

Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,

Did you ever see such a sight in your life, oh

As four. . . . blind. . . . mice.

“Nursery rhyme,” I say. “English. Seventeenth century, I think. But he’s singing it in French, and he’s messed up the words.”

Lilly stares at me, impressed, like I just discovered string theory or something. Perdu glances up at us.

“Dance around the edge of the pond and you’ll fall in,” he says, soft and urgent, like he’s telling us a secret. “But if you leap in the middle, all will be well. You will still get wet, but you chose to, then, don’t you see? It is your own fault.”

“Okay, Perdu. You could just come out and say it: ‘I’m not going to tell you anything helpful, because either I want you to die, or I’m just really clueless.’”

I stand abruptly and walk quietly over the furs. Someone follows after me and I think it’s Perdu for a second, but it’s Will.

He doesn’t say anything. Just walks with me down the library. We stop in front of the doors.

I gaze up at the furniture mountain, ears straining to pick up any blip of sound on the other side. The whirring is gone. Every scratch, creak, whisper, hum noise is gone. A solid white silence is crushing against the library doors, so complete it’s like the hallway and the Sistine Room and all the other rooms have vanished. I imagine opening the doors and finding nothingness. Blank space. A vacuum, the library floating like a shoe box in the void.

“It’s so quiet,” I say.

He nods. We’re breathing in unison. An itch starts crawling up my arms like a million tiny insect feet. I have the overwhelming urge to shove down the furniture, open the doors, run.

“What if this is our chance?” I say. “We’re sitting ducks in here. What if we should be running?”

“We’ll be okay,” Will says, and rolls his shoulders.

Deep, Will. Logically well-founded. A layered argument.

We head back to the others.



Jules hands me some grapes. He’s got his colorful shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and is rubbing his arm furiously, except you can’t really tell because he has an actual ink sleeve under the cloth one: a Cheshire cat and abstract flowers and the words “Plague of Monkey Lice” in Mandarin on his wrist. I bet they told him it meant “‘Good Luck and Fortune.’”

I swallow the grapes. They taste like ash, dry and bitter. It looks like everyone’s getting ready to sleep. I wonder how long we were out in the glass cube room. I wonder if it’s nighttime up on the surface.

“There’s another pillow here if you want it,” Lilly says, apparently taking pity on my Spartan sleeping arrangements. I take it and nod at her, which she can interpret as thanks if she wants to.

She nods back. She’s curled up on a wing chair, wrapped in a carpet like a Bedouin lady. Before I went to check the door, she’d been wearing a fluffy fur sewn from the pelts of a thousand small and adorable animals. I guess Jules explained that to her, though, because she dragged it all the way to the other side of the library and pushed it under a table as a form of protest.

I pick up the clock Will brought and look at it. “One hour gone, seven to go.” I flick my head in the direction of Perdu. Watch him, I mouth. “Every two hours we’ll switch, okay? The first one will probably be the easiest, since you won’t have to wake up. Who wants it?”