The Book of Lost Things(69)

David knelt down and took a deep breath, then pushed hard against the armor. To his surprise, the knight’s remains moved quite easily. True, the armor was heavy, but not as heavy as it should have been with the body of a man inside it. Once he had managed to turn the knight over, David could see the sign of an eagle on his breastplate, a snake writhing in its talons. He rapped upon the armor with the knuckles of his right hand. The sound echoed within; it was like tapping on an empty can. It seemed that the suit of armor was empty.

But, no, that was not the case, for David both heard and felt something move as he rolled the armor, and when he examined the hole at the top, where the head had been separated from the body, he saw bone and skin within. The top of the spinal column was white where the head had been severed from the body, but even here there was no blood. Somehow, the knight’s remains had been reduced to a husk inside the armor, rotting away to almost nothing so quickly that the flower he’d worn, perhaps for luck, had not yet had time to die.

David considered fleeing the fortress, but he knew that even if he tried to do so, the thorns would not part for him. This was a place to be entered but not to be left, and despite his doubts, he had heard, once again, his mother’s voice calling to him. If she was truly here, then he could not abandon her now.

David stepped over the fallen knight and entered the tower. A set of stone stairs wound upward in a spiral. He listened intently but could hear no sound from above. He wanted to call his mother’s name, or to cry out for Roland, but he was afraid of alerting the presence in the tower to his approach. Perhaps, though, whatever waited in the tower already knew that he was in the fortress and had parted the thorns to enable him to pass through. Still, it seemed wiser to be quiet than to be noisy, and so he did not speak. He recalled the figure that had passed across the lighted window, and the tale of the enchantress who kept a woman in thrall, dooming her to an eternal, ageless sleep in a chamber of treasures unless she could be awakened by a kiss. Could that woman be his mother? The answer lay above.

He drew his sword and started to climb. There were small, narrow windows every ten steps, and these allowed a little light to filter into the tower, enabling David to see where he was going. He counted a dozen such windows before he reached the stone floor at the top of the tower. A hallway stretched before him, with open doorways on either side. From outside, the tower appeared to be twenty or thirty feet wide, but the corridor in front of him was so long that the end of it was lost in shadow. It must have been hundreds of feet in length, lit by flaming torches set into the walls, yet somehow it was contained within a tower only a fraction of that size.

David walked slowly down the hallway, glancing into each room as he did so. Some were bedrooms, opulently furnished with enormous beds and velvet drapes. Others contained couches and chairs. One housed a grand piano and nothing else. The walls of another were decorated with hundreds of similar versions of one painting: a picture of two male children, identical twins, with a painting of themselves in the background that was an exact replica of the picture they occupied, so that they stared out at infinite versions of themselves.

Halfway down the hall was a vast dining room, dominated by a huge oak table with one hundred chairs around it. Candles were lit along its length, and their light shone upon a great feast: there were roast turkeys and geese and ducks, and a huge pig with an apple in its mouth as the centerpiece. There were platters of fish and cold meats, and vegetables steamed in big pots. It all smelled so wonderful that David was drawn into the room, unable to resist the urgings of his growling stomach. Someone had started carving one of the turkeys, for its leg had been removed and slivers of white meat had been cut from its breast and now lay, tender and moist, upon a plate. David picked up one of the pieces and was about to take a great bite from it when he saw an insect crawling across the table. It was a large red ant, and it was making its way toward a fragment of skin that had fallen from the turkey. It clasped the crisp, brown morsel in its jaws and prepared to carry it away, but suddenly it seemed to totter on its feet, as though its burden was heavier than it had expected. It dropped the skin, wobbled a little more, then ceased moving entirely. David poked at it with his finger, but the insect did not respond. It was dead.

David dropped his piece of turkey on the table and quickly wiped his fingers clean. Now that he looked more closely, he could see that the table was littered with the remains of dead insects. The corpses of flies and beetles and ants dotted the wood and the plates, all poisoned by whatever was contained in the food. David backed away from the table and returned to the hallway, his appetite entirely gone.

But if the dining room disgusted him, the next room into which he looked was more troubling still. It was his bedroom in Rose’s house, perfectly re-created down to the books upon the shelves, although neater than David’s room had ever been. The bed was made, but the pillows and sheets were slightly yellowed and covered in a thin layer of dust. There was dust on the shelves as well, and when David stepped inside, he left footprints on the floor. Ahead of him was the window facing onto the garden. It was open, and noises could be heard from outside, the sounds of laughter and singing. He walked over to the glass and looked out. In the garden below, three people were dancing in a circle: David’s father, Rose, and a boy whom David did not recognize but whom he knew instantly to be Georgie. Georgie was older now, perhaps four or five, but still a chubby child. He was smiling widely as his parents danced with him, his father holding his right hand and Rose his left, the sun shining down upon them from a perfect blue sky.