For a while Linus\u2019 presence makes Edmund happy; but that happiness frays from him over time.<\/p>\n
Each time Edmund sees the nithrid he is reminded of the blood.<\/p>\n
Each time he sees \u2014 practically anybody that isn\u2019t Linus \u2014 he\u2019s reminded of the fact that eating people is considered contrary to the cornerstone principles of decorum, even at the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth. And yet he\u2019d like to. He really . . . kind of . . . would.<\/p>\n
Each time he goes to bed, in his furless bed, in his bed that does not breathe, that is not warm, or, well, not warmer than a normal bed, at any rate, he is reminded that he is alone and far from his wolf, for all that the wolf is in his blood, is in his bones, is something that trickles through him every moment when he breathes.<\/p>\n
He can\u2019t take it any longer.<\/p>\n
He begins to brood. He begins to listen to Linus\u2019 poetry and it speaks<\/i> to him. He begins to wander aimlessly through the foggy nights.<\/p>\n
He goes to that promontory of the hat cemetery that curls through Brentwood to the edge of the Lethal Magnet School and he climbs up and he throws down his hat as an offering, stomps it thrice, and lopes up to sit on a high peak of dead, abandoned hats and sulk.<\/p>\n
Much to his surprise, he is not alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh,\u201d says Tom.<\/p>\n
He looks Edmund up and down. He tilts his head to one side.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy do dwarves have to tie up everything good and marvelous in chains that hurt them?\u201d Edmund says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is<\/i> a mystery,\u201d agrees Tom.<\/p>\n
He looks up at the sky. His eyes glint with dream-light. One day some child on a distant world will look back down at their sky; will catch a glimpse of Thomas\u2019 dream-wroth; and its alien heart will move.<\/p>\n
That is countless millennia from now.<\/p>\n
That is not today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d say,\u201d says Tom, \u201cthat when we encounter an alien purpose, a thing that moves but not in the way that we expect it to move, that has a dream that is its<\/i> dream and not our<\/i> dream, that it is natural to want to tame it to our own ideas. To simplify<\/i> it, to bind it down into that which aligns with ourselves, and that which is our enemy, so that there is no expression of its being that is not in those terms that are our own.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat isn\u2019t an answer,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n
\u201cHm,\u201d says Tom.<\/p>\n
He takes down his hat. He holds it in his hands. He plays with the rim of it. \u201cSometimes I think I am my own worst enemy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d says Edmund. He looks at his hands. Sometimes he wants to bite his fingers off, gently, chew them, swallow them, feel the warmth of Edmund in his gut. Sometimes he wants to bite off his own head. He gets so hungry.<\/p>\n
Then he does a double-take, because the hat\u2019s come off.<\/p>\n
\u201cTom?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cHuh?\u201d says Tom. He waves a hand vaguely. \u201cYes. That is my name. Thomas the First, if you like, or Tom Friedman. I am the head boy of the House of Dreams \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDude,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if you are torn,\u201d says Tom. \u201cIf you are at war within yourself, or unfocused; if you are given to two destinies, or to no destiny at all \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
It percolates, like svart-drink flowing through the ill-named and ill-omened coffee-makers of the House of Dreams. He realizes.<\/p>\n
\u201cEdmund?\u201d<\/p>\n
He is crying. Why is he crying? He can\u2019t imagine it. He\u2019s Thomas I, of the House of Dreams. He is basically a god. Also, a science adventurer. But he can\u2019t help it. He is laughing and he is crying.<\/p>\n
\u201cLinus is here too, man,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cOh, God. This is so awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLinus?\u201d says Tom. \u201cLinus? <\/i>I looked<\/i>, man. I thought the Devil\u2019d taken him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was being shuffled through a series of increasingly baroque and terrifying foster homes, as is traditional in our beloved, post-cisorian twenty-first century England, Tom! But now, he\u2019s here!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow is he?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s great,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cHe\u2019s great. He is sneaking into a nunnery even as we speak.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom squints at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine,\u201d says Edmund, \u201cit\u2019s a school trip to Leominster. But it totally counts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom laughs.<\/p>\n
After a while, he wipes his eyes. He blows his nose. He smiles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He flops down on the hill. He leans back. He looks up at the stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow,\u201d Edmund agrees. \u201cYou\u2019d think there\u2019d be some kind of spiritual radiation that\u2019d keep him out, but apparently that\u2019s only if he forgets to bring his chicken blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh,\u201d sighs Tom, reminiscing.<\/p>\n
After a while he says, \u201cI was going to offer you my hat. Why was I going to offer you my hat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI \u2014 don\u2019t know?\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were dwarves,\u201d says Tom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were saying something about dwarves and rot. Only, I wasn\u2019t paying the least bit of attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were conversing!\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom smiles apologetically. \u201cThat\u2019s my marvelous auto-conversation ability,\u201d he says. \u201cI was totally thinking about dead mice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHa,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n
He leans back too. He sketches in the sky with a finger. It doesn\u2019t take, although maybe \u2014 after all his lessons \u2014 there\u2019s a little tiny bit of violet light that follows it. Maybe. It\u2019s ambiguous.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you always give your hat to people when you start thinking about mice?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly you, Ed. Only you. Seriously, what\u2019s up?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a girl,\u201d Edmund says.<\/p>\n
\u201cO ho<\/i>,\u201d says Tom. \u201cYou sly dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat? No!\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom giggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry,\u201d he says. \u201cI have just always wanted to call you a sly dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmund cracks up. Then he tells Tom, \u201cThat is by no means funny, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a wolf bound through me and in me,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cI want to eat you. I mean, right now. I mean, the kind of eating that leaves you dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSup dog,\u201d Tom offers.<\/p>\n
Edmund winces.<\/p>\n
\u201cTom,\u201d he says. \u201cSeriously.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom sticks his tongue out. \u201cYou cannot eat me, Edmund. I am a science adventurer. I would just subdue you \u2014 with science! Besides, your girl is unlikely to approve. She would look at you and the slaver and the bits of Tom you have on your mouth and say, \u2018Eek! You cannibal! This relationship is over!\u2019 I trust you to avoid such eventualities as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBah,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cI\u2019ll just tell her I was saving the world from ophidian planet-inheritors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom\u2019s smile flickers. It goes out. Then it comes back on a bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe isn\u2019t really a girlfriend, anyway,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cShe isn\u2019t into that kind of thing. She\u2019s more of a \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
He waves his hand around.<\/p>\n
\u201cCandidate Doom Team member, if you know what I mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI do want to free them,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cI want to let them go.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019s sitting up now. He\u2019s grinding his fingers in the hats. He\u2019s trying to find something, some way, to let his emotions out, but there\u2019s nothing, he can\u2019t, there isn\u2019t, all he can do is vigorously massage dead hats.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re so hurt,\u201d Edmund says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want,\u201d says Tom, \u201cI can give you something \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah?\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom has stopped. He is silent for a while. \u201cPardon. I am just wondering if my marvelous auto-conversation ability has led me out onto a conversational branch which, now that I am paying attention to it, I should retreat from. This is a transparently bad idea. But \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut?\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom smiles. \u201cBut it is through exhaustive implementation of our bad ideas that we discover at last the good ones. If you want to let \u2018them\u2019 go. If you want to become something that can let them go. Wolves that eat the world. Whatever? I can help you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReally,\u201d says Edmund flatly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t predict what\u2019ll happen,\u201d says Tom. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s not even really who you are, you know? Maybe deep down you\u2019re not a wolf-boy but a proper science adventurer. Or even some kind of holy saint! But \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
He shakes his head, vigorously.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter. I can give you purpose, Ed. And I can make you more.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cYou can help me,\u201d says Edmund. He licks his lips. He looks at Tom and his eyes catch the light of the drifting moon. \u201cYou can help me free Fenris?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t you supposed to do that anyway?\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmund\u2019s voice has gone to begging: \u201cCan you help me?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
In his head is the memory of the nithrid breathing, and the blood dripping from her mouth, and his conception of the spikes; and Fenris\u2019 horrid wounds \u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d says Tom.<\/p>\n
Tom tosses him the hat.<\/p>\n
Edmund looks it over. He turns it upside down and right-side up. Then, with a shrug, he puts it on.<\/p>\n
He flails backwards.<\/p>\n
Edmund seizes there magnificently upon that hill of hats; he flutters like a kite in a gale-wind. He tries to tear the hat from his head; he screams; his eyes roll back and his hands twitch and his fingernails sharpen and grow long.<\/p>\n
It is pounding through him. He cannot think.<\/p>\n
His mind keeps glancing off of the walls of the hat\u2019s structure in him like a dazed man staggering into walls of polished marble, granite, slate. They are slick, the eyes of his mind are confounded, he cannot focus on the things that obstruct his thoughts because no sooner does he see them than his attention chases its own reflection in great slick streams into his hidden thoughts. His mind bruises itself from within; flails; he tastes bird\u2019s spit, four simian arms, and what he can only imagine to be the torment of the willing, the clanking footfalls of some cat, the bearing witness to the wrongness, and the perseverance of hope.<\/p>\n
Hope tastes, in case you\u2019ve ever wondered, like a hat.<\/p>\n
Lacerations spread around Edmund\u2019s four limbs. He is cut, he is scarred, he is ripped and mended in a moment. Chalk-white flecks, pale veining, and bits of silver spread from the whites of his eyes into the iris and the black.<\/p>\n
The white wolf-gold that is wound through him and around him is pulled shockingly straight and tight against his soul; it is snapped out from both directions like a cord pulled suddenly into a knot; his own soul frays. The hunger in him explodes; it alloys with him, within him, and through him, until there is no part of him that is not whole and sound and rife with the hunger\u2019s rancid touch.<\/p>\n
He is made starved in a world of chains.<\/p>\n
The kether-hat floats from his head and he scrambles in the graveyard until he finds a hat of pale white to match his soul.<\/p>\n
He rests there, for a moment, on his hands and knees in the hat cemetery. His head hangs low with its white cap on.<\/p>\n
Tom picks up his hat. He stares at Edmund thoughtfully.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d hoped you\u2019d be in Dreams,\u201d he says. \u201cBut Dreams wears a night-hat. What are you? What name is given to your House?\u201d<\/p>\n
An intuition moves in him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHunger?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTom,\u201d says Edmund. His voice is weak.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you do me a favor, Tom? Please?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything,\u201d Tom says.<\/p>\n
He tries to take in a sharp breath of pain and stops. Edmund\u2019s hand is in Tom\u2019s lungs. It\u2019s pulling out a handful of . . . stuff. Edmund\u2019s shoving Tom down onto the hats. Tom\u2019s heart beats rapidly. He can\u2019t think. He can\u2019t breathe. He is drowning in the stench of hats.<\/p>\n
His body is heavy.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan I kill and eat you, Tom?\u201d Edmund clarifies, just in case Tom will live long enough to confirm or retract his broadly stated answer. Edmund slurps the bite from his hand, drops onto Tom, and prepares to rip out Tom\u2019s neck with a snap of his jaws.<\/p>\n
A dream-wroth falls onto Tom instead.<\/p>\n
Tom ducks aside. He rolls. He staggers.<\/p>\n
He shudders out a mental command to his robot bees. They swarm out from their hiding places in Tom\u2019s backpack and the little nest in his hat. As Tom holds the crowning hat to his head and rolls away, the bees pour over Edmund and distract him from his prey.<\/p>\n
Black blindness threatens to drown Tom\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n
He digs an ampule out of his pants pocket. Edmund is snarling, screaming. Tom jams the ampule into his own arm.<\/p>\n
He watches Edmund clawing at the bees, then runs.<\/p>\n
Ten seconds. He guesses that he has ten seconds; and \u2014<\/p>\n
The bees are gone. His life is gone. He is \u2014<\/p>\n
Tom glances back.<\/p>\n
Edmund\u2019s head is moving like a squirrel or dog preparing for a jump. Tom charts things. He sees a hope. He moves, he runs, his head is down, he can\u2019t breathe any more, his heart is stopping \u2014<\/p>\n
Edmund leaps. He lands a foot from Tom, intending to press his attack, but he doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
He is standing, to his surprise, on a patch of quickfelt, the most hazardous of haberbogs, an Edmund-devouring morass of hypersaturated hats.<\/p>\n
He sinks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m dead,\u201d whispers Tom. \u201cI\u2019m dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is still walking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should be dead by now.\u201d<\/p>\n
He cannot understand how<\/i> he is still walking. Science cannot explain it. This makes him weep and then go into denial.<\/p>\n
He is alive not because of the ampule, or because of some hardiness in his body, but because of an alien vitality. It pours down into him from the sky; from the world; from the crown of his wicked hat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a while Linus\u2019 presence makes Edmund happy; but that happiness frays from him over time. Each time Edmund sees the nithrid he is reminded of the blood. Each time he sees \u2014 practically anybody that isn\u2019t Linus \u2014 he\u2019s reminded of the fact that eating people is considered contrary to the cornerstone principles of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-4982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter-1","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Lightning_Amidst_the_Hats.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4982"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6178,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4982\/revisions\/6178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4982"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=4982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}