There aren\u2019t very many of them.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust three of us,\u201d mutters Saul.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re gathered in a nook under the stairs. They\u2019re trying to figure out a pattern to the newly-hatted students. If there is one, it appears to be: saints are peculiarly rare.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bothers me,\u201d says Saul. He waves his hand at a passing student and prevents them from later getting gout. As an unintended consequence of this outburst of miraculous energy, that student\u2019s grade in English ticks upwards from a C- to a C. \u201cYou\u2019d think that saints would be the most common sort.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReally?\u201d says Peter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell,\u201d says Saul, \u201cfirst, consider that we are disparate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSure,\u201d says Peter.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut more than that, we\u2019re generically perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saul gestures down his front as if to say: I don\u2019t mean to brag, but seriously.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d think more people would be . . . generally well-meaning, wanting to be good, you know, with a kind of diffuse generic impulse towards perfection . . . than dominated by an urge towards science adventuring or cannibalism. I mean, before the hat comes along and refines it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d says Peter, \u201cbut that can\u2019t be what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are not anywhere near that many people with a generic urge towards cannibalism only waiting for a hat to bring it out,\u201d Bethany agrees. \u201cIt\u2019d be . . . I mean, there are a lot of scientists and adventurers in the unaltered population, but hardly any proto-cannibals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMeat-eaters?\u201d ventures Saul.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love a good roast,\u201d says Peter.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t get to Lethal valedictorian by being a vegetarian!\u201d says Bethany.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe some kind of inaccurate kerning engine \u2014\u201d starts Peter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not the point,\u201d says Saul.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d says Bethany. \u201cIt\u2019s not. It\u2019s clearly some other impulse that\u2019s being sublimated into murder and anthropophagous frenzy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLike, the urge to rock a tight outfit,\u201d says Saul.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr collect stamps!\u201d offers Peter.<\/p>\n
\u201cOr both,\u201d Saul suggests.<\/p>\n
Bethany stares out thoughtfully into the hall. \u201cI suspect decorum,\u201d she says, \u201cactually. They are an oddly polite people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saul raises an eyebrow at her. Then he frowns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a disturbing notion,\u201d says Saul. \u201cPropriety is merely anthropophagous frenzy in a different hat?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd when I am blessing people,\u201d says Peter, waving his hand in a generic gesture of blessing out at the hall, \u201cI\u2019m really expressing the pugnacious can-do sensibility of my youth?\u201d<\/p>\n
Under some circumstances Bethany would have answered this; but regrettably, she does not get the chance.<\/p>\n
The generic blessing, spread too widely, precipitates a phenomenon.<\/p>\n
See, even as Peter speaks, there are three members of the House of Hunger coming down the stairs at the other end of the hall. Keen-sighted Bethany has spotted them; Saul feels them coming and is frowning; but neither of them understands their danger in time to warn Peter away.<\/p>\n
There is scarred Sally, with her single eye and her loathsome gait. She\u2019s going to grow up to administer surveys one day, but for right now she\u2019s a cannibalistic beast.<\/p>\n
There is Lucy, the evil prophet of space. She\u2019d really just planned to take a few local classes in prophesy while the Earth was still around and then destroy it, but now she\u2019s got wolf-hunger wound through her and within her and it\u2019s compromised her intentions. She is chewing on the inside of her cheek and trying not to eat through to the outside of it and remembering what it was like when she was focused on playing rock-paper-scissors with legendary rock-paper-scissors opponents and goats and not on killing and eating people.<\/p>\n
Lastly there is Linus.<\/p>\n
Linus didn\u2019t expect to get a white hat. He didn\u2019t expect to get any hat at all. He was just hanging out with Tom, getting really, really drunk in celebration of finding one another again, and it turns out that when Tom is drunk enough he will put a magic hat on the antichrist.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a pretty good party game when you\u2019re really drunk, kind of like pin the tail on the donkey, except that you can only play it once.<\/p>\n
Tom has basically ruined it for the rest of us forever.<\/p>\n
Not even Eldri, who\u2019d made the Ultimate Frisbee robot, who\u2019d made the perfect bingo robot, and even made Navvy Jim <\/i>\u2014<\/p>\n
Even Eldri couldn\u2019t make a robot to play the drunkenly-put-the-magic-hat-on-the-antichrist game now.<\/i><\/p>\n
Or at least, it wouldn\u2019t ever be as good at it as had been Tom.<\/p>\n
Linus\u2019 eyes had paled. He\u2019d fallen over. When he woke, though \u2014<\/p>\n
He\u2019d laughed and laughed.<\/p>\n
He hugged Tom, who\u2019d tried not to look the least bit afraid while frantically feeling around on his belt for an emergency panic button. He hugged the table and his unfinished beer.<\/p>\n
The white dog appeared. The white dog panted.<\/p>\n
Linus hugged the white dog and it licked his face.<\/p>\n
Then Linus\u2019 vision blurred and the white dog was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s so much better,\u201d said Linus. \u201cI used to have an endless empty hollow in my soul. But now it\u2019s like \u2014 it\u2019s where I\u2019m connected to Fenris and to eating people and to the wolf-gold, instead!\u201d<\/p>\n
He was laughing and he was crying and it was an absolute and utter relief to him, an end to pain for him, even though in fact nothing at all had changed.<\/p>\n
Except that he sort of wants to eat Tom like a steak, and maybe the rest of the bar, stools and vodka and all, now; and he can laugh about that with Edmund afterwards \u2014 that\u2019s the good thing, the best thing, the thing that makes it aces, so very, very sweet.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s still a boy with a hollow in him, and it\u2019s still bigger than the world, but now it isn\u2019t part of what holds him apart from the world any longer. It\u2019s not a thing of loneliness <\/i>any longer.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something that brings him and Edmund \u2014 and Lucy and Sally and Bernard and all the rest \u2014 closer, <\/i>instead.<\/p>\n
So he\u2019s walking with Lucy and Sally, and they\u2019re laughing and talking, and there\u2019s a really good chance that they were just going to walk by the saints without even caring about them, only \u2014<\/p>\n
Peter just blessed him, and Linus is, quite frankly, allergic to being blessed.<\/p>\n
He sneezes. Vigorously!<\/p>\n
\u201cBless you,\u201d asides Sally.<\/p>\n
He sneezes. Vigorously!<\/p>\n
\u201cBless you again!\u201d Sally says, even as Lucy chimes in slyly with a blessing.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, God, stop,\u201d says Linus, waving and sneezing, which holy utterance causes his tongue to burst into flames.<\/p>\n
Linus screams. He begins hitting his face with his palms to try to put his tongue out without actually reaching either of his hands inside his mouth. He appears to be playing the Indian in a quick impromptu game of \u201cCowboys & Indians,\u201d except (a) he isn\u2019t, (b) he wouldn\u2019t, (c) nobody plays that any more, (d) hardly anybody played that in England to begin with, and (e) his tongue is on fire and he is the antichrist and a white-hatted theoretical cannibal surrounded by two similarly-anthropophagous beasts that are his peers.<\/p>\n
Finally Linus begins chewing up large portions of the walls to put out the fire in his mouth. He gulps down most of a priceless painting by Michelangelo that was on loan to the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth. Damn it, antichrist!<\/p>\n
\u201cAh,\u201d mutters Linus, sinking to the ground, his belly bloated. \u201cThat\u2019s ever so much better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeter,\u201d says Bethany, disapprovingly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to,\u201d says Peter, setting his jaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you need to give people more specific blessings,\u201d says Saul. \u201cLike, if I point at him and say, \u2018gout, get out!\u2019, well, I don\u2019t think his tongue will catch on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d says Peter. \u201cThat hardly ever happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should avaunt,\u201d Bethany says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have any toothpaste,\u201d says Peter, who has no idea what avaunting is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, we should get out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could probably beat them up,\u201d Peter says, \u201cnon-<\/i>violently.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s go<\/i>,\u201d says Bethany, but it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n
Sally is standing in front of their nook. She is squinting at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you like to be protected from bad weather at sea?\u201d says Peter, because he\u2019s aces at protecting people from bad weather, when they\u2019re at sea.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a long, cold silence.<\/p>\n
Then:<\/p>\n
\u201cActually,\u201d Sally admits, \u201cthat would be kind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There aren\u2019t very many of them. \u201cJust three of us,\u201d mutters Saul. They\u2019re gathered in a nook under the stairs. They\u2019re trying to figure out a pattern to the newly-hatted students. If there is one, it appears to be: saints are peculiarly rare. \u201cThis bothers me,\u201d says Saul. He waves his hand at a passing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-3","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Hat_3a_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5244","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=5244"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6149,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5244\/revisions\/6149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5244"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}