Skip ahead a bit.<\/p>\n
Edmund wakes up. Edmund yawns. Edmund stretches. Edmund wanders off to eat Sid, because he\u2019s hungry.<\/p>\n
The little wimp from the House of Torment, Edmund discovers, has got a gun.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty amusing. Edmund stares at Sid\u2019s face. He looks down at the gun\u2019s barrel. He looks back up. He doesn\u2019t laugh, because his heart is in a stone box in his pocket, but he can\u2019t help giving the other boy a little smile.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s Edmund, <\/em>of the House of Hunger. He isn\u2019t frightened of a gun<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a death ray,\u201d says Sid.<\/p>\n Edmund steps casually forward.<\/p>\n \u201cTom made it,\u201d Sid explains.<\/p>\n Edmund stops. He hesitates. He squints.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve eaten death rays,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cTom <\/em>made it,\u201d Sid says again.<\/p>\n Edmund sighs. He leans against the doorframe of Sid\u2019s room. He stretches up his arm. \u201cYou can\u2019t possibly \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n He stops. He shudders all over. There is a spider crawling on his arm. Apparently it was living on the top of Sid\u2019s doorframe. He tries not to freak out and wave his arm around. His heart is in a box of stone. He has eaten people. He is bound to a giant wolf.<\/p>\n Just barely, he manages not to freak.<\/p>\n He lowers his arm. He shakes the spider gently off onto the floor. He lifts his arm back up again, but not all the way.<\/p>\n \u201cMathilda,\u201d says Sid sternly to the spider. He leans forward. He picks up the spider with his free hand. He shudders all over, twice. He closes his eyes. There\u2019s a perfect moment there for Edmund to attack him, but when the moment ends, Edmund hasn\u2019t, yet.<\/p>\n \u201cI hate spiders so much,\u201d confesses Sid.<\/p>\n There are little red marks all along his arm where he\u2019s been pulling out his hairs. It\u2019s like the spider is crawling up a stucco road.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t possibly want to stay like this,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d says Sid. \u201cBut I\u2019ve got to, don\u2019t I?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d says Edmund.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s necessary that there be a sacrifice,\u201d Sid says. \u201cThe hat said.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor what?\u201d<\/p>\n Sid waves his gun around. \u201cFor the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmund\u2019s eyes narrow.<\/p>\n \u201cSee,\u201d says Sid, \u201cthere\u2019s a \u2014 there\u2019s a weight, you know? Ever since God, or whomever, died. There\u2019s all this chaos and strangeness pressing in on things. There\u2019s all this madness. And if it doesn\u2019t have a place to drain into, if it doesn\u2019t have someone to hurt,<\/em> then it pops through and breaks everything and it frees the wolf<\/span> . . .\u201d<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t make it through the last word. Right or wrong, he doesn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just the way the cookies crumble.<\/p>\n Edmund is moving. The death ray is firing. Edmund knocks the beam aside one-handed and he leaps on Sid.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t actually work, by the way. This is actually called \u201cbeing hit by a death ray, one-handed.\u201d<\/p>\n Only: Death is small.<\/p>\n Death is small, and the wolf is large; and Death may not have Fenris\u2019 Edmund Gulley.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Skip ahead a bit. Edmund wakes up. Edmund yawns. Edmund stretches. Edmund wanders off to eat Sid, because he\u2019s hungry. The little wimp from the House of Torment, Edmund discovers, has got a gun. It\u2019s pretty amusing. Edmund stares at Sid\u2019s face. He looks down at the gun\u2019s barrel. He looks back up. He doesn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter-0-6-occasions-for-some-concern","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Hat_5_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497","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=5497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6106,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5497\/revisions\/6106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5497"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}