Edmund goes to Tom. He stares at him with whitened eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so tired of this, \u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d says Tom. His face twitches, once, twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am so tired of wanting to eat people,\u201d Edmund says, \u201cAnd you are the House of Dreams. Help me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no help for you,\u201d says Tom. \u201cThis is<\/em> you, Edmund. This is who you really are.\u201d<\/p>\n He is pinned against the wall. Edmund is holding him there casually.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t me,\u201d says Edmund. His face twitches. \u201cThis is how your hat saw me. This isn\u2019t even all <\/em>of how your hat saw me. This is one strand<\/em> of how it saw me; one piece of me, one moment of me, one perspective; and you took your hat and you made me something to be afraid of, because I trusted you unwisely, unaware of the treachery of meat and hats.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d manages Tom.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you really think I wouldn\u2019t notice?\u201d says Edmund. \u201cDo you really think I\u2019d look back on my past and look at my present and think, \u2018wow, what an amazing refinement to my Edmund Gulley?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Tom makes Tom-wroth gestures of his neck to indicate that Edmund should put him down.<\/p>\n Finally, Edmund does.<\/p>\n Tom smoothes himself down like a ruffled cat.<\/p>\n \u201cI worried,\u201d says Tom. \u201cI worried that you\u2019d turn into this. Of course I did. But I said to myself, \u2018you know, Tom, you don\u2019t have to be afraid of your old friend Edmund just because some people think his existence is evil.\u2019 So I offered you my hat.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmund\u2019s teeth grit. \u201cI did not ask for inspiring speeches or a guilt trip,\u201d he says. \u201cI asked you to change me.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you think,\u201d says Tom, \u201cThat my friend would start eating people<\/em> and I would . . . wait for his permission before I turned him back? I\u2019ve looked into it<\/em>, Ed.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmund makes a disdainful noise. \u201cYou can fix me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course I can fix you,\u201d says Tom. \u201cI can strap you to a gurney and put bolts in your head and you can stagger around like some overmedicated puppy drooling and pissing and yapping at the trees. I can paint your eyes red and make you a star athlete while I twiddle the remote control that sends signals up and down your spine. But I can\u2019t \u2014 it turns out that I don\u2019t even know what \u2018fixing\u2019 a person would mean.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cShatter me,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cTake the one thing that I am and shatter me. I cannot do it. I am a knife that can only cut outwards. But you can shatter me. <\/em>Or make me that which can free Fenris, but without the hunger for flesh. Or \u2014 anything. Make me anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDid you know,\u201d says Tom, his voice rasping like there\u2019s a dead mouse in his throat \u2014<\/p>\n There isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n I mean, I wanted to clarify that. There\u2019s not an actual mouse there. There could be, because he\u2019s Tom, but there isn\u2019t<\/em> \u2014<\/p>\n \u201cDid you know that when we chain things up, we call them hungers. And when we let them go, we call them dreams?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d says Edmund. \u201cThat is nonsensical.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t fix you, Ed,\u201d says Tom. \u201cI can\u2019t help you. I can barely keep trusting you. To fix you \u2014 I think I\u2019d have to be God.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Edmund stares at him for a while. Edmund\u2019s right eye twitches. Then he turns aside.<\/p>\n \u201cBe God, then,\u201d says Edmund, and he hunches his shoulders, and he walks away.<\/p>\n \u201cHaha,\u201d laughs Tom. \u201cHahaha.\u201d<\/p>\n It trails off.<\/p>\n He closes his eyes.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t weep.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Edmund goes to Tom. He stares at him with whitened eyes. \u201cI\u2019m so tired of this, \u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d says Tom. His face twitches, once, twice. \u201cI am so tired of wanting to eat people,\u201d Edmund says, \u201cAnd you are the House of Dreams. Help me.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s no help for you,\u201d says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-4","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Hat_1_blankbg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607","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=5607"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6075,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions\/6075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5607"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}