In the week following that fateful tear in the trust between them, Harllo had come to believe that he was once more truly alone in the world. Wounds scabbed over and scabs fell away to reveal faint scars that soon faded almost out of exis shy;tence, and the boy worked on, crawling into fissures, scratching his way along fetid, gritty cracks in the deep rock. Choking at times on bad air, stung by blind centipedes and nipped by translucent spiders. Bruised by shifting stones, his eyes wide in the darkness as he searched out the glitter of ore on canted, close walls.
At week’s end, however, Bainisk was with him once more, passing him a jug of silty lakewater as he backed out of a fissure and sat down on the warm, dry stone of the tunnel floor, and in this brief shared moment the tear slowly began to heal, reknitted in the evasiveness of their eyes that would not yet lock on to the reality of their sitting side by side — far beneath the world’s surface, two beating hearts that echoed naught but each other — and this was how young boys made amends. Without words, with spare gestures that, in their rarity, acquired all the necessary significance. When Harllo was done drinking he passed back the jug.
‘Venaz is on me all the time now,’ Bainisk said. ‘I tried it, with him again, I mean. But it’s not the same. We’re both too old for what we had, once. All he ever talks about is stuff that bores me.’
‘He just likes hurting people.’
Bainisk nodded. ‘I think he wants to take over my job. He argued over every or shy;der I gave him.’
‘People like him always want to take over,’ Harllo said. ‘And most times when other people see it they back off and let them. That’s what I don’t get, Bainisk. It’s the scariest thing of all.’
That last admission was uncommon between boys. The notion of being fright shy;ened. But theirs was not a normal world, and to pretend that there was nothing to fear was not among the few privileges they entertained. Out here, people didn’t need reasons to hurt someone. They didn’t need reasons for doing anything.
‘Tell me about the city again, Mole.’
There’s a haunted tower. My uncle took me to see it once. He has big hands, so big that when he holds yours it’s like your hand disappears and there’s nothing in the world could pull you apart. Anyway, there’s a ghost in that tower. Named Hinter.’
Bainisk set on him wide eyes. ‘Did you see it? Did you see that ghost?’
‘No, it was daytime. They’re hard to see in daytime.’
‘It’s dark enough down here,’ Bainisk said, looking round. ‘But I ain’t never seen a ghost.’
Harllo thought to tell him, then. It had been his reason for bringing up the story in the first place, but he found himself holding back yet again. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because the skeleton wasn’t a true ghost. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘the dead don’t go away. I mean, sometimes, they die but the soul doesn’t, er, leave the body. It stays where it is, where it always was.’
‘Was this Hinter like that?’
‘No, he was a real ghost. A spirit with no body.’
‘So what makes ghosts of some people but not others?’
Harllo shrugged. ‘Don’t know, Bainisk. Maybe spirits with a reason to stay are the ones that become ghosts. Maybe the Lord of Death doesn’t want them, or lets them be so they can maybe finish doing what they need to do. Maybe they don’t realize they’re dead.’ He shrugged again. ‘That’s what my uncle said. He didn’t know either, and not knowing made him mad — I could tell by the way he held my hand tighter.’
‘He got mad at a ghost?’
‘Could be. That’s what I figure, anyway. I didn’t say nothing to make him mad, so it must have been the ghost. His not knowing what it wanted or something.’
Harllo could well recall that moment. Like Bainisk, he’d asked lots of questions, amazed that such a thing as a ghost could exist, could be hiding, watching them, thinking all its ghost thoughts. And Gruntle had tried to answer him, though it was obviously a struggle. And when Harllo asked him if maybe his father — who was dead — might be a ghost out there somewhere far away, his uncle had said noth shy;ing. And when he asked if maybe his ghost father was still around because he was looking for his son, then Gruntle’s big hand squeezed tight and then tighter for a breath or two, not enough to actually hurt Harllo, but close. And then the grip soft shy;ened once more, and Gruntle took him off to buy sweets.
He’d probably seen Hinter, looking out through one of the gloomy windows of the tower. He’d probably wanted to tell Hinter to go away and never come back. Like bad fathers did. Because maybe Harllo’s father wasn’t dead at all, since one time his real mother had said something about ‘
But thinking about Gruntle made him sad, so instead he reached for the jug of water again and drank deep.
