Cruel Zinc Melodies

94

I was in my own bed. My head felt pleasantly empty. The Dead Man had flushed me out while I slept. My legs still hurt bad.

Ti

The Dead Man touched me. The world and I matched speeds.

Ti

I made a noise. Hoping it was good enough. Hoping she wouldn’t demand explanations. I couldn’t manage that. Nor did I remember what I had to excuse.

Turn off your You. Stop being Garrett. Some things are best left untold. Some explanations, however true and sincere,are inadequate.

In simpler words, keep your big damned mouth shut.

I had only one foot in the real world but had no difficulty grasping the wisdom there. And for once was able to keep it shut.

Over the next half hour every member of the household wished me well, asked if there was anything they could do, then left looking worried. Even Melondie Kadare made a drunken buzz-through, accompanied by several more serious pixies. They made up an a

Oh, joy. The pixies were out of hibernation.

So. Winter was over.

‘‘I spent a night in Elf Hill,’’ I told Ti

Only Old Bones understood. Only he knew what I’d gone through. He promised he’d let me know what that had been, too.

He knew what happened after the dancing stopped.

You saved the city. You and your ghost woman. The dragon . . . the entity . . . did not go back to sleep, however. It is much too excited to sleep now that it knows there may be others like it. I sensed uncertainty. What might even be fear.It knows there is a world outside itself now. Which it understands only through two minds and two souls, one of them a woman murdered long ago and the other a . . . a you.

That didn’t sound so bad to me.

You became immortal that night.

‘‘Just a hero thing.’’

Desist. This is serious. And you are not going to be pleased.

That was his ‘‘Dire news ahead!’’ tone. I shut up.

Your ghostly friend warned you that you would not like the price. You thought that might mean losing the essence that lived on in her portrait. And you were correct. But the entity did not just take Eleanor. It took you, too.

I was too worn down to argue or question. But it sounded like he was full of something.

The thing couldn’t have taken me very far. Here I was, right here.

There is a copy of you, of the Garrett inside the flesh, identical to a percentage point so remote that it would be a waste of good numbers to state it. That Garrett will live on inside the entity forever. With Eleanor. Quite possibly never understanding that it is both a copy and the template by which the entity builds its new worldview and responds to the outside that it has just discovered.

No one else knows this. Nor ever will, so long as you control your tongue.

He then fed back selections of what he had harvested from my head once Singe and Saucerhead dragged me home.

My ratgirl had been the only one to figure out where to find me. Maybe because I hadn’t told anyone else where I was going.

Ti

‘‘That problem has been handled.’’

‘‘You locked Rose in a cage?’’

‘‘Not Rose. Though she did do the hands-on. My uncle Archer came up with the idea. Rose is too lazy. The cage is reserved for Kyra. That girl is going to embarrass us all if she doesn’t show a little more sense.’’

‘‘Turning into one of the fuddy-duddies, are we?’’ I’d once heard her departed uncle Lester make a similar observation about her.

‘‘Gaining wisdom. Try it sometime.’’

‘‘I got wisdom coming out my ears.’’

‘‘That’s hair.’’

‘‘And if I don’t, you’ll make every effort to encourage me.’’

She eyed me suspiciously, then backed down, smelling a trap.

She’d heard a lot of male thoughts about the futility of trying to reform men. Mostly not from me. Being a selfish weasel, I try not to say things likely to put barriers in the way of my ambitions.

Being a slick weasel her very own self, Ti

I will stipulate that, even after all this time, she might not have a fixed strategy. A glance round her circle of acquaintances wouldn’t betray any glittering example to emulate. The most successful couple either of us knows is Winger and the Remora.

I changed the subject. ‘‘If you hang around I’ll put you to work. Chuckles already has Singe shackled, scribing for him.’’ My formal penmanship leaves room for improvement. And I needed a final, formal report, full of final, formal recommendations and some creative bullshit to baffle Max and Manvil about the end of the dragon threat.

That should be an easy sell once you explain the dragon’s . . . the entity’s . . . willingness to assist with the elimination of waste from the World.

‘‘What?’’

So much that you do not remember. Look. It lives off rotting organic matter locked in the silt and organic matter that filters down from the river. It wants to grow now, in order to reach out to its brothers. It will be thrilled to take waste matter direct, through the tu