The Bone Clocks

MY RIGHT FOOT hits the ground first, but my left one’s gone AWOL, and I’m cartwheeling, my body mapped by local explosions of pain—ankle, knee, elbow —shit, my left ski’s gone, whipped off, vamoosed—ground-woods-sky, ground-woods-sky, ground-woods-sky, a faceful of gravelly snow; dice in a tumbler; apples in a tumble dryer; a grunt, a groan, a plea, a shiiiiiiiiit … Gravity, velocity, and the ground; stopping is going to cost a fortune and the only acceptable currency is pain—

OUCH. WRIST, SHIN, rib, butt, ankle, earlobe … Sore, walloped, sure … but unless I’m too doped on natural painkillers to notice, nothing’s broken. Flat on my back in a crash-mat of snow, pine needles, and mossy, stalky mulch. I sit up. My spine still works. That’s always useful. My watch is still working, and it’s 16:10, just as it should be. Tiny silver needles of birdsong. Can I stand? I have an ache instead of a right buttock; and my coccyx feels staved in by a geologist’s hammer … But, yes, I can stand, which makes this one of my luckiest escapes. I lift my goggles, brush the snow off my jacket, unclip the ski I still have and use it as a staff to hobble uphill, searching for its partner. One minute, two minutes, still no joy. Chetwynd-Pitt will be giving the fluffy snowman a victory punch down in the village just about now. I backtrack, searching through the undergrowth along the side of the piste. There’s no dishonor in taking a fall on a black run—it’s not as if I’m a professional or a ski instructor—but returning to chez Chetwynd-Pitt forty minutes after Fitzsimmons and Qui

Here comes a whooshing sound—another skier—and I stand well back. It’s the French girl from the viewing platform—who else wears mint green this season? She takes the rise as gracefully as I was elephantine, lands like a pro, sees me, takes in what’s happened, straightens up, and stops a few meters away on the far side of the piste. She bends down to retrieve what turns out to be my ski and brings it over to me. I muster my mediocre French: “Merci … Je ne cherchais pas du bon cфtй.”

“Rien de cassй?”

I think she’s asking if I’ve broken anything. “Non. А part ma fiertй, mais bon, зa ne se soigne pas.”

She hasn’t removed her goggles so, apart from a few loose strings of wavy black hair and an unsmiling mouth, my Good Samaritaness’s face stays unseen. “Tu en as eu, de la veine.”

I’m a jammy bugger? “Tu peux …” “Bloody well say that again,” I’d like to say. “C’est vrai.”

“Зa ne rate jamais: chaque a

Jesus, my French is rustier than I thought: “Every year someone breaks their spine and I ought to stick to the blue piste”? Something like that? Whatever it was, she launches herself without a goodbye and she’s gone, swooping through the curves.

BACK AT CHETWYND-PITT’S chalet, floating in the tub, Nirvana’s Nevermindthumping through the walls, I smoke a joint among the steam serpents and peruse the Case of the Body-Hopping Mind for the thousandth time. The facts are deceptively simple: Six nights ago, outside my parents’ home, I encountered one mind in possession of someone else’s body. Weird shit needs theories and I have three.

Theory 1: I hallucinated both the second coming of the Yeti and his secondary proofs, like his footprints and those statements that only Miss Constantin—or I—could have known about.

Theory 2: I am the victim of a stu

Theory 3: Things are exactly as they appear to be, and “mind-walking”—what else to call it?—is a real phenomenon.

The Hallucination Theory: “I don’t feel insane” is a feeble retort, but I really don’t. If I was hallucinating a character so vividly, surely I’d be hallucinating other things too? Like hearing, I don’t know, Sting singing “An Englishman in New York” from inside lightbulbs.

The Complex Hoax Theory: “Why me?” Some people may hold a grudge against Marcus Anyder, if certain fictions were known. But why seek revenge via some wacky plot to loosen my grip on sanity? Why not just kick the living shit out of me?

The Mind-walking Theory: Plausible, ifyou live in a fantasy novel. Here, in the real world, souls stay inside the body. The paranormal is always, alwaysa hoax.

Water drops go plink, plink, plinkfrom the tap. My palms and fingers are pink and wrinkly. Someone’s thumping upstairs.

So what do I do about Immaculйe Constantin, the Yeti, and the weird shit? The only possible answer is “Nothing, for now.” Perhaps I’ll be served another slice tonight, or perhaps it’s waiting for me back in London or Cambridge, or perhaps this will just be one of life’s dangly plot lines that one never revisits. “Hugo?” It’s Olly Qui

“Yes, the last time I checked,” I shout, over Kurt Cobain.

“Rufus says we should get going before Le Croc fills up.”

“You three go on ahead and get a table. I’ll be along soon.”

LE CROC—A.K.A. LE Croc of Shit to its regulars—is a badger’s set of a drinking hole down an alley off the three-sided plaza in Sainte-Agnиs. Gьnter, the owner, gives me a mock salute and points to the Eagle’s Nest—a tiny mezzanine cubbyhole occupied by my three fellow Richmondians. It’s gone ten, the place is chocka, and Gьnter’s two saiso