It was for sure a head; there were two bulging eyes, and a ball of a nose; the grinning mouth had once been an open space, the lower lip ran broad and flat like a counter, and the rusted metal plates that filled it were like a mouthful of bad teeth. Only, for a head, it was absurdly, perfectly globular. Standing before it, I had the impression I had seen it before, but even now I can't remember where.
There was a door of metal in the back, rusted as thin as paper, and I broke through it. Inside it was dark and close, with the smell of a place closed for who knew how long, and of small animals that had found a way in; they fled from Brom and me, who took possession. With the door open, I could see what sort of place we had: it had been, of all things, a kitchen. It looked like a miniature of the one in Twenty-eight Flavors. And for what, here, in the middle of nothing, where only Road ran? Maybe the angels had wanted to show they could build one of their kitchens anywhere… A ceiling cut the place in half, at about nose level, and there was a door in it, and by piling up things I clambered up through it. Very dark, but I could make out the curve of the skull, which I stood inside, and the concave eye sockets. After a lot of tripping through ancient mess and new nests, I found a length of something metal, pipe perhaps, and with it I whacked out both great round pupils and let in light.
It took a day or two to pitch out all the ancient junk, and find the floor was sound and the skull leakless. I built a stair for Brom and me to climb up into the skull, and fixed the door in the neck, and made shutters for the eyes, to close at night. I have some skill in ancient ways, you know, and I knew enough to spend some days gathering in what dry grass and other eatables I could for Fido when winter came. (Of course I gathered in too little.) It surprised me that though for sure the time must be past when any child she had would be grown, still as long as I plucked her milk ran.
Downstairs in the tubs of angel silver I could make fires; there was even a hood of angel silver over them, and a hole to the outside, so it wasn't too smoky; the heat rose up, and up above I made a bed of boughs and leaves and pine needles, covered with my black and silver. And so I had my hat hung up there as winter began.
If you had been there, if you'd stood at the bottom of the woods and looked up through the leafless trees slick with rain (it seemed to rain every day now), you would have seen the head we lived in, bone-white in the drizzle, grinning idiotically with rusted teeth; and looking down at you (but not at you; at nothing; at no one) would have been Brom, in his left eye, and me, in his right, peeking out. I had a lot of time, as I sat, to think about what my head could possibly have been for. I was alone for all that winter there, and many explanations occurred to me. Once I scared myself dark by coming to the sudden conclusion that what I lived in wasn't something the angels had made but one of the angels themselves, buried up to his neck in stone in this desolate place, dead grinning weeping with a kitchen in his mouth and me in his brain - it was all I could do to keep from running out in terror.
Well, I got over it. I had to. I had no place else to go.
It was in this winter that I took up avenging for a living. In a way, everyone who lives now is an Avvenger; certainly the List with its treasure house of angel stuff, and the warren with its chests; Blink was an Avvenger if you count knowledge. But there are some whose sole occupation it is: like Teeplee.
There was a day when I thought I would see if I could find some glass to replace the wooden shutters I had made for my eyes, or perhaps even some nice clear plastic. I had passed a great ruin coming to the head, and I took the day to go there and see if I couldn't find something I could use. It was a warm Decembery day, clear and brown and cheerful; I had just passed my birth-time; I had turned seventeen.
The ruin had been one of those places the angels made countless thousands of something in, a place huge enough to raise its head or heads above the woods that grew around it. One tall wall stood alone, like a cutout, all its windows empty; strange, but though the sunlight passed more easily now through all those windows, it seemed only more blind. Big trees had gotten fingers and toes inside the walls of other fallen buildings, though they had left the wide stone plaza (which all must have) mostly alone; spiky brown grass grew over the odd hillocks made of fallen walls. It was no more still there, I suppose, than any place; jays screamed at me, and chipmunks whistled; but it seemed stiller. You could see where paths had crossed between the buildings at proper angles; the broadest of these led up to the largest and least ruined of the buildings, and I went up to its wide dark mouth. I almost went in, but stopped to blink in the darkness - and saw that the place had no floor. I stood on the edge of a drop several times my height. Far down, something scurried; one of the animals that had found living room there. The tiny sound echoed hugely.
The dusty shafts of light from the empty windows didn't illuminate the dark tangle below, but I made out that there were ways to climb down. I had got some way down when I wondered if I could get back up, and stopped. I kicked something off the ledge I stood on, and listened to it clatter down in the depths; I sat and brushed away something that had fallen on my shoulder.
I turned. What had fallen on my shoulder was a glove, and inside the glove was a hand. I cried out, but couldn't stand, because the ledge was too narrow. The hand was attached to a whole long body topped with a pale face, whose curly-browed eyes looked down into mine bright with suspicion.
"Now," he said, and his grip tightened on my shoulder. The glove his hand was in was shiny black plastic, with a big stiff cuff from which plastic fringe dangled. On the cuff was printed or painted a dim white star. I didn't know whether to be afraid or astonished: head to foot he was cloaked in a thick, shiny stuff caught in a hood with string; it was broad-striped in red and white, except over his shoulder where there was a square of bright blue crossed by even rows of perfect white stars. From out of the red and white hood snaked his long neck, so long it bent in the middle as though broken; his hair was a fine stubble of metal color, cropped nearly off. In spite of myself, I smiled; and though his grip didn't lessen, he smiled too. His teeth were even, whole, and perfect; and as green as grass.
"Avvenger?" he said.
"I don't know," I said, though the word sounded familiar to me. "I was looking for some glass. I thought I might find some I could use here, some glass or clear plastic..
"Avvenger," he said, nodding and grinning greenly. He released my shoulder and drew his hand out of its glove. The hand was pale and sparkled with rings; he held it out to me and said "Shake." I thought he meant to help me stand up, but when I took his hand he just - shook it, quickly up and down, and let go. Was this a warning or a greeting or what? He was still smiling, but the green teeth made it hard to tell the reason, for some reason. He slipped past me, gathering in his barred skirts, and began to climb down quickly on handholds I hadn't noticed, then turned and waved at me to follow him.
He wasn't easy to follow. He went like a spider or a squirrel down the wall and over the vast nameless piles of rust and collapse. Now and then a great window far above threw a block of December light over him, and his gorgeous robe shone for a moment and went out, like a barred lamp. And I remembered: "I'm not an Avvenger," I said. Then, louder, to be heard over the multiple echoes of our clambering, I shouted, "I thought all the avvengers were dead."
At that he stopped and turned to me, standing half in, half out of a window's light. "Dead?" he said. "Did you say dead? You did? Do you see this National thing here?" He flung the robe wide in the light. "This National thing here has been dead since it was made, and is still as good as new; and I suppose that long after I'm myself as dead as it is, somebody's body will be wrapped in its old glory. So don't say dead. Just follow me."