Little white clouds puffed from my lips; sogginess sloshed in my boots. Every hundred paces, I would try to look into the fourth dimension. The light from the hypersphere was a distant ember, then a dull spark, then a not-so-dull flicker. It was still too dim and far-off to see with; my hyper-body and higher senses were blind and numb still; but the fact that Grendel's curse seemed to be wearing off comforted me.
And I admit, I had to use one of the handkerchiefs to wipe away tears that, to my surprise, I kept finding on my cheeks. By rights, I should have cheered when Grendel got his throat ripped out and fell to his death. He had boasted about murdering people and "biting ears off," and I suspected I was not the first virgin girl he had dragged down to his lair for a quick wedding and a brief life as a sex toy.
I could not even think of another person so horrible as Grendel had been, except maybe for some of the oriental tyrants described in Herodotus, or Torquemada, or Adolf Hitler or something.
Those sailors he killed had wives and sweethearts and children back home. No doubt, they had stared out windows at the gray sea on cold nights, wondering; and no doubt, years passed, and no news ever came of the boyfriends, husbands, and fathers who had been the central pillars of their lives.
But pity is not something that fits in an either-or matrix. Just because I felt sorry for his victims did not mean I was not also sorry for him.
It would have been simpler if I could have just hated him and laughed when he died, or made some cruel wisecrack, like a good British spy in the movies when he pushes the bad Chinese spy into a nuclear reactor coolant tank. ("Have a nice trip, Grendel! See you next fall! Har, har, har!") When I was young, I thought the act of getting older meant, year by year, getting more sophisticated, more hard, cool, and unpitying. Less innocent.
Maybe that was a childish idea of what getting older was about. Maybe adults, mature adults, get more innocent with time, not less. Because the word "innocent" does not mean "naive," it means "not guilty."
Children do small evils to each other, schoolyard fights and insults, not because their hearts are pure, but because their powers are small. Grown-ups have more power. Some of them do great evils with that power. But what about the ones who don't? Aren't they more innocent than children, not less?
So I trudged in the snow, weeping slow tears for a dead monster who had wanted to marry me, and wishing I were like a child, cruel and unpitying, again.
3.
I topped the rise. Below me was a narrow slope of hill, then the brink of the upper cliffs, the ragged limestone juts of lower and lesser cliffs, and the inlet, where the docks of Abertwyi are. The village curves around the mouth of the inlet, separated by a low stone retaining wall from the water. Across the water could be seen the looming silhouette of Worm's Head, a steep-sided island, which rises sheer from the waves.
On the slopes north of the village, climbing up toward my vantage point, were derricks and ropes used by stone miners. To the south was the fish cannery that had made the Lilac family rich. On a hill in the middle of the village were the church and the courthouse, and to the east were the tenant estates of some of the influential local families, the Penrice and Mansel Halls. To the northeast was the extension of the highway, easily visible through the nude trees of wintertime, a marching line of telephone poles and power lines to either side…
Except it was not there.
Gone. Vanished.
The physical features were the same. There was the inlet, the cliffs of limestone, and, across the water, the brooding rock of Worm's Head.
There was a village there. It looked enough like Abertwyi that a moment passed before I noticed how small it was. During the day, it is hard to tell whether a town has suffered a power blackout, but after a moment, I noticed no lights were burning anywhere.
The fish cannery was gone. The highway was gone. There were no power lines or telephone poles. The streets were narrower, unpaved, and there were no signal lamps. There was no traffic. On the slopes closer to me, there were a few crudely made wooden derricks, and only a small part of the cliff had been mined for limestone. At the mouth of one of the cuttings, I saw, not a diesel engine, but a steam engine from a museum, next to a coal bin. Both were coated with snow and ice at the moment, white and motionless.
The boats. Nothing seemed that different about them, except that there were far more, even though the docks were fewer. Then I noticed the lack of motorboats. Then I saw the side-wheeler, with a crooked black smokestack above it.
I tried to look into the fourth dimension again. For a moment, I got a clearer view, then a dimmer, and I could see the utility and inner nature of the things around me. The moment I looked, a strand of the morality substance touching me jerked rigidly, and glittered as some energy or signal passed along it.
That jerk frightened me; it looked too much like a trip wire being sprung. I closed my eyes tightly for a moment. When I opened them again, the fourth dimension was dim again, my hypersphere only a candle flame, illuminating nothing.
I admit I was scared. It is much easier to be scared when you are cold, tired, and footsore. And hungry.
When was the last time I had eaten? Holiday pie and hors d'oeuvres at Lily Lilac's house, I think.
Why had my upper senses failed just now? Maybe I had strained them by trying too hard. Maybe fear hindered their operation. Maybe it was part of a trap, or an attack. Or…
I said aloud, "Colin, this is creeping me out. What was your motto: 'When in doubt, bug out'?"
Time to run away.
4.
I turned east and began to jog. In ten minutes, I had trees around me. By fifteen minutes, I was getting tired and beginning to wonder what time it was. Near noon? In the afternoon? Where was I going to sleep tonight?
Twenty minutes, and I came to a break in the trees.
And there was the highway. I walked across the empty lanes, staring left and right in wonder.
Power lines were dripping with icicles like Christmas ornaments. The telephone poles stood as stiff, regular, and proper as Beefeater guards before the palace of the Queen, with no expression to show that they had been gone from their posts when I last looked for them, half an hour ago.
One lane of the highway was paved in black slush and puddles of blue-gray water. In the distance there came one truck on the road, rolling cautiously down the lane, little wings of filthy water dashing from its tires as it came.
I put up my thumb. I cannot recall if they ever taught me not to hitchhike at school. Maybe they thought I would never leave the estate. But, unless the guy driving the truck was Grendel Glum's twin brother, I thought I would be in less danger than I had been anytime that morning.
I danced back to avoid getting sloshed, tripped on the snow, and landed on my bottom by the roadside, my bearskin flopping open, my hair tangles spilling every which way. My bird flapped and shrieked in annoyance, a high-pitched whine like a steam whistle, cold and lonely.
And shockingly loud. No ghost, no banshee could utter a wail as penetrating as a prince of chaos, trapped in the form of a brainless, bloodstained bird, lost in the snow.
The truck went on by. I understand it is customary in these situations to make rude finger-gestures in the rearview mirrors. I was too well brought up. I stood up, bird in one hand, and tried to shake the snow off my bearskin with the other.
Maybe the bearskin flapping did it. The truck slowed, stopped. Its reverse lights came on, and it backed up. It made a little beep-beep noise as it came.
A man leaned from the driver's side and pushed open the passenger's door. He was a rough-looking fellow in a gray knit cap and a heavy woolen sweater. He had a pipe in his teeth, and the cab of the truck was thick and wet with pipe smoke. I stared in disbelief. Who smoked a pipe in a cab without opening a window?