For the rest of that day, I dodged everywhere around The Gaff and Slasher, slipping back into the kitchen now and then to make sure that Shadry was still asleep. I hid in the smokehouse, the buttery, the bathhouse—even in the smelly little shrine place on the hillside—trying to follow the shadows as the sun moved. But after a while it seemed to me that the sun was hardly moving at all. I watched and watched it, looking through my fingers, and it didn’t stir as much as the length of my thumbnail. From high noon it hung up above the stable, growing riper and heavier every minute, and brighter too, until it was almost white on the outside, white as daisies. But on the inside it was dark—all hard, swollen dark, like a yolk gone bad in the egg. I stopped looking at it when it went like that, but then I began to hear it beating, thumping like an iron heart—you could feel that slow clang everywhere, all the time, in your bones, in your eyes. And it never moved, that clanging sun.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to find Rosseth, to show him what was wrong with the sun, but he was still busy with Tikat somewhere. Gatti Milk-Eye came out, and I talked with him a little, because he hates Shadry and wouldn’t ever tell him about me running off from the kitchen. But all he could say, over and over, was how frightened he was of the new moon that night. Over and over, rolling his white eye—“I don’t like it when there is no moon, no, I don’t like it. There should always be a moon, just a little piece, so you can find your way between things. Not good to see the night without a moon.” So it wasn’t any comfort to be with him.
Then the old man in the red coat came, and that was a comfort. He came in the afternoon, late—on any other day, it would have been already twilight. That was his usual hour to walk out from Corcorua, where his grandson lived, and sit a while chatting and drinking in the taproom. I know that because Rosseth told me—I was only once in the taproom, to clean up after a fight—and because that old man talked with everybody, he knew everybody, even potboys. He had a funny voice that really hurt to listen to, as though it kept hitting some kind of crazy-bone inside your head. But everybody liked him, except fat Karsh.
When the old man saw me hanging about in the big shadows of the courtyard trees, he called my name, saying, “Little one, what are you doing so far from your kettles and cauldrons? Do you realize that the sun is refusing to set because it is so astonished to see you out in its light?” He gave me a dusty boiled sweet out of his coat pocket.
“No, it’s not,” I said. He didn’t seem to mind the awful heat at all—it might have been any other evening, except that I’d have been in the kitchen, running and fetching, stirring and scouring, trying to keep one jump ahead of Shadry’s long swinging arms. I said, “I don’t know what’s the matter with the sun or the weather or the people, but it’s nothing to do with me. I just want it to stop.”
He picked me up and swung me around in the air. He was very strong for somebody with white hair and thin old hands. He said, “Why, I can stop it, child, if that is what you wish. Shall I do that? Shall I argue with the sun and tell it to go to bed, so that you can get to your rest? Say the word and it shall be done.” I nodded, and he said, “Well, then,” and set me down, both of us laughing.
I went off a few steps and turned around again. I don’t know why. He was already stumping toward the inn door—not the one to the taproom, but the big carved one for the paying guests. When I called to him, to remind him of his promise, he just kept walking. He didn’t knock on the door, either, but pushed it open and went inside, bold as Karsh himself. The door slammed shut behind him, hard, without making a sound. I saw it.
Then right away the sky began to darken, and the sun stopped its awful slow clanging. Birds started making their night noises all at once. If I had turned my head, I know I would have seen the sun skidding down the sky, butter in the pan now, but I didn’t turn. I just stood there with my eyes closed, and felt the stars coming out.
LAL
It was absurd. I was never so ashamed of myself. Here we were—Soukyan, Lukassa, Rosseth, and I— crowded together around my friend’s bed, just as though he were about to read us his testament before folding his hands on his chest and wafting politely off into the next world. In fact, we were five friends doing the best we could to say a hopeless, terrifying farewell; but what I remember best is the pain in my still-tender ribs from containing a torrent of schoolgirl giggles. No excuse, absolutely no excuse. I think only Soukyan noticed anything, but if they all had it would serve me right.
He had been gone from us all that day and the night before: not dead, not wandering in his mind, but far away on a frontier we could not begin to imagine, fighting back the new moon. There was never a chance of that, of course, not even for him. But he fought on anyway— unconscious, drooling, wasted to a new moon of a man himself, he lay on a mattress in a tiny, shabby room and fought for daylight, and lost.
The instant the sun passed from sight, he gave a small, quick gasp and opened his eyes. As though he had only been interrupted by a cough or a witless question, he said, “Now this is what you will need to do about the griga’ath.” Of all that happened so soon afterward, of all that has happened to me since, nothing has ever been as frightening as those few words in that calm, rasping voice.
My friend said, “We have only a moment, so pay attention for once. There is no defeating or destroying a griga’ath—you are hearing me, aren’t you, Lal? It is possible, however, to divert it briefly, and perhaps escape, if you all do exactly as I tell you.” He looked around the darkening room. “Where is Tikat?”
Rosseth answered, his voice cracking hoarsely. “He is surely on his way—Karsh had him cleaning the sacrifice stones at the shrine. He will be here in a minute, I promise.”
My friend reached out and put his trembling hand over Rosseth’s hand. He said gently, “The griga’ath will destroy this place and everyone in it. You may be able to save a few people, I don’t know. I will not be able to help you.”
Soukyan was crying, not making a sound, standing with his shoulders back and one single tear at a time wandering down one side or the other of his nose. Lukassa’s face, for a wonder, was pulsing with color, and her mouth was drawn tight and hard as my friend went on. “There are beings, as you know, who can only travel in a straight line—the simplest screen will head the worst of them off—and there are others who cannot cross running water. Griga’aths have no such weaknesses.” He nodded toward a vase of silvery sweet-regrets on the table. “Fetch those to me, Lukassa. Quickly.”
Marinesha had set them there that morning, wilted and dry before she ever picked them, but a find for all that, so deep in that evil summer. Along with the sweet-regrets (in the south they grow taller and darker, and are called windshadows), she had also placed two or three shuli flowers in the vase. Shuli are always the exact shade of the sky above them; these were completely colorless, warm to the touch even in water. My friend took the vase from Lukassa, though he seemed barely able to hold it upright. The flowers stirred feebly between his hands.