Not me. Each day, the moment Shadry’s wet, squirmy mouth sagged open on his wrist, I was across the scullery and through the side door, already opening my own mouth to gasp even before the full morning hit me. I have never known heat like that: barely past sunrise and you’d feel the sweat begin to sizzle on your skin, like fat meat in the pan. I never saw such a sky, either—first white as bone, then white as ashes in the afternoon. At night, late, it turned a sort of white-streaky lavender, but that was as dark as it ever got; and day or night, indoors or out, we all went on turning and turning in the pan. Everything was the pan.
The scullery would have been cooler—the scullery was the nicest shelter of all, except for the wine cellar where fat Karsh napped out the worst part of the days. But I wouldn’t have passed a single free second in that kitchen, not for anything in the world; and none of us except Shadry was allowed to go anywhere else in The Gaff and Slasher. So I usually stole off first to the stables and helped Rosseth with the horses.
Rosseth was my friend. He was years older, of course, grown up, and often he had too much work to do, or something on his mind, and then we couldn’t talk about things the way we liked to. But he never got angry at me, and two times he let me hide in the hayloft and lied to Shadry when he came hissing after me, swinging his long arms. Rosseth never was afraid of Shadry, no matter what he did. I was always safe with Rosseth.
That day the horses lay in their straw and would not even stand up to be curried or have their feet seen to. Rosseth did what he could with them, and I carried water in and pushed fresh hay down from the loft. Then we rested in an empty stall, where we couldn’t be seen from the door, and we talked for a while. I remember, I asked why it was so hot all the time, even at night, and Rosseth told me that it was because two great wizards were fighting in the sky. He made a whole story out of it for me, but I fell asleep in the middle, with my head on his arm.
I didn’t get to sleep very long, because Tikat came in and woke me—he woke up Rosseth, too, I think—saying that heat or no heat, Karsh wanted a cart of market vegetables unloaded. I never liked Tikat. Not that he ever did me any harm—I just didn’t like him. Sometimes I couldn’t understand what he was saying, because of the southern way he talked, and when I could he was telling me to get back from there, get out of everybody’s way. But he did point at his lunch—a winter apple and two whole heshtis, all crusty-brown with cheese—as he and Rosseth left, meaning for me to eat it. So he wasn’t so bad, I suppose, for a southerner.
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.