Arthur’s face went, if possible, even redder.
“So, what are you going to do now?” she said. “I guess we’re safe-for a while, at least. But Chaos knows about us now. And the Shadow never really gives up…”
I thought about it for a while. And then an idea came to me. I said: “Have you ever thought of a career in entertainment? I could find a job for you with the band…” I wondered if she could sing. Most celestial spheres can, of course, and anyway, she’d light up the place just by stepping onto the stage-we’d save a fortune on pyrotechnics…
She gave that megawatt smile of hers. “Is Arthur in the band, too?”
I looked at him. “He could be, I guess. There’s always room for a drummer.”
Come to think of it, there’s a lot to be said for going on the road right now. New people, new lineup, new places to go-
“That would be nice.” Her face was wistful. His was like that of a sick puppy, and it made me even more relieved that I’d never been the romantic type. I tried to imagine the outcome: sun goddess and thunder god on stage together, every night-
I could see it now, I thought. Wild-re, on tour again. I mean, we’re talking rains of fish, equatorial northern lights; hurricanes, eclipses, solar flares, flash floods-and lightning. Lots of lightning. Might be a little risky, of course.
But all the same-a hell of a show.
Neil Gaiman. THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS
YOU ASK ME IF I CAN FORGIVE MYSELF? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did. But I will not forgive myself for the year that I hated my daughter, when I believed her to have run away, perhaps to the city. During that year I forbade her name to be mentioned, and if her name entered my prayers when I prayed, it was to ask that she would one day learn the meaning of what she had done, of the dishonour that she had brought to my family, of the red that ringed her mother’s eyes.
I hate myself for that, and nothing will ease that, not even what happened that night, on the side of the mountain.
I had searched for nearly ten years, although the trail was cold. I would say that I found him by accident, but I do not believe in accidents. If you walk the path, eventually you must arrive at the cave.
But that was later. First, there was the valley on the mainland, the whitewashed house in the gentle meadow with the burn splashing through it, a house that sat like a square of white sky against the green of the grass and the heather just beginning to purple.
And there was a boy outside the house, picking wool from off a thorn-bush. He did not see me approaching, and he did not look up until I said, “I used to do that. Gather the wool from the thorn-bushes and twigs. My mother would wash it, then she would make me things with it. A ball, and a doll.”
He turned. He looked shocked, as if I had appeared out of nowhere. And I had not. I had walked many a mile, and had many more miles to go. I said, “I walk quietly. Is this the house of Calum MacInnes?”
The boy nodded, drew himself up to his full height, which was perhaps two fingers bigger than mine, and he said, “I am Calum MacInnes.”
“Is there another of that name? For the Calum MacInnes that I seek is a grown man.”
The boy said nothing, just unknotted a thick clump of sheep’s wool from the clutching fingers of the thorn-bush. I said, “Your father, perhaps? Would he be Calum MacInnes as well?”
The boy was peering at me. “What are you?” he asked.
“I am a small man,” I told him. “But I am a man, nonetheless, and I am here to see Calum MacInnes.”
“Why?” The boy hesitated. Then, “And why are you so small?”
I said, “Because I have something to ask your father. Man’s business.” And I saw a smile start at the tips of his lips. “It’s not a bad thing to be small, young Calum. There was a night when the Campbells came knocking on my door, a whole troop of them, twelve men with knives and sticks, and they demanded of my wife, Morag, that she produce me, as they were there to kill me, in revenge for some imagined slight. And she said, ‘Young Johnnie, run down to the far meadow, and tell your father to come back to the house, that I sent for him.’ And the Campbells watched as the boy ran out the door. They knew that I was a most dangerous person. But nobody had told them that I was a wee man, or if that had been told them, it had not been believed.”
“Did the boy call you?” said the lad.
“It was no boy,” I told him, “but me myself, it was. And they’d had me, and still I walked out the door and through their fingers.”
The boy laughed. Then he said, “Why were the Campbells after you?”
“It was a disagreement about the ownership of cattle. They thought the cows were theirs. I maintained the Campbells’ ownership of them had ended the first night the cows had come with me over the hills.”
“Wait here,” said young Calum MacInnes.
I sat by the burn and looked up at the house. It was a good-sized house: I would have taken it for the house of a doctor or a man of law, not of a border reaver. There were pebbles on the ground and I made a pile of them, and I tossed the pebbles, one by one, into the burn. I have a good eye, and I enjoyed rattling the pebbles over the meadow and into the water. I had thrown a hundred stones when the boy returned, accompanied by a tall, loping man. His hair was streaked with grey, his face was long and wolfish. There are no wolves in those hills, not any longer, and the bears have gone too.
“Good day to you,” I said.
He said nothing in return, only stared; I am used to stares. I said, “I am seeking Calum MacInnes. If you are he, say so, I will greet you. If you are not he, tell me now, and I will be on my way.”
“What business would you have with Calum MacInnes?”
“I wish to hire him, as a guide.”
“And where is it you would wish to be taken?”
I stared at him. “That is hard to say,” I told him. “For there are some who say it does not exist. There is a certain cave on the Misty Isle.”
He said nothing. Then he said, “Calum, go back to the house.”
“But da-”
“Tell your mother I said she was to give you some tablet. You like that. Go on.”
Expressions crossed the boy’s face-puzzlement, hunger, happiness-and then he turned and ran back to the white house.
Calum MacInnes said, “Who sent you here?”
I pointed to the burn as it splashed its way between us on its journey down the hill. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Water,” he replied.
“And they say there is a king across it,” I told him.
I did not know him then at all, and never knew him well, but his eyes became guarded, and his head cocked to one side. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”
“I have claimed nothing,” I said. “Just that there are those who have heard that there is a cave on the Misty Isle, and that you might know the way.”
He said, “I will not tell you where the cave is.”
“I am not here asking for directions. I seek a guide. And two travel more safely than one.”
He looked me up and down, and I waited for the joke about my size, but he did not make it, and for that I was grateful. He just said, “When we reach the cave, I will not go inside. You must bring out the gold yourself.”
I said, “It is all one to me.”