IX

i

The climb was not arduous for Will, not with Jacob at his side.

All the man had to do when the way became too steep or slippery was to lay his bare hand lightly on the back of Will’s neck, and a portion of Jacob’s strength would pass from fingers to nape, enabling Will to match him stride for stride. Sometimes, after a touch like this, it seemed to Will he was not climbing at all, but gliding over the snow and rock, effortlessly.

The wind was too strong for words to be exchanged, but more than once he felt Jacob’s mind moving close to his. When it did, his thoughts went where they were directed: Up the slope, where their destination could be glimpsed on occasion; and down, into the valley they’d escaped, its petty perfection visible when the gusts dropped. Will was not shocked by this intimacy, mind with mind. Steep was unlike other people; Will had realized that from the very beginning. Living and dying, we feed the fire—that was not a lesson that just anybody could teach. He’d joined forces with a remarkable man, whose secrets would slowly be uncovered as they grew to know each other in the years to come. Nor would there be any limit to their knowing: That thought was clearer in his head than any other, and he was certain Steep had read it there. Whatever this man asked of him, he would supply. That was how it would be between them from now on. It was the least he could do, for someone who had already given him more than any other living soul.

ii

Down in the Courthouse, Rosa sat in the dark and listened. Her hearing had always been acute, sometimes distressingly so.

There were times—days, weeks even—when she would deliberately drink herself into a mild state of befuddlement (usually on gin, but scotch would do) in order to muffle the sounds that came at her from every direction. It didn’t always work. In fact it had backfired on her several times, and instead of dimming the din of the world it had simply stripped her of her power to control her own wits. Those were terrible times, sickening times.

She would rage around, threatening to do herself harm—pricking out her ears or plucking out her eyes—and might have done it too, if Jacob hadn’t been there to soothe her with a fuck. That usually did the trick. She’d have to be careful with the drinking in future, she mused, at least until she found someone to couple with her in Steep’s place. It was a pity the boy was so young, otherwise she might have toyed with him for a while. She’d have worn him out, of course, all too quickly. When on occasion she’d taken any man besides Steep to her bed, she’d always been disappointed. However virile, however heated they appeared to be, none of them had ever shown a smidgen of Jacob’s staying power.

Damn it, but she would miss him. He had been more than a husband to her, more than a lover; he’d been a goad to excess, calling forth all manner of behavior she’d never have dared indulge, much less enjoy, in any other company, man or beast.

Beast. Now there was a thought. Maybe she would be wiser looking for a fuck-mate outside her own species. She’d dallied with this before, a stallion called Tallis had been the lucky creature. But she hadn’t given the affair full rein, so to speak; it had seemed at the time a cumbersome way to be serviced, not to say unsanitary. With Jacob gone, however, she would certainly need to broaden her palate. Maybe with a little patience she’d find a creature the equal of her ardor, out in the wild.

Meanwhile, she listened: to the snow, falling on the Courthouse roof and on the step, on the grass, on the road, on the houses, on the hills; to a dog, barking; to cattle, lowing in a byre; to the babble of televisions, and the bawling of children, and somebody old and phlegmatic (she couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman; age eroded the distinctions) talking nonsense in his or her sleep.

Then, somebody closer. Footfalls on the icy road; a breath, snatched from chapped lips. No, it wasn’t one breath, it was two, both male. After a moment, one spoke.

“What about the Courthouse?” It was a fat man’s voice, she judged.

“I suppose we could take a look,” said the other, without much enthusiasm. “If the kid had some sense, he’d get out of the cold.”

“If he’d had some sense, the little bugger wouldn’t have run away in the first place.”

They’re coming in here, Mrs. McGee thought, rising from the judge’s chair. They’re looking for the child—compassionate men, how she loved compassionate men!—and they think maybe they’ll find him in here.

She brushed the hair back from her brow and pinched some color into her cheeks. It was the least she could do. Then she started to unbutton her dress, so as to hold their attention when they entered. Perhaps after all she would not have to stoop to barnyard couplings; perhaps two would replace the departed one, at least for tonight.

iii

The worst of the storm had cleared to the southwest by the time Will and Jacob came within sight of the summit. Through the thinning snow, Will saw that up ahead there was a stand of trees. Leafless, of course (what the season had not taken the night’s wind had surely stripped), but growing so close together, and sufficiently large in number that each had protected the other in their tender years, until they had matured into a dense little wood.

Now, with the gale somewhat diminished, Will asked a question out loud, “Is that where we’re going?”

“It is,” said Jacob, not looking down at him.

“Why?”

“Because we have work to do.”

“What?” Will asked. The clouds were coming unknitted over the heights, and even as he put this question a patch of dark star-pricked sky appeared beyond the trees. It was as though a door were opening on the far side of the wood, the sight so perfect Will almost believed it had been stage managed by Jacob. But perhaps it was more likely—and more marvelous, in its way—that they had arrived at this moment by chance, he and Jacob being blessed travelers.

“There’s a bird in those trees, you see,” Jacob went on.

“Actually there’s a pair of birds. And I need you to kill them for me.” He said this without any particular emphasis, as though the matter was relatively inconsequential. “I have a knife I’d like you to use for the job.” Now he looked Will’s way, intently. “Being a city boy you’re probably not as experienced with birds as you are with moths and such.”

“No, I’m not,” Will admitted, hoping he didn’t sound doubtful or questioning. “But I’m sure it’s easy.”

“You eat bird-meat, presumably,” Jacob said.

Of course he did. He enjoyed fried chicken and turkey at Christmas. He’d even had a piece of the pigeon pie Adele had made once she’d explained that the pigeon wasn’t the filthy kind he knew from Manchester. “I love it,” he said, the notion of this deed easier when he thought of a barbecued chicken leg. “How will I know which birds you want me to—”

“You can say it.”

“Kill?”

“I’ll point them out, don’t worry. It’s as you say: easy.” He had said that, hadn’t he? Now he had to make good on the boast.

“Be careful with this,” Jacob said, passing the knife to him. “It’s uncommonly sharp.”

He received the weapon gingerly. Was there some charge passed through its blade into his marrow? He thought so. It was subtle, to be sure, but when his hand tightened around the hilt he felt as though he knew the knife like a friend, as though he and it had some longstanding knowledge of one another.

“Good,” Jacob said, seeing Will fearlessly clasping the weapon. “You look as if you mean business.” Will grinned. He did; no doubt of it. Whatever business this knife was capable of, he meant.

They were at the fringes of the wood now and, with the clouds parted, the starlight polished every snow-laden twig and branch until it glittered. There remained in Will a remote tic of apprehension regarding the deed ahead—or rather, his competency in the doing of it; he entertained no doubts about the killing itself—but he showed no sign of this to Jacob. He strode between the trees a pace ahead of his companion and was all at once enveloped in a silence so profound it made him hold his breath for fear of breaking it.

A little way behind him, Jacob said, “Take it slowly. Enjoy the moment.”

Will’s knife hand had a strange agitation in it however. It didn’t want any delay. It wanted to be at work, now.

“Where are they?” Will whispered.

Jacob put his hand on the back of Will’s neck. “Just look,” he murmured, and though nothing actually changed in the scene before them, at Jacob’s words Will saw it with a sudden simplicity, his gaze blazing through the lattice of branches and mesh of brambles, through the glamour of sparkling frost and starlit air, to the heart of this place. Or rather to what seemed to him at that moment its heart: two birds, huddled in a niche at the juncture of branch and trunk. Their eyes were wide and bright (he could see them blinking, even though they were ten yards from him) and their heads were cocked.

“They see me,” Will breathed.

“See them back.”

“I do.”

“Fix them with your eyes.”

“I am.”

“Then finish it. Go on.”

Jacob pushed him lightly, and lightly Will went, like a phantom in fact, over the snow-decorated ground. His eyes were fixed on the birds every step of his way. They were plain creatures.

Two bundles of ragged brown feathers, with a silver of sheeny blue in their wings. No more remarkable than the moths he’d killed in the Courthouse, he thought. He didn’t hurry toward them. He took his time, despite the impatience in his hand, feeling as though he were gliding down a tunnel toward his target, which was the only thing in focus before him. If they fled now, they still could not escape him, of that he was certain. They were in the tunnel with him, trapped by his hunter’s will. They might flutter, they might peck, but he would have their lives whatever they did.

He was perhaps three strides from the tree—raising his arm to slit their throats—when one of the pair took sudden flight.

His knife hand astonished him. Up it sped, a blur in front of his face, and before his eyes could even find the bird the knife had already transfixed it. Though strictly speaking it had not been his doing, he felt proud of the deed.

Look at me! he thought, knowing Jacob was watching him.

Warn’t that quick? Warn’t that beautiful?

The second bird was rising now, while the first flapped like a toy on a stick. He hadn’t time to free the blade. He just let his left hand do as the right had done, and up it went like five-fingered lightning to strike the bird from the air. Down the creature tumbled, landing belly up at Will’s feet. His blow had broken its neck it feebly flapped its wings a moment, shitting itself. Then it died.

Will looked at its mate. In the time it had taken to kill the second bird, the first had also perished. Its blood, running down the blade, was hot on his hand.

Easy, he thought, just as he’d said it would be. A moment ago they’d been blinking their eyes and cocking their heads, hearts beating. Now they were dead, both of them, spilled and broken. Easy.

“What you’ve just done is irreversible,” said Jacob, laying his hands upon Will’s shoulders from behind. “Think of that.” His touch was no longer light. “This is not a world of resurrections. They’ve gone. Forever.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t,” Jacob said. There was as much weight in his words as in his palms. “Not yet, you don’t. You see them dead before you, but knowing what that means takes a little time.” He lifted his left hand from Will’s shoulder and reached around his body. “May I have my knife back? If you’re sure you’ve finished with it, that is.”

Will slid the bird off the blade, bloodying the fingers of his other hand in the doing, and tossed the corpse down beside its mate. Then he wiped the knife clean on the arm of his jacket—an impressively casual gesture, he thought—and passed it back into Jacob’s care, as cautiously as he’d been lent it.

“Suppose I were to tell you,” Jacob said softly, almost mournfully, “that these two things at your feet—which you so efficiently dispatched—were the last of their kind?”

“The last birds?”

“No,” Jacob said, indulgently. “Nothing so ambitious. Just the last of these birds.”

“Are they?”

“Suppose they were,” Jacob replied. “How would you feel?”

“I don’t know,” Will said, quite honestly. “I mean, they’re just birds.”

“Oh now,” Jacob chided, “think again.” Will obeyed. And as had happened several times in Steep’s presence, his mind grew strange to itself, filling with thoughts it had never dared before. He looked down at his guilty hands, and the blood seemed to throb on them, as though the memory of the bird’s pulse was still in it. And while he looked he turned over what Jacob had just said.

Suppose they were the last, the very last, and the deed he’d just done was irreversible. No resurrections here. Not tonight, not ever. Suppose they were the last, blue and brown. The last that would ever hop that way, sing that way, court and mate and make more birds who hopped and sung and courted that way.

“Oh,” he murmured, beginning to understand. “I . . . changed the world a little bit, didn’t I?” He turned and looked up at Jacob. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what I did! I changed the world.”

“Maybe . . .” Jacob said. There was a tiny smile of satisfaction on his face, that his pupil was so swift. “If these were the last, perhaps it was more than a little.”

“Are they?” Will said. “The last, I mean?”

“Would you like them to be?” Will wanted it too much for words. All he could do was nod. “Another night, perhaps,” Jacob said. “But not tonight. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but these,” he looked down at the bodies in the grass, “are as common as moths.” Will felt as though he’d just been given a present and found it was just an empty box. “I know how it is, Will. What you’re feeling now. Your hands tell you you’ve done something wonderful, but you look around and nothing much seems to have changed. Am I right?”

“Yes,” he said. He suddenly wanted to wipe the worthless blood off his hands. They’d been so quick and so clever; they deserved better. The blood of something rare, something whose passing would be of consequence. He bent down and, plucking up a fistful of sharp grass, began to scrub his palms clean.

“So what do we do now?” he said as he worked. “I don’t want to stay here any longer. I want to . . .” He didn’t finish his chatter, however, for at that moment a ripple passed through the air surrounding them, as though the earth itself had expelled a tiny breath. He ceased his scrubbing and slowly rose to his feet, letting the grass drop.

“What was that?” he whispered.

“You did it, not I,” Jacob replied. There was a tone in his voice Will had not heard before, and it wasn’t comforting.

“What did I do?” Will said, looking all around for some explanation. But there was nothing that hadn’t been there all along. Just the trees, and the snow and the stars.

“I don’t want this,” Jacob was murmuring. “Do you hear me? I don’t want this.” All the weight had vanished from his voice, so had the certainty.

Will looked around at him. Saw his stricken face. “Don’t want what?” Will asked him.

Jacob turned his fretful gaze in Will’s direction. “You’ve more power in you than you realize, boy,” he said. “A lot more.”

“But I didn’t do anything,” Will protested.

“You’re a conduit.”

“I’m a what?”

“Damn it, why didn’t I see? Why didn’t I see?” He backed away from Will, as the air shook again, more violently than before. “Oh Christ in Heaven. I don’t want this.” His anguish made Will panic. This wasn’t what he wanted to hear from his idol. He’d done all he’d been asked to do. He’d killed the birds, cleaned and returned the knife, even put a brave face on his disappointment. So why was his deliverer retreating from him as though Will were a rabid dog?

“Please,” he said to Steep, “I didn’t mean it, whatever it was I did, I’m sorry . . .”

But Jacob just continued to retreat. “It’s not you. It’s us. I don’t want your eyes going where I’ve been. Not there, at least.

Not to him. Not to Thomas—”

He was starting to babble again, and Will, certain his savior was about to run, and equally certain that once he was gone it would be over between them, reached and grabbed hold of the man’s sleeve. Jacob cried out and tried to shake himself free, but in doing so Will’s hand, seeking better purchase, caught hold of his fingers. Their touching had made Will strong before; he’d climbed the hill light-footed because Jacob’s flesh had been laid on his. But the business of the knife had wrought some change in him. He was no longer a passive recipient of strength. His bloodied fingers had been granted talents of their own, and he could not control them. He heard Jacob cry out a second time. Or was it his own voice? No, it was both. Two sobs, rising as though from a single throat.

Jacob had been right to be afraid. The same rippling breath that had distracted Will from cleaning his hands was here again, increased a hundredfold, and this time it inhaled the very world in which they stood. Earth and sky shuddered and were in an instant reconfigured, leaving them each in their terror: Will sobbing that he did not know what was happening; Jacob, that he did.