I started digging again. Digging I understood.
“Are you real?” asked Saul abruptly.
I had a mad urge to deny it, but that would have been cruel. “I’m pretty sure I am,” I said, and didn’t add:not as sure as I was a few hours ago. It would have been much easier not to be real. If I wasn’t real, none of this was real either, and that made a lot more sense than a world where it was.
Another scoop of clay hit the ground. The hole was definitely real though. My shoulders wouldn’t ache so badly if it wasn’t.
“Sorry,” said Saul quietly. “One gets these ideas…”
“Yes, of course.” Lying down here in the dark, one had to imagine all sorts of things. “I don’t blame you.”
He lapsed into silence again. I tried to think of something else to say, and settled on, “Everybody thinks you’re dead.”
“Do they?” Saul sounded only mildly interested.
“The story is that Dr. Halder shot you while you were running away with Louisa.”
Thatgot his attention. Wires rattled, jerking my gaze back to him. He actually lifted his upper body a little way up, maybe half an inch, before collapsing back. “Louisa. Is she…?” He swallowed, tried again. “Does Halder mistreat her still?”
“What?” I asked blankly.
“What is he doing to her?” Saul shouted, and the flies all took flight from his face, buzzing around in a panicky cloud of black and gold.
“He doesn’t do anything,” I said. “She got away. Ma Kersey and the rest, they got her away.”
An idea was starting to form in my brain. It explained everything quite neatly. It just happened to be impossible, which was a definite strike against it.
“Away?” Saul stared at me, his eyes flat and oddly reflective in the lantern light, like coins. “Away where?”
“I don’t know. Ma Kersey wouldn’t tell me. She didn’t want Halder to find out and go looking, since I guess they’re still legally married. I’ve never met her.”
I heard an odd, jagged little snap, and looked down to see that Saul had clenched his hand into a fist. Two fingernails had broken off and a third had torn partway free.
The idea poked me again. I shoved it back down. A hypothesis is no good if it requires the impossible as a condition. If you don’t know how an orchid is pollinated, there’s no point in suggesting that fairies do it, even if that would explain everything neatly.
(how long does it take fingernails to grow like that?)
“You’re sure?” Saul said. “You’re sure he’s not keeping her prisoner somewhere?”
I considered this. It’s impossible to prove a negative, of course, but this didn’t seem like a good time for that particular discussion. “I’m pretty sure. Mrs. Kent would never allow that to go on.”
“Rose Kent…” Saul breathed. “No, she wouldn’t.” He sagged, his fingers falling slack once more. The two broken nails were floating on the surface of the water like chitinous leaves.Raw sienna mixed with white, a wash of Payne’s gray for the shadows…I looked away.
“He lied,” Saul said, and began to laugh again, louder this time, an awful throat-tearing sound that was too much like his scream, the same dreadful sawing violin note. “The bastardliedto me. Oh god, Louisa!”
“Please stop,” I whispered, my hands clamped over my ears. In another room, that laugh would have echoed, but here it sank into the muffling burlap and that was somehow worse, as if thelaugh was still there, burrowed into the walls, waiting to pupate into something worse. “Please,pleasestop.”
To my surprise, he did. It took longer for the laugh to die away inside my head. I slowly lowered my hands, feeling foolish.It’s just a laugh, what’s wrong with you?
“I’m sorry,” Saul said. “It’s just that I’ve spent so long thinking he still had her. He said he did. That he kept her locked up, painting pictures. I kept picturing it… and now… now I find out it was lies all along…”
The idea needled me again, more insistently. “How long?” I asked. “How long have you been down here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. His smile was ghastly. “How long has it been since he shot me?”
There, you see? Itdoesexplain everything!
It’s still impossible. No one could live this way for that long. He’d have rickets and bedsores and… and… it’s just not possible.
