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.Please.He says please.At least he’s got some manners.That’s something.No, it ain’t.Won’t buy you ale.We have to rescue a girl trapped inside the tower, said Jute, his voice desperate.We’re her only hope.You must help us.Surely if you’re trapped you wouldn’t wish that on someone else.She’s young.Don’t mind if everyone were trapped in here along with us, said a voice.A woman’s voice, spiteful and bitter and as sharp as curdled milk.Reckon if we have to suffer, other folks can, too.No, said another voice.Think on this, now.Helping someone.Now that’s a memory we could all use.A new memory.Something fresh to remember.Ahh.It was the hunter, his voice full of mountains and the sun on rocks and pine trees.A good idea, but I’ve one better.Make him pay with a memory.A good, rich one for his release.Aye.A good idea.A new memory for us all.More voices chimed in, falling over each other into a confusion of excited noise.A memory.A new memory to leaven the dark, dreary, and unending tedium of their imprisonment.A memory.Give us a memory, boy.One of yours.Something with sunlight and summer, for it’s dark and cold in here an’ most of us, we’ve forgotten the light.A picture blossomed in Jute’s mind.An old memory from the summertime.He spoke without realizing it, and the unseen audience expectant in the darkness around him listened with avid attention.Listen, said Jute.I’ll tell you about a day.Afternoon sun on the roof, on the slate tiles blinding hot and white, with shadows deep along the eastern wall.The sharp, sweet scent of apples in the air.Lena asleep on the second-story balcony of the old house.Skinny legs and arms burned brown by the sun.Sprawled in a tangle on a dusty rug.Flies crawling about an apple core.Jute and the twins, Moro and Mana, sitting on the edge of the balcony, legs dangling through the wooden railings, crunching apples.Stolen apples.Juice on their hands and chins.Pitching cores down at a dirty white goat in the yard below.The goat, busily happily contentedly munching on apple cores, but still rolling an occasional yellow eye up at the children as if to say it would remember them and deal harshly if they ever came within reach of its horns.Sudden, soft noise inside the house.The owner returned home long before he should have.He should’ve still been drinking at the inn.He always did.Stayed late.Startled alarmed glances from the twins.Jute nudging Lena into yawning wakefulness.The balcony door flung open and the astonished, angry face of the owner, mouth agape, shouting something, some blur of words Jute hadn’t even bothered to hear.The children evading his outstretched hands with practiced ease, giggling and shrieking, hearts thumping, jumping up onto the roof overhang, and scrambling away across the hot tiles.A few tiles kicked free and sliding down with a skittering, scraping sound to shatter in powdery red shards around the man on the balcony.Him shaking his fist at them in rage.The goat still crunching apple cores, not caring.A handful of coins, as gold as fresh butter, heavy in Jute’s pocket, scooped from a chest inside the house.The sun drifting down toward the shining surface of the sea as they scampered off across the rooftops.Sunlight, sky, water, and life.Ahh.A good memory.I like the goat.Thank you, boy.Our own memories are tired.Thank you.And now? said Jute.His throat was tightening.He struggled to breathe.He could feel the stone around him hardening more.Your end of the bargain.How do we get out of the wall? How do we get inside the tower?Let’s keep him.Him and the silent one behind him.They must be full of memories.No.We made a bargain.And that’s a second new memory for us as well.We keep our end.Listen, boy.It’s easy enough.Just step forward.We won’t keep you any longer.Jute stepped forward.His legs could only move slowly now.The darkness and stone pressed in around him as if to say, no, we won’t let you go.Ever.But then the voices were behind him, fading into the distance, and he found himself standing in a bare, gloomy room bounded by stonewalls.He stumbled due to the sudden absence of stone pressing around him.His legs trembled and he almost could not stand.There was a whispering sort of noise and then Declan stood next to him.Behind them, in the wall, Jute thought he heard a sigh.“I don’t want to go through that again,” said Declan, his face pale.“Couldn’t hardly breathe toward the end there.”“No.”“Just wake me up when it’s over,” said the ghost from inside Jute’s knapsack, its voice shaking and growing louder with every word until surely it was about to break into a shriek.“Just wake me up when—”“Hush.”“We must go higher up,” said Declan.“I can feel it.”Stairs led up from the middle of the room to the ceiling above, curving around a stone pillar.There were no windows in the room, nor were there torches, yet it was lit with a dim light that came from either the stairwell opening in the floor, as there were also stairs leading down to the floor beneath, or from the stairwell opening in the ceiling.Both Jute and Declan did not move for a moment, as if both were reluctant to find what waited higher up the tower.Declan roused himself with a shudder.“Right.No use standing about.Up the stairs.”“I’d much rather be anywhere but here.That smell.It’s horrible.”“Something dead, I suppose.Rats caught in the drains.”“I don’t think so.It’s magic, I think.It reminds me of a smell from the university ruins.An old spell.”“I’d rather not bother with any more spells for the moment.”The stairs wound around and around, and they walked higher and higher, treading in silence, ears pricked for any sounds.But the tower was quiet around them.The stairs continued their spiral up through room after room.The rooms were identical.Each a bare, gloomy space stretching out into the shadows [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]