The Gray House

Humpback’s silence is more telling than would be his scream. Blind is amazed at his discovery. So it really was Humpback. Honorable and generous even at six years old. Protector of strays and bullied newbies. Blind had all the reasons to be frightened back then. The one standing under the tree with a crossbow turned out to be the one who could not have been standing there and doing what he had done. That’s where the silence comes from. Humpback is ashamed, like a grown-up would be ashamed of an evil deed.

“How much time does it take to vanish?” Humpback says stiffly. “To fade away into thin air, like you never existed?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Nor you, mine.”

Blind spits out a strand of hair that somehow found its way into his mouth.

How can you explain something that is in the nature of things for you, and at the same time impossible and fantastic for everyone else? How can you express the knowledge, the experience that took you years to accumulate, in mere words? Yes, of late Blind finds that he is being called to do just that more and more often, but it doesn’t make the task any easier.

“When I came here I was five,” he begins. “Everything was simple then. The House was Elk’s House, and the miracles were of his making. As soon as I entered I realized that I knew more about this place than should have been possible, and that I was different here. The House opened itself before me, opened all of its dreams, its doors, its endless paths, all but the tiniest objects in it sang loudly to me when I approached. It was Elk’s House, so how could it be otherwise? At night I ate pieces of its walls, believing that this brought me closer to Elk. He was the god of this place, the god of its forests, swamps, and mysterious ways. He used to tell me, ‘The world is boundless, it opens up outside the door, and there will come a time when you’ll understand it, my boy.’ What could I have thought of those words except that we were not allowed to talk, other than in riddles, of what only the two of us knew about?”

Humpback is silent. Only his breathing betrays his presence.

“Years passed,” Blind continues, “and I realized that all that had nothing to do with him. That he was not the creator of this place, or its god, that it existed separately from him, that the secret I thought we shared belonged to me alone. Then it turned out that there were others, but it made no difference anymore. Because for me it was always about him. And he simply didn’t know. He lived his life on the Day Side, lived there and died there, and the House did not protect him. It would have protected me, because I was a part of it, but Elk wasn’t. The House is not responsible for those it didn’t let in. It isn’t responsible even for those it did, if they get lost, or get scared at the wrong moment, or don’t get scared at the right moment, and especially if they think that what they see are just dreams. Dreams where you can die and then wake up. Those like you. Thinking that the Night Side is a fairy tale. The Night Side is strewn with their skulls and bones, with the tattered remains of their clothes. Every dreamer thinks this place is his. That since he created it, nothing bad could happen to him while he’s there. Sooner or later it does happen. And one morning he doesn’t wake up.”

Humpback swallows.

“What about you?” he says. “Did you know right away that it wasn’t a dream?”

“I never had dreams before I came here,” Blind says drily. “I am not sighted, if you recall.”

Humpback shifts on his branch, sits differently. Clicks the lighter. He clicks and clicks, again and again, until there appears a cloyingly sweet, vanilla-scented cloud.

“So I’m a Jumper?” Humpback says indistinctly. The pipe gets in the way of words. He takes it out and adds, “That word always sounded funny to me.”

Blind shrugs.

“You can call yourself something else if you wish. The word is irrelevant.”

“And that little monster . . .”

“Is Godmother,” Blind says. “I had no choice but to drag her over, and it’s not my fault she turned into what she did. I’ve left her with you to wake you up.”

Humpback’s silence is so long and deep that Blind begins to suspect he’ll never talk again. There’s no more smoke, the pipe must have gone out.

“Damn,” Humpback says finally. “I know you’re not lying, but I still can’t believe it. Is it true, what they say about her and Vulture?”

“For the most part,” Blind says, getting up.

“She bites really hard.”

“I know.”

Humpback gets up too.

“You climbed up here only to tell me all this?” he says suspiciously.

“No. I climbed up here to ask you to play for me. I need a piper on the graduation night. Someone who is a Jumper and can play the flute.”

“What for?”

Judging by the tone of his voice, Humpback can guess at the answer and doesn’t like it at all.

“To lead away the Insensible.”

Blind feels the horror in Humpback’s gaze directed at him.