The Gray House

What wonderful arrogance!

For the next half hour I am busy assembling everything that’s necessary into the spare backpack.

Then we crawl. Slowly, because of the need for stealth. Finally we’re in the anteroom, wheelchairs and flashlights at the ready. I free Mustang of the weights, to save on clang and clatter. I don’t have the master backpack with me, so there’s no chance of it overturning. I’m not sleepy anymore. I’m alert and perky, and wouldn’t say no to a nice snack, because the first thing that catches up with me when I’m perky is hunger, with everything else switching on later.

Noble is quiet and exceedingly polite. Very helpful and not at all annoying. And good on him, because I’m not in the mood for explanations.

The journey is short, since our destination is the classroom. A midnight visit to the beloved collection, you might say. Once inside I open the spare backpack and take out the three items I’m going to require. The chain with watch gears hanging off it. Those that live in old watches, not the modern ones with batteries inside. It goes over the neck. Also I hold a notepad in my hands and a pencil in my teeth. Now I’m ready.

Noble gnaws at his fingernails, studying the collection with a haunted look on his face, like it was me luring him out here and not the other way around. Fingers the strap with rat skulls that I have hanging on the birdcage, takes it off, and turns it this way and that.

“A delicate specimen,” I warn him, extracting the pencil from my mouth. “Possibly a hex. I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.”

He hangs the skulls back. With a fleeting smile that immediately trips my hunting instincts.

“All right, what is it? What did you just understand about them? I saw it, ’fess up!”

Noble shrugs. Leans to the side, fishes the wide-brimmed black hat out of the pile of no one’s things, and winds the strap around its crown. The skulls line up in a circle. Noble clicks the copper buckles that obviously were designed to be latched to this very hat and carefully places it on the seat of the chair with the stuffed crow.

There is nothing left for me to do but to gasp slowly.

What’s been simply a hat has now become the most meaningful item in the entire collection.

“Wow! Thank you,” I say. “You know, I had this impression for a moment that you were going to put it on.”

Noble looks at me blankly.

“It’s not my hat,” he says after a long silence.

I look at the hat. Then at him.

“Of course not,” I say.

Then open up the notepad and clear my throat.

“So. You have made your stupid choice and you don’t want to think it over.”

He nods.

“You are aware that your memory is a part of you? And not an insignificant part. Those who return could become somebody quite different from who they were before. And not experience some of the things they have experienced on the previous loop. Which would make the next loop itself different as well.”

“I know,” Noble says. “You’re wasting your time. I will not reconsider.”

“You are of the Forest,” I say. “It’s in your blood. You shall not find rest until you join with it.”

“I know,” he says. “But she is not there.”

“Your love has consumed you. And the first thing it devours is reason, mind you. Speaking of love . . . Are you sure that when you become a different you, you’ll still love the same person that you love today? Absolutely sure?”

“Of course.”

And he smiles. The smile of a maniac. Or of someone in love. Which is the same thing, come to think of it. His love has eaten him alive, stripped him to the bones, and still he smiles at me. This smile overpowers all. To hell with tradition, with the rituals, and everything else, including the questionnaire. I’ve never neglected to go through it before. Ten questions must be asked and answered, and I’ve asked them of everyone, but Noble will get not a single question more. He is the Little Mermaid who came to exchange her tail for the useless legs, and gave up her voice too, and if the Sea Witch asked her for something else, anything else, she would’ve given it to her as well. Lovers and maniacs are all the same, they rush in where anyone else would fear to tread, and arguing with them is a fool’s errand.

He has no idea what it is he’s just asked for. That’s his problem. He believes that his love is so strong that it’ll catch up with him on every loop. Let him believe. Who am I to tell him otherwise?

“All right,” I say. “You have convinced me.”

I unclasp one gear from the chain and place it into his open palm.