The Gray House

I realized that I was shaking. Because I’d been there, right there with him when he “ascended wreathed in fire and light.” If I’d known back then that this was the “divine sword piercing the Heavens,” I’d have probably shaved my head too and joined the Devout. I was pretty close to something like that anyway. It’s strange how quickly and easily this all had faded away from memory. Well, not really, just got hidden somewhere. Where normal people hide things they can’t explain, to try and preserve their sanity.

And one more thing I understood. That some people in here had it much harder than I. Because if it were me after whom the Devout came to make me lead them forth, I would’ve hanged myself straight off. Even if I were an angel.

I had a hard time getting into the next tales. I was listening, sure, but did not follow the plots. I tried. There was a lot hidden in those stories, they all had some kind of secret, even the most fantastic of them, I got that, but still I couldn’t listen to them with the same attention as the others did. It wasn’t just because of the shaved heads. I was too tired, and the darkness, stuffiness, and the smell of wax all combined to mold the tiredness into a kind of torpor. Some stories shared certain details, some involved the same characters, some seemed to happen in the same places. I guess it would have been exciting to trace all of those intricate connections, except for the drowsy lethargy that overtook me.

During the next break I decided to go sit somewhere else where it would be easier to breathe and harder to fall asleep, and made a stupid move—slipped down from the bed. Someone immediately squeezed into the space I had vacated, and I immediately regretted having done that. Crawling on the floor was impossibly difficult. In the places where no one was lying down someone would be sitting, and where no one was sitting there would be backpacks and more backpacks. The candles had burned down to almost nothing and gave out more smoke than light. I didn’t go two walker’s paces before landing in a plate of sandwiches, bumping my head into the bed leg, and bowling over Whitebelly, who was just climbing down from that same bed. Then someone stepped on me. I figured I’d better get up on the nearest bed before they trampled me, but there was no space on the nearest bed. It was occupied by Shuffle, his guitar, Owl (I think), and someone hiding behind a backpack.

That someone said, “Hey, what are you doing? It’s packed here.”

So I crawled on.

In the next three minutes I got stepped on about two dozen times, so by the time the break ended I was hurting all over. Thankfully, when Tabaqui declared the end of the break and everyone took their seats, someone lit the Chinese lantern. Just one, but that was enough to save me. I saw a place for me. It turned out that place was next to Vulture. No one ever chose to sit next to him, but I didn’t care anymore.

Angel told about an enchanted house that could move about. Ginger told another one about the same town Noble had been in, and about Noble himself in it.

Then for a while I wasn’t listening at all, because Noble squeezed in between me and Vulture and started whispering something in his ear, and then took off some bauble that was hanging around his neck and gave it to Vulture. And then Vulture, I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, Vulture burst out crying. I mean, if it were only my eyes I wouldn’t have believed them anyway, but I was sitting so close to him, and he sobbed so hard, that there could be no mistake. I didn’t know where to put myself. Then it got even worse, because he suddenly hugged Noble, still crying. And he was crying as if he couldn’t breathe. It was painful to listen to. Noble hugged him too, and held tight until Vulture calmed down, and he looked like he didn’t give a damn what anyone would think about them, because there was only one thing they could think if they saw something like this. I didn’t think anything of the sort, of course, but it upset me greatly that others certainly would. Lizard, and everyone else sitting close enough. I think I was so upset because I realized right away that what had just happened between Noble and Vulture was important, sad and joyful at the same time, something that couldn’t be expressed in words, that you could only laugh or cry about. The way Vulture was crying.

RED’S TALE

In that world Death came to people wearing one of the two disguises, that of a young man or a young woman.

The woman was pale with black hair. The man’s hair was red. The woman was sad, the man merry. That’s how it’s always been in that world, since the beginning of time.