The Gray House

He wheels next to the bed and looks at me probingly.

“Why did you fight with Black?”

Meaning: how on Earth have you and Black managed to have a fight. Even though my expertise in that area is an undiscovered country for him, he finds it easier to imagine me fighting as compared to stolid, emotionless Black, which is the way he sees him. Also, he’s deathly afraid of hearing something along the lines of “You know, kid, we just had a certain difference of opinion” as the beginning and end of conversation. He’s afraid because that’s exactly the kind of explanation he usually gets, and it makes him depressed. It interferes with his need to feel grown up. He has all the reasons to be afraid right now. The temptation to get rid of him with a pair of meaningless sentences is overwhelming. The explanations will only invite more questions, and then eventually I will run out of answers. But Smoker is impossible to get rid of. He opens his palm and all of himself is right there on it, and he just hands that to you. You can’t throw away this naked soul, pretending like you don’t understand what it is you’ve been offered and why. That’s where his power comes from, out of this devastating openness. I’ve never met anyone like that before. I sigh and silently bid good-bye to the idea of getting some rest before the pack is back.

“You see . . . Noble decided to try Moon River. The effect of this stuff on the human consciousness is unpredictable to the extreme. Some just feel sick. Others start behaving strangely. There are those who experience absolute bliss. Which doesn’t look nice on the outside. I knew a guy who after a dose of River started talking in iambic pentameter. And then there was one who completely forgot how to talk . . .”

Smoker’s attention is so rapt that I’m barely in time to stop myself from expounding on all side effects of River I’ve had the opportunity to learn about.

“You get the idea. Drinking it makes you a human guinea pig.”

He nods. “I understand. It’s a drug. So what happened to Noble?”

I shoot a quick look to the wrinkled covers in the corner of the bed. The place where the dragon was sitting. Frozen. Lifeless.

“He went stiff. Turned to stone. Wouldn’t respond to anything. That’s not a particularly bad reaction, by the way. The important thing in those circumstances is to stand back and not interfere. Except someone needs to be nearby. Just in case.”

Smoker sighs with relief. He wasn’t here to look into the wide-open eyes of the live statue for five hours straight. Or to hear Lary’s whining and Jackal’s prophesies. There is nothing scary for him in what I’m saying.

I am trying to stick the damned Band-Aid back in its place by rubbing it against the bars of the headboard, but no such luck. Breakfast will be over soon. Time to wrap up the story.

“Black volunteered to stay with Noble over lunch. When we returned, Noble wasn’t here. This moron hauled him over to the Sepulcher. I’ve no idea if he lugged him all the way there himself or asked Spiders for help. But it doesn’t matter, really. That’s about it.”

Just as I expected, this is clearly far from “it” for Smoker. He looks so shocked that I begin to suspect that something must have filtered through from my side, something bad. I felt like I was talking without bringing any emotions into this, and anyway I am already far removed from the way I was yesterday, but some feelings are very hard to hold inside, they find a way out. My dislike of Black is one of those. As is his dislike of me, naturally. Smoker doesn’t need to be burdened with this, but I might be too late, at least on my own account. He’s already caught some of it.

“I think”—Smoker’s eyes flee, hiding behind the lashes—“maybe he thought that would be for the best? Maybe he was afraid for Noble and decided that he’d better make sure. In the hospital wing they know how to take care of people after . . . after things like that.”

“Of course. They know a lot of things there. And Black wanted what was best. And what’s best, in his opinion, is that we get rid of Noble. He’s much too unstable.”

“That’s a strange way of putting it, Sphinx . . . It’s not like they’d eat him alive there.”

That’s the most unbearable feature of all newbies. They constantly need obvious things explained to them. I feel like an idiot doing that. Especially when I’m wrapped in a wet towel. But I am also firmly against avoiding it, since sooner or later we always run into problems stemming from things left unsaid. From one of us being misunderstood.

“The medical records kept in the Sepulcher,” I forge on bravely, “have these stickers on them. Yellow ones, blue ones, and red ones. They are also put in the personal files. I’m not going to talk about yellow and blue right now, but one red stripe means that you are antisocial and unbalanced. Two, you have suicidal tendencies and require a psychologist. Three, you have a psychiatric disorder and require inpatient treatment, which the House is not capable of providing.”