Nightside the Long Sun

Teasel’s mother sighed as she looked at her daughter. “There was blood on her pillow, Patera. Not much. I didn’t see it till shadeup. I thought it might have come out of her ear, but it didn’t. She felt so cold.”

Teasel’s eyes opened, surprising them both. Weakly, she said, “The terrible old man.”

Her mother leaned forward. “What’s that?”

“Thirsty.”

“Get her more water,” Silk said, and Teasel’s mother bustled out. “The old man hurt you?”

“Wings.” Teasel’s eyes rolled toward the window before closing.

They were four flights up, as Silk, who had climbed all four despite his painful right ankle, was very much aware. He rose, hobbled to the window, and looked out. There was a dirty little courtyard far below, a garret floor above them. The tapering walls were of unadorned, yellowish, sunbaked brick.

Legend had it that it was unlucky to converse with devils; Silk asked, “Did he speak to you, Teasel? Or you to him?”

She did not reply.

Her mother returned with the water. Silk helped her to raise Teasel to a half-sitting position; he had expected some difficulty in getting her to drink, but she drank thirstily, draining the clay cup as soon as it was put to her lips.

“Bring her more,” he said, and as soon as Teasel’s mother had gone, he rolled the unresisting girl onto her side.

When Teasel had drunk again, her mother asked, “Was it a devil, Patera?”

Silk settled himself once more on the stool she had provided for him. “I think so.” He shook his head. “We have too much real disease already. It seems terrible…” He left the thought incomplete.

“What can we do?”

“Nurse her and feed her. See she gets as much water as she’ll drink. She’s lost blood, I believe.” Silk took the voided cross from the chain around his neck and fingered its sharp steel edges. “Patera Pike told me about this sort of devil. That was—” Silk shut his eyes, reckoning. “About a month before he died. I didn’t believe him, but I listened anyway, out of politeness. I’m glad, now, that I did.”

Teasel’s mother nodded eagerly. “Did he tell you how to drive it away?”

“It’s away now,” Silk told her absently. “The problem is to prevent it from returning. I can do what Patera Pike did. I don’t know how he learned it, or whether it had any real efficacy; but he said that the child wasn’t troubled a second time.”

Assisted by Blood’s stick, Silk limped to the window, seated himself on the sill, and leaned out, holding the side of the weathered old window frame with his free hand. The window was small, and he found he could reach the crumbling bricks above it easily. With the pointed corner of the one of the four gammadions that made up the cross, he scratched the sign of addition on the bricks.

“I’ll hold you, Patera.”

Teasel’s father was gripping his legs above the knees. Silk said, “Thank you.” He scratched Patera Pike’s name to the left of the tilted X. Patera Pike had signed his work; so he had said.

“I brought the cart for you, Patera. I told my jefe about you, and he said it would be all right.”

After a moment’s indecision, Silk added his own name on the other side of the X. “Thank you again.” He ducked back into the room. “I want you both to pray to Phaea. Healing is hers, and it would appear that whatever happened to your daughter happened at the end of her day.”

Teasel’s parents nodded together.

“Also to Sphigx, because today’s hers, and to Surging Scylla, not only because our city is hers, but because your daughter called for water. Lastly, I want you to pray with great devotion to the Outsider.”

Teasel’s mother asked, “Why, Patera?”

“Because I told you to,” Silk replied testily. “I don’t suppose you’ll know any of the prescribed prayers to him, and there really aren’t that many anyway. But make up your own. They’ll be acceptable to him as long as they’re sincere.”

As he descended the stairs to the street, one steep and painful step at a time, Mucor spoke behind him. “That was interesting. What are you going to do next?”

He turned as quickly as he could. As if in a dream, he glimpsed the mad girl’s death’s-head grin, and eyes that had never belonged to Teasel’s stooped, hard-handed father. She vanished as he looked, and the man who had been following him down the stairs shook himself.

“Are you well, Marten?” Silk asked.

“I went all queer there, Patera. Don’t know what come over me.”

Silk nodded, traced the sign of addition, and murmured a blessing.

“I’m good enough now, or think I am. Worryin’ too much about Sel, maybe. Rabbit shit on my grave.”

* * *

In the past, Silk had carried a basin of water up the stairs to his bedroom and washed himself in decent privacy; that was out of the question now. After closing and locking both, he covered the Silver Street window with the dishrag and a dish towel, and the garden window (which looked toward the cenoby) with a heavy gray blanket he had stored on the highest shelf of the sellaria closet against the return of winter.