us!.”
Jeremy’s shock at the outburst was soon overtaken by a fit of giggling. Soon both boys lay upon the floodlit stone consumed by laughter. Through great sobs of breath, Ian repeated his last sentence again and again. Jeremy pleaded with him to stop. He closed his eyes against a film of tears; cold stone at his palms.
Finally Ian stood and holstered his pistol, addressing Death:
“You really shouldn’t do that again. We will call for you if we want you.”
The boy’s affirmation provoked a gasp of indignation in Jeremy. But Ian stared him down. Jeremy felt a flush of shame, for his friend had given voice to his own thoughts, in a voice resonant with pride, every syllable anchored in lead. One last longing for the mission came to him; the glimpse of a cathedral spire as it slipped beneath floodwaters.
Perhaps there never was a mission, Jeremy thought.
Ian was now enacting that certainty, standing alongside Death with thumbs hooked cowboy-style in his jeans pockets. Jeremy saw then that Death’s arm was raised, fingers of his right hand splayed beneath an index finger aimed at the pyramid’s opposing side. The clouds were dissipating. At their backs was a black day hued in cast-iron. Against this boilerplate were rain showers etched in silver. Before them lay what seemed to Ian an Alpine meadow under Spring-light. Wind tossed the grass-tops here and there in quick gushes.
The boys stood together. Jeremy pointed to a house upon a hilltop. Its skin of board shone a lustrous white. Jeremy peered to his right and left, to see where the desert ended and paddock began. There was no clear division between the two, with sparse lawn patching the sand far out to their rear. These islands of grass congealed to make the desert mere rivulets of dust between them. Finally all traces of it were over-run by green, and the sight gladdened the boys’ hearts.
“What is this, then, Death?” said Jeremy softly.
Ian heard his friend and offered his own thesis. “Maybe there’s dinosaurs down there, or other stuff that time forgot. Maybe it’s living stuff. Like the guns except alive.”
Jeremy had a rush of conflicting thoughts.
Perhaps Death has a garden where animals were sent for safekeeping. The ones the world had no use for any more.
Unicorns and Griffins might lie on the porch of that house, attended to by tuxedoed Minotaurs bearing iced tea.
The thought made him smile. He wanted to slide down to the house on a commando line. He did not request this from Death. Instead, he motioned for Ian to take point. The trio made a steady progress down the pyramid. A fissure sundered the blocks halfway down the structure. From this cavity came a meek stream. The boys plunged their hands and arms into its flow. A sheen of moss coated the cracked stone from which the stream ran. Jeremy imagined their frog crawling within this aperture. He dared Ian to stick his arm in the cave up to the shoulder. Ian shook his head.
“If we had a flamethrower we could …” the boy would have said “cauterized” but the absence of Nathan weighed suddenly on his heart. He used “burn” instead. Ian mimed closing his finger on an invisible ignition switch and hosing the area with fire. Jeremy took care not to step within the stream, for he guessed the moss would rob him of traction.
If I slipped, would Death help me? He wondered. Or would he and Ian peer after me as I crashed down from block to block like a bone-stuffed doll?
They started down. A stand of trees obscured the pyramid’s lower reaches, receiving the stream as it left the blocks. Rocks were scattered through this glade, ringed by a soft mantle of turf.
“It looks like it’s been cut, that grass,” observed Ian.
Jeremy nodded. He turned to Death.
“Is that your special place? Somewhere you come to get away from things and think?”
Ian busied himself with spinning his gun’s cylinder to and fro. Death looked at Jeremy, and he smiled at him. Within those eye sockets could be discerned nothing. Jeremy could not overcome his fear. His grin slackened.
“Can you smile as well, Death?” asked the boy in a near-whisper.
Wind whipped lightly at the skeleton’s robes. Ian drank of the breeze deeply, remarking that it was the smell of their school’s soccer ground when newly cut.
When he was small, Jeremy had accompanied his real dad to a golf links. Every green seemed to him the landing site of some alien species, landing beacons secreted somewhere in the flags. Each bunker was an emergency runway, the young Jeremy decided, should the craft lose power en route to one of the main sites. For some reason he could not shake the picture of Death partnering his father around the course.
“Does Death play golf?” he asked Ian.
Ian considered this, then replied no.
“He doesn’t play much of anything. Apart from us.”
Jeremy saw the truth in this.
“Should we play with him, Ian? I mean, show him how we play?”
“I feel SHF again, Jeremy” said Ian.
Jeremy looked at Death, smiled, and said that he did also.
Nathan awoke to the sensation of sliding. It was a gentle descent, nonetheless (albeit headfirst and upon his stomach). He dug his fingers into the ground to arrest his travel. His fingertips drew squeaking lines of resistance across a surface slicker than glass. Finally he slid to a halt and blew the friction from his fingers. He lay upon a slope of polished stone. A channel no wider than his palm bisected the face. A minor torrent lay thick within this groove. Only a hiss proclaimed its passage. It moved with such force that its skin was a plane compromised by neither bump nor ruffle, like a blade of molasses. Nathan scoured his pockets, finding a coin. This soon entered the water without noise or impact.
A shadow flashed up upon the black hill and Nathan saw that the pillar was directly above him. Its base was only a football field away. Where it met the stone was obscured by the hill’s slope. Nathan saw now that the channel ran from the pillar’s centre. A thread of ocean wavered out towards the boy, swayed momentarily then fell as a peal of green water. This detonated upon the stone with a ringing crash, sluicing down the hillside as a waist-high flood.
There was no avoiding the water. Nathan had an instant’s fear before the wash caught him by the shins and brought him down. The boy gasped down a mouthful of icy saltwater. His spine hammered upon the rock like an insect wing beating out Summer’s fullest joy. Nathan succumbed suddenly to plunging, cold impact, as might a nail driven into ice. He kicked at the depths, but his next breath was still half-riven with liquid. When this ceased, he found that he stood in water no deeper than his chest. Remnants of the wave frothed rings of white away from him. Thunder reached him, as the pillar calved off monstrous plates of ocean.
He was in a pond of a soccer field’s size. Ripples from his entry were only slapping at the far banks. A man stood there, and Nathan ducked down instinctively. When he surfaced, the man was squatting at the poolside. The boy felt a pressure beneath his feet. A swelling bloom of lake rose up; a gobbet of greenish water in which he hung. The force of its ascension overtook his efforts to stay afloat, and a thorough dunking resulted. For a moment, he regarded the man through a bulbous prism.
This was not Death, Nathan saw. It was a knight, steel-clad head to toe. A profusion of weapons were strapped to him. A cluster of spiked balls affixed to a rod via a short length of chain sat upon one hip.
Morningstar, though Nathan. He had modelled one with a tennis ball, stick and links of rubber band. It had the satisfying effect of ensnaring any opponents’ sword, ready for disarmament.
He stretched upwards to gasp in a breath. The mountain of black stone lay at his back, the pillar calving off vast panes of ocean. The Knight waved to Nathan, and bid him closer. Wobbling as it came, the lake-ball hovered to the man and sank ponderously to the grass. Its belly flattened and spread, before dissipating in a bright shower upon the pair.
Instinctively, Nathan called for Death, and his dread shadow fell upon him almost at once. The boy stepped back to reclaim the wan sunlight for his face. The Kni
ght nodded at Nathan’s companion, and the movement was assured, fluid. This was no weighty warrior mired in clanking metal. A coat of paint clung grimly to his breastplate, and Nathan thought he saw a Griffon prowling there. Twin antennae of grooved metal wavered out behind his back. Both were tapered to jewelled tips set with a stone of deepest blue. Leaves of thin steel sprouted thickly from chains unlinking this rail-length. Soon great wings now spread from his back in a profusion of glittering metal.
Only then was Nathan conscious of the sensation of standing upon firm ground again. This was only a moment's grace, for shock soon overcame him. He had drawn many hundreds of angels before: robot angels, reptilian angels; those that might crowd the ocean depths on silken wings of scale. Had he imagined one in the form of a knight? The boy decided it was inevitable that he had. Therefore, this being was equally his creation, surely. He said as much in a tone measured with caution. The great wings rustled black and silver.
The Knight pointed to a nearby rock, upon which a thick book was placed. Nathan traced his fingers across the cover, entranced by the tree-pattern wrought in leather and metal. The two seemed to find an odd fusion amongst the embossed tangle of limbs. Tracing a leaf, Nathan saw it transmuted several times between hide and metal in a mere thumb’s breadth. The books covers were clasped by a crab sculpted of pitted brass. From its