R K Duncan - [BCS272 S02] - The Boy Who Loved Drowning (html) Read online

  Three weeks after she shut him in the house, Bit slipped out. The moon was full, and he padded quietly down the silvered stairs to the black water. He held his question as he sank beneath the smooth black water.

  “Why is Kal so strange now?”

  The weeds reached out and patted him like eager hounds as soon as he was in the drowning. He almost heard them asking where he’d been. The water cooled the burning itch under his skin and he felt the dark place fold him into itself. He fell fast and easy, and the answer almost leapt into his hands.

  “She is afraid of how well you drown.”

  His breath was still bubbling where his body was. Time left to try another question. Would the drowning answer two questions without him leaving in between? He asked aloud, making sure it was only in the dark place, not opening his lips under the water.

  “Why is she afraid of that? She wanted me to be the best.”

  He fell again, and again the answer was ready under his hand when he landed.

  “She is afraid of how we are your friends, because she never felt it.”

  He kicked himself back to himself and broke the surface, breathing a sharp gulp of cold. Lamps were burning in the high house. In Kal’s room, and in his. She knew he was gone. He drowned again.

  “What will she do?”

  The weeds were eager, shooing him just where he needed. He fell fast and rolled among the soft and swarming truths. He came up with the answer clutched to him.

  “She will take you back inside, and never let you into the drowning again.”

  Never again. No. He couldn’t lose his friends. Not now that Kal wasn’t even his friend anymore.

  “How can I stop her?”

  It flashed just a step farther, and he caught it before the afterimage of blank nothings faded from his eyes.

  “You must kill her.”

  Tonight the drowning was personal, speaking to him, not just dispensing secrets he half-understood.

  “Isn’t there another way? How can I make her love me again?”

  Two questions at once, but the answers ran to him like they were tame.

  “Only by lying and making her believe it. She will never love you again while she knows you are our friend.”

  He could never do it. Bit had tried lying to Kal twice, in seven years, and each time she had put ten stripes on him with a hazel switch. Years of drowning had taught her to hear the truth, and lies were forbidden in her house.

  The answer to his third question was waiting as he fell. He was deep now, almost to the bottom of the lake.

  “How can I kill her?” She was so much taller, so much stronger than him.

  “Take the knife from her belt when she embraces you. Put it into her belly and let her fall into the lake.”

  He fought back to the surface, gasping and coughing out water, and there she was, waiting on the shore, with her arms open.

  “Bit, come out of the water. It’s not safe. The drowning wants something from you, and I don’t understand what it is yet.”

  She pulled him to her breast and cooed over him, as if he needed comfort. She was tense as a wire under the tenderness. He looked up at her eyes in the moonlight; she was looking past him, at the water, and she was afraid. She was afraid of the drowning, the worst thing she had always taught him not to be. She couldn’t teach him anything more, not while she was afraid of the water and the dark place and the weeds that held him softer than she did.

  He felt at her belt and found the knife where she always kept it. He pulled it out, heavy and sharp and bright under the moon. She stepped away, but only a little. Not too far. He pushed it in, and it slid easy. Once. Twice, and she fell into the water, and slid under it, as if the weeds, his friends, had reached out of the drowning to pull her down. He ran back to the high house, and after a long time lying, he fell asleep in front of the banked fire.

  In the morning, there was a loud knock at the door, and someone called for Master Kal, the diviner.

  He dressed in his suit of black and red and met them in the anteroom that smelled of cedar and incense, and when they came in, a rich merchant and her six attendants, he greeted them.

  “What secrets would you have me bring out of the dark?”

  Everything would be alright. He could drown better than anyone alive. He would answer every question and never be away from his friends again.

  © Copyright 2019 R.K. Duncan

 

 

  The Boy Who Loved Drowning (html), R K Duncan - [BCS272 S02] - The Boy Who Loved Drowning (html)

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends