The Child Eater (19 page)

“Very good, Master,” she said. “Now—”

“Matyas,” he interrupted.

“What?” The fear was back, and he realized how much he'd enjoyed having driven it away, at least for a while.

He said, “You don't need to call me Master. Just Matyas is good.” It was what Veil called him, he thought, and Horekh, the only people who actually spoke to him on a regular basis.

She nodded. “Matyas,” she said, her voice hardly above a whisper, as if she might be entering a trap.

“Good,” he said, and added, “Lahaylla.” She looked down but she was smiling. He thought of telling her that her name resembled words in several ancient languages, including a certain medicinal flower that bloomed only once a century in a land long since destroyed by a volcano, the volcano itself having been triggered by a war of wizards over that very same flower.

Picking up the purple and gold, she said, “I need to know your designs.” When he just stared, she said, “The pictures. For the robe? I don't know . . . what a Master wants.”

“Oh,” he said, suddenly excited then. “Do you have any paper? And a quill? Or something to make marks?” He doubted she could write, but some of her clients might need to sketch an image. To his surprise she quickly produced several sheets of rough paper, a stone inkpot with gall ink already mixed and a nicely cut goose quill.

He closed his eyes a moment and breathed deeply, slowly allowing images to form on the “blank sky,” as Florian called the canvas in our minds. Almost immediately he could see an entire composition, taken partly from his books, partly from things Veil had shown him, and even his own embellishments that he'd drawn in sudden moments of inspiration, late at night in the library or the tower.

He showed it all to her, a treasure such as no one had ever given her before. But all she said was, “Yes. I can do that. I think. Yes, I'm sure.” He turned his face away a moment and was about to leave when she said, “Umm, Master? I mean, Matyas?” When he looked at her again she took a breath, then said, “I need—you know—to measure you.”

He almost laughed, thinking of what Horekh might say to that suggestion, but then it struck him what she meant, and he felt his face grow warm. He said, “Oh. Yes. Do I need . . . do I have to take off my clothes?”

He saw a new flare of fear move across her face, and he thought suddenly of the wizard whom Medun had brought down through the Singular Storm, the one who'd told young women he would transmit magic to them. He wondered,
Does she think I—?
But apparently not, for a moment later her wariness changed to amusement as she said, “If you remove your jacket, that will be enough.”

As he stood with his arms out for her to measure his shoulders, around his chest, the distance from wrist to wrist and the distance from his neck to the ground, he found himself deeply grateful he hadn't asked for pants to match the robe. He was glad too that she ran her tape across his back and not his front, but even so, when her fingertips happened to graze his palm he was fearful she must have seen his reaction.

If so, still all she did was step back from him and with her eyes cast down slightly said, “Thank you. It will be ready in seven days.” He put on his jacket and was glad he could leave when she made a small sound and said, “Um—Master—sorry! Matyas—”

He stared at her, waiting, then finally said, “What is it?”

“I do not want to diminish the
honor
, but the fabric is, well, my most special. And the work, well, I will have to put everything else aside.”

She looked so miserable. Was he supposed to soothe her in some way? Say something? What? No one had ever tried to comfort him in his life. Then he realized. It wasn't comfort she wanted, it was money. He was a Master, which meant he must be rich. He, who had never held any coins except to buy cheese and turnips for Veil. He'd thought of it before, but the excitement had driven it from his mind. Excitement that she'd appeared to share, but no, of course not. All she cared about was what she thought he could give her.

He stared at the arrogant little seamstress with her bolts of silk and gold. What had she done to get the money to buy all
that
? Who did she do it with? Why should
he
have to give her anything? Maybe it was
payment enough that he didn't just turn her into some dreary brown moth. And anyway, why did she need money from him? Wouldn't she just run out into the street and tell everyone she could find about the “honor” of serving Matyas the Brilliant? Wasn't that enough?

All this ran like a river through him, but instead of letting it overflow into a flood of words or spells, he found himself saying, “How much do you . . . how much do you need?” He felt as ignorant and helpless as the first day Veil sent him to buy bread at the market.

Staring at the dirt floor, she whispered, “Twenty.”

“Florins?” Veil had sent him once for a small bag of powder from Johannan's stall at the end of the market and given him two of the gold coins, the king's face engraved on one side, a crude image of a dove on the other. “Pigeons,” the market people called them.

Lahaylla nodded without looking up.

Matyas said, “I'll bring them when I return. In seven days.”

For three days after he brought his son back from Carla Lowe's house, Jack Wisdom hardly slept. Howard Porter came and examined Simon, an exercise as pointless as always. As always, Howard couldn't exactly find anything
wrong
, but he did give Jack some medicine to bring the fever down, and something to make sure Simon slept. Only, Simon didn't, not really. He was out for maybe half an hour, long enough for Howard to suggest “something for anxiety, or maybe ADHD” and for Jack to remind him they'd tried medicine and all it had done was make Simon violently ill, even have seizures. “You really want to go
there
again?” Jack asked, and Howard just looked down and shook his head.

A moment later, he said, “I don't get it, Jack. He was doing so well. I've got to tell you, it made me smile every time I thought of you guys. And now this. Do you know what set it off? Did something happen? At school maybe?”

I tore up his mother's Tarot cards
. Jack shook his head. “No. Not that I know of. He wasn't in school, he was just at his friend's house.”

Howard's eyes narrowed and he searched Jack's face, like someone trying to figure out a map in a foreign language. “Are you sure you can't think of anything?” When Jack didn't answer, he went on, “Sometimes in cases like this, when we can't find a . . . medical cause—” He stopped.

“Christ!” Jack said. “Do you think I'm
doing
something to my own son?”

“No, no,” Howard said, actually taking a step back. “Of course not. But I've got to . . . Could something be happening at school? Is there any teacher that Simon seems scared of? Maybe in gym or something?”

For some reason, Jack thought of the man in the baseball field all those years ago, who'd held his head as if to measure it and then pronounced it “not ready.” He remembered how the police had come, and they'd searched and searched, and when they couldn't find anything, they'd made the usual joke about the family name, and Jack's dad had become angry and accused Jack of making it up. He shook his head now and said, “No, there's nobody. At least, nobody he's told me about. You've examined him, right? You know, physically . . .”

Howard looked down as he nodded. “Yeah. No signs of . . . of anything.”

Jack let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. “Well, he's resting now. You can go, I guess.”

Howard sighed. “Okay, Jack. Let me know if there's any change, okay?”

“Sure,” Jack said. He didn't move as Howard walked toward the door. When he heard the door close, Jack thought of going to the fireplace and sifting through the ashes, as if he could somehow reconstitute the cards and bring them back to present to his son on a golden tray. He'd ask forgiveness and his beautiful boy would hug him and tell him everything was okay now. Somehow Rebecca got into the act, as Jack imagined her standing over them, her arms around their shoulders. Jack had no idea he was crying until a noise from Simon upstairs made him jump up and he felt the tears splash on his face.

Upstairs he found his son thrashing around, screaming something about fingers. Jack managed to grab Simon's arms and bring them against his body, which seemed to wake him up. The boy stared wildly at his father, and for a second Jack thought Howard Porter must be right to think such terrible things about him, for why else would Simon look at him that way, with such terror and hate? But Jack pushed the thought aside and chanted the world's most useless magic formula: “It's okay, it's only a dream.”

It went on like that for weeks, as it had before, only this time Simon wouldn't talk to him. The fever broke after a couple of days, which
allowed Jack to tell Carla Lowe it was some kind of forty-eight-hour bug, and thank her once again for her concern. He wondered what the other parents had told her about allowing her son to play with Simon. Did they warn her? And had she said, “Oh, he seems perfectly fine”? And was she kicking herself now for not listening? No more invitations came for play dates, and when Jack asked Simon, “How is Jerry?” (meaning, Are you and he still friends?) Simon just shrugged and said nothing. But then, that was Simon's response to everything Jack said.
Early adolescence
, Jack Wisdom told himself, again, and wished with all his torn heart that it was true.

Simon lost his appetite and sometimes refused to eat or threw the food on the floor. Jack yelled at him, ordered him to his room, then sat at the kitchen table and cried. Once, when they were eating pizza and Simon actually appeared to have an appetite, all of a sudden he threw up on the table. Jack ran over with a pot as Simon continued to vomit until all the food was gone and Jack feared blood would follow. Jack tried to steady his son but Simon pushed him away.

Simon gripped the sides of the table as if he'd fall over otherwise. “Daddy,” he said, “what did you do to me?”

“It was only a pizza,” Jack said.

“
What did you do to me?
” Simon shouted, then ran upstairs.

Jack slumped in his chair. He should clean up the mess. At least he was capable of wiping up vomit. Instead, he just sat there and whispered, “I don't know what I did. Really. It was only a deck of cards.”

Every morning Simon lay in bed a long time, hoping something would have happened to the school, or Daddy would suddenly decide to stop forcing him to go. Finally, Daddy always came up and pulled the covers off him in that fake-fun way, as if this was just some dumb game, ha ha. It wasn't only that school was awful. The thing was, Simon never knew how it would go. Some days nothing happened; he sat there through Math and Geography and Social Studies, and with luck, the teacher didn't call on him and no one bothered him at lunch or during after-school activities. He could just sit by himself and pretend to read until finally Daddy picked him up and closed his eyes a moment when no bad reports came, and then took Simon for pizza or something, as if it was some big deal, like a birthday or something, when it was just dumb luck.

And other days . . . It wasn't his fault, that's all he kept thinking. He didn't want to cheat, he didn't want to know stuff. What did he care if Sally What's-her-name loved Arthur but was scared he'd laugh at her? What difference was it to Simon if Ms. Bowden's brother had a lump somewhere and was scared of doctors? At least Simon could understand that last part—he
hated
doctors, even Dr. Howard. Was it cheating if you didn't want to do it?

Even if it was just that, knowing things people didn't want him to know, cheating in spite of himself, he could get through it if he just had to stare at the floor, not look at anyone. It was like ignoring a gang of kids all shouting at you at once. As long as you didn't answer, they'd give up and go away. He knew about that because it happened sometimes. There were five of them, three girls and two boys (sometimes he got confused which was which, until he realized that they themselves couldn't decide and that scared them). When they started to grab at him and call him “Weirdo,” or sometimes “Faggot,” he just stood there and stared at the ground. Usually they gave up and walked away, fake-laughing as if they'd done something really cool. Once, one of the girls kicked him, and another punched his arm, and soon they were all hitting him, and Simon could see a teacher, Mr. Hunt, watch from the side until finally, when Simon's nose started to spurt blood, Mr. Hunt sighed and came over to chase the kids away. Even that wasn't so bad, it was just another day. The worst part was when his dad saw the plaster and wouldn't stop asking questions, until finally Simon told him—kind of—and Daddy went around making lots of noise, which Simon knew, without cheating, he only did because it was something he could
do
.

Days like that were just . . . days.

It was the other stuff that really made him want to stay home. Like when he looked at a kid and saw green rot all over him, or white things sticking out of his chest. Or that time in dodgeball, when Simon, who usually hid behind everyone else (he tried to pretend to himself that was why they chose him last, because he sucked, but of course he knew it wasn't), found the ball in his hands. He looked at it a moment then threw it as hard as he could at Caroline Hansen. When the ball hit her in the chest, he looked at it a moment then . . . fell apart. A hole opened in her chest and blood burst out everywhere, and in the middle of the torrent a small child, like some kind of antique doll, screamed and waved its arms for help. Simon didn't realize that he himself was
screaming until he felt the gym teacher's arms around him. And then he just stopped, froze, became silent, because he knew how much Mr. Patton hated having to touch him, and Simon himself didn't want those angry arms touching him one second longer than necessary.

Everyone avoided him. In the hallways, everyone who was not actually yelling at him or hitting him moved closer to the walls when he walked past them. No one sat next to him in class, something his teacher, Ms. Bowden, pretended not to notice. She called on Simon as little as possible, only when she became scared his father would complain. As if Simon might tell on her.

The only person who seemed like he might be willing to be friends with Simon was Popcorn Jimmy. A couple of times, Simon could see Jimmy looking at him, in class, in the cafeteria. Simon pretended not to notice.

He did his best not to look at anyone, with one exception, and it wasn't Jimmy. It was Ellen, the girl who'd once brought Tarot cards to school to tell kids' fortunes. If she brought them again, would she let Simon look at them? Would they—he couldn't think of the right word—
work
for him? He wondered if he could somehow push her to think of bringing the cards. Would that be cheating? It wouldn't be the same as knowing what she was already thinking.
Probably
, he thought. He might have decided to try it anyway, except he was pretty sure it wouldn't help. They wouldn't be
his
Tarot cards.

Simon didn't look at people, and people didn't look at Simon. Even his teacher tried to look past him. He didn't mind. He understood. It wasn't safe to look at him.

But Jimmy looked, and then one day at lunch he came over to where Simon was sitting on the edge of a bleacher facing an empty baseball field. “Hey,” Jimmy said. Simon didn't answer. “Can I sit down?”

“No,” Simon said. Jimmy tried to say something but Simon told him, “Go away.” He didn't have to look to know that Jimmy had slunk off, head down even more than usual.

He hated doing that. Simon didn't deserve Jimmy's friendship (even if it was because there was no one else). He hadn't even thought about Jimmy when there were other kids who wanted to hang out with him. No, it wasn't fair, but that wasn't the reason Simon had sent him away. He just didn't think it was safe for anyone to be friends with him. Jerry Lowe had started dreaming the terrible things, even if he didn't
remember them when he woke up. Maybe Simon had stopped being friends with him just in time.

Simon told Jimmy to go away to save him, but he still hated it. A couple of times he glanced at Jimmy standing all alone, his hands in his pockets, and once he almost got up and walked over to him, but instead he made his whole body stiff, as if he'd turned to stone and couldn't move at all.

Back in class that day, Simon was not just scared, he was angry. It was so unfair! He didn't ask for any of this. He never cheated—well, almost never—and it wasn't like he wanted to dream, or any of it. He made a face at Ms. Bowden, who had asked some dumb question and now was looking around the room to pick on someone for the answer. Her eyes seemed to touch on Jimmy, then jump away, then come back. “Jimmy,” she said, with a sigh, “how about you? Do you know how the War of 1812 started?” Jimmy slumped down further in his seat, as if he hoped he could disappear.

“Maybe it was popcorn!” Billy Ventner called out, and a bunch of kids laughed.

“That's enough!” Ms. Bowden said, but Simon could feel how much she wanted to laugh. And then suddenly, without wanting to, he could hear, or just know, everything she was thinking, and he found himself doing that thing again, like he'd done with the Allens, when he'd rescued Jimmy.

Christ, why do I have to get all the weirdos?

“Christ,” Simon said, “why do I have to get all the weirdos?”

What?

“What?”

Oh my God, did I say that out loud?

“Oh my God, did I say that out loud?”

Stop it!

“Stop it!”

Jesus, fuck, get out of my head, you fucking creep!

“Jesus, fuck, get out of my head, you fucking creep!”

Then Ms. Bowden was actually speaking—shouting, in fact—with her left arm extended straight out to point at the door. “Simon! Principal's office! Right now!”

As he stood up, shaking from what he'd let himself do, Simon heard bits of laughter all around the room, and he was about to run out through
the door when he realized, with a thrill, that it wasn't aimed at him—they were laughing at the teacher. Janie Higgins even whispered, “Cool,” as Simon walked past her. At the door, he stopped and turned to stare one last time at Ms. Bowden. “Now!” she yelled, and Simon smiled as he left the room.

His excitement fell away almost the moment he stepped into the hallway. By the time he reached Mr. Chandruhar's office, he was shaking and finding it hard to breathe. He shouldn't have done that, it was the worst kind of cheating. Now his dad would hate him, everyone would hate him, and it hadn't changed anything, hadn't helped. Nothing could help.

He was wondering if he should just run away when Mr. Chandruhar called through the door, “Come inside, Simon.” Simon jumped back—could teachers and principals
cheat
?—before he realized that Mr. Chandruhar must have spotted him through the frosted-glass window. Simon went into the office and stood just inside the door.