The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

seem that the old man had a face like weathered rock. It was full of lines and hollows, two of which held his eyes like precious secrets. His nose was flat and broad, his mouth a thin line. He looked like he hadn’t smiled in a long time. He looked like he’d forgotten how to.

But he wasn’t scary. In spite of his face and the third hand growing out the middle of his back, hanging behind him like it didn’t have anything better to do, the old man wasn’t scary.

On the contrary, he looked very lonely.

Perhaps that is why I stayed.

‘No,’ he said, answering my question in a voice that had once, I supposed, been young. He did not say anything else, but he did not look away either. And neither did I. I wondered how long it had been since he had had someone to talk to. I certainly couldn’t remember seeing anyone with him before.

‘I was playing catch with Deidre, but she threw the ball too hard,’ I found myself saying. ‘She’s not very good at throwing.’

The old man nodded like he understood, but he still didn’t say anything.

I said, ‘Deidre’s my friend. She’s… imaginary. That means I made her up.’

And I waited for the reaction. I waited for the look of pity to creep into his eyes. I waited for him to shake his head sadly. I waited for him to ask me where my parents were.

But the old man with the third hand did none of these things. And for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was in the presence of someone who did not think me odd.

So I sat down in the sand and drew my knees to my chest and just sat there, watching the sea dance and the sun dip in the sky. The old man said nothing to me. We just sat in silence, both of us no longer alone, at least for one afternoon.

I forgot all about my ball.

*

The next day I went back down the beach.

The old man was right where I’d left him the day before. He was not rocking today, but he was still looking out at the water. He turned to glance at me as I walked down the beach. He did not speak to me, but he stood and used his third hand to shift his rocking chair ever so slightly to the side to make room for me to sit, and that was enough.

That day I told him about the book I was trying to write, how I’d spent a year-and-a-half on it and still felt like I was getting nowhere; I told him about the despair of getting words down, looking at them and feeling like everything I’d written was stupid and boring and had probably been said before – and better – by people I probably wouldn’t like if I met them, and I told him how that was nothing compared to the despair of not getting any words down at all.

I even told him about the people I was attracted to and how I wanted to have sex with all of them (and there were a lot of them) even though I knew it wouldn’t be fulfilling for very long.

The old man with the third hand listened patiently as I opened up certain parts of me that hadn’t seen daylight in so long. He did not interrupt or ask questions. He just listened.

By the time I was done the day was nearly dead. Before I went home I thanked the old man for listening.

The next day the old man started talking to me in return.

*

‘Why do you sit here every day?’ I asked him. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

He told me no, he was not waiting for anyone. Then he pointed out to the sea and said, ‘That is where I came from. That is my home.’

I followed the line of his hand and looked at the ocean, saw how it undulated, rocking itself gently.

‘The sea?’ I asked the old man.

‘Yes,’ he said. In his deep and rolling voice he told me the story of his birth, how he grew up among his people in the depths of the ocean, never seeing the sun till he was grown. He told me of his people, of Leviathan, whose throne is the deep, and of Cthulhu, old beyond imagining.

The old man with the third hand told me these things, and when he was done I asked him why he was here, on land, and not in the sea with his people.

He didn’t answer me for a long time. I assumed mine was a question he did not want to answer, so I turned away and looked out at the ocean, imagining, somewhere in its depths, the many claws of the Leviathan stretching from continent to continent. I imagined what it would be like to live inside the sea. I wondered if anybody I knew would ever find me there. They probably wouldn’t.

I wanted to go live in the sea.

After a while, the old man answered my question.

‘I left my home,’ he said, ‘and my people, to explore the dry lands. I did not tell anybody I was leaving, and I have since lived a long time on the land. I have seen mountains and kingdoms rise and fall and rise again. I have seen man. I have come to know the extent of his kindness and his cruelty, and I have seen how often one becomes the other overnight. I have seen this and more. I have seen all I wanted to see and much more I did not. I have seen everything there is to see under the sun.

‘And now I am afraid to go back home, for I do not know if my people will forgive me for leaving.’

‘And so you sit here,’ I said, somewhat redundantly.

‘And so I sit here,’ the old man agreed.

We said nothing more that day till evening, when the setting