Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee (beach read book txt) 📕

feeling of depression, almost of fear inside him. Inthe swift importunate way of the young, he knew where salvation lay, and hadcome to care less and less for anything else.

Heeven ran some of the miles. The dawn was just a phantom smudge of light alongthe hills when he reached the town, the gate not even open. He did not wait forit, but climbed in at a place he knew of, illegal and urgent. Then, coming tothe alley where the neat hovel sparkled between its far from immaculatesupports, a sudden peculiar reluctance overcame him.

Heloitered, undecided, on the street, until a woman came out of a door fartherdown, water bucket in hand. She glanced at him, and a half-startled look spreadover her face. Something in the look unnerved him utterly, though why he didnot know. He turned and ran.

Heran straight to the field that backed the dilapidated school. Again, he couldnot have said why, perhaps because it was a reference point, because he hadcome most often that way in the past.

Inthe field, he did not know what to do with himself. A dreadful uneasy restlessexhaustion was coming over him. His hands buzzed and were full of nerves likeneedles. Insects seemed to crawl along his scalp, under the hair. Then, walkingstupidly, he came on the apple tree and checked. It was still not quite truedawn, the sky silvery but nothing much lit up. For a moment the hideousness ofthe tree was more illusion than fact. As he was staring at it, he heard Silky’svoice call lightly across the twilight behind him.

Heturned and there she was in her clean darned rags, her gossamer hair blowing.

“Hallo,Parl,” she said, “I thought you never would come back.”

Hestared at her, as he had stared at the tree. When she started to come towardhim, a monumental terror boiled up in him, as if his blood and all his boneshad changed to blazing ice.

“Iwaited for you, Parl. I’ve waited, every time I could, here by the tree.”

Hefound he had backed a step away. When he did so, her face seemed to tremble. Hestill could not work out what was wrong. Then suddenly, as before, he brokeinto a run. He raced out of the field, away from her and from the tree, and ashe ran, he shouted, long blank wordless shouts.

Hedid not stop again until a door stopped him. He had rushed right into it, andwas crashing there with his fists. His yells had started all the dogs in the neighbourhoodbarking. Then the door opened and he almost fell through it. He recognisedSilky’s grandmother as if from a long way off, and so he realised which door hehad been hammering on.

“Oh,”she said. “Oh, someone told you.”

Shestarted to cry. He became aware that he was crying, too. She led him to a chairand she shut the door.

Shedid not tell him directly, for of course she supposed he knew. It was only byher elaborations of grief that he found out. On the night of the storm whichwrecked the harvest, Silky had been lingering by the apple tree in the fieldbehind the school. When lightning had struck the tree, it had struck Silkyalso. Silky was dead. She had been dead for more than a month.

Thegrandmother brewed a herbal tea, which once the three of them had drunk. Nobodycould drink it now. She patently wanted to keep Parl with her. He had been sooften with Silky that now he seemed to conjure the girl for the old woman. Thenthe grandmother went to a chest and brought out something mysteriously. Drawingnear to him, she showed him a cloth packet and opened it to reveal a clot ofshining threads.

“AllI’ve got left of her,” she said.

Shehad trimmed Silky’s silken hair the very morning before she died. The lightninghad left nothing much, stripping flesh and sweetness, as it had stripped thetree. But these fringes of hair the grandmother had, by sheer luck, retained.Now, with a supreme effort of sacrifice, she offered the packet to Parl.

Theinstant he saw the hair, he felt very sick. Truths that he would learn andreason for himself in later years, came to him now merely instinctively. He feltbut did not know what the shorn hair represented, and what its power must be.He had not guessed yet what that power signified.

Evenso, instinct ordered him. Though he almost cringed with revulsion, he took thepacket of hair.

Hesat, with the packet lying by him, most of the day, in Silky’s grandmother’shouse. All that time they said hardly anything to each other. She did not thinkto ask him if he should be anywhere else. She had forgotten real life. AndParl, though he understood the world went on, the landowner and his fields andhis anger, they were only dimly perceived, dimly remembered, events outside thebubble which enclosed him and the blasted apple tree and the dead girl and hershorn hair.

Whenthe day began to drain away, he rose and politely said good-bye to the oldwoman.

Ashe was going to the field, he met three of his former fellow students from theschool. They clustered around him, eager to commiserate, or, as it seemed tohim then, to enjoy his pain. Finally, one said, “So-and-so told me the priestswent to bless the ground where she was killed. So-and-so said she might not liequiet.” One of the others cuffed him, growing aware of sheer bad taste at last.They went away.

Batsfizzled over the field and dissolved in the darkness. The sky was overcast, andrain fell. The struck tree glowed strangely in the wet with a hard vitreoussheen.

Afteran hour, Silky came walking softly through the rain toward him.

Shewas strong. She looked very near mortal this time. Before, she had been mostlytransparent. He felt the weird drawing, the drag of energy going out of himselfto her. He had wanted her to be there, and the sense that he fed her existencewas almost pleasant. But then again, somewhere inside himself, he shied fromthis pleasure, was revolted by it. When she stood close to him and put her handon his arm, he grew cold, colder than he had ever been in his