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

Therewas no mark on her of the lightning. There rarely ever was, as he would come toknow, evidence of the positive wounds or bodily spasms of death upon a livingghost. Its whole revenance was a masquerade of life; it tended to be amnesiacabout the instant of annihilation, even in the degree of camouflage.

Theysat together on a flat-topped stone. They talked. Presently he took her hand,and this time her hand felt real.

Shehad been young and innocent. Perhaps it was her naïveté that made her do whatnext she did, a frank and honest desire that they should be together as equals.Some would cheat and trick from jealousy and vengeance, out of hatred for thosewhose lives were genuine, some never slew directly or intentionally, warmingthemselves at lives as if at fires. Silky had been honourable. What remained ofher could not have altered, so cruelly, into a fiend.

Shewas thirteen. A lovely, generous, desperate child. No, it was her naïveté, herlonging not to lose him, that had made her seek his death.

Shesaid that they should go into the school. There was a side door which each knewhow to open. The rain was falling still, and she said they must take shelter.He asked her, almost with embarrassment, if the rain could inconvenience hernow. She smiled radiantly at him.

“No.See, my hair’s quite dry, and my dress. But you’re wet through.”

Helet her take him to the door, and he opened it Not because he cared about therain, but because she had seemed to want them to go inside.

Theywandered about the benches and the chests. The books were piled untidily andthe slates more so. A mouse pranced over the tiles. It had been eating thelarge candle which the tutor used to tell the time. The atmosphere was verydark, yet somehow Parl could see everything well. Even when the girl hurried upthe narrow stair to the attic, he was able to follow her with ease.

Thefloor of the attic, which rested on the beams of the hall below, was mainlyrotten from the leaking roof where the rain even now entered, and where thesprays of winter ice would poke through to drip slowly on the pupils’ headsfifty feet below. The joists had long since cracked. The walls bulged. Thepupils were forbidden to enter the attic.

Silkyran daintily over the unsafe floor. Old parchment and cobwebs lay about. WhereSilky’s feet passed over them they left no imprint.

Athis first step after her, a plank groaned. At the second, he heard the woodcrack quietly. In that instant, he was aware of how she invited him and where,and it did not matter. There was a savage sweetness in her face, pain that shewould cause him pain, happiness, blind and foolish, that called for him to cometo her. If she saw anything, it was their life together–their unlife–childrenand lovers, wedded forever in the shadows.

Thenhis foot went through the rotten boards as, years later, most of his body wouldgo through the rotted struts of a bridge.

Theescaping manoeuvre was complex and almost hopeless, but somehow he achieved it,flinging himself away from the floor, and from her. He landed in the doorway ina shower of splinters. His head rang, and he heard her through the ringing,murmuring to him, coaxing him to return.

Whenhe could look at her again, she was still smiling. She held out her hands,mutely encouraging him. A moment of discomfort, and all would be well. Amoment, only a moment.

Hestaggered down the stair, and back into the school room. He was not certainwhat he meant to do, but, as if it had been planned, his confused gaze settledinstantly on the tall wax time candle, and the flint and tinder that lay besideit.

Hedid not know–how could he?–that the ultimate act must be performed in theirsight. Yet his instinct knew, that seventh sense which would make him what hewas to become, that seventh sense which all that frightful day had been forminginside him, brain and soul.

Whenshe drifted down the stair, he already had the candle alight. She glanced at itwonderingly, then took up a slate and a scrap of chalk. He was not amazed thatshe could hold them in her unreal hands, the shock came when she showed himwhat she had written. Not that he could read it He would have needed areflective surface for that. For, in the way of her kind, she had writtenunhesitatingly from right to left, back to front, in mirror writing. If he hadneeded any further sign, she had supplied it.

Whenhe drew the packet of her hair from his belt, her eyes and mouth widened infrightful demented shapes. He had his first glimpse into hell, then, as thefirst of the great white moths dashed itself against him, throwing thefilaments of its wings over his face, tearing him with the shards of its nailsand its frantic unhuman cries–

Theburning packet of hair fell from the candle onto the tiles.

Andas he destroyed her, in that minute he learned, and learned forever, that yes,it could be possible, and essential, and unbearably horrible, to kill the dead.

Itwas his very last lesson in that schoolroom, as it was his last night in thattown or on that stretch of land.

Whenthe rainwater, dripping through from above, quenched the smouldering ashes, heran away into the undergrowth of night. He had been running from things sincesunrise. Running from them, and toward them. Now too, he ran toward his future,and his trade. Although he did not know it, and just then would have wept if hehad.

Thefire was low. A crimson branch had broken open, whistling as the sap bled fromit. The fortress wall hid the lights of the village from Parl Dro the man. Onlythe mild passage of the river at its summer low was audible, and sometimes atreacly chorus of frogs.

He was thinking the endlesslyrepeated question. Did I simply curtail herdead-life because she would have robbed me of my human one?

Theanswer came, as it always did, soothing him, never quite enough: He had notdestroyed her in rage, not even merely in terror. He had grasped, or some partof