The Giant's Almanac by Andrew Zurcher (black female authors .txt) 📕

in the middle of nothing, and built that thing. Someone must look after it. And its only purpose is to warn people. To take care of them. To help them keep an eye out.’

Fitz waited for the light to come round again. It was exciting, mesmerizing, reassuring to find that in all that nothingness, there was such a light.

‘I used to come here most nights. Now I come only once in a while. But I think about it every night, before going to sleep, and it helps to remind me, you know, that there’s more.’

Above them, on the top of the cliff, someone opened the door of the Heresiarch’s library, shut it, and started to walk towards them. The top hat was unmistakable. Navy pulled Fitz further off the path, on to the edge of the cliff, dragging him down to the ground. He knew to be silent. Only when the Master had passed them, and gone on down the steps, and disappeared below, did he dare to breathe.

‘That’s the other reason I brought you up here. He’s been coming up here almost every night since you came to the Heresy. These days, he comes during Feeding, when everyone else is in the Lantern Hall. He doesn’t eat. I doubt he sleeps. He’s looking for something, isn’t he?’

Fitz nodded. Navy felt it.

‘Something to help you. Fitz,’ she said, ‘something awful is happening in the Heresy. I know it is. And when the Master left, last year, it got worse. Fingal, Dina, the Rack, the Commissar, the Registrar – they’re all in on it. So many secrets. They’re never around. They’re always looking at one another, looking like they know something. Whatever it is, I know the Master must be against it. And that’s all I need to know. I’d follow him anywhere. And he brought you here, and he looks out for you, so I think you must, somehow, be important. I think I know why you are here.’

‘Why?’ Fitz asked her.

‘Everyone feels it, even if they react in different ways. Even if they react in terrible ways. We all know it. You’re here because, unlike the rest of us, even me, even Dolly, and I love Dolly – I don’t know exactly how to put it – you’re here because, wherever you go, whoever you are with, love – happens. That’s a gift that’s greater than any of ours.’

They walked back in silence, down the thousand steps, through the Heresiarch’s court, and into the Mastery. Navy dropped Fitz’s hand at his tower door.

‘It may not make any sense,’ she said. ‘But you belong here because you don’t fit.’

Then she was gone.

13

The Incoherentists

The next morning, four weeks to the day after Fitz had first arrived at the Heresy, everything changed.

For one thing, he stopped eating the stack. It was a simple thing to do. Once he had learned about it from Dina, he had noticed it on the porridge that was served them each morning, sprinkled on the surface of every bowl set before the children. It smelled sweet and earthy, a little like nutmeg, and was russet brown in colour. At first he hadn’t minded it much; eager for the concentration it allowed him, the sense of unity, the quick gains in understanding and in feeling, he ate it almost greedily. But now, since Russ became ill, and after the Master was attacked, with Dina – stung and surly – absent from half their lessons, and given all that Navy had said, Fitz wasn’t so eager. So when the bowl was set in front of him – and always without looking, especially if he were in the middle of a conversation with Dina – he dragged his spoon lightly across the surface of his porridge, scraping up the stack, and folded it over on the inside lip of his bowl. It was a technique adapted from his new practice in oil painting. That bit he left in his bowl, when he was finished; and if he ate a few grains of the stuff on this or that morning, it didn’t seem to have anything like the effect it had had before.

It didn’t go unnoticed. One of the Serfs brought a fresh laver and pitcher to Fitz’s room every morning, setting it outside his door. The jug of water was for washing; but next to it there was always a glass of cool water for drinking – and the first thing Fitz usually did, on waking, was to take it down by gulps. Sure enough, not two days after he started avoiding the stack at porridge, the daily glass of water had an unmistakable new smell to it. So, he was being watched, and closely. That morning, he contrived to climb from his bed, using the window frame as a step, just high enough to push open the trap in the ceiling. He poured the water on the roof, and with satisfaction heard it trickle into the gutter and down the leads.

After that, Fitz had to simulate the effects of the stack, so that Dina would remain convinced, so that the Officers would remain convinced, that nothing had changed for him. He enjoyed this, and was surprised at how easy he found it to concentrate entirely on whatever he was doing, to let himself go, to become absorbed in it, as if it were the only thing he had ever known. He was surprised at how easy it was – despite everything – to dote on Dina completely. All things considered, the simulation wasn’t so different from the real experience of stack, save that a little part of him, something like an eye or a little window on himself, remained open and conscious of the passage of time, of the existence and importance of other ideas, other people and other actions. He came to feel that he wasn’t faking anything at all, but