The Reign of the Departed by Greg Keyes

Author:Greg Keyes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2018-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

When Errol went out of the townhouse, he heard Billy vomiting again. He’d asked before if he could help, but it had only seemed to embarrass him, so rather than repeat the mistake, he went around the other way. Above, the night sky blazed, glorious to behold. Even in rural Okatibee County it was never like this; the light of Sowashee bled into the sky, and most houses, no matter how isolated, had lights outside. Here the only illumination was that falling from the heavens.

It had been a long time since he had looked up at the stars. The last time had been when he and Bobby and Jay had gotten hold of a bottle of Thunderbird and drank it out in Bound’s pasture, lying on their backs. He had started naming the constellations, and Jay had made fun of him. That was when he was still learning to keep his mouth shut about such things. When he had been little, it had been with his dad, before he got sick. Once they had watched the sky wheel by for half a night, naming each constellation and planet as they rose.

And once with Aster.

The sudden remembrance startled him. She had known the stars, too, but she’d had different names for the constellations —Ursa Major or the Big Dipper was Thunder’s Cart, and the Milky Way was the Path of Birds. They had been eleven or twelve.

Why had he forgotten that?

He lay on his back, half-fearing that in the Kingdoms, even the stars wouldn’t be the same. But soon he began to pick them out, like old familiar friends.

Something rustled nearby, and he sat up, ready to fight, but the dark silhouette against the Milky Way was Veronica.

“Do you want to be alone?” she asked.

He did, but he didn’t want to say so. Typically, she interpreted his silence the way she wanted to, and lay down next to him. Her arm touched his, and he twitched in startlement. It almost felt real, her touch, rather than the muffled half-sensation his puppet body made do with. He relaxed and felt the smoothness of her skin; it was the same temperature as the night air, which was to say hot.

“Can’t sleep?” she asked.

“Something like that,” he said.

She was quiet for a moment.

“Look, Errol,” she said. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, with me trying to kill you and all . . .”

“You’ve saved me twice,” he said.

“What?”

“You came back for me at the Snatchwitch’s cave. You saved us all from the whatever-the-Hell-it-was in the river. I guess I can get over that one little thing.”

“Can you?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Huh,” she murmured.

She started to lift up, but then relaxed back onto the ground. He was increasingly aware of the place where their arms touched, try as he might to ignore it.

“You like the stars?” she asked.

“I guess,” he said.

“That’s as good as a lie, Errol Greyson,” she said. “You talk straight with me.”

“I like them,” he admitted.

“Tell me about them.”

“You know—there they are,” he said, pointing.

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