The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

Author:Katherine Arden [Arden, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2024-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

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He drank until he was no longer afraid. He drank until longing became only a pleasant ache. Faland drank too, color on his cheekbones, the paler eye brilliant. It was a compelling face. You wanted to look at it, and know its secrets. You wanted to look through it to where the music lived. The room around them was sunk in murmured talk, heady with warmth and wine.

“Will you tell me a story now, Iven?” said Faland. He’d taken a seat beside Freddie, lounging in the half-light.

Freddie hesitated. A story meant remembering. He wanted to stay adrift in the unmoored present. But Faland’s silence was expectant. I have fees, he’d said. Well, it was little enough, for the hours of glorious oblivion. Freddie found himself groping through his wine-hazed memory, thought of things he could tell—good and terrible—and finally he blurted, “Laura stole an ice cream for me once.”

“Misdeeds run in the family, I fear,” said Faland. He propped his chin on his fist and waited.

Freddie hadn’t thought of it in years. But he found himself slipping into the memory as though it were playing out in front of him. Faland leaned forward.

“Laura— God, she spoiled me. I’m nearly three years younger, you know, and I was a fat little brat of a red-haired thing. Awful freckles. And she had me by the hand once and we were walking past the shop, and I told her I wanted an ice cream. She didn’t have any money, of course, and neither did I. But you know it never occurred to me, even then, that she couldn’t get me one. So she looks at me. Looks at the shop. And then she marches in like a queen, holding me by the hand. She was—twelve? Twelve, I think. And she orders ice creams for both of us. With chocolate sauce. And then she gets to the till. Of course she’s not got a penny. And she reaches into her pocket. Nothing’s there. Her eyes fill up with tears. I started to cry myself, seeing her get started. She turns to the shopkeeper and says, ‘Sir, my dollar fell out of my pocket.’ She’s weeping like a Madonna the whole time, and she turns to me and says, ‘Freddie, go home, for I must make amends. Please, sir, spare my brother at least—’ She was heartbreaking, I can tell you. And the long and short is we got those ice creams and got off scot-free. I used to think she was terribly clever; now I think the shopkeeper was just impressed with her barefaced cheek and crocodile tears.”

Freddie raised his eyes and saw Laura’s adult face in the mirror, without a single mark of strain on it. As though the woman there had grown from the girl in his memory, with no Armageddon come between. He didn’t know how long he stared and when he looked away, Faland had disappeared.

Freddie didn’t remember how or when he got to bed. But

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