That Dark Infinity by Kate Pentecost

Author:Kate Pentecost [PENTECOST, KATE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

ATONAIS WAS UNCONSCIOUS FOR AN ENTIRE DAY after the lightning strike, but the shadows did not approach again, and when Flora’s bloods dried four nights later, the shadows no longer danced between the trees or lingered at the edge of the clearing. When he did wake, it was as though he had undergone a minor transformation. Atonais no longer shuddered and sparked and looked out the window at the snap of a branch. When he volunteered to keep watch during the day, they let him.

The Weir changed around them as they traveled. The alder and oak trees were replaced by evergreens, the shadows grew fewer and the air grew thinner and colder and harder to breathe. Broad-backed trolls rumbled, slow and stupid, among the trees in these higher altitudes, but they seemed to know the Black Caravan, and they did not come near it. There were hot springs in the mountains, and as they bathed Flora’s wounds in the warm water, small white monkeys sat in springs nearby and watched them.

While the others healed and grew stronger, and the land changed, Lazarus’s condition worsened. The drog tissue spread across his chest, down his stomach, onto his back and up his neck, and with it came a dreadful fever. When his shivering became too much, Flora and Atonais banished him to the interior of the caravan. There, he tried to distract himself by baking black-currant scones, but of course no one wanted to eat baked goods that always had a subtle scent of decaying flesh, so he ended up having to feed them to the horses. He read, drew, played sad songs on the violin. Sometimes when the others were out, he even used the memory machine by himself. Still, he could never remember his name, not even when he and Atonais went through the memory globes together. So still, slowly, the tissue spread.

Lazarus began to count his nights as being either good or bad. On his good nights, he was almost his usual self. On his bad nights, though, the pain of his functioning organs trying to work with his rotting organs grew to be too much, and Lazarus retched and shook until he went into his chamber to die. On those nights, Atonais took the reins as Flora sat with Lazarus’s head in her lap, or held his hair back as he vomited into a basin. No one knew why some nights were good and others bad, but Lazarus’s health seemed to wax and wane like the moon.

He slept more often than he had in centuries, using his “alive” time on bad days to rest. With rest came dreams. Some of them were good dreams, like walking through a garden in bloom during that time of day when everything was gold around the edges. Some were embarrassing dreams, like a few of the ones he’d begun to have about Flora. Those were the dreams, though, that had begun to shift into nightmares, full of blood and viscera. Things that shuddered him when he woke, sweating, praying for it all to be over.

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