Feeling discomfited in a way he could not remember having felt before, Bod made his way back to the Owenses’ tomb, and was pleased to see both of his parents waiting for him beside it. As he got closer, his pleasure turned into concern: why did Mr. and Mrs. Owens stand like that, arranged on each side of the tomb like characters from a stained-glass window? He could not read their faces.
His father took a step forward and said, “Evening, Bod. I trust you are keeping well.”
“Tolerably well,” said Bod, which was what Mr. Owens always said to his friends when they asked him the same question.
Mr. Owens said, “Mistress Owens and I spent our lives wishing that we had a child. I do not believe that we could have ever had a better young man than you, Bod.” He looked up at his son with pride.
Bod said, “Well, yes, thank you, but…” He turned to his mother, certain he could get her to tell him what was happening, but she was no longer there. “Where did she go?”
“Oh. Yes.” Mr. Owens seemed ill at ease. “Ah, you know Betsy. There’s things, times. When, well, you don’t know what to say. You know?”
“No,” said Bod.
“I expect Silas is waiting for you,” said his father, and then he was gone.
It was past midnight. Bod began to walk toward the old chapel. The tree that grew out of the gutter on the spire had fallen in the last storm, taking a handful of the slate-black roof tiles with it.
Bod waited on the grey wooden bench, but there was no sign of Silas.
The wind gusted. It was late on a summer’s night, when the twilight lasts forever, and it was warm, but still, Bod felt goose-pimples rising on his arms.
A voice by his ear said, “Say you’ll miss me, you lump-kin.”
“Liza?” said Bod. He had not seen or heard from the witch-girl for over a year—not since the night of the Jacks of All Trades. “Where have you been?”
“Watching,” she said. “Does a lady have to tell everything she does?”
“Watching me?” asked Bod
Liza’s voice, close to his ear, said, “Truly, life is wasted on the living, Nobody Owens. For one of us is too foolish to live, and it is not I. Say you will miss me.”
“Where are you going?” asked Bod. Then, “Of course I will miss you, wherever you go…”
“Too stupid,” whispered Liza Hempstock’s voice, and he could feel the touch of her hand on his hand. “Too stupid to live.” The touch of her lips against his cheek, against the corner of his lips. She kissed him gently and he was too perplexed, too utterly wrong-footed, to know what to do.
Her voice said, “I will miss you too. Always.” A breath of wind ruffled his hair, if it was not the touch of her hand, and then he was, he knew, alone on the bench.
He got up.
Bod walked over to the chapel door, lifted the stone beside the porch and pulled out the spare key, left there by a long-dead sexton. He unlocked the big wooden door without even testing to see if he could slip through it. It creaked open, protesting.
The inside of the chapel was dark, and Bod found himself squinting as he tried to see.
“Come in, Bod.” It was Silas’s voice.
“I can’t see anything,” said Bod. “It’s too dark.”
“Already?” said Silas. He sighed. Bod heard a velvet rustle, then a match was struck, and it flamed, and was used to light two huge candles that sat on great carved wooden candlesticks at the back of the room. In the candlelight, Bod could see his guardian standing beside a large leather chest, of the kind they call a steamer trunk—big enough that a tall man could have curled up and slept inside it. Beside it was Silas’s black leather bag, which Bod had seen before, on a handful of occasions, but which he still found impressive.
The steamer trunk was lined with whiteness. Bod put a hand into the empty trunk, touched the silk lining, touched dried earth.
“Is this where you sleep?” he asked.
“When I am far from my house, yes,” said Silas.
Bod was taken aback: Silas had been here as long as he could remember and before. “Isn’t this your home?”
Silas shook his head. “My house is a long, long way from here,” said Silas. “That is, if it is still habitable. There have been problems in my native land, and I am far from certain what I will find on my return.”
“You’re going back?” asked Bod. Things that had been immutable were changing. “You’re really leaving? But. You’re my guardian.”
“I was your guardian. But you are old enough to guard yourself. I have other things to protect.”
Silas closed the lid of the brown leather trunk, and began to do up the straps and the buckles.
“Can’t I stay here? In the graveyard?”
“You must not,” said Silas, more gently than Bod could remember him ever saying anything. “All the people here have had their lives, Bod, even if they were short ones. Now it’s your turn. You need to live.”
“Can I come with you?”
Silas shook his head.
“Will I see you again?”