Shara shushes him. “Don’t worry. It’s me. You’re fine.”
“Who? Who is it?” He licks his lips. He’s drenched with sweat by now.
“You need to relax, please. You’re in recovery now.”
“I am?”
“Yes. You had a bad fall. Don’t you remember?”
He squints as he thinks about it. “Maybe. I think I … I fell during that party. …”
“Yes. We had to put you in a cool, dark place, for you to relax. You were very agitated, but you’re going to be fine.”
“You’re sure? You’re sure I’ll be fine?”
“We’re sure. You’re at the hospital. We just have to keep you here for a little bit longer, to make sure.”
“No! No, I need to go! I have to … to …” He fumbles with his seat, trying to stand.
“What do you have to do?”
“I have to make it back to everyone.”
“To who? To your friends?”
He swallows and nods. He’s almost panting now. Shara imagines he is seeing blinding bursts of color, rippling shadows, cold fires . …
“Where would you need to go?” she asks.
He struggles with this question. “N-no … I have to … to go.”
“You can’t, I’m afraid,” she says soothingly. “We have to take care of you. But we can send word to your friends. Where are they?”
“Where?” he says, confused.
“Yes. Where are your friends?”
“They’re … they’re in another place. It’s a place from another place. I think.”
“All right. And where is this place?”
He rubs his eyes. When he looks back at her, she sees he has burst several blood vessels in them.
“Where?” she says again.
“It’s not … not like that. It’s an … older place. Where things ought to be.”
“Ought to be?”
“How things ought to be.”
“But how do you get to this place to see your friends?”
“It’s hard.” He stares at the light in the ceiling. He looks away, like the sight of it pains him. Then he says, “The world is … threadbarren. Threadbare.”
“All right?”
“It’s incomplete. The city is. It has spots where a thing was, but there’s nothing there now. It got taken away. Connective …” He furrows his brow. “… tissue. But you can still get to them. To the places. If you belong. The gold is … smudged, but it still shines. The pearl has cracked. Yet it is still the city. Still what I feel”—he taps his heart—“here.”
“Is this how people disappear?”
He starts laughing. “Disappear? What a … what a ridiculous idea.” The idea tickles him so much he almost falls out of his seat.
She tries another tactic: “Why did you come to the party tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He holds his head. “Are you sure it was tonight? It seems so long ago. …”
“It wasn’t. It was just a few hours ago.”
“But I felt years pass through my fingers,” he whispers. “Like the wind.” He reflects on it. “We came for … metal.”
“For metal?”
“Yes. We were trying to buy some, but it was too slow. We didn’t like him … We hate him. But we had to have him.”
“Votrov?”
“Yes. Him.”
Shara nods. “And did the woman have anything to do with it?”
“Who?”
“The …” She thinks. “… the shally.”
“Oh. Oh, her.” He starts laughing again. “Do you know, we had no idea she’d be there at all?”
“I see,” says Shara quietly. “What do you need the metal for?”
“We can’t fly through the air on boats of wood,” says the boy. “That’s what they said. They’d all fall apart. Wood’s too weak.” His eyes trace the passage of something invisible through the air. “Oh, my goodness … How beautiful.”
Shara wonders if she perhaps overdosed him. “Did you and your friends kill Dr. Pangyui?”
“Who?”
“The shally professor.”
“Shallies don’t have professors. They haven’t the minds for it.”
“The little foreign professor who was … committing blasphemy.”
“All foreigners are blasphemous. Being alive is blasphemous, for them. There is only us. We are the children of the gods. All others are people of ash and clay. For them to live and not pay us fealty is the greatest of blasphemies.” He frowns and leans forward like his stomach hurts. “Oh. Oh, dear.”
“There was a man here, studying at the university,” says Shara slowly and clearly. “You didn’t want him here. The city didn’t, I mean. There was much outcry about it.”
The boy rubs his eyes. “My head. There’s … There’s something in my head. …”
“He died, just a few days ago. Do you remember?”
He whimpers. “There’s someone in there …” He raps the side of his head with his knuckles hard enough to make a noise. “Please … Please help me get him out. …”
“Someone attacked him at the university. They beat him to death.”
“Please. Please!”
“Tell me what you know about the professor.”