It was not even as if he had been able to forget about the two gentlemen. The double murder still lay heavy inside him, although he always tried to rationalise it by reminding himself that they had attempted to kill him. Many a night, as he lay on his cot in Vakk, staring up at the distant vault, he saw again the gentleman’s eyes as he sat up and tried to pull the spear from his entrails.
The cell was small and damp and dark.
When he recovered from the shock of being alone, he felt cautiously about him. His prison was featureless except for an ill-smelling gutter and a low shelf on which to sleep. Yuli sat on it and buried his face in his hands.
He was given plenty of time to think. His thoughts, in the impenetrable darkness, took on a life of their own, as if they were the figments of delirium. People he knew, people he had never seen, came and went about him, engaged in mysterious activities.
“Mother!” he exclaimed. Onesa was there, as she had been before her illness, slender and active, with her long serious face that readily broke into a smile for her son—though it was a guarded smile with lips scarcely parted. She bore a great bundle of twigs on her shoulder. A litter of little horned black piglets walked before her. The sky was a brilliant blue; both Batalix and Freyr shone there. Onesa and Yuli stepped along a path out of a dark larch forest and were dazzled by the brightness. Never had there been a blue like that; it seemed to tint the piled snow and fill the world.
Ahead was a ruined building. Although it had been solidly built in the long past, weather had broken it open like an old tree fungus. Before it stood a flight of shallow steps, now ruined. Onesa flung down her twigs and sprang so eagerly up the steps that she almost skipped. She raised her gloved hands as she went, and even offered a snatch of song to the crisp air.
Rarely had Yuli seen his mother in such spirits. Why did she feel like that? Why not more often? Not daring to put these questions direct, yet longing to have some personal word from her, be asked, “Who built this place, Mother?”
“Oh, it’s always been here. It’s as old as the hills… .”
“But who built it, Mother?”
“I don’t know—my father’s family, probably, long ago. They were great people, with stores of grain.”
This legend of his mother’s family’s greatness was well-known to him, and the detail of the store of grain. He marched up the ruined steps, and pushed open a reluctant door. Snow scattered in a cloud as he shouldered his way inside. There was the grain, golden, piles of it, enough for them all for ever more. It started running towards him in a river, great piles of it cascading down, over the steps. And from under the grain, two dead bodies heaved to view, struggling blindly towards the light.
He sat up with a great cry, sprang to his feet, stood up, paced to the cell door. The could not understand where these alarming visions came from; they seemed not to be a part of him.
He thought to himself, Dreams are not for you, dodger. You’re too tough. You think of your mother now, yet you never showed her affection. You were too afraid of your father’s fist. You know, I really believe I hated my father. I believe I was glad when the phagors carried him off—weren’t you?
No, no… . It’s just that my experiences have made me hard. You’re hard, dodger, hard and cruel. You killed those two gentlemen. What are you going to be? Better to confess to the murders and see what happens. Try and love me, try and love me… .
I know so little. That’s it. The whole world—you want to find out. Akha must know. Those eyes see everything. But me—you’re so small, dodger—life’s no more than one of those funny feelings when the childrim flies overhead.
He marvelled at his own thoughts. Finally he cried for the guards to open his door, and found that he had been incarcerated for three days.