a class in Latin. Therefore, I was touched. The apparent effort that he
had taken to mock me was a sign of true friendship.
I closed the dictionary and slid it aside, next to a copy of the book I
had written about my life as a child of darkness. It had been a national
best-seller about four years ago, when I’d thought I knew the meaning of
my life, prior to my discovery that my mother, out of fierce maternal
love f and a desire to free me from my disability, had inadvertently
made me the poster child for doomsday.
I hadn’t opened this book in two years. It should have been on one of
the shelves behind my desk. I assumed Sasha had been looking at it and
neglected to put it back where she’d found it.
Also on the desk was a decorative tin box painted with the faces of
dogs. In the center of the lid are these lines from Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render
praise and favor, With my hand upon his head, Is my benediction said
Therefore and forever.
This tin box was a gift from my mother, given to me on the day that she
brought Orson home. I keep special biscuits in it, which he particularly
enjoys, and from time to time I give him a couple, not to reward him for
a trick learned, because I don’t teach him tricks, and not to enforce
any training, for he needs no training, but simply because the taste of
them makes him happy.
When my mother brought Orson to live with us, I didn’t know how special
he was. She kept this secret until long after her death, until after my
father’s death. When she gave me the box, she said, “I know you’ll give
him love, Chris. But also, when he needs it and he win need it take pity
on him. His life is no less difficult than yours.” At the time, I
assumed she meant nothing more than that animals, like us, are subject
to the fear and suffering of this world. Now I know there were deeper
and more complex layers of meaning in her words.
I reached toward the tin, intending to test its weight, because I wanted
to be certain that it was filled with treats for Orson’s triumphant
return. My hand began to shake so badly that I left the box untouched.
I folded my hands, one over the other, on the desk. Staring down at the
hard white points of my knuckles, I realized that I had assumed the very
pose in which I’d first seen Lilly Wing when Bobby and I returned from
Wyvern.
Orson. Jimmy. Aaron. Anson. Like the barbed points on a razor-wire
fence, their names spiraled through my mind. The lost boys.
I felt an obligation to all of them, a fierce sense of duty, which
wasn’t entirely explicable except that in spite of my good fortune in
parents and in spite of the riches of friendship that I enjoyed, I was
the ultimate lost boy, myself, and to some extent would be lost until
the day I passed out of my darkness in this world into whatever light
waits beyond.
Impatience abraded my nerves. In conventional searches for lost hikers,
for small aircraft downed in mountainous terrain, and for boats at sea,
search parties break from dusk to dawn. We were limited, instead, to the
dark hours, not merely by my XP but by our need to gather our forces and
to act in utmost secrecy. I wondered whether the members of conventional
search parties checked their watches every two minutes, chewed their
lips, and went slightly screwy with frustration while waiting for first
light. My watch crystal was etched with tracks, my lip was shaggy with
shredded skin, and I was half nuts by 12:45.
Shortly before one o’clock, as I was diligently ridding myself of the
second half of my sanity, the doorbell rang.
With the Glock in hand, I went downstairs. Through one of the
stained-glass sidelights, I saw Bobby on the front porch. He was turned
half away from the door, staring back toward the street, as though