On by Adam Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

that too much about the village,’ she said. ‘Your old Grandhe wouldn’t hold back at throwing
you
off if he smelt heresy.’ But there was a smile flexing her lips.
    ‘Nobody gets thrown off the world for heresy, not really,’ said Tighe, feeling the mood relax. ‘That’s just grand talk.’
    ‘There was a man my pahe knew in Meat,’ said Wittershe, starting to scrape again. ‘He spoke some heresy and he got thrown off. Or he was chased off. Before I was born.’
    Before I was born
was an impossibly enormous length of time to Tighe. He came over to where Wittershe was sitting and reached out. Her neck was stretched over the ape she was dealing with. There was a little nobble of bone at the exact point of the nape. Tighe let his hand rest gently on that place. His heart sped up with the proximity, with the touch of her flesh.
    ‘Now,’ said Wittershe, ‘you’d best stop that. I have work to do.’
    Tighe danced back, skittering. His heart was full of light. The softness of her skin on his fingers’ ends. ‘You hear about Old Konstakhe dying in the night?’
    Wittershe looked up sharply. ‘What’s that? Old Konstakhe dead?’
    ‘There’s the ceremony today, the burning. To send his soul up to God, they say. My Grandhe came round today crying because of the death.’
    ‘Well,’ said Wittershe. ‘That’s something. A burning today.’
    ‘I never saw my Grandhe cry before,’ said Tighe. He pushed himself against the wall and rolled slowly, pressing front and then back and then front against the warmth of the soil. Particles of dirt stuck to his skin.
    ‘Well,’ said Wittershe, with a sly look. ‘You know what they said about your Grandhe and that man.’
    ‘No,’ said Tighe. ‘What was that?’
    ‘So you never heard?’
    Tighe was genuinely puzzled. ‘No.’
    ‘What an innocent you are!’ Wittershe laughed briefly, and then turned back to the monkey. ‘Can it really be that you never heard?’
    ‘Heard what?’ Tighe brushed the dirt from his chest. His shirt was tied like a fat belt about his hips. There was more of a breeze now, falling from above and coaxing goosebumps from his arms. He unravelled his shirt and wriggled back into it.
    ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Wittershe, with a strange smile on her face. ‘You’ll be at the ceremony?’
    ‘Sure,’ said Tighe. He had nothing to do, so of course he would go. ‘Will you go?’
    ‘Well, I’m supposed to shave all these monkeys, but I guess I could spare a little while.’
    ‘Seriously, Wittershe,’ said Tighe, coming over to her again. ‘What is it that I never heard about my Grandhe? What won’t you say to me?’
    ‘I’ll tell you at the burning,’ she said with the same minx-smile on her face.
    ‘But what is it?’
    ‘I’ll tell you at the burning,’ she repeated. ‘Only, your Grandhe and Konstakhe were more than friends. That’s all.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    But Wittershe wasn’t to be drawn, and eventually Tighe climbed back up the ladder and roamed around the village again. The pyre was ready now, on the market shelf; one of the junior preachers stood solidly beside it. Tighe loitered a little more.
    Soon, though, the sun was up to the level of the village and the shadows shrank right to the back of the wall. It was time for some lunch. Tighe made his way back Left through the village to his pas’ house. As he arrived back at the door the air was very still and the sun’s heat was undisturbed. He was sweating a little as he fingered the latch of the dawn-door aside and stepped into the cool of the hallway.
    His pashe was home, lying in the dark of the bedroom. When she heardTighe moving around in the main space she stirred and came out of her room. For a while she was silent, only watching whilst Tighe cut up some sprouted grass-bread and smeared it with watery cheese. Her silent audience began to make Tighe nervous. She was usually in a weird mood after any encounter with Grandhe, but if she were going to explode