Tears of the Salamander by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

corridor that ran the full length of the house. The woman led him along this, past the hallway and the stairs and then down another side passage. At the far end of this she scratched on a door, waited for an answer, then opened the door and held it for him.
    Inside Alfredo found a fair-sized room. One window looked toward the mountain, invisible behind woods.Outside the other one the trees stood closer, almost brushing the panes. Uncle Giorgio was working at a desk, apparently copying something out of a thick book. He glanced up and nodded to the woman. She left, closing the door, and Uncle Giorgio returned to his writing. Alfredo gazed round the room. Apart from the two windows, every inch of the walls was covered with shelves, most of them filled with books, but the ones at the farther end held dozens of labeled jars and flasks, like those in a pharmacist’s shop. There was a long table with glass and brass apparatus on it, delicate scales and small implements. Beside that stood a small brazier, unlit. Above it, hanging from a hook in the ceiling, was a birdcage, containing what looked like a starling.
    The bird seemed to notice that Alfredo was looking at it and eyed him back, cocking its head a little to one side.
    “One! Two! Three! Four!” it screeched suddenly. And again “One! Two! Three! Four!”
    Alfredo jumped at the harsh, inhuman cry and the unmistakably human words. Uncle Giorgio wiped his quill and laid it down, sanded his paper, closed the book, marking the page with a scrap of paper, and rose.
    “One! Two! Three! Four!” shrieked the starling as he took a crust of bread from a bag hanging on a peg and wedged it between the bars of the cage. The starling fell on it.
    “A reward for speech,” said Uncle Giorgio.
    “Can it say anything else?”
    “There is no need. Come with me.”
    He led the way down to the cellars and along to thefurnace room. This time he took a second pair of the black–lensed spectacles from his pocket and gave them to Alfredo.
    “I made these for you before you woke,” he said. “Wear them always before I open the crucible, or it will destroy your eyesight. Stand well back, but be ready to sing the psalm when I tell you.”
    Alfredo put the spectacles on and could see nothing. The glass seemed totally opaque, but as soon as Uncle Giorgio raised the lid of the crucible the glare struck through, as strong as that of the glowing embers in the fire pit of one of the bakehouse ovens, but now bearable. The fierce orange surface was as smooth as liquid but didn’t boil or churn, even when Uncle Giorgio, using tongs, fed it with two or three dark lumps, too heavy to be charcoal. They might have been pit coal, but didn’t look like that, either, and didn’t smoke or crackle, despite the intense heat immediately below the surface. Instead they settled slowly into it and sank out of sight.
    “Stand still farther back,” said Uncle Giorgio. “This fire is the fire of the inmost sun. It sends out an emanation that alters the nature of the flesh, making it cancerous, as has happened in my own throat. Good. Now sing.”
    Fear and excitement dried Alfredo’s mouth. His whole body seemed to be fluttering like the air in the bass pipes of the cathedral organ. He wasn’t sure he could sing at all—there would be none of the usual joy in it—but he sucked and swallowed two or three times, pulled himself together and almost listlessly began.
    Before he was through the first bar of the music the fierysurface rippled and the salamander emerged. He could see it clearly through the dark glass of his spectacles. It rose until it was waist deep in the liquid, and then stopped. Its body rippled with the flow of heat, like a burning ember. Apart from the flattish oval of its face it was covered with neat triangular scales. Its eyes were round and slightly pop, and of a black unimaginably deep, full of living fire, like the rest of it—but fire that gave out no light at all. Instead the eyes