The Black Room (26 page)

Tom looked up at her, innocently. “Well, we'll have to go home and change now, won't we? We're all pretty muddy. And that means—” His grin widened. “You're going to be
late for school,
Emma Doherty!”

For an instant he thought she was going to shout at him. Then she glanced down at her watch and grinned back. “You want to bet?”

Before either of the others could reply, she had jumped across the ditch and started to run. She was out of the woods and on the grass before they caught up with her.

 

“ONCE UPON A TIME,” ZAK SAID, “THERE WAS A MAN whose baby daughter died.”

No, Lorn thought.
No, I don't want to hear this.

The words connected with the angry, ugly memories that filled her mind. They were all sliding together now, making a dark pattern, full of pain and grief. She still didn't understand everything, but she remembered now. She
knew.
And it was almost too much to bear.

How could Zak be asking her to cope with more?

She wanted to crawl away and curl up in a shadowy corner. But that would be going backward. Retreating into another dark corner, on her own. She was
Lorn,
and her place was in the circle. So she sat still, like the others, listening.

Zak's face was tired and lined in the firelight. “The man couldn't stop his daughter from dying,” he said. His hands moved over the drum on his lap, not making any sound. “The doctors and nurses and social workers and experts came and took her away from his house. She was his, but they shut her away inside a hospital and stuck her full of needles and tubes and medicines. And when she died, they said to the man,
It's your fault.”

On the other side of the circle, Bando suddenly lifted his head. He was lying on the stretcher they had used to bring him back along the tunnels—a length of thick white cloth wound tightly around two heavy wooden posts. No one knew what it was, but it had appeared in the cavern like magic, just when they needed it to carry him back along the tunnels.

He still looked pale and dazed, but that didn't stop him from interrupting the story. “It's not fair!” he said indignantly. “They were the ones who took her away. How could it be the man's fault if she died?”

The left side of Zak's mouth curled up into a half smile. “That's just what the man said.
It's not my fault.
He blamed the doctors for not saving his daughter's life. He blamed the nurses and the social workers and the experts.
She belonged to me, and they took her away and killed her.”

He stroked the drum skin, and it murmured softly under his fingers. They all waited for him to go on, but he didn't speak. After a moment, Perdew prompted him impatiently.

“What happened next?”

Zak stroked the drum skin again. “For a long, long time nothing happened at all. Only the voice in his head, shutting out everything else.
It wasn't my fault.... It wasn't my fault....
For years and years and years. And then—”

“And then?” Annet said, leaning forward eagerly.

Zak's fingers began to beat out a slow, insistent rhythm. “And then,” he said, “the man had another daughter....”

Lorn wanted to block her ears. She wanted to shut out his voice. But she knew she had to hear the story. She put her hands in her lap, knotting her fingers together to keep them there while she listened.

Because she could hear it now. She was ready to understand.

35

TOM ALMOST MADE IT TO SCHOOL IN TIME. As THE LAST bend came into view, he saw Robert and Emma ahead of him, running flat out. Robert glanced back over his shoulder, and when he saw Tom, he stopped to wait for him. Emma went on, flying around the corner at top speed.

So she wasn't going to be late after all. Well, if she could do it—so could he. Tom broke into a run, determined to beat the bell.

“Come on!” he said as he passed Robert. “Let's catch her!”

In two strides Robert was beside him. The two of them raced around the corner together—

—and bumped into a man coming the other way.

Tom cannoned straight into him, knocking himself off balance. He staggered sideways, and if he hadn't caught hold of Robert's arm, he would have fallen into the gutter.

“Sorry,” Tom said, looking up apologetically.

In the same moment, Robert caught his breath. “You?” he said. “Aren't you the one—?” And then he broke off, without finishing.

The man didn't speak at all. He just stood still, looking straight back at Tom. And his eyes were as clear as water, as blue as a cloudless sky.

I've seen you before,
said a voice inside Tom's head. But he couldn't think when or where. All he could do was stare at his own reflection in the center of those blue eyes while the man looked gravely back at him.

He didn't know how long he went on staring. It could have been for a split second or for an hour. While it lasted, there was nothing except the bright, dazzling blue.

And then, suddenly, it was over. The man stepped past them and disappeared around the corner, and they heard the school bell begin to ring.