Читать книгу The Music Box - Toby Bennett - Страница 7

Crossed Wires

Maribell Schmitt almost dropped the tray of muffins for the church sale at the sound of the telephone.

“You been fiddlin’ again, John?” She shouted into the gloom.

She set the tray on the nearest table and glared down the ill-lit corridor. The threadbare carpeting had borne the brunt of her broad, sensible shoes for more than a decade and a half; the floorboards beneath groaned in protest as she advanced on the shrill ringing.

“I told you we don’t need that contraption. Nothing but trouble out there and we don’t need that … Not since your father …” The strain of sustaining a one-sided argument over the insistent rattle of the old phone’s decrepit bell had already become too much. She grabbed the handset with one oversized mitt.

“Hello?” She hollered into the mouthpiece, squeezing the masking tape on the handle until the plastic beneath popped and the earpiece squealed, hissing static.

“Hello? Is this Mrs Schmitt?” A tentative voice.

“You sellin’ something, mister?” Maribell asked, immediately distrustful of the quiet, affected voice.

“Not as such. You are Mrs Schmitt, I take it?” There was an unpleasant firmness to the question.

Maribell hated people who asked questions when they already knew the answers.

“Well, I’m not mister, am I?”

“Quite.” The caller had found his feet and was plunging ahead with the conversation, seemingly indifferent to Maribell’s reluctance. “My name is Laurence Carter. I’m phoning to inform you that your son, Jonathan Schmitt, has gained acceptance to our scholarship programme.”

“Thought you said you weren’t sellin’ anything,” Maribell growled. Her eyes flicked back down the hall.

What had John been up to?

“I assure you I’m not selling a thing. Jonathan is probably one of the highest-scoring candidates we have ever had; tuition at Rosewood Academy would be at almost no cost to you, and certainly of a completely different standard to …” There was a rustle of papers and a crackle on the line. “St Martin’s.”

“And what’s wrong with my son’s school?” Maribell asked.

What had he done now?

“Nothing, I’m sure, but there’s no way a school of that calibre can properly nurture a talent like your son’s. It is only a publicly funded school, after all.”

“It’s a good church school, is what you mean. Not some fancy book-worshippin’ place where people get above themselves, thinkin’ they can tell us all what’s what,” she sputtered.

“Please, Mrs Schmitt, our religious facilities are not –”

“Any of my goddamned business, just like my son is none of yours. Jonathan’s father, God rest him, went to St Martin’s and he turned out smart enough. If my boy’s as smart as you say, then he don’t need help to make his way!” Maribell was breathing hard and she felt an immense weight pressing against her heavy chest.

“Mrs Schmitt, please listen to me. This is about what’s best for Jonathan –”

“You’re saying his own mother doesn’t know what that is?” she shrieked.

“Not at all,” Mr Carter protested, “but …”

Anything else he had to say was lost in the sound of the handset being repeatedly slammed against the wall and the scream transmitted by the broken entrails of the receiver in Maribell Schmitt’s hand.

“Let’s see you fix it this time, you miserable son of a …”

* * *

John didn’t hear the last word. He didn’t need to; he’d heard the accusation many times before. As usual she said it without any sense of irony. He could guess what had set her off. He should never have fixed the phone, but it bothered him to leave things broken. He’d resisted the urge for as long as he could, but it was as if the battered device had been calling to him.

It didn’t do to scare his mother though, and nothing scared Maribell like her son’s uncanny talent with broken things. She was never happy when he repaired something around the house; instead, she said he was cursed. No doubt his latest work would lead to hours of repentant prayers and admonitions. John wished he could make his mother happy, but certain problems tugged at his awareness like an aching tooth until he had to fix them. The phone, for instance, had bothered him every time he’d walked past, until he’d had no choice but to set it right, even though he’d known how Maribell would react.

The Devil’s work! That was what she called his talent.

John did his best not to remind his mother what he could do.

Even when he tried to pretend he was normal, she treated him as though he were possessed. When he was younger John had felt shame, but more recently a sliver of resentment had begun to prick at his mind.

John had sat through his fair share of sermons, but nothing he’d heard in Dowdale’s small church or St Martin’s chapel was more than a dull echo of his mother’s fervour. She claimed she saw the Devil in him. That was why he could only leave the house to go to school, and why she always insisted he come straight home. John knew that she wouldn’t have allowed him to leave at all if she could help it, but Dowdale was small enough that she couldn’t have kept him entirely cooped up without the town talking – apparently when it came to facing the Devil or the neighbours, the neighbours won out.

As he’d grown older, John had realised that no one else saw the Devil, but Maribell did seem to have an uncanny knack for knowing when her son had used his talents. She claimed her bones ached every time he fixed something tricky.

Even now his mother was twice his size, and it didn’t do to make her bones ache.

It was tempting to imagine that it was all in his mother’s mind. The kids at school laughed at some of the things their mothers said and would have mocked any suggestion that mad old Mrs Schmitt was anything more than two sticks shy of the full basket, but John knew better – he felt it.

He couldn’t explain how his mother felt it too but there was something unnatural to his talent. The truth was, John could fix anything if he tried hard enough. The few times he’d attempted to explain that to someone else, he’d been met with disbelief and confusion. Others seemed incapable of understanding that “anything” wasn’t simply an expression; he was being quite literal. When he sat down to repair something, the process felt just short of magic. He didn’t understand how, but he always knew what needed to be done when he saw something broken. It was almost like he could see into whatever he was looking at – like X-ray vision in the comics he wasn’t supposed to read.

It was the kind of gift that should have made someone happy, but it never seemed to work that way. It was one thing to know how to repair a watch or a toy, another to see everything that went wrong in the world if you looked too closely. John still remembered the first time he’d seen a starling fly into the window at school. The other children had been shocked and frightened, but only he had known exactly where the bird’s neck had broken; the impulse to reknit that splintered bone and stabilise the slowing heart had been overwhelming and sickening – Maribell had had to come and pick him up from the nurse that day. They’d prayed long and hard when she’d got him home.

It hadn’t helped.

The need to tinker still came upon him when he least expected it. The worst times were when he knew something was broken but he was in no position to fix it.

Mostly John imagined he could fix anything, but he’d never been able to fix what was wrong with his mother – at least not in any way that mattered. You didn’t need any kind of gift to see that Maribell was not quite right. She was often agitated and never completely at ease in her own skin, but the people of Dowdale didn’t feel what John could – even though he did his best not to. He could sense that there was something dreadfully wrong with her, but he knew he didn’t have the tools to mend her.

John had stopped trying years ago.

All he could do now was endure.

That thought returned his attention to the screaming and stamping on the cracked boards in the hallway outside his room. As always, he did his best to drown out the sounds of her rage. He crossed the room and sat down at his work desk almost without thinking.

It was easier to bear the storm if he let his instincts take over.

His hand almost seemed to move on its own as it slid open the drawer and rummaged around inside. His mother didn’t like his work desk, but it had belonged to his father and she didn’t quite have the courage to take it from him. As he’d grown older, John had realised that the only thing stronger than her revulsion for the strange talent he shared with his father was her need to keep him close. She knew that if she went too far, he’d leave her or be taken away. John sometimes wished that one of them would find the strength to step off the tightrope they walked together, but despite everything, neither of them could quite manage to detach from the other.

Don’t think about it; keep working.

His hand rummaged through the drawer. John didn’t need to look down to find what he was looking for in the neatly stacked tray of screws, cogs and tiny tools. At times like these he only worked on one thing. His fingers knew every item they brushed, the tools and mechanisms were a part of him, but none so much as what he sought now. No matter how far he retreated from the chaos of the world, John always knew where the music box was. It tugged at him as no broken phone ever could.

Despite its importance in his life, he knew very little of the box, which was not all that much bigger than one of the old snuff boxes Mr Beacham sold on his antiques counter. A gift his father had given his mother, the music box looked as though it had been exquisite once, but had been marred by ill use and long discarded. It was a treasure only to him, and he kept it close, especially when Maribell was in a temper.

The music box was his true failure.

It was cold under his fingers – metal and smooth enamel, one side chipped, but the mother-of-pearl still shimmered as much as the dented silver of the casing. Sometimes he thought he saw shadowy scenes in the rainbow patterns of the iridescent surface. Whenever he looked closer though, the images he imagined he’d seen dissolved into the twisting abstract patterns that coiled beneath the lacquered surface. If there was anything there, it could only be seen from the corner of the eye.

The object he held in his hand was the only mechanical device he’d never been able to make right – no matter how he tried. There was no knowing how old it was, but his instincts told him it was a thing of great antiquity.

He flicked up the lid, which immediately set the tiny brass dancer spinning to broken music. The dancer was a strange, stylised figure, a fool or troubadour, playing a flute. The features picked out in the flat plate of brass clearly marked the dancer as female, but she was a far cry from the ballerinas and waltzing couples that John had seen in other music boxes.

This dancer was wild, her head thrown back in abandon and her golden hair splayed around her face. John wondered if the box’s original tune had reflected the Arcadian wantonness of the dancer and her flute. If it had, the sounds that issued from it now were only a ghost of what they should have been.

Anyone who looked closely would have noticed that there was something not quite right with the box; to John’s senses, the imperfection all but screamed. The notes from the ruined mechanism were distorted and not particularly loud, but they provided a distraction that drowned out the sounds of shouting from the other side of the house.

John fondly imagined that if he could ever fix the box’s clever little innards, he might be able to fix what was wrong with his mother. He couldn’t have told you why that made sense; perhaps if he could do what seemed impossible once, he could do it again. It didn’t matter if there was no logic to it – he trusted his instinct. After all, John reassured himself, she couldn’t have as many problems as the intricate antique had missing gears. He had to believe he could fix the things that bothered him – it was in his nature to reach for an answer.

The footsteps came even closer. He stiffened. A heavy fist hammered on his door. His mother’s yelling coalesced into words.

“You think I want to hear from them lah-de-dah types, Johnny boy? You think you’re going to get gone to somewhere fancy, and leave me behind? Too good for me now?” Her voice was as strained as the tortured springs of the box in his hand. “We both know what you are, John, and you know I’m going to save you, Jesus help me. You want to live with all those heathens and devil-lovers? Well, I won’t have it, Johnny – I love you too much to let you damn yourself like that.” His door shuddered under a new impact. “Speak to me, Jonathan. Come and pray. Do the right thing before we both regret it!”

Answering would make it worse, so John focused on the box’s mechanism. The tiniest turn of the screw altered the speed of the complex gearing. Another false note cranked out and Maribell’s voice became even more shrill.

“Don’t you ignore me! Open this door! Did I say you could lock it?”

John kept his back to the door and lost himself in a tiny universe of interconnected parts. Even for someone as talented as him, it was difficult to keep track of the myriad components that had once whirred and clicked in the exquisite shell. It reminded him of the complexity of the computer they’d recently got at the school. He’d been told in no uncertain terms that he mustn’t tinker with that, but he’d had to have a look inside.

The metallic web of conduits and junctures that patterned the green silicon hadn’t seemed as numerous as the miniscule cogs and gears that had been packed into the music box. At times John wondered if there was really space in the box for everything he saw when he opened it up.

The music box was so needlessly complex that John could only speculate as to who might have made such a strange mechanism, and what it had really been meant to do. John was certain that the box was capable of doing more than simply playing music and making the dancer twirl, but even his insight failed him when it came to guessing what else the mechanism might be doing. There were definitely parts missing, and some parts that didn’t seem to function according to any conventional physical rules. In his most despondent moments, John suspected that the box had been designed to test the patience and ingenuity of other craftsmen, but that never quelled his hunger to learn its secrets.

With each twist of a cog or turn of a screw, Maribell’s hysteria became worse.

“Why do you do these things, John?”

Another thud and the wooden door strained.

John barely flinched; he’d heard her rantings as often as he’d surveyed the galaxy of tiny parts in his hand.

“Open the door and pray with me, John. Ask for forgiveness.” The handle turned again.

John felt for a magnifying glass and leant down to focus on the music box. The tip of his screwdriver loomed large as a skyscraper over the field of tiny golden screws and gears.

“John, say something.” Maribell’s tone was almost pitiable.

Her only answer silence from the house she knew she would haunt, through grinding days and forgotten nights until it all wound down – till John was finally gone.

Maribell Schmitt stopped shouting and began to pray alone.

The evening deepened around them both; neither noticed.

The tinkling music blotted out the noise beyond John’s room, but it brought its own frustrations – his intuition told him the current tune didn’t fit. He’d come close in the past, but there was always something off, a subtle beat or fractured melody he was unable to account for.

The murmured prayer broke off and the pounding began again; he paid it no mind. He’d long ago changed the locks so that his mother couldn’t get to him when she lost control. This security was slim comfort, but at least she couldn’t treat him as she had when he was younger. A beating used to be the least of it – she’d had all sorts of ways to turn him from the Devil’s influence. John would never forget the horror of her “baptising” him the time he’d sneaked away from the church to play with some other children after service.

He turned a screw and the melody went higher; a scream without words. He dimly heard Maribell’s tone rise to match it. The box’s mechanism was taking strain. He quickly adjusted the screw back to its previous setting. The house went quiet again. John waited a few minutes but there wasn’t even the sound of footsteps to tell him where his mother was.

Is that the sound of breathing on the other side of my door?

John set down the music box in the beam of his desk lamp and crept across the room. The door shifted – a dull groan – but he couldn’t tell if that was his mother or simply a draft in the house.

He pictured her leaning against the wood, slumped and empty-eyed, waiting for him to weaken and open the door. If she even wanted to get in any more. There were times, more and more if John were honest, when Maribell just stopped processing things entirely. When she was at her worst, Maribell might become unresponsive and stare straight through him. It wasn’t something anyone else knew about, she was very careful not to let herself lapse while in public, but John had observed whole moments when his mother seemed to go slack and be unaware of the world around her.

For all that he resented how she treated him and feared her temper, John hated seeing his mother in that state. He momentarily wondered if he should check on her. He moved over to the door and rested his own head against the rough wood. Concern and caution warred in his mind. He reached up and flattened a hand against the smooth wood. The varnished surface was dark, yet seemed warm to the eye if not the touch. John couldn’t be sure how he felt about the barrier. It had protected him from his mother’s anger, but now it was also stopping him from knowing if she needed him. He slid his splayed fingers over the wood and tried to imagine her on the other side. Was her hand close to his? Was she kneeling to pray or slumped with her back against the door, her heavy body limp and heaving for breath? He didn’t dare find out. Was this as close as they could get these days?

John could hear ragged breath echoing through the hallway. Maribell gave a low moan, like a dreaming animal hearing its master’s voice. He took a deep breath and turned the key in the lock; he reached for the bolt, but stopped when he heard her whisper.

“Jonathan?”

She was waiting for him; he couldn’t take the risk that her performance was just to lure him out.

He relocked the door as quietly as he could and stepped away, slowly and softly, so as not to be noticed.

Would it make things better if he let her in? It was so strange not knowing how something could be improved. John only had one solution when things began to overwhelm him – run.

He gave the door one more glance, then crossed to his window. He took pains to slide the window open as silently as he could – he regularly greased the tracks to ensure that his departures wouldn’t be heard. The open window let in the cool evening air; he shivered slightly. The slight bite of the wind outside woke his senses and lit a nervous fire in his belly. His room suddenly seemed too small and confining, its corners dark and filled with unspoken sorrow – all that would change if he could get beyond the burglar bars that lay between him and the night. He stretched up and coiled an arm through the bars. Maribell always assumed he was in his room because she didn’t see how he could get out, but she failed to understand the subtlety of his work. The hinge was almost invisible from the outside and anyone testing the bars without shifting the hidden catch would conclude that they were sturdy, but the modified bars proved no obstacle to John. The hinge moved as quietly as the window did. John put a foot over the sill and slipped out into the moonlit night.

The streetlight at the end of his lane was out and the stars shone all the brighter for it. John had always seen well in the dark and the lack of artificial illumination suited his purposes. There had been several attempts to fix the old streetlight over the years, but it never seemed to function for long. The last time he’d messed with the light, John had made sure the problem was almost impossible to spot, and months later no one had had the will or the insight to get it working again.

John needed only moonlight to see the craggy peaks of the hills that curled around the north-east side of town, and he didn’t want his neighbours to mark his comings and goings lest Maribell get wind of them. The moon was bright enough that the neat rows in the Hartleys’ field seemed clear as day, and even the shadows of the stubborn trees that packed around the higher slopes of the hills hid nothing from him. The jagged horizon, formed by the lip of the Dow valley, was framed by a swirl of stars. As he walked up the slope towards them, John felt the fear and tension slicking off him.

John’s house stood on the edge of town, on the corner of Hecham and Rose Street. A few hundred metres beyond his front door, Hecham turned onto Mist’s Way. The Way was a far older road that had run up into the hills for as long as there were village records. The main road that ran through town and looped back onto the national roads curled round the hills, and few if any ever took the old route. Only the ragtag caravans of the travellers that came through town every April kept the treacherous old pass open.

John walked past his neighbour’s house and stood on the dusty verge of the old road. They’d laid the tarmac a while back and it was showing signs of wear, even though it was so rarely used. He could see the sparks of campfires beyond the Hartley farm. His mother, and most of the town for that matter, called the people who tended those flames “gypos”. There was a long, uneasy truce between the travellers and the tight-knit community of Dowdale; ties that went back centuries and fears that went back even further.

John had no more attachment to the gleaming streetlights below him than to the flickering sparks of the roaming folk. Both seemed like alien worlds. It was solitude that he sought now. He took a deep breath and stared out at the crags that held both village and travellers in their sleeping coils.

There were caves up in the old hills; he’d found them a couple of years earlier, before he’d had the courage to put the locks on his door. He looked back at his house. It was mostly dark, no tell-tale shadows moved at the windows. He’d probably be safe if he chose not to go back; Maribell would have forgotten everything by morning.

She did that after she went quiet.

She’d be satisfied with taking her muffins down to the church, and only he would be left to deal with the memories of her screams and the hammering at his door.

Getting away wasn’t just about being safe from Maribell. He’d begun to feel a growing urge to have somewhere of his own. He could never relax or be himself in the house he shared with his mother. More and more he needed to find somewhere he felt at home – where no one could reach him or hurt him. Fortunately, he knew exactly where to go.

John set off up the old road; it would take him over half an hour of brisk walking, but with the night so wide and welcoming he almost wished the journey would last longer. Cool air filled his lungs, misting slightly with each exhalation. Trees arched over the road, their pale bark turned white by moonlight. The black surface was studded with worthless jewels – dusty cat’s eyes that winked balefully, afire with reflected light. John used those gleaming points to count out his steps as he went, like a captain making his way by familiar stars.

Somewhere an owl spoke, startling a fellow traveller, most likely a fox, off the road ahead. Apart from these small signs of life, John was blissfully alone. The trees grew taller the farther one went from the village, and he could hear their leaves whispering with every breath of wind. The wild wonder of these night-time jaunts was the only thing that came close to the sheer joy he felt when he was fixing something. In this case, the peace and quiet was fixing something in him – solder over a well-worn crack, but a fix nonetheless. He went slower than he could have, drinking in his surroundings and tarrying over the small details that revealed themselves as he drew closer to the night-time shadows between the trees. Here and there moss shed lambent light or a firefly winked out as he approached, each point of illumination all the more dazzling for its gloomy setting. He had long since stopped being afraid of the night, even the deepest shadows meant little to him.

At length, the lane became even steeper and began to curl round the Hartleys’ fields, and John climbed until he was standing on the edge of a low bank. He glanced about to ensure that he was unobserved. The breeze brought him the smell of cooking meat from the now not so distant campfires and the sound of laughter from farther round the hill. Did some part of him long to share laughter the way the travellers did? For a moment his mind drifted and he imagined what would happen if he kept walking over the curve of the hill. He’d go past the Hartley farm and down into the no-man’s-lands the travellers had claimed for themselves. His mind’s eye took in their flashing smiles and gleaming jewels, the bright fabrics and their features, dark and wild. Perhaps he would fit in with them as he did not with the staid and suspicious people of the dale – or so he momentarily imagined. In truth, he wasn’t sure if he belonged anywhere, regardless of how appealing belonging might sometimes seem.

When he was sure there were no eyes on him and nothing was amiss, he stepped off the road and lowered himself down the bank. He was careful not to leave any telltale scrapes in the earth as he went; his secrets were his own. Once he was down, he bent low, slipping past the hedge and through a hidden gap in the wire fence that supported it.

Technically John’s destination lay on the very edge of the Hartley farm, though he would be loath to acknowledge that anyone else could claim ownership of the cave – he’d found it, after all.

The slight indent in the stand of rocks had gone unnoticed for years, so well hidden even the foxes had overlooked it. The obscure entrance had called to John every bit as loudly as a broken telephone or stopped watch might do, even from a distance. Despite the narrow fissure’s natural appearance, the stone itself had once been worked by skilled hands. Even after untold years, subtle glyphs decorated the weathered surface. John rarely saw the cave in daylight, so he’d never had a chance to catalogue all of them, but that only added to the cave’s mystery. The hidden depths beyond were a legacy for any with eyes to find them.

The way in was tight. He had to take a deep breath and force himself through the gap. A moment of claustrophobia before the tunnel opened up providing passage into a time-sculpted cave. Cool air and moonlight streamed in through a small hole cunningly cut at the back of the high chamber. John reached out to the table near the entrance and snatched up an old book of matches. He struck sulphurous flame and lit one of his candles. Warm yellow light spilled into his sanctuary, flashing off the bright flecks of quartz in the surrounding stone.

On the half-lit walls, painted animals seemed to dance in time with the jumping candle flame – antique ghosts of a forgotten hunt. Faded shapes outlined in grey and rusty red; laid down by unknown hands, when the walls had not been so smooth. Here and there, phantoms on two legs stood among the herds or stalked the unwary dead from the shadows, as they had through endless seasons.

John shook his head to dispel the effect. He reminded himself that the old paintings were not moving – it was just a trick of the flickering light. It was still slightly creepy to think how old the simple figures might be. He’d seen similar cave paintings in books and he had little doubt about the antiquity or authenticity of these. He could only guess at their significance. Blessings for the hunt, or perhaps warnings – there were as many predators as prey animals depicted. Some of the creatures seemed strange and savage, stylised representations of beasts John had never seen before. Familiarity had eroded much of his initial awe; whatever the chamber had meant to its original creators, it was his now.

There were several articles of furniture set about the room. A work-desk – cruder than his father’s but serviceable – two chairs and a bed. Each was a triumph considering the difficulty of getting their components into the cave. In the winter the cave sometimes flooded, so he’d built them tall. The weather was warming now and there was little chance of waking up to a wet floor. John had once spent the night in the cave when the weather was really bad, and it was not an experience he wanted to repeat.

He lit another candle and took the first one over to the bed. He set his light on a small indent in the wall. A wolf’s head loomed behind the flame, grinning at him with sharp, shadowy teeth. At one end of the bed there was a dark chest, polished smooth except for the scrapes where he’d had to force it through the cave mouth. The chest had been his father’s too – John had made his mother very happy the day he told her he’d thrown it out.

John crossed to the chest and opened the lid. He pulled out a spare school uniform and gave it an offended shake. St Martins was just big enough to have pretensions but small enough to reject anything different. They took in kids from various communities and claimed that uniforms helped to standardise things, but while Maribell enjoyed all the rules and formality, John hated the clothes they made him wear. He was barely fifteen and even though he was short on experience, he had the disconcerting feeling that the world beyond Dowdale was very different to the one its inhabitants clung to. Certainly, that is what the examiners who’d come to the school had made him feel. Uniforms were part of what everyone at the school took for granted – it wouldn’t do for anyone to stand out. John knew that as long as he turned up at school in a clean uniform, no one would want to ask where he’d spent the night. That was Dowdale’s attitude and it was certainly his mother’s. The truth, he knew, was something unspoken.

John shook the hated uniform again. A few more years and he’d be old enough go his own way. He’d endure it till then. Life in the valley taught you that it was best to for a person to keep their problems to themselves – the last thing he needed was outside intervention.

When he was satisfied that he wouldn’t be too noticeable at school the next day, John refolded the uniform and moved over to his workbench. An old car battery provided electricity for the powerful light that he’d set above his work space. He flicked a switch and the half-light of the candles was replaced by the glare of his lamp. The sudden illumination was enough to freeze the old paintings on the wall in place, fixing them to the rock at strange angles, revealing where erosion had robbed them of their integrity. John reached into a pile of parts and broken machines and pulled something out at random.

One of the old watches he’d found while combing the town dump. The glass was still intact, though he had to find replacements for the hands. If he cleaned up the watch well enough he could get a fair price from Mr Beacham at the second-hand shop. John didn’t get much for what he reclaimed, but it meant that he had money outside what little his mother would allow him.

He got the watch mechanism ticking inside half an hour and then went to work on an old wind-up fire truck. Once he’d finished that, he found he had a few likely looking cogs left over that he could try on the music box. He hadn’t brought it with him when he’d hurried from home, so he packed up the cogs for later. He didn’t like bringing the music box to the cave; it meant risking it on the journey or leaving it behind when he went to school in the morning. Silly as it might seem, the one broken thing he owned was also his most precious possession.

After a while, John felt his eyes slipping shut. He looked over to the alarm clock he kept next to the bed. Past midnight. It was so easy to lose track of time. He tried to shake off his growing fatigue, but there was no stopping the yawning.

He left the work table with regret. The pile of trashed machinery and electronics was an itch he still longed to scratch, but it would be a long walk to school in the morning, so he had to be sensible.

John settled down on the narrow cot. A slight mustiness told him that he’d have to take his bedding back to the house for cleaning soon. With the work lamp off, there was only the flame from the candle he’d set above the bed – it rose and dipped with a frantic rhythm, and the long-legged hunters began to move on the wall once again. Quick figures darted from one shadow to the next and, as John closed his eyes, it seemed that the stone roof above him melted away, becoming a strange new constellation of stars.

Each fleck in the granite became a burning point. The tiny stars swelled then receded, each one becoming a winking mote in a light show that gave shape to the infinite darkness around him. His eyes were shut and the rocks held him close, yet in those last seconds of wakefulness, it seemed that he slept under the open sky.

“Beautiful,” he murmured to himself.

Outside the stars were dim compared to those that winked beneath the stone. Clouds slunk past the moon in silver streams. Gypsy fires burnt low in the growing wind, village dogs howled. A stranger came striding down Mist’s Way, his hair bone-white and his coat little more than rags, yet he surveyed the valley beneath him like a king returning from a long journey.