As soon as Ann had towed Hume out of sight, Mordion, instead of getting on with his house, sat on one of the smooth brown rocks under the pine tree. He leant back on the trees rough, gummy trunk, feeling like someone who had not had a holiday in years. Absurd! Centuries of half-life in stass were like a long nights sleep but he was sure he had had dreams, appalling dreams. And the one thing he was certain of was that he had longed, with every fibre of his body, to be free. But the way he felt now, bone-tired, mind-tired, was surely the result of looking after Hume.
Yes, Ann was right. Hume had been bigger at one time. When? How? Mordion groped after it. The subtler of the two paratypical fields kept pushing in and trying to spread vagueness over his mind. He would remember this. Woodland Ann looking horrified
It came to him. First it was blood, splashed on moss and dripping down his hand. Then it was the furrow in the ground, opening to show bone-white body and a tangle of hair. Mordion contemplated it. What had he done? True, the field had pushed him to it, but it was one of the few things he knew he could have resisted. He must have been a little mad, coming from that coffin to find himself a skeleton, but that was no excuse. And he had a very real grudge against the Reigners, but that was no excuse either. It was not right to create another human being to do ones dirty work.
He had been mad, playing God.
He looked at the cut on his wrist. He shuddered and was about to heal it with an impatient thought, but he stopped himself. This had better stay had to stay to remind him what he owed to Hume. He owed it to Hume to bring him up as a normal person. Even when Hume was grown up, he must never, never know that Mordion had made him as a sort of puppet. And, Mordion thought, he would have to find a way to deal with the Reigners for himself. There had to be a way.
Ann led Hume away, hoping that the weirdness of this place would cause Hume to grow older once Mordion was out of sight. It would be confusing, but she knew she would prefer it. Small Hume kept asking questions, questions. If she did not answer, he tugged her hand and shouted the question. Ann was not sure she should tell him the answers to some of the things he asked. She wished she knew more about small children. She ought to, she supposed, having a brother two years younger than she was, but she could not remember what Martin had been like at this age at all. Surely Martin had never kept asking things this way? They crunched their way up a hillside of dry bracken, littered with twisted small thorn trees and, before they were anywhere near the top, Ann found she had explained to Hume in detail the way babies were made. And that was how I was made, was it? asked Hume. This was one of the times he pulled Anns arm and kept shouting the question. No Ann said at last, mostly out of pure harassment. No. You were made out of a spell Mordion worked out of my blood and his blood. Then Hume pulled her arm and shouted again, until she described it to him, just as it had happened. So you got up and ran away without noticing either of us, she finished, as they came to the top of the hill. By this time she was resigned to the paratypical field keeping Hume as he was. window.yaContextCb.push(() => { Ya.Context.AdvManager.render({ "blockId": "R-A-435267-32", "renderTo": "yandex_rtb_R-A-435267-32" }) }) As they entered woodland again, Hume thought about what he had been told. Arent I a proper person then? he asked mournfully. Now she had damaged Humes mind! Ann wished all over again that the field had made Hume older. Of course you are! she told Hume, with the huge heartiness of guilt. Youre very particularly special, thats all. Since Hume was still looking tearful and dubious, Ann went on in a hurry, Mordion needs you badly, to kill some terrible people called Reigners for him when you grow up. He cant kill them himself, you see, because theyve banned him from it. But you can. Hume was interested in this. He cheered up. Are they dragons? No, said Ann. Hume really was obsessed with dragons. People. I shall bang their heads on a stone, then, like Mordion does with the fish, Hume said. Then he let go of Ann and ran ahead through the trees, shouting, Heres the place! Hurry up, Ann! Its inciting! When Ann caught him up, Hume was forcing his way through a giant thicket of those whippy bushes that fruit squishy white balls in summer. Snowball bushes, Ann always called them. They were almost bare now, except for a few green tips. She could clearly see the stones of an old wall beyond them. Now whats this? she wondered. Has the field made the castle a ruin? Come on! Hume screeched from inside the bushes. I cant get it open! Coming! Ann forced her way in among the thicket, ducking and pushing, until she arrived against the wall. Hume was impatiently jumping up and down in front of an old, old wooden door. Open it! he commanded. Ann put her hand on the old rusty knob, turned it, pulled, rattled, and was just deciding the door was locked when she discovered it opened inwards. She put her shoulder to the blistered panels and pushed. Hume hindered in a helping way. And the door groaned and scraped and finally came half open, which was enough to let them both slip through. Hume shot inside with a squeal of excitement. Ann stepped after more cautiously. She stopped in astonishment. There was an ancient farmhouse beyond, standing in a walled garden of chest-high weeds. The house was derelict. Part of its roof had fallen in, and a dead tree had toppled across the empty rafters. The chimney at the end Ann could see was smothered in ivy, which had pulled a pipe away from the wall. When her eyes followed the pipe down, they found the waterbutt it had drained into broken and spread like a mad wooden flower. The place was