George did not sleep that night. He sat in his bed thinking of how he had misjudged or mistreated Colette, or she him, sometimes cursing himself for his forwardness. Then in the early morning he heard his door creak open. He rolled over to see the short, bulky figure of his father sidle its way into the room, hat in hand.
“Harry?” whispered George.
“You’re awake,” said Silenus. “Good. Get dressed.”
“Why?”
“We’re going on a trip. Don’t wear your nice shoes.” Then he put his hat back on and walked out, shutting the door.
George half-dressed and came down to find Silenus and Stanley in the street behind the theater. They appeared to be in the midst of a new argument: Silenus had his arms crossed and was trying to ignore Stanley’s pleas, while Stanley held up his blackboard, which was marked with: IT SHOULD NOT BE HIM. There were other half-erased messages in the borders that read things like NOT WELL YET and ME INSTEAD.
“Ah,” said Silenus when he saw George. “You’re ready.”
“Where are we going at his awful hour?” said George. He was in a bad temper. The lack of sleep and humiliating rejection had cast a pall over him.
“We’re going fishing,” said Silenus.
Stanley did a double take on hearing this.
“But not for fish,” said Silenus. “And not at a river. We’re going fishing at a cemetery, George.”
Stanley rolled his eyes and wrote: DO NOT MAKE THE BOY GET OUT OF BED. I WILL COME INSTEAD.
“No,” said Silenus. “You won’t. I don’t need you at all. I need George. You need to stay here, and look after the rest of the troupe.”
TOO MUCH EXPOSURE, wrote Stanley.
“The wolves are looking, but they haven’t found us yet,” said Silenus. “Things are only dangerous near the parts of the song they’ve found, where they’re watching. And we won’t be going near those.”
Stanley did not seem convinced. He frowned and shook his head.
“What do you need me for, anyway?” said George.
“Let’s say I need a catalyst, and you should serve nicely,” said Silenus. “It’s nothing dangerous. I just need a reed to catch the wind, and sing for me.”
“I’m not singing,” said George.
“You have no gift for the metaphorical,” said Silenus. “Let’s get to the fucking train station, all right? I need to make some stops near there before we can go.”
When they arrived Silenus bought the tickets and hurried off to a hardware store down on the corner. He would not say what he was looking for. George and Stanley sat on a station bench to wait for him.
Stanley anxiously watched George out of the side of his eye, and reached out as if to put his arm around him. George flinched and ducked away.
“Don’t,” he said. “What are you doing?”
Stanley blinked, hurt, and smiled a little. He wrote: YOUR COLLAR ISN’T RIGHT.
“I can take care of it.” He did so, but avoided looking Stanley in the face. Then he moved over to put more distance between himself and the older man. He was not sure if the wolf in red had been right, but he did not want to be touched or tended to by Stanley right now, when he was in such a foul and unforgiving mood.
Stanley shifted in his seat. He appeared to look around to make sure Silenus was not near, and pulled out his blackboard and wrote: HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU.
George glanced sideways to read his message, but did not look at the man.
Stanley reached into his coat. He seemed a little ashamed by what he was doing, but then he smiled and shrugged and pulled his present out. There was a twinkle of gold from his fingers, and George glanced to the side again to see he was holding a very thick pocket watch.
FIGURED YOU COULD USE A WATCH, wrote Stanley. NOT NEW. OLD. STILL TELLS TIME, THOUGH IT IS SLOW. He opened the watch to show him, and smiled and turned the knob at the top. DON’T FEEL THE NEED TO KEEP TRACK OF TIME THESE DAYS. LESS IMPORTANT.
He held it out to George. George looked at it, but did not take it. “Why?” he asked.
Stanley faltered. He took his board and wrote: DO YOU HAVE A WATCH ALREADY?
“Is that it? You just want to give me a watch?”
Stanley looked at him, confused.
“You give me clothes, combs,” said George. “Razors and shoes, and… and now jewelry? Why? What is it you want from me?”
Stanley thought and picked up his blackboard. He wrote several things, erasing each one before he finally showed one to George. He’d written: DO NOT WANT ANYTHING.
“Then just stop, all right? Stop giving me stuff. Stop hovering over me all the time. Just stop.”
Stanley stared at him. The man looked heartbroken, and George felt sure that the wolf in red had been right.
“I don’t want anything to do with you, all right?” said George. “Just leave me alone.”
Stanley slumped over a little. Then he nodded and replaced the pocket watch and turned away.
Silenus finally returned with some large canvas bags over his shoulder. “That took longer than it should have,” he said.
“What did you get?” George asked. Whatever was in the bags clanked when Silenus moved, and George got the very bad feeling it was shovels.
“It doesn’t matter. Come on, kid. We don’t have much time to lose. We’ve got to be there by nightfall, and I don’t want to be in the same county with Lettie when she realizes I’ve dipped into the budget for train tickets again.”
George stood and prepared to follow him. Silenus bade Stanley goodbye, but George did not. For some reason this irked his father. “Say goodbye, why don’t you?” he said. “It’s rude not to.”
Neither George nor Stanley looked at the other. “Goodbye,” George mumbled, and Stanley nodded.
They climbed aboard and within several minutes the train began moving. As it pulled away George and Silenus looked out the window to see Stanley standing at the station with the few other watchers. Yet unlike them he did not look at the train, but at his feet, and as the distance between them increased George thought he saw a flash of white from his breast pocket that rose to his face. It was, George realized, a handkerchief, and he knew immediately that Stanley was using it to wipe away tears.
It was an extremely long train ride for such short notice. George slept at the beginning in short bursts, but each nap was dreary and gave him little rest. Eventually he again asked where they were going.
“To a cemetery, like I told you,” said Silenus. “But this is a very special cemetery. It is extremely old, so old that people are not really aware of how old it is, otherwise it would be considerably more feted. And it has, over time, quietly collected some of the most prestigious residents these lands have ever seen. By which I mean dead people, of course. There’s one in particular I’m looking for.”
“You’re dragging me across the country to find a dead person?”
“Right,” said Silenus. “Finn MacCog, specifically. He made some unusual burial requests, and I’d like to investigate them.”
“And how am I supposed to help you investigate them?”
“Why don’t you go back to sleep, eh?” said his father.
They arrived in a tiny New York town by evening and tried to hire a horse-drawn coach to take them out to the cemetery. The coachman gave them a nervous look when he heard their destination, and Silenus had to up the fare considerably before he would agree to take them.
Soon they pulled up to a large iron gate set between two stone pillars before a path that led into the woods. The end of the path was dark and shadowed, and none of them could see where it ended. The driver was so unnerved that Silenus had to pay him extra to wait, which he did far away down the lane.
The gate was not locked, to George’s surprise. It opened for Silenus with a creak, and the two of them walked in.
“How did you find out about this place?” George asked.
“I once buried someone here,” Silenus said. “Long, long ago.”
They came to the cemetery proper. There were hundreds of lines of headstones of many shapes and types of stone, and some looked very old and crumbling. The forest itself served as its fence, yet no tree encroached on the many plots. It was an extremely quiet and still place, lit only by the fading evening light.
“Do you feel it?” asked Silenus.
“Feel what?”
“Time,” he said. “It forms pools and eddies in certain places. In graveyards its effects are most noticeable. So much time and life is stored up here… like an underground cavern, full of water. There is good slumber here for the dead.” He squinted at the stones around him. “Hm. Now. My research said that Finn MacCog was buried here in 1796.”
“That long ago?” said George.
“Yes. But it’ll be a little hard to find his resting place. He requested that his headstone be buried with him.”
“What sort of person would be buried with his own headstone?” asked George.
“Well, he also requested that he be buried with his finest possessions, so that he could enjoy them in the afterlife. This put Finn in a bit of a conundrum—he didn’t want to lie in an unmarked grave, since then he wouldn’t be found and woken when the Rapture came, yet he was also a suspicious bastard and didn’t want any grave robbers to dig him up and steal his prizes. So, figuring that Christ and His angels wouldn’t have a problem with a few feet of dirt, he is buried with his headstone mere inches above his coffin in the ground.”
George began to get a bad feeling about this. “And what are we here to do?”
“For now, you’re to do nothing but stand where I tell you to,” said Silenus.
“To what?”
“Hmm… 1796… so that would be, what?” his father said to himself. He scanned the headstones. He pointed. “We’ll start over there.”
They walked to a corner of the graveyard. Silenus surveyed the plots and headstones, making sure to note all the empty ones, and he turned around, looking at the sky and testing the wind. Then he said, “Here. Stand right there.”
He positioned George before a very old headstone that read ARCHIBALD EHBERTS 1737–1799. “So all I have to do is stand on this man’s grave?”
“You have it exactly,” said Silenus.
“Did you really need to bring me all the way out here for this, Harry?”
“Let me amend my instructions. Stand there, and don’t talk.”
George did as he asked, irritated. Silenus sat down on the grass so that George stood between him and the headstone. Then Silenus stared at the stone, focusing on the words written there with a fearsome intensity. George waited, wondering what would happen. Soon the wind picked up, and tufts of grass waved around his feet, and George began to get the strangest feeling, as if something was rushing to him across long, long distances.
There was a twitch in the air above the headstone. At first George thought it was just a flick of dust caught by an errant breeze, but it did not blow away. And as he looked George thought the dust appeared to take the shape of a brow, and a long, crooked nose, and pendulous jowls…
“What? What is this?” said a croaking, distant voice. It was like no more than a scratching at the very back of George’s skull. “What’s going on? Where… where am I?”
“Archibald Ehberts?” said Silenus.
“Who’s there?” said the voice. “Where are you? I can’t… I can’t see you… Wasn’t I just in my bed, and then I was sleeping? Sleeping there, and then later… later I was sleeping in the dark…”
George was so alarmed he could hardly move. He thought he could see shoulders now, bent and very crooked, like those belonging to a terribly old man.
“We have woken you, good sir, to ask you a simple question,” said Silenus. “Do you know the final resting place of Finn MacCog? He is said to lie here in the earth which you share.”
“You woke me? How?”
“The question, sir,” said Silenus patiently. “We only want the answer to that, and we will let you sleep again.”
“I would not know such a thing,” said the creaky voice. “I am but a cobbler, a simple cobbler. I lived simple days and I died a simple death. Such things are beyond me. I do not know…”
“Thank you,” said Silenus. He motioned to George to step aside. George did so and the faint image in the air evaporated.
“W-what was that?” said George. “Was that a… was it a g—”
“It was an echo,” said Silenus. “An echo of a past life. Didn’t I tell you that time has been stored up here, like a pool underground? All that needs to be done is allow a very small drop to fall in certain places, and as its effects ripple and echo across and back, we can listen carefully, and learn.” He picked up his bag and continued on into the graveyard.
“And what are we dropping in to make that echo?” asked George as he followed.
“Can’t you imagine why I brought you here, George? What distinguishing characteristic would make you suitable for such work?”
“The song, I’d guess.”
“Very good. Each part of the song has connections to all of existence. It is all of existence, in a very tight, packaged way, regardless of time or place. You carry a bit of eternity next to your heart, George, just a bit. But that’s all it takes to make the slight echoes we need. Sometimes it’s damn convenient, having you around.”
They continued across the graveyard in this manner, George standing in front of the headstones and Silenus focusing and bringing up those strange, unearthly faces and voices. They mostly originated in the late eighteenth century, though sometimes Silenus would make an error and bring up someone from the nineteenth. When this happened he’d immediately dismiss them, much to their surprise and indignation. On one occasion the echo they summoned up was not the person indicated on the gravestone at all, but neither George nor Silenus had the heart to tell her she was buried in the wrong grave.
Yet no matter when they died or who they were, none of the echoes could say where Finn MacCog was buried. “I am just a simple weaver,” they would say, or perhaps a simple farmer, or a simple reverend, or a simple wife or Christian or son. They doggedly stuck to one little label, and would not venture any knowledge beyond it.
They both grew frustrated, especially George, who had not slept well and was still in a bitter mood. “What’s eating you?” said Silenus.
George was not sure if he wanted to tell him. But he’d been aching to share his troubles for some time, and if he could not speak to his own father then who could he speak to? So as they wandered among the headstones and memorials he related the confusing events of the previous evening.
“I see,” said Silenus when George had finished his story. “You know… I think it would be best if you left Colette alone.”
“Why?”
“She’s a troubled girl, George. She came from a hard, hard place. I should know, I’m the one that found her.”
“Then can’t I help her? Can’t I… can’t I give her something to make it better for her?”
“Some people don’t want help,” said Silenus. “And Colette is one of them. She runs on pride, and little else. To accept help is to admit weakness.”
“Sometimes she doesn’t seem that proud,” said George. “Sometimes she seems ashamed. Like she wishes to be someone else.”
“What do you mean?” asked Silenus.
George told him about the night they saw the minstrel show together, and how afterward she’d behaved not like herself but like the princess she was often forced to be. As he finished Silenus’s face blackened and curdled until George was almost afraid to keep speaking.
“It didn’t seem right,” said George after a while. “She shouldn’t go around… pretending.”
“Right?” said Silenus. “Right? What the hell do you know about right? Who are you to judge her? Do you have any idea what she came from? How she’d be treated if she was honest? Maybe she has to pretend every once in a while, because the other option is sticking a gun in her fucking mouth and taking the easy way out! Maybe it’s not about right, but about survival.”
“Survival?” said George, shocked. “What do you mean?”
“Who would want to live in a world where you get treated in such a way? Maybe she has to lie to herself, just so she can get up in the morning and fucking walk outside! Colette isn’t doing anything new, George. She’s doing what people’ve done the world over, since the beginning of time—pretend the world is something it isn’t, just so they can feel better about it. You think those bastards laughing at that minstrel bit were any different? Pretending the darkies are clowns, or animals? They aren’t any such thing, and deep down those fools knew that, but it made them feel better to pretend it’s so. I’ve seen it everywhere, anywhere. There hasn’t been an ugly truth yet that man can’t spin into a soothing lie, or, better yet, ignore. Now shut the hell up and come along.”
Silenus’s anger continued to mount until his eye fell upon one gravestone: JOSEPH BLAKELY—1834–1872. He stopped and raised an eyebrow, thinking, and his fury dissipated. “Here. Come and stand before this one.”
“But that’s not in the time of MacCog’s burial.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Silenus. “We’ve got nothing to lose. And make sure you stay quiet for this one. This may get… personal. I had history with this man, once.”
“Is this the person you came here to bury?” said George.
“No,” snapped Silenus. “Now hurry up and fucking stand there.”
George stood before the headstone as he had for all the others. Soon a flicker began to appear in the air over the plot, but this echo was different from all the others: it did not express astonishment on being summoned, but calmly looked around. Then, on seeing Harry, it said, “Ah. William. Is that you?”
George was not sure who the echo could mean, but Silenus smiled. “It is indeed, Joseph,” he said. “I’d ask you how you’re doing, but that’s obvious.”
The echo looked down, then back at the headstone. George thought he could discern smoothly parted hair and cold, bored eyes somewhere in that ethereal face. “Ah, yes. Judging from our surroundings, I seem to have passed. I suppose it’s safe to assume, then, that I am not the real Joseph, but a shade of him?”
“Something like that,” said Silenus.
“Interesting,” the voice said. “How long have I been dead? No, wait. Don’t tell me. It’d just depress me. You don’t look a day older than when we last parted, Billy. But then, I wouldn’t expect you to. Not after the tricks we got up to. Do you still remember the bacchanalia, Bill?”
“How could I forget?” asked Silenus.
The voice laughed. “Yes. How indeed.” George felt the echo’s faint eyes sweeping over him. “Who is this?”
“That is my son.”
“Your what?” said the echo. “I thought that wasn’t possible.”
“Then you can imagine my surprise when I met him,” said Silenus. His placid smile grew a touch. “You know we haven’t summoned you up just to chat, Joseph.”
“Oh, yes, yes. I can’t say I didn’t expect this, though. You’d never let something like death prevent you from calling in a favor, you old charlatan. What are you after this time?”
“The final resting place of Finn MacCog.”
“Really? That old legend?” said the echo.
“Legend?” said Silenus. “You thought it was real. It might have been years since we last spoke, but I can remember that. You always were a scholar, so if anyone knew for sure it’d be you.”
“Hm. Why would I tell you that, and let you disturb another sleeper here?”
“Because I can tell you what happened to Freddy,” said Silenus.
The echo was quiet for a long while. Then it said, “Freddy. My God. That dear, dear boy. Would you really?”
“Then please. Tell me.”
“He traveled with our troupe for two more years after your death,” said Silenus, “but he was never the same. Didn’t have the heart for it. Eventually he resigned, and returned home to New Jersey. The last I saw of him he was working in an export company, and had a lovely wife and two lovely children.”
“A wife?” said the echo. “A wife… Cheeky little bastard. I should have known.” It sighed. “You know, sometimes I think you introduced me to your little dancer just so you could use my expertise. And, of course, my library.”
“That may have been the case, but it doesn’t matter anymore,” said Silenus.
“True,” it said. “Finn MacCog, eh? That’s what you want to know?” There was a laugh. “Well, I’m afraid to say that you didn’t need to summon me up at all. You already know where he’s buried, William. You’ve seen it.”
“I have?” said Silenus.
“Yes,” said the echo. “You won’t find him among the others who died in that era. He was so paranoid he was buried far away from those. As time went by and more plots were added, his resting place wound up among those who’d passed much later.” The echo smiled. “In fact, William, I’m fairly certain his unmarked grave lies not far from where we buried your wife.”
George was so surprised by this statement that he nearly fell over. His movement made the spell break, and the echo dissolved, though not before giving one last unpleasant chuckle.
Silenus sat still for a long, long time. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Well.” Then, again, “Well.”
George waited for what he had to say, but it did not come. Silenus slowly stood up, eyes distant. “I’d hoped… I’d hoped we would not have to see that. But… well.” He picked up his bag. “This way.”
It was now very dark in the graveyard, but Silenus seemed to know where he was going. They walked until they came to an ancient oak tree, and George’s father walked down the line of headstones before it until he came to one at the end. George lagged behind to give his father some time alone, but he eventually approached and stood beside him. Engraved on the headstone was:
ANNE MARIE SILLENES
LOVING WIFE
TO WAKE AND RISE AGAIN
PATER OMNIPOTENS AETERNA DEUS
1829–1862
George’s eyes lingered on the date. She had died nearly fifty years ago. But if that was true, how could his father look no more than forty or fifty himself? George wanted to ask, but Silenus was staring at the headstone with such heavy eyes that he could not summon the nerve.
“Pater omnipotens…” said Silenus softly. “I forgot I’d put that. It was her request, not mine. But I had to honor it. She thought Latin was so lovely, though she couldn’t ken a word of it.”
“I didn’t know you were married before my mother,” said George.
“There is very little you know about me, I suspect. Some days I think I have a friend lying in every graveyard in this country, and maybe a few beyond. But there is none that stays with me more than this one.”
“How did she die?”
He tapped the side of his head. “Cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for? You didn’t know her.”
“I’m sorry for you, I guess. It’s a beautiful headstone, though.”
“It is a fucking rock. No more. It doesn’t know what’s written on it or what shape it’s in. Nor does it care. What is written there is meaningless. The thing it signifies has long since passed.” He shook his head. “What fools we all are.”
“What?” said George.
“You heard them, didn’t you?” asked Silenus. “I am a simple man, a simple farmer, a simple preacher… They are dead, yet still they cling to their titles. What fools. We lard ourselves with words and labels and silly, insipid roles so that we might blinker our eyes and live in happy ignorance. And from these small titles we think we derive worth.” His voice dripped with contempt. “Loving wife… pater omnipotens… These are… they are only words!” he thundered. “They are inventions! Things and ideas we have dressed ourselves up in! But they are not… they are not real. They are only cheap comforts, flimsy half-truths, if that. What fools we are to spend our lives chasing them… There are only two truths, George, or only two worth paying attention to: the song, and what we use it to stave off, day by day. How these wretched creatures would tremble if we knew what we were saving them from.”
George frowned, concerned. Though he could see that his father was distraught, this last comment troubled him. For if the wolf in red had been right, the troupe had not really been saving anyone. He had tried his hardest to believe it couldn’t be true, but as he watched his father contemptuously describe those he was meant to be protecting, that awful suspicion returned so strongly that George could not stay quiet. He had to know.
“When I spoke to the wolf in red, he said we don’t perform like we used to,” he said.
Silenus froze. He did not speak for a long while. Then he faintly asked, “Oh, no?”
“No. He said that our performances… aren’t really protecting anything. Except maybe ourselves, is what I’m guessing. Is that right? We perform just enough to give us and the place we’re staying some defenses, so that we can locate and gather the remaining fragments of the song. And that’s what we’re really traveling for, isn’t it? The First Song, and not the singing of it.”
Silenus turned a slight shade of gray. He blinked and slowly nodded. When he spoke his voice was again a croak. “Yes. Yes, that… that may be true.”
“May be true? Or is true?”
Silenus could not bring himself to speak; he only nodded.
“Why would we do that?” George asked. “I thought the purpose of the troupe was to help, to maintain what was left of the world.”
“It was, George.”
“So we’re not doing that anymore?”
“No, we are!” said his father. “We are helping!”
“But we’re just getting the song, we’re not really using it.”
“Not… not yet. Not fully. We don’t have time for that anymore. But we will.”
“When?” asked George.
Silenus hesitated. “Do you understand what the song is, boy?”
“Yes, yes. It’s a blueprint, it’s a—”
“And who made that blueprint?”
George stayed quiet.
“Yes,” said Silenus. “It is the sum of all the wishes and intents the Creator had for this world. The will of the Creator itself. Right now the song is impartial. Yet can you imagine what it would be like if we had the whole?”
“The whole?” said George.
“Yes. With the whole pattern before us we could finally learn why the world was intended to be the way it is now. Why it is so often cruel, and dark, and unhappy. We would learn the mind of what made us, the thing that called Creation itself into existence. And maybe… maybe if we had the complete First Song, we could call the Creator back.”
Silenus looked euphoric, as if he was finally revealing a precious secret he’d kept hidden for too long. But George felt nothing but alarm. “Call it back?” he said.
“Yes! We could, perhaps, call it back, and make it return. And we could ask it to fix this world it made. To repair the wrongs, to save us. Wouldn’t you want such a thing, George? Doesn’t such a thought appeal to you? Parts of the world may be or, or… or might have been lost in the meantime, sunk under that growing darkness. But none of that would matter if the Creator were to return. It outweighs the cost of such a measure. I’ve seen so much life, George… I can think of nothing better. It could fix everything.”
George did not say anything for a while. Then he asked, “Does Stanley know?”
“Stanley?” said Silenus. “N-no. No, he does not. Our change in performing took place before he ever joined the troupe.”
“So he thinks this is normal. And if he doesn’t know, the others don’t either.”
“Yes,” said Silenus. “And you must not tell them otherwise! George, we are nearly there! We have so much of the song collected, so many echoes harvested… It’s almost complete, and it can’t take much longer. There are only one or two more pieces of the song that we so desperately need… Once we have those, everything may be saved.” Silenus turned away from his wife’s grave and marched across to an unmarked plot. “And what we uncover here will help us.”
George followed his father over to the plot. “How will this help, Harry?”
Silenus produced a shovel from the bag and stabbed it down into the earth. “Because what Finn MacCog was buried with will be of prime interest to some people I need to see.”
“You’re grave robbing him?” said George. He had suspected this to be the intent all along, but it was still a shock to see his father doing it right in front of his eyes.
“Yes,” said Silenus. “He won’t miss it. Besides, rumor has it he was a miserable bastard in life. Makes sense. Who the hell gets buried with his favorite malt, anyway?”
“I can’t take part in this!” said George.
Silenus looked up. “Eh?”
“I will not do any grave robbing, Harry!”
“What! But this’ll take hours longer if you don’t help! Come on, grab a shovel.”
George turned around and began walking away.
“George? George!” cried Harry. “Get back here, George! For Christ’s sake, boy…” His words dissolved into grumbles, pierced by the sound of the shovel.
George found a large white stone memorial on top of a small hill. It looked like the point of a cathedral tower, and he sat under the shadow of one of its small stone eaves and watched his father’s progress. He made quick enough work of the grave for George to conclude he’d done this several times before.
Soon night fell and the graveyard grew densely dark. The moon and stars sometimes emerged from the thin clouds to show a gleaming landscape of ornate stone and gentle hills, and at the bottom of one hill his father toiled frantically. But then the clouds would move, and everything would be dark again, and George would know nothing but the cool granite behind him and the cough and scrape of a shovel out in the night. And yet even in this blind state he could not block out the knowledge that they had not been protecting anything in their travels. Instead, a hundred little towns or valleys or lives had winked out behind them, erased from the world by the thoughtless shadow the troupe had been meant to hold back.
George buried his face in his hands. “Jesus,” he said. “My God, my God, what have we been doing?”
Then there was a golden light among the tombstones. “Aha!” cried Silenus’s voice. “I’ve found it!”
George’s eyes adjusted and he saw the light was coming from Finn MacCog’s grave. He stood and walked down to his father, sometimes feeling for the way. He saw Silenus’s head poking up from the excavated grave, yet there was something glowing very, very faintly at the bottom of it.
George neared the edge of the open grave and looked in. His father stood on a large slab of stone at the bottom. There were words written on it, but George could not read them. Silenus had dug around the slab until the coffin below was revealed, yet beside the coffin was a large iron case of some kind which had been dragged out and pulled open, and there in the case was what looked at first to be a lamp of some kind, glowing with a smooth golden light. Other trinkets lay around it—some of them appeared to be very old bones of some kind—but the glow was the most astonishing thing.
“What is it?” asked George.
Silenus stooped down and plucked it out. George saw it was not a lamp at all, but a bottle, and its contents were glowing. “It is whisky, my boy,” said Silenus. “But not any whisky. The whisky. Maybe the first one.” He cackled happily. “They were right about you, Finn my boy. You managed to steal some over from the Old Country, didn’t you?”
“It’s whisky? Why does it glow, then?”
“Because it is uisce beatha, the water of life. The whisky they made in the old days, before the darkness came. It is an extraordinarily rare and precious drink, much sought after by knowledgeable aficionados. No one knows how it was made, and there is almost none left in the world. And you,” he said to the coffin below his feet, “you miserable bastard, you tried to have it entombed with you here for eternity.” He laughed again.
“Are you honestly telling me we came all the way out here and robbed a grave for whisky?”
“Absolutely,” said Silenus. He set the bottle on the grass and climbed out. He was filthy from head to toe. “The idea came to me last night, as I stared at my wine. There are only two known bottles of uisce beatha remaining in the world, and those are closely guarded and used for rituals, if they are used at all. But the people I am going to petition for help are… very famous gourmands.”
“Gour-what?”
“Gourmands. Epicures. People who enjoy food, and drink, and refined things. And excess. They are very big devotees of excess, and I think they’ll prize this gift very highly. Now give me some help. I know you won’t dig up a grave, but surely you can’t find anything morally reprehensible about filling one in, right?”