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.He closed his hand around it and pulled it toward him, unable to move further, pulling it in like a rope in the sea.Then he was fumbling in his jacket, where the hand cream had been and where a purple stone nestled in paper, and found the shells, the shells that had survived the river and everything else.The pain made him shake, the urgency made him shake.He tried to focus his mind, control his hands.He broke open the gun, dropping one of the shells as he did so.He slid the other one in and then groped for the one he had dropped, not seeing, with the blood, feeling in the dirt and finding it at last, smeared with grit so that he had to take another few seconds wiping it on his jacket.Then he slid that in, hearing the pop as it went in.He snapped it closed and tried to stand.His head swam.Though there was a bright light now where the sun had cut through in a beam like a searchlight, he could feel a darkness begin to welcome him.He banged his hand, the one holding the shotgun, against his shoulder so that his body lit up with pain.Then he took a step forwards as two shots rang out, sharp and clear, not a shot and an echo but two shots so crisp, separated by no more than a second, that he knew what had happened without needing to see.They had stood side by side and shot the boy together so they could both say they did it.They had shot the boy who had saved him not once but twice and no matter what happened now, there was no getting him back.And this was the boy that had told them what was only partly true, that had spoken for him as he hadn’t spoken for himself.And he didn’t think black and white, though that was why this had started.He thought how they had killed his son, knowing it wasn’t his son but knowing no other word that could describe his feeling.He stepped back now, knowing there was no point in going through the water, knowing that it was better to wait for them when they came back through, but knowing that it made no difference in the end whether he got them or they got him because what was important was what had already happened.For a second, he thought that maybe they had been shooting to scare and that he might still save him.But he knew that such as them, riled as they were, wouldn’t see the point to that.Besides, those shots were as final as anything he had heard.It was an execution without benefit of judge or jury.It was the end of time.He saw them on the other side of the water, saw their outlines, dark and wavering.And he saw their shadows cast on the back of the cave by the searching sun, as if some record of such as they would be imprinted for ever there.Then they stepped on through, silver for a moment, as though they had turned to molten glass, except that a second later they were dark and dripping water and with no faces he could see, the light coming from behind, so that he never saw their faces as he fired, not noticing which was which as they flew back through the water again, one, then the other, the second not moving, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening, couldn’t think what to do.They went back as if they were on their way to the planet they had come from, stepping into another time.He stood with the gun in his hand, frozen, all pain suddenly swept away as though someone had been pressing a rock on him and had suddenly relented.Then the gun was on the floor quite as if he had meant to drop it there, except that he hadn’t, was unaware it had gone.Then he was on the floor, too, sitting down with no recollection of meaning to.After a minute or two, he edged himself backwards until he came up against the rock where he had been sitting before.He eased himself up against it and settled himself.There was no running any more.Just a blankness where everything had been.Just the sound of the water falling down.Minutes passed and he began to wonder whether he should step outside, see to the boy maybe.He didn’t doubt he was dead, no more than he doubted the other two were, having taken buckshot from no more than six feet and straight in the chest.But he had seen enough of death and wanted to see no more, and since all death was of a piece, it reminded him of others and took him off to another time.He reached in his pocket and found the package he had felt when he was reaching for the shells, the shells he had forgotten and they had known nothing of.He took it out and shifted himself along to where the sun had slid down the wall as it rose in the sky somewhere beyond the silver curtain of water.He slid along to where it shone warm on his face, bent and changed by the water, softened so that it was more green than gold.He opened the paper, which was no more than a newspaper with long-ago news, and there was the brooch and the purple stone at its heart.He held it up where the sun could reach it, watching as a light seemed to pulse at its very heart, as if it were alive and had been all these years, though the woman who’d worn it had been dead in her grave, her and the one she died in bringing into the world [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]