“Why do you go to the island?” said Marlowe.
The boy was walking next to Lymenion, not bothered, looking with interest at his features, and seeing this Oskar felt strangely relieved.
“You’ll go too,” he said. “Both of you. Miss Davenshaw will take you. It’s because of the orsine. She’ll show you what it is, how it works.”
“What’s on the other side?” asked Marlowe. His skin looked pallid and ghostly in the dark. “Is it frightening?”
Oskar shrugged, embarrassed. “It’s where the spirits are,” he said lamely. Truth was, he didn’t know much. “The world beyond the orsine is where the dead go, when they die. I heard Mr. Nolan talking about it once. He’s one of the old talents. He said it’s … it’s like if this world was a sheet of paper, and you folded it, and then folded it again. And then you tried to draw a line over all the folded-up surface. It just feels … wrong. It just feels like a wrong place.”
“Because you have to be dead first,” said Marlowe.
In the fog, Oskar felt Lymenion turn his attention on the boy.
“But how would he know?” asked Charlie. “If he’s never been there, how would he know?”
Oskar blushed, feeling suddenly foolish. “I wondered about that too.”
“Maybe he did go there,” said Marlowe.
But Oskar knew that was impossible. “No one can go inside the orsine.”
They descended the dark slope, their feet hissing in the wet grass. The fog parted; Oskar saw the flat black table of the loch; the fog thickened again.
“You have to be dead first,” Marlowe repeated softly to himself.
* * *
Charlie heard the soft wash of the loch on the stony shore but he didn’t see it because of the fog, didn’t see it at all, not until his shoes had splashed right down into it, and he felt Oskar’s hand on his sleeve, pulling him back.
“Careful,” said the boy, in his quiet way. “The dock is this way.”
“Come on, you lot,” called Ribs, from ahead. Charlie could see her disembodied robes stalking back and forth in the fog.
Near him, the flesh giant’s breathing came thick and labored. There was something strange and dreamlike about it all, so alien was it from the world he’d known all his life, the cruelty of Natchez. He kept thinking about his father, not much older than he was now, losing his talent, going out alone into the world. Did his mother know anything about his father’s other life, what he’d once been able to do? Did he hide it from her, that sadness, the sense of loss? Charlie saw a slender young man alone in a wet alley, his frock coat fraying, and he filled with a sadness all his own. He still didn’t know what to make of it. He reached for Marlowe’s hand.
The dock was a gray weathered contraption that had sunk on one side, maybe fifty years old, and it led crookedly out over the dark water. At its end was moored a solitary rowboat, big enough for the five of them, and Lymenion too, a cold lantern on a pole rising from its bow. Charlie heard a noise; then Komako came rattling along the dock, oars in her arms.
Marlowe was staring out at the loch. “It’s big. I didn’t know it was so big, Charlie.”
“They say it has no bottom,” whispered Oskar.
“Rrrh,” mumbled the flesh giant.
“For God’s sake,” said Komako, brushing past them, climbing nimbly into the boat, her long braid swaying. “It has a bottom. It’s just deep, is all.” She steadied the boat’s lantern on its chains, and opened the glass door. She peeled off her gloves, cupped her raw fingers around the little candle stub in its wax. Slowly she squeezed her hands into fists.
The candle bloomed into flame.
“Oh,” breathed Charlie, amazed.
Komako blushed.
“Aw it’s just friction,” grumbled Ribs, from close by. “It ain’t magic, Charlie.”
He felt Ribs take his hand. Her fingers were warm. She half dragged him off the dock, into the back of the boat, the boat rocking and banging as they got in. Ribs held his hand a moment longer than needed and then she let it go.
Oskar’s flesh giant took the oars. A shine of mucus dripped from the handles where it gripped them, and soon they were sculling away from the dock, turning, pulling powerfully across the loch.
The fog thinned as they passed away from the land. All was silence; the chill of the air on the water seeped through Charlie’s robe; the soft splash of the oars and the sleek weightless sensation as they sped over the surface made him sleepy. They were halfway across when Komako reached back, shuttered the lantern. He snapped awake.