Chapter 155: Something’s coming
It was only the second time Leon had come to the house, but it already felt familiar. Iris had told him to come in the morning, when the house was quiet and the light was good, and she had been waiting at the door with the kettle already on.
He had spent the three days since the glass cup in his hotel room, trying to pull legendary items out of whatever he could find.
He had tried a pen, a coin, a spoon, a hairbrush, a key, and the leg of a chair.
Every single one had crumbled to dust in his hand, and every time, a notification had told him that the extraction had failed. He still had no idea why.
But the dust had not knocked him out once. On the first day, he had only managed a few seconds before the mana ran dry.
By the third day, he had held on to a spoon for almost nine seconds before it fell apart, and he had still been standing when it did.
It was progress, and he had decided to take it.
’That boy sounds like someone I would enjoy meeting,’ Medusa said in his head, sounding bored. ’Stealing cattle on the day you are born. What a clever child.’
’You would like him,’ Leon thought back. ’He is a liar and a thief.’
’Is that how you see me?’
’You tried to lock me in a field forever.’
’Details.’
Leon almost snorted, and he caught it in time. Iris was looking at him with her head tilted.
"You went somewhere again," she said.
"I was thinking about the boots," he said, and then he stopped, because he had not meant to say that.
"The boots?"
"The god. The one with the winged boots. He sounds like a menace."
"He was the most mischievous of them all," Iris said happily.
"My grandfather used to say that every other god had a duty, but Hermes only had an appetite for trouble."
"That was why he was so popular with the mortals. He was the only one who laughed with them instead of at them."
Under the table, the golden wings around Leon’s ankles gave a faint flutter, and then went still again. It was so small that he could not be certain he had seen it at all.
’Hmm,’ Medusa said. ’Someone is pleased with himself.’
Iris reached across the table and turned the page. "Oh, you have to see this one. Look."
She held the book out so he could see the illustration.
It showed a huge dog standing at the gates of a dark palace. It had three heads, and every one of them wore a different expression. One looked angry, one looked sleepy, and the third one was looking at a butterfly.
"That is supposed to be the guardian of the underworld," Iris said. "The one that no living man could get past."
"It looks like it has been up all night."
"Look at the one on the right. It is thinking about something else entirely."
"It wants the butterfly."
"It is the only head that has made a good decision all day," Iris said, and she bent over the table, laughing so hard that she had to hold on to the edge of it.
Leon found that he was grinning, and that his face hurt a little from doing it. He could not remember the last time that had happened.
’You never laugh like that with me,’ Medusa said.
It was said lightly, but there was something under it that Leon did not miss.
’You buried me in snakes the last time we met,’ he thought.
’That was a hug.’
’A hug.’
’A very enthusiastic one.’
Leon pressed his lips together. He could feel the laugh rising again, and he looked down at the book so Iris would not see it.
After a moment, her own laughter faded. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sat back against the wall, looking at the open book on her knees.
"Do you know, my grandmother used to read this one to me every winter?" she said. "She did all the voices. She was terrible at them, and I loved every one of them."
"What was she like?" Leon asked.
"Loud," Iris said, with a small smile. "She sang while she cooked, and she hated players, and she was convinced that the system was listening to everything she said. She used to turn the radio up whenever she wanted to tell me something private."
"Did it work?"
"I don’t think so. But it made her feel better." She looked up at him. "I never had anyone to share this with after she was gone. The books, I mean. I used to sit here alone and read aloud to the walls."
Leon did not know what to say. There was a tightness in his chest that he did not expect, and it was not entirely pleasant.
He was sitting in this woman’s house, drinking her tea, and listening to her talk about her dead grandmother, and every word she had ever heard from him was a lie.
His name was a lie, and his face was a lie. She was laughing with a man who did not exist, and the real one was the killer she had called terrifying on the street only a few days ago.
’You are brooding,’ Medusa said.
’I am not.’
’You are doing it with your whole face.’
Leon pushed the thought down. He could feel the Mask of Many Faces smoothing his features over, and for once he was glad of it. Iris would not see what he was feeling.
"I am glad you read to the walls," he said at last. "It means you kept doing it."
Iris blinked at him, and then she smiled, and it was a real one, small and slightly crooked.
"That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me this month," she said.
"It has been a quiet month."
"It has been a very quiet month." She pulled another book onto her lap. "All right, Just Adam. This one is about the minotaur, and I warn you now that the artist did not take it seriously. He is drawn wearing a hat."
"A hat?"
"A very small hat."
"Why would a minotaur wear a hat?"
"It is the only part of the story that I have never been able to explain."
Leon leaned over to look, and Iris held up the book. She was right. The minotaur was standing in the middle of a maze, looking worried, wearing a little pointed hat that was clearly too small for its head. Leon covered his mouth with his hand and made a sound like a kettle.
"Stop," Iris gasped, laughing. "You are going to make me drop the tea."
"I am not doing anything."
"You are doing a great deal!"
And then it happened.
It started as a prickle at the back of Leon’s neck, a faint cold wave that ran down his spine and made the hair on his arms stand up.
He went still.
"Adam?" Iris asked. "What is it?"
"Something is coming," he said slowly.
"What do you mean, something?"
He turned his head toward the window. The sky outside was clear and blue, and the street below was quiet. A few birds sat on the wire across the road.
But the feeling was getting stronger. It was not coming from the ground. It was coming from above, and it was moving very, very fast.
"Iris," he said. "Get down."
"What—"
The sky cracked.
A deafening bang rolled over the house, so loud and so sudden that it felt as though the air itself had been slapped.
The windows shook in their frames, and the floor trembled beneath them. A shelf on the opposite wall gave way, and a dozen books came tumbling down in a cloud of dust.
The teapot jumped off the table and shattered on the carpet, and the minotaur in its tiny hat slid off Iris’s knees and landed face down.
Iris screamed and threw her arms over her head, and Leon dropped across the table without thinking, with one arm around her shoulders.
The bang rolled on across the rooftops and slowly faded.
For a moment, nobody moved. Dust drifted down from the ceiling and settled on the carpet.
"Was that an explosion?" Iris whispered.
"No." Leon lifted his head. "It was too high."
"Then what was it?"
"I don’t know." He stood up and held out a hand. "Stay behind me."
He helped her to her feet, and together they hurried through the house to the front door. Iris pulled it open, and the two of them stepped out onto the little garden path.
The street was full of noise. Windows were opening up and down the row of houses, and neighbors were stepping out onto their porches with their hands over their ears.
A dog was barking somewhere. A woman across the road was staring at the sky with her mouth open and a basket of laundry hanging from her arm, and next to her, an old man was slowly lowering himself onto his own doorstep as if his legs had stopped working.
Leon looked up.
There was something hovering over the middle of the street.
It was a giant. It hung in the air at the height of the rooftops, a great steel body nearly four meters tall, with a broad chest of dark plates that glowed orange along the seams.
Two wide nozzles were mounted on its back, and thick white fumes poured out of them in a roaring column, holding it steady in the air.
From its sides, eight long mechanical arms hung down, six of them thick and heavy and ending in claws, and all eight of them swaying gently like the legs of an enormous insect.
And on top of the machine, perfectly clear against the morning sky, sat a human head.
It was pale and narrow, with thin black hair, and it was smiling. The smile was far too wide. It did not move at all, even when the rest of the body shifted in the air.