“What do you think he’s doing?” Zoe said, still rattled by their conversation. “He’s obsessed with you, and it’s time for a new episode of World’s Slowest Courtship. ‘This week, Rufus starts growing a rose!’”
“Don’t do that,” her mother said. “If he heard you say something like that, it would really embarrass him.”
Rufus pulled up near the garage and killed the engine.
“Get X into the woods,” Zoe’s mother told her, “unless you think you can explain who he is to Rufus. Because I certainly can’t.”
The words jolted X. Why had he just been standing there, eavesdropping? He could not afford to be seen by yet another citizen of the Overworld. Every person who saw him was another person he endangered. He might as well have dangled them over a furnace.
He scanned the woods. He could reach them in an instant, but he feared he would alarm Jonah if he ran. He looked down at the boy. Jonah’s back was turned, and he was kneeling in the snow, fussing with Zoe’s scarf.
X headed for the trees. He forced himself to move slowly. It was agonizing. He was barely a hundred feet away when Jonah—apparently not as entranced by his game as X had imagined—stood up, brushed the snow off his knees, and began shouting: “Rufus! We’re in back! Come meet our new friend!”
Zoe came around the house and ran toward X.
“Is there any chance you can talk like a normal human being for even two minutes?” she said.
“I shall endeavor to do what the circumstances require,” he said.
Zoe rolled her eyes.
“We are so screwed,” she said.
Rufus came around the back of the house now, too, and saw them. He approached Jonah first, playfully baring his teeth and hissing like an animal.
“I am One Tooth, ancient ruler of the cat tribes of the tundra!” he exclaimed.
“And I am Many Teeth, the usurper!” Jonah shouted back.
The exchange cracked both of them up, and they ran to hug each other.
Watching, X was hit by a wave of jealousy—he hadn’t realized how attached he’d become to the little boy.
Zoe’s mother, meanwhile, looked alarmed.
“Perhaps all is not lost,” X told Zoe quietly. “I have spent years listening to Banger in his cell, and he died not so long ago. I believe I can do a tolerable imitation of him.”
“Then start now,” said Zoe.
Rufus came toward them. He was flushed with happiness. He extended his hand to X in greeting. Rufus was maybe five years younger than Zoe’s mom. He had a friendly, open face, an unruly, reddish-brown beard, and dark hair that clumped together in a strange way. He caught X staring at it, and smiled such a wide, unself-conscious smile that X’s jealousy turned a deeper shade.
“Yeah, I’m thinking about dreads,” Rufus said. “But I’m only thinking about them, so don’t judge me. Your hair’s pretty epic, too, bro. What’s your name? I’m Rufus.”
X took his hand.
Zoe and her mother stared at him, waiting. He had never even spoken his name aloud.
“’Sup, dude?” he said. “I’m X.”
seven
That night, after Zoe was safely launched into her dreams, X padded around the quiet house. He had lived such a barren life that the rush of faces and voices and attachments had unnerved him. He could not sleep. The lords would be strategizing even now about how best to punish him. He knew he should return to the Lowlands before they struck. And yet Zoe had all but silenced the Trembling. She had all but silenced everything. She had filled everything. When she had hugged him for just that instant on the lake…
If he could just have one more day with her.
He remembered Zoe’s mother saying that Zoe had gotten too close to him. Zoe hadn’t denied it. Could it be true that she thought of him as more than an object of pity? He couldn’t stop wondering. The thought was like a train on a circular track.
X gazed out the living room window. The moon was high and nearly full. The ice on the river was shining with its borrowed light, and looked lovely in the darkness. X was reminded of his own filthiness.
He went outside and descended the hill under a vast and humbling sky full of stars. His own world had no equivalent. In truth, it had nothing that one would willingly gaze at.
When he reached the river, he knelt at its edge. The surface was decorated with cloudy whorls, and pocked here and there with stones and reeds that had been trapped in the ice.
He removed his shirt and pants and laid them on the ground beside him. His body was a map of bruises from grappling with Stan. He wondered how far his prey had gotten by now. Had he fled as far as he could without looking back? Had he crept into some innocent family’s home? Was he still nearby, shivering among the trees? Thanks to Zoe, very little of Stan remained in X’s veins. The man could be anywhere.
X leaned forward and pushed against the ice, testing it. He clenched his left hand and raised it. He was about to bring it down on the ice when he felt himself being watched. It was as if someone’s fingertips were grazing his neck.
He reached for his shirt, now dusted with snow, and wrapped it around his waist. He turned to the house, and ran his eyes along the windows. There was no one there.
He turned back to the river, knelt once more, and punched at the ice. It shattered instantly, cracks racing in every direction. He cast his shirt aside.
The water glimmered darkly, like oil.
He stepped into it.
The river closed over him as he sank to the bottom, his hair floating above him in tendrils. It was like traveling through the earth to the Lowlands—a slow, blurry drift that existed outside of time. When he reached the bottom, he drew his knees to his chest and wrapped them with his arms. He hung suspended for two or three minutes—a new sort of sea creature—then burst up to the surface.