Saying It Out Loud

PREVIOUSLY: Cassian joined the Chosen for his mother's sake. He learned that the hymn sung every night at the seventh bell is not a prayer but an invitation to something sleeping beneath the chapel, and that in eight days he will be asked to feed it. Standing over his sleeping roommates, he chose not to keep the secret.

…

He chose Sunday because on Sundays they let the boys out.

It was the only break in the week. After the long morning of scripture, when the last response had been recited and the last hymnbook closed, the dormitories were turned loose for fifteen minutes into the yard behind the east wing. Fifteen minutes, by the clock in the cloister. A quarter hour of cold air and open sky, under the eyes of two Prefects who strolled along the wall with their hands behind their backs and looked, for the most part, bored.

It was not much. But it was out of doors. And in all of Blackthorne, it was the only place where five boys could stand together in the open without a roof to listen.

Cassian had not slept.

He knew it showed. He had seen his face in the cracked mirror that morning, the hollows under his eyes, the red rims, the way the skin had drawn tight on the bone. He had lain awake until the six o'clock bell, rehearsing. He had tried a dozen openings. Listen. I need to tell you something. Nothing sounded right. All the words he knew were short and flat and blunt, the words you use to ask for a wrench or to say a thing is broken. He had never in his life made a speech.

He would have to find a way.

He walked out into the yard with the others in a straggling line, and the cold bit at his face, and the sun was a pale coin behind cloud. Gravel crunched. A few boys kicked at a patch of frozen mud. Ronald Fisk, chattering, hurried along at his elbow, one of those boys who cannot be silent even in the cold, and behind them came Karl, hands in pockets, with his chin up, and Albert, shuffling, and Leo, alone.

At the far end of the yard stood a stand of pines.

It was a ragged thicket of scrub, ten or fifteen trees growing close together against the wall, black needles and rust-colored bark. The Prefects patrolled the wall on the other side. From where they walked, the pines made a screen. And behind the screen, if you put your back to the stone, you were out of sight of everyone except the sky.

"Come with me," Cassian said.

Ronald blinked. "What?"

"Over there. All of you."

"Why?"

"Please."

He had not said the word since Iowa. It felt strange in his mouth.

They went.

…

It was dim behind the trees, and still, and smelled of resin. The wall rose gray and wet at their backs. Over their heads the branches closed in a low black roof. He stood with his shoulder to the stone and looked at the four faces turned up toward him in the half-light, and for a moment he could not think of one word.

Ronald's eyes were enormous. Karl's mouth had tightened into a line. Albert hung back, half-hidden, one hand twisting the end of his scarf. And Leo stood a little apart, with his arms folded and his head down, looking at the ground, as though he already knew what was coming and had come to bear it.

"I have to tell you something," Cassian said.

His voice came out rougher than he'd meant.

"It's not a joke. I'm not trying to scare you. I need you to listen all the way to the end, and not say anything till I'm done, because if you do, I won't be able to start again. Okay?"

Silence. Then Ronald, in a very small voice, said, "Okay."

"The song," Cassian said.

They waited.

"The one at night. From the chapel. The one you hear when the bell rings." He swallowed. "It's not a hymn. I don't know what you thought it was. A prayer, a ritual, some old church thing. I thought so too. But it's not."

"It's Latin," said Karl.

"Yes."

"So it's liturgical—"

"It's an invitation." He looked at Karl. "I translated it. Yesterday. I got a dictionary from the library and I wrote out every line. It says: Come, guest, to our table. The table is ready. Blood is poured out. We give a hand that you may be filled. Guest, sit. Guest, eat. Guest, do not leave."

The pines creaked. Somewhere beyond the wall, one of the Prefects laughed at something.

"They're calling it," Cassian said. "That's what the song is for. It's not praying to it. It's not worshipping it. It's calling it. There's something under the chapel, in the ground, in a stone room, and they've been singing to it every night since 1893 to make sure it stays. And once a year... no. Once every seven years, they feed it."

"Feed it," Ronald whispered.

"Animals. Forty-nine of them. And then, on the last night..." He stopped. He could not finish that sentence. "On the last night, a person."

Nobody breathed.

"How do you know?" said Karl.

"Because I've been in the chapel. I'm one of them. You know that." His voice cracked. "I was a Chosen for a week, and I thought I could stand it, and I've been inside and I've heard it. Under the floor. It breathes. And I've seen it."

Ronald made a high, small noise.

"The night I pulled Albert off the floor," Cassian said. "In the hallway. You remember. Albert, you remember." He looked straight at him. "It was real. It's not a story. It was tall and gray and its head was wrapped in cloth, and it had a hand on your neck. It's real."

Albert did not answer.

He was white to the lips. He stood against the trunk of a pine with his arms wrapped around his ribs, and the scarf that hid his throat shook with the pulse beneath it. His glasses had fogged. Behind them, his eyes were wide and glassy.

"That's why they're nice to us," Cassian said. "The food. The cloaks. The boots. It's not a reward. They're fattening us. They need people like me to do it and people like..." He faltered. "People like Albert to be what's left. And the teachers won't touch us because they know. They know what it does to anyone that's close. They've been scared of it their whole lives."

He heard himself say it, the whole ragged tumble of it, and it sounded like a child's fever dream. He stood there with his hands at his sides and his face hot in the cold, and felt the story die in the air between them.

…

For a while, no one said anything.

The Prefects' voices drifted over the wall, faint and far. A crow flapped out of the pines with a rattle. The cold had gotten into Cassian's bones, and he stood waiting for the first of them to laugh.

Ronald swallowed. It was a thick, audible gulp.

Karl adjusted his glasses. He did it slowly, with two fingers, as though to give his hands something to do. His face had gone smooth and careful, the way it did when he was calculating the length of a sentence before he spoke it.

Albert had slid down the trunk until he was half sitting, his knees drawn up, his head bowed. He was shaking.

And Leo, who had not lifted his eyes since they entered the pines, only stood looking at the ground. A muscle in his jaw twitched, once.

He knew, thought Cassian. He knew all of it. And he's standing there like a man at his own trial.

"Cassian," said Karl.

His voice was light. Gentle, even. The voice of a doctor calming a patient who has said something alarming.

"Cassian, I want you to know that I take what you've said seriously. I do. I want to be a good friend to you. And as a friend..." He paused, with an air of delicacy. "This sounds crazy."

The pines whispered.

"I mean it kindly," Karl said. "You've been under a lot of pressure. We all know that. The accident, your mother, the move, the change of school, the Chosen. A person can lose his footing. They can start to see things that—"

"I'm not seeing things."

"I'm not saying you are. I'm only saying it sounds as if—"

"Ask Albert."

Karl turned his head.

On the ground, in the shadow of the pine, Albert Sterling lifted his face. He looked from Karl to Cassian and back, and his mouth opened, and Cassian saw him fight the answer. Saw it rise in his throat, and saw him choke it down. A look went over his face like a shutter coming down. His lip curled.

"I don't know what he's talking about," Albert said.