The Kitchen Gate

PREVIOUSLY: Cassian wore the gray cloak and sang the hymn and, on the seventh night, watched Albert Sterling walk into the dark in a white robe. The next morning Rector Kell offered him a place in the Society for life, and a private clinic for his mother. That evening Leo pressed a key into his hand and said: Tonight. If you want.

…

At a quarter to midnight, he got up.

He did it without deciding. His body simply rose from the bed, in the dark, in his clothes, and stood there, as a sleeper stands who has been called. He had not undressed. He had put on both shirts and the wool sweater and the boots, and tied the laces twice, and lain on top of the blanket for three hours with his eyes on the ceiling and the iron key clenched in his fist until the bow had printed itself into his palm.

The bell in the tower tolled a single note.

Across the room, Ronald slept. Leo's bed was empty.

Cassian lifted his coat from the hook. He took the cracked glasses from under the pillow and put them in an inside pocket, against his ribs. He did not look back at the room. He knew that if he looked, he would stay.

The door swung without a sound.

…

The corridor was black. He went along it on the sides of his feet, with one hand trailing the wall. Somewhere ahead, very far off, voices were singing. The last hymn of the night. It came up through the floors, soft and slow and sweet, and he found himself walking in time to it, left, right, left, and put out his hand and pressed it flat against the stone to make himself stop.

It wants you to stay.

He kept his mouth shut and his breathing slow and went down the back stair.

The kitchen was cold. The great range had been banked for the night, and a faint red glow showed through its grating. Copper pans hung from hooks, shining dimly. A cat lay on the flour bin and opened one green eye and closed it again. The smell of the place, bread and onions and woodsmoke, was so ordinary, so warm and homely and kind, that for a second his throat ached.

By the scullery door, a figure stood waiting in a thick wool coat.

Leo.

He had a scarf wound twice round his neck and a knitted cap pulled down over his ears. He looked about ten years old. He held in one hand a paper bag, tied with string, and in the other a pair of heavy gloves, and his face in the red glow was drawn and white and absolutely steady.

"You came," he whispered.

"You said tonight."

"I didn't think you would." The corner of his mouth moved. "I'd decided you wouldn't. It made it easier."

He thrust the bag at Cassian. It was warm. Through the paper came the smell of new bread. "Bread. Cheese. An apple. There's a flashlight in the left pocket, but don't use it till you're in the trees." The gloves followed. "Put these on. It's going to freeze."

"Leo."

"Listen." The boy came a step closer. His voice dropped to a thread. "Go out through the cold frames. The gate is behind them. Follow the track down the slope, through the pines, past the broken wall. There's a stream at the bottom. Cross it. Don't stop. Don't look back. Don't answer if you hear your name." He swallowed. "Whatever it sounds like. Whoever it sounds like. Don't answer."

"Come with me."

"I can't."

"You can. Right now. It's not far, we could—"

"I can't." It came out of him like a gasp. He pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth. When he took it away, he was shaking. "If I go, they die. My, my parents. It isn't a, it isn't a figure of speech. I've seen it. I know how."

"Who? Who would—"

"Don't ask me." Leo's eyes were enormous. "Please. I've told you so much. I've told you so much more than I should."

Cassian stood in the dark kitchen with the bag in his hand. He understood, all at once and with total clarity, that the boy in front of him had been trying to save him since September, and that every word he had spoken since had cost him something, and that nothing Cassian could say would pay it back.

He put out his hand.

Leo took it.

They stood like that for a moment, a pair of fifteen-year-olds in a dark kitchen, shaking hands in the manner of men. Leo's grip was hard and cold. His fingers trembled. His eyes were fixed on Cassian's face, and in them was an expression Cassian had no word for, a wild bright hunger, as if he were trying to memorize it.

"I'm glad it was you," Leo said.

"Glad what was?"

"That it was you who came."

Cassian opened his mouth. He wanted to say something, thank you, or I'll come back, or I'll find a way. But the thing in the kitchen shifted. The red glow in the range seemed to dim, and beneath their feet, through stone and clay and a hundred feet of earth, the slow vast breath drew in.

Both of them went rigid.

"Go," Leo breathed. "Now."

He turned the key in the scullery door. He pulled it wide. Cold poured in, and the smell of frost and pine and wet earth, and the sky beyond was black and enormous and full of stars.

Cassian stepped over the sill.

He looked back once. He had promised himself he would not.

Leo stood in the doorway of the kitchen, small and straight and hugging his elbows, with the red glow of the range behind him. He lifted one hand, palm out.

Then the door closed.

…

The garden lay white under the stars. His boots broke the crust of the frost with a sound like biscuits snapping. He ran along the line of the wall, bent double, past the black lumps of the cold frames, and the chapel stood up on his right against the sky, enormous, listening.

The little gate was in the hedge. He found it by feel.

The lock was a heavy old thing, rusted, crusted with moss. He pushed the iron key into it and it would not turn. He wrenched. His heart pounded in his ears. He twisted harder, and something inside gave with a dull crunch, and the key turned a quarter-turn, and a half, and stopped.

Please.

Far behind him, in the dormitory wing, a window lit.

He threw his weight against the gate.

It opened with a long, rising, rusty shriek, a sound like a gull, like a baby, like a saw cutting through bone, and it echoed up and down the valley, and in the chapel on the hill the singing stopped.

Cassian ran.