the Headstones was alive. That was what the Book of Buford and all the Quists believed. The illumination of the tablets was proof of this.
“Are you some kind of proph-et?” one of the black men on the other side of the circle asked with a tremor in his voice.
Lloyd was not sure how to answer this question, and so repeated what he had said before. “I am Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. I have seen these markings before. These things you have are not the only examples.”
“Order!” McGitney called, as the commotion this assertion caused threatened to upset the entire proceeding, not to mention draw unwelcome attention.
“Well, young Lloyd Meadhorn Sitturd. My name is Increase McGitney, and the people you see gathered around you are my devoted compatriots in a holy mission of discovery and fulfillment. We call ourselves Quists. You may have heard of our trials—or have even been warned away from us. That is, provided you are not a spy. Are you a spy, young Lloyd?”
Lloyd shook his head violently. It occurred to him that if he were a spy he was not a very adept one. Hattie would have been dark with him.
“And where have you seen these writings, Lloyd? In a dream?”
“No,” the boy answered.
“Then where? Where are you from?”
“Zanesville, Ohio.”
“And is that where you saw them?” McGitney pestered. Even if by some fluke the boy was speaking the truth, if another example of the Headstones lay at a distance, perhaps lost, his claim could not be proved. Perhaps the effect the boy seemed to have on the tablets could be explained away and they could return to their ceremony.
Still, he could not get around his own intuition that the boy’s appearance was somehow fated. A defining moment in Quistory.
Lloyd hesitated. He had become so intrigued by the sight of markings like the Ambassadors’—and by their unexplained luminescence—that he had forgotten for a moment about his precarious situation. Surrounded by strangers with strange beliefs, late at night in a foreign frontier town—his parents not knowing where he was—he knew that his goal should have been to get back to the Clutters’ in one piece and get to bed without his parents knowing that he had been gone. He realized that he was always endangering their safety, and reproached himself for it. But he could not curb his curiosity—or his need to show these head-wrapped wayfarers the error of their ways.
“I have it with me,” he replied at last, which set the Quists chattering and speculating, while the light from the Headstones held in various hands around the circle bloomed brighter. “A short distance from here,” he added, as McGitney held up his hands for quiet.
“Then you must fetch it,” the Quist patriarch commanded. “Drucker and Soames, go with him. We must prove the truth of this claim here and now.”
“No,” Lloyd insisted. “I will not let you take it from me. It was given to me.”
“Who by, lad?”
“That is not for me to say to you,” Lloyd fired back. “But I will not fetch it for you to steal.”
The circle of faces erupted in discord.
“Hush!” McGitney demanded. “Lad, whoever you are, and wherever you are from, know this: the Quists are not thieves. More honest, law-abiding folk you would be hard pressed to find, wherever laws are fair and allow for freedom of faith. We are merely humble believers in the revealed truth the great Saint Kendrick bestowed upon us. We mean you no harm, as we hope to have none done to us. But see here. You have made a bald, bold claim that strikes at the heart of what we have risked and lost good lives to defend and protect. If what you speak is the truth, then something of your destiny is entwined with ours—whether the genuine nature of this can be fathomed by any of us gathered at this crossroads or not. I say to you—I give our word—you will not be harmed. Your property will not be appropriated. And if you are in the shadow of any danger, as we are, perhaps we may even be of help to you. And yours. You have family, I take it? Unless you just rose out of the ground to haunt us. Or did you fall from the sky?”
This last query had a noticeable effect on Lloyd, for he could not help seeing and hearing the pitiful Ambassadors as they were swept away into the cruel blue above the Mississippi. He had repaid their hermetic trust