The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,104
but because I seen my own self in that hunger. When I decided I didn’t want to be a Woodsmith no more but must make myself a Rampart, I wasn’t no different than Mardew was right then. For I chafed at what I was, like he did, and went about to be different by stealing what wasn’t mine and lying about it after.
“I don’t feel like that’s something I want to do,” I told him. “If you’re thinking to kill me, I don’t see why you should get to have your own everlasting Summer-dance as a reward for it.” I was not half so fearless as I sounded, but I wasn’t going to give Monono to him, no matter what he did or said he would do.
Mardew hauled off and kicked me. He was aiming for my head, but I twisted round and took the kick on my arm. It hurt me bad, but not as bad as he meant it to. “Are you stupid, Koli?” he yelled. “You see this? You see it?” He waved the cutter in my face, then took it back again out of my reach in case I went for it. “I can rip you open and leave you for rats to eat.”
I laughed again, mostly because I seen it riled him up the first time I done it. “Rats heard you coming,” I told him. “Everything in the damn valley did. I heard you a mile off, and hid when you passed me. Only I never guessed it was you I was hiding from. I never thought you was like to come so far on a fool’s errand, though now I seen it, it don’t surprise me much.”
Mardew had let the cutter go dark while we talked, but now he fired it up to silver again. His face flushed red, just a little. “You keep on like that,” he said, “and see what it gets you. Now I’m going to ask you again, and it’s for the last time. How do I make that player work for me?”
Well, now I was come to it, and there wasn’t no way of going round or about. I had got to decide what to do. I meant what I said to Mardew, and I thought I could stick to it. That I would be able to keep the secret of how to make the DreamSleeve work, no matter how much hurt he put me to. I wanted to do it just to spite him, if nothing else. But a thought come to me then, and it give me to worry. The thought was this: was it better for Monono to stay switched off for ever, or to be waked up and made to work for Mardew?
It was not an easy question to answer. I felt sure she would hate Mardew, for he was a fool and a bully. But what was it like for her, lying on a shelf in the Underhold through all them years? Maybe it wasn’t like anything, or was like being asleep without no dreams at all. And maybe, when enough time had gone by, someone else would come and slide that little button across and her life would start over again, all new.
But just as likely not. And between death and Mardew, I suppose Mardew had the edge by about an inch or so.
“Okay,” I said, though I had got to force the words out past my teeth. “I guess I’ll tell you.”
“I guess you will at that,” Mardew said.
“What you got, Mardew, it’s not called a music player. It’s called a DreamSleeve. Monono Aware special edition.”
“I don’t give a dry shit what it’s called, Koli Faceless. Tell me how to use it.”
I shoved down the anger that was rising in me, and gun to explain it to him. “There’s a switch on the bottom corner of it. It’s kind of small, and it’s set right in against the edge, so you’re only like to see it if you look hard. You got to slide it across, from the left to the right, with the little window facing you. And then you say—”
I come to a stop there, just staring at Mardew and stumbling into silence. I couldn’t help it. His hand – his left hand, not the cutter hand – had gone inside his jacket and was touching on something there. Something that was sitting on his belt, or else was tucked inside it.