The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,147

not to think about it too much. And I guess I did get to feeling stronger, by and by.

My leg was healing too. On the third day, I asked Ursala if it was all right for me to take the splint off, but she said not to. “It’s better if they think you still can’t walk, Koli. It works in our favour if they believe us to be more helpless than we really are.”

I was not certain sure that was possible.

We was still working on a plan to get away. We had got it halfway figured out, but there was a lot of things that had got to go right if it was going to work, and there wasn’t no way for us to practise it beforehand. There was three parts of it really. The first was lifting the grating off, the second was getting out of the cave and the third was making sure we wasn’t followed. The ideas for the first two come from Ursala. The third idea come from me, although really it was Senlas who told it to me.

“So why do you think we live here, under the ground?” he asked one time when I was by his bed and being talked at.

“I don’t know, Senlas.”

“Yeah, you do, Koli Faceless. Tell me.”

Well, I didn’t have no idea at all. “Is it so them from the villages won’t find you?” I asked him.

He just laughed at that. “Them from the villages isn’t nothing to me, Koli. They isn’t even as much as nothing. With a wave of my right hand I will strike them down, and with a wave of my left hand I will damn them. No, it’s not that.” He sit up and he turned my head around so it was facing past the lanterns into the darkness that come after.

“There,” he said. “What do you see?”

“I see it’s dark,” I said.

“But what’s on the other side of the dark? Keep looking.”

I kept looking and didn’t see nothing there. If something’s dark, that’s either because you can’t see through it or because there’s nothing there to see in the first place.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Keep looking.”

“Nothing again.”

He was still smiling, but it was a smile that looked like it was working hard to stay where it was and might fall off right soon. “The eyes of the innocent is not deceived by the tricks of this world, Koli,” he says. “They see past it. There’s light there, isn’t there? A long ways off. What do you see now?”

His hand that was not on my head curled into a fist. It felt like I had got to give a right answer or else it would not go well for me. I did my best to think.

“I do see a light,” I said to hold him off a little longer.

“Of course you do. And by that light, you see…”

“I… I see… the world that was lost?”

Senlas give a whoop. “Yeah, you do!” he yelled. “Yeah, you do!” He grabbed me in his arms and hugged me something fierce, and I lost my balance. I didn’t fall though, for he was holding me so tight. I felt the edge of the DreamSleeve press against my heart, and I hoped like anything he wouldn’t feel it too, for if he did he was sure to think it was a weapon and get the hand people to take it from me.

Even without that, the hand men and the hand women come in on both sides of us. They was watching me close, standing on the balls of their feet to be ready to jump on me if I tried anything. I kept my arms at my sides and spread my fingers out so they could see I didn’t mean to hurt their messianic.

“Not one in a thousand thousand can see it,” Senlas said in my ear. “I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time. Him that sent me still lives in me, but like I told you, it’s hard for him to get his voice down low enough to speak into this fragile little world we got here. It’s good that you see, Koli. So good, and so meet. When your soul flies out, you’ll know the way. And you’ll light it up so I can guide the rest of them. We’ll ride the wagon into that place of endless grace. And you’ll be rewarded for your pain, for you’ll sit at my right hand in the body of an