get from the gather-ground and still be inside the fence, so I was pretty sure I’d be alone, but I looked all round before I stepped in through the one half of an arch that was all it had by way of a door. And once I was inside, I made sure to keep ducked down, kind of, with my shoulders bent over. The stone walls of the house, or what was left of them, didn’t come up higher than my chest along most of their length, but as long as I didn’t stick my head up high I couldn’t be seen from afar off, and there was nobody close enough to see me through the gaps in the stone.
I had brung the silver box with me, tucked inside my shirt. I took it out now and held it in both hands, sitting down with my back against the wall and my feet out in front of me.
“Okay,” I said. “Wake up.”
The box didn’t do nothing.
I tried confirm, and I tried acknowledge, but they didn’t do a damn bit of good either. I got scared then. It will sound like a stupid fear when I tell it, but it struck my heart just the same. I was afraid I dreamed the voice, and the box wasn’t going to wake for me again because it never did in the first place.
But right then is when I seen something I should of seen before. On the bottom edge of the box there was another switch. It was smaller than the switches that was on the front and it wasn’t made to be pressed. It was made to be slid across, with your thumb or maybe with the heel of your hand. I must of touched it by accident the night before, when I was turning all seven boxes over and over in my hand.
I slid it now, from left to right. It made a clicking sound that seemed to have some serious meaning to it. Of a sudden, the black window lit up again with all the same patterns and colours I seen the night before.
“Hiiiiiiiiiii, dopey boy,” the girl in the box said to me. “You want me to say confirm-acknowledge? I know that’s your favourite!”
I was so relieved she was still there, I let out the breath that was in me all at once. “Oh my goodness!” the girl said then, kind of making out like she was shocked. “You’re too excited already. I’ll have to calm you down before you have a heart attack. Are you one of those kyoktana sportsu types? Too bad if you are. Dancefloor’s the place for cardiac, baka-sama. You should know that by your age. What is your age anyway? So rude of me to ask, shame, shame, but a girl likes to know what she’s getting into.”
I couldn’t think of nothing to say to this big flood of words. It was that same voice again, that was halfway to singing and halfway to laughing – like everything in the world was a joke, and the girl in the box was sharing the joke just with you and not with nobody else. But none of what I was doing was fit to be joked about. Stealing from Rampart Hold could get me whipped, or worse. I knowed I had got to take control of the box so it was mine and nobody else’s. And I had got to do it before anyone else seen it or knowed about it.
But I was too slow, by a long way. “So,” the girl in the box says, “what say we wapoo? I bet you got some moves, right? Cue disco lights!”
I don’t hardly know how to say what happened next. The whole inside of the broken house filled up with sparks, kind of, only the sparks was of different colours and they was rushing and swirling round. They was even moving on my skin, though I didn’t feel no heat at all.
“This one’s by Redbeard,” the girl said. “‘Spin Ain’t No Sin’. If you like it, I’ll put it on your playlist. If you don’t, just make a raspberry noise. I can take a hint.”
The next thing I knowed, there was drums and a horn and a whole lot of other things sounding out from all around me. The drums was first, and they was so loud and so close I thought that drummer was going to come up behind me and step on me. I flinched