said. “You’ve got that to keep you company until I—”
And then, of a sudden, the little window went black.
“Monono?” I said, but got no answer. “Monono-chan?” No answer again. And however many times I called, there wasn’t anything. The DreamSleeve didn’t speak, or light up, or wake in any way at all.
I had broke it somehow.
I had killed Monono, though the dead god knows I didn’t mean to.
26
For a young boy trying to get across to being a man, everything is tied up with his pride and his pizzle in ways that make the whole job a lot more difficult.
I had got myself into a very dangerous place, for no good reason except that I wanted to be big and important and I wanted to have again the sweetness I had that one time with Spinner.
When the DreamSleeve’s window went dark, and Monono stopped talking to me, I had good reason and good opportunity to think about that, and yet I didn’t hardly think at all. I went into a great panic, and then into a great sadness – and in case you was thinking of being sorry for me, I got to say most of that sadness was for my own self. I felt like I had got to the veriest edge of something that would of changed my whole life, and then I had just been throwed back down into the life I had got before.
But I was scared for Monono too. For a good hour or more after the DreamSleeve went quiet, I was shaking it and talking at it, thinking that she was merely gone away a mite further than she thought, and might hear me.
But she didn’t, and I realised at last that I had got to stop. Monono wasn’t coming back, but if I kept on yelling at the DreamSleeve someone was bound to hear me and come to see what was what. Sick at heart, I tucked the box inside my shirt and went home.
Jemiu received me in an ill humour, which was not to be wondered at. I had been no use to anyone in the days I’m speaking of, and the burden of that had all fell on her shoulders and my sisters’. When I come into the mill yard, they was burning a cord of green wood that I had forgot to put into the steep. New growth had sprouted on it in a great many places, drawing on the old so the core of the logs would be part-way hollowed out. It was a grievous error.
“Look who it is, Athen,” Mull said. “We just better call off them search parties, for here he was within gates this whole time.”
“I’m sorry the timber spoiled, Ma,” I said, for I rightly was. “That’s on me and I’ll make it right. I’ll go out catching this afternoon.”
“It’s too late for today,” my mother said. “And look at the sky, for Dandrake’s sake.” Which was light cloud with the glow of the sun kind of laced through, so only a fool would take a chance on it. “If you’re sorry for this mess, Koli, prove it by making yourself useful and not sneaking away every turn of the glass to who knows where for who knows what.”
I said I would, and I set my back to it. Though not my heart nor my mind, as you may well imagine. I worked until lock-tide and a little after, staying on when Ma and Athen and Mull went inside to supper to show them I meant to mend.
There was an ache in my thoughts that wouldn’t spare me. The DreamSleeve was still tucked in my belt. I knowed that wasn’t a safe place for it to be, but I thought if it gun to grow warm I could pretend I needed to piss and run away sharp before Monono spoke up.
But she didn’t. Not then, and not after, when I finally give up for the day and come inside.
“There’s bread and corn stew,” my mother said. “Fetch yourself a bowl.”
I done that, and I sit with them a while. Athen and Mull was talking about what they would wear for the wedding, and I marvelled that they could make so much out of a choice that come down to which one out of two skirts and what colour of ribbon would go in their hair. But Jemiu smiled as she listened to them, and every so often she would drop in some word or other.