He did his own slow
circle of the cave, peering into the shadows. Where had they gone?
There. A streak of red clay, leading to a mound. Alan drew up alongside
of it and made out the runny outlines of the legs and arms, the torso
and the head. The golem had dragged itself into this corner and had
fallen to mud. The dust on the floor was red. Dried mud. Golem-dust.
How long since he'd been in this cave? How long since he'd come around
this side of the mountain? Two months. Three? Four? Longer. How long had
the golems lain dead and dust in this cave?
They'd carved his cradle. Fed him. Taught him to talk and to walk. In
some sense, they were his fathers, as much as the mountain was.
He fished around inside himself for emotion and found none. Relief,
maybe. Relief.
The golems were an embodiment of his strangeness, as weird as his
smooth, navelless belly, an element of his secret waiting to surface and
-- what? What had he been afraid of? Contempt? Vivisection? He didn't
know anymore, but knew that he wanted to fit in and that the golems'
absence made that more possible.
There was a smell on the wind in here, the death and corruption smell
he'd noticed in the sleeping cave. Father was worried.
No. Davey was inside. That was his smell, the smell of Davey long dead
and back from the grave.
Alan walked deeper into the tunnels, following his nose.
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