The Tower (1999) (47 page)

But having spoken, he realized that the room was empty, that Travers had left long ago, maybe hours, maybe days, and for the first time that he could remember, he felt like crying.

He gazed through the metal screens that guarded his window, looking out at the night sky and the trace of a moon--the same moon upon which he and Allander had once fixed their eyes. It seemed that a lot of time had passed since the dance, and now more time would pass with him here alone, trapped with his thoughts and with Allander in the shadows.

Full fathom five

He saw Allander's grown face on a child's body, popping out of a jack-in-the-box and dancing around the room. Allander sang to him through red-painted lips that stood out starkly against the pasty white of his cheeks.

Full fathom five thy father lies

He skipped around the room and Jade saw that he was dressed in the baggy pants of a clown. Big red suspenders with large buttons stretched across his skinny, little boy's chest.

Jade's bed creaked as he shifted his body. His right-lower eyelid twitched slightly. It was just from the pain and the painkillers, the nurse had said, and it would go away when he got better. When he got better.

The boy-Allander stopped at the foot of the bed and stretched out an arm, a disproportionately large, white-gloved hand directing Jade's eyes to shift to where he pointed. Jade followed the arc of the hand and looked at the bare tiles of the floor, and as he watched, they dissolved into a garden scene. A small group of people stood before a rectangular hole in the ground: a man and a woman with their arms around each other, and a row of people sobbing into handkerchiefs.

Alone, under a tree on the far side of the grave, stood a boy in an awkward black suit with a cap worn backward on his head. He looked angry; he looked mean. The parents did not look to him and no one stood near him. He did not cry.

The boy-Allander stepped into the scene on the tiled floor and walked past the open plot in the ground to stand next to the lone boy under the tree. Taking the boy's hand in one white glove, he led him slowly away from the other people. They did not look back, and gradually, they faded from view.