“Show me,” Blind requested.
Elk bent down to him and let Blind’s fingers probe his face. Blind encountered the wet teeth and jerked his hand.
“It’s scary,” he said. “Can I please not do that?”
Elk sighed resignedly.
A lot of time had passed since then, and Blind had learned to smile, but he knew that a smile did not make him more appealing, like it did others. He stumbled upon the wide-mouthed faces on the tactile pictures in his books, found them on toys, but none of those were something that made itself visible in the voice. Only listening to the smiling voices did he finally understand. A smile meant a light switching on inside. Not for everyone, but for many it did. He knew now what Alice must have felt when the Cheshire Cat’s toothy, sarcastic smile was floating in the air in front of her. That was how the Forest smiled. From above, in a boundless mocking grin.
Blind rose and staggered forward, stumbling against tree roots. His foot dropped into someone’s burrow. A whistler startled and went silent. Blind bent forward, felt in the grass and grasped it—a tiny one, covered in peach fuzz and smelling of a young cub. He cradled it against his cheek. The whistler was breathing softly, its heart ticking in his fingers. A worried whistle issued from about ten paces ahead. The baby in his hand squeaked in response. Blind laughed and placed it on the ground. The grass rustled. The baby rushed to its mother, squeaking along the way, and soon their joined whistling faded in the distance. Before continuing on, Blind sniffed at his hand to better remember the baby’s scent. An adult whistler smelled different.
He couldn’t feel his legs. They became alien and bent in all the wrong directions, as if made of rubber. That irked him. He soon grew tired of snatching them out of holes and avoiding mud and puddles and decided to sit down. His legs folded the wrong way again. It also seemed that there were more than two of them now. He was probably turning into something, but the transformation wasn’t complete yet. He heard the laughter of the dogheads. They were still far off, running, giggling, bumping against each other. Blind shot up and tottered away on all six of his legs, long and articulated. The stray leaves clung to them, but they made for an easy gait. He hid in the nearest hole and waited in silence. The dogheads thundered past. The disgusting guffaws faded. Blind peeked out cautiously. Something hooted in the canopy and dropped a cloud of rotted wood on him. He shook himself off and counted the legs again. This time there were two. The night was stifling. Blind pulled off his sweater and threw it away. Then took off the waterlogged sneakers, tied their laces together, and dropped them into the hole.
He touched the gnarly trunks as he went by, his ears pricked. Slender, silent, invisible against the trees, he was a part of the Forest, its offshoot, a changeling. The Forest was walking alongside him, swaying its treetops far above, dropping its dew on the warped floorboards.
Blind stopped at the clearing. The gigantic moon drenched him in silver. He crouched, feeling the light bathing him, feeling his fur stand on end, electrified by this light. He pinned back his ears, closed his eyes, and howled.
A lingering, mournful sound enveloped the Forest. It was full of sorrow, but also of Blind’s joy, of the closeness of the moon, of the night’s own life. It didn’t last long, and then Blind bolted into the thickets to sniff at the mossy trunks and dance on the wet leaves and roll around on the ground. He was boisterous, scaring off the small creatures, covering his fur in debris, leaving wolflike prints in the puddles. He ran after a stupid mouse and chased it into someone else’s burrow. He peeked into a tree hollow and got hissed at. He excavated an underground lair and ate its owner, a fat, juicy one, spat out the fur, and moved on. The moon was hidden by the trees now, but he felt it as vividly as he’d feel someone standing behind the door or hiding in the bushes—it was that close, and the trees could not hinder it. He leapt over the brook without getting his paws wet, ran back and forth along the shore, found a puddle and gulped it all in, tadpoles included.
A frog, miraculously spared, cursed him piercingly in its language and scampered off to find another hiding place. He stretched on the wet sand, his sharp-eared head on top of the folded paws, listening to the Forest noises and to the grumbling in his stomach, then leapt up and bounded farther along the path, since he didn’t like to spend too much time near the water.
He soon was within earshot of the dogheads’ howls again, but decided not to hide this time. Instead he howled back in defiance, but they did not accept his challenge and were soon gone, quarreling among themselves. He followed their trail for a while. He would have caught them had he wanted to, but it was a game, not a real hunt, and he liked running games more than chasing games. He suddenly switched direction, as if he’d thought of something he had to go and see about, and from then on ran purposefully, with his nose to the ground, paws moving fast. His tail, up in the air and full of thorns, broadcast his concentration to the world.
Then the Forest ended. Vanished just as instantly as it had appeared. Blind wasn’t upset, and he didn’t think of going to search for it again. He stopped. Exactly on the edge dividing the darkness and the light rectangle on the floorboards, the yellow glow cast by the opened door. Behind the door, shaggy shadows darted over the tiles and talked in muffled voices. On Saturdays and Sundays the teachers’ bathroom was poker territory. The only player in his pack was Noble.
Blind was motionless, and the flame of the candles played in his wide-open eyes. He stood there for a long time. Then he lit a cigarette and moved on. He crossed the strip of light, not hiding anymore, went past the moonlit clearing of the Crossroads, the open door to the bathroom, the door to the staff room, the canteen. The stairs smelled of cigarette butts; he stepped on one of them, still warm, and slowed down.
Down the stairs. Another long, empty corridor, and at the very end of it—more stairs and the door to the basement. He swayed, and his feet slid on the steps. He steadied himself against the wall. Picked the lock with a piece of wire and entered.
The basement was dusty and stuffy. Blind sat on the concrete floor facing the door, buried his chin in his knees, and froze. His armpits flowed down into his jeans. The cigarette clung to his lips. A ringing in his ears. Three little bells and one cricket. He rolled over to the wall, rose up to his knees, and ran his fingers along the scratchy brick surface. Feeling for the emptiness behind one of them. At first he had needed to count steps from the corner to find the right one, but now he knew instantly. Blind carefully removed the brick. In the opening there was a bundle wrapped in newspapers. He shook the dust off his fingers and inserted both of his hands into the hiding place. The old paper rustled. He extracted the parcel, put it on the floor, and unwrapped it.
There were two knives inside. Blind liked to touch them. Sometimes he would cry when doing it. At one time the parcel had also contained a monkey skull on a chain, but he had given it to Sphinx, so now there were only the knives.
One was a gift. It had been given to him so long ago that he didn’t remember exactly when it happened, and remembered only that it had always been a secret—first so that no one would take it from him, and then just to keep it away from prying eyes. The knife was beautiful. The blade thin as a thorn and sharp on both sides. No one had told Blind it was beautiful, he just knew it. He’d never questioned the seniors of his childhood, and so one of them giving a child a toy like this did not appear strange to him at all.
The other knife was the one they’d used to kill Elk. It was neither beautiful nor particularly handy. A regular kitchen knife marred with rust. He always shuddered when he touched it, but at the same time his pain was dulled by the strange feeling of the impossibility of what had actually happened. This pitiful piece of iron in his hand couldn’t have killed Elk. A mouse never would gnaw down a mountain, a mosquito bite never would harm a lion, a sliver of steel never would destroy his god. So he kept the knife and visited it regularly, touching it to refill himself with unbelief again and again. To imagine that Elk wasn’t dead, that he’d vanished, disappeared, cast off the House that had betrayed him.