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BOOK THREE
The Abandoned Nests

SPHINX

Schon schweben Mobiles
über dem schwelenden Dorn.
Bald zählt dein Handschuh
die verlassenen Nester.

Alfred Gong, „Boedromion“.

I am stretched out on the damp grass, feet up on the bench, face turned to the sky that has just finished weeping. My feet in muddy trainers are crossed up there on the seat of the bench, and the mud on them gradually lightens in color as it dries out, flaking off onto the rickety slats. Too fast. The summer sun is relentless. In another half-hour there won’t be any trace left of the short rain, and an hour later anyone who’d want to lounge here would do well to bring sunglasses. But I still can look at the sky with impunity for a while. It’s bright blue behind the spider web of the oak branches. Below them is the gnarly trunk, a jumble of interwoven ropes turned to stone. The oak is the most beautiful tree in the whole yard. Also the oldest. My gaze slides down from its top, from the thinnest twigs all the way to the fat roots. I notice something scratched into the rutted bark just above the back of the bench, in thin faded scrawl: “remember” something and also “lose”… I raise my head to see better. I’ve learned to decipher writings much less legible that that.

Remember L. N. and never lose hope.
L. N. The Longest Night.
Apparently for some people it means hope.
I’d have to laugh if it weren’t so sad. To flee from the House, where similar writings snake along the walls, intertwining and twisting themselves into spirals, biting their own tails, each of them a scream or a whisper, a song or an indistinct muttering, making me want to cover my ears as if they were really sounds and not simply words — flee them only to end up here admiring this very small, but very scary sentence.

I am a tree. When I am cut down, make a fire with my branches.

Another one. Also cheerful.
Why do they have this effect on me? Maybe because they’re out here, not there, on a wall, lost among the tangled web of other words. Here, unfettered, they sound more sinister.
And I really wanted to get some rest. From the House. From the words. From the exhortations to make merry — “WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME!”… From the hundred and four questions of the test “Know thyself” (one even more stupid than the next, and don’t even think of skipping subparagraphs). I ran away from it all. Out of the chaos and into the world of silence and of the old tree. But someone came here ahead of me, dragging his fears and hopes along, and mutilated the tree, forcing it to whisper now to anyone who comes close: “Make a fire with my branches.”
The oak spreads those knobby branches majestically towards the sun. Ancient, beautiful, serene, like all its brethren ready to suffer the worst of the indignities inflicted on it by humans without fear and without reproach. I suddenly get this picture very clearly in my head, of it standing amid the ruins of the demolished House, knee-deep in brick rubble… It stands there, still stretching upwards. And the letters scored into it still implore not to lose hope.
A cold shiver runs down my spine.
“Do you sometimes experience an irrational fear of the future?” This is question number sixty one. They told us that all questions on the test were significant. That each added important detail to the psychological profile. In our case they could very well begin and end the test with this one.

The crunch of gravel underfoot. I close one eye.
The sky… The branches… The legs in black trousers.
“You comfortable?”
Ralph, his jacket unbuttoned, the knot on the tie askew, sits down on the bench and lights a cigarette.
“Very.”
I don’t get up. I’ve already said I was comfortable, so now I have to look up at him from where I’m lying. Ralph is cool with that. He puts the lighter back in the pocket and takes out a folded piece of paper. Unfolds it and puts it under my nose. It’s a list. Six names.
I know three of them well. Squib, Solomon and Don. Rats that split from the House, went to the Outsides. The first time they did it was back in winter, after the Longest, but they caught them quickly and brought them back. They ran away again almost immediately. Over the next month they got returned twice more. For thirty days the inhabitants of the House gleefully ran a pool on how long they’d manage to hold out. Their names on “Wanted” posters became a fixture on the first floor. It was as if Shark finally cracked, went totally nuts and started to equate the first floor with the street, imploring the imaginary passers-by from its walls: “Anyone with the information regarding the whereabouts of the above mentioned youths…”
Then they brought back Squib, alone. What happened to the other two “above mentioned” no one ever found out. Squib couldn’t muster the courage to run away by himself and remained in the Den, a grotesque shadow of his former self, shrinking from even the youngest Ratlings.
“Yes?” I say. “The first three names are Squib, Solomon and Don, and I’ve never seen the rest. Have they also run away?”
“Not exactly.”
Ralph turns his list over and studies it carefully, apparently trying to make sure he’s got it right.
“The rest are from the First,” he says. “They haven’t run away yet, but are rather keen to try for some reason.”
I sit up. Warm and toasty from the front, damp and freezing from the back. All covered in sand and ants. I brush them off, trying to get my spinning head under control.
“They call their parents,” R One continues, eyes buried in the list. “They write letters to the principal. They demand to be released from the House immediately. One might assume that were they not so… limited in terms of movement, they would have already followed the example of those first three. Almost like they are being terrorized. Would you know anything about that?”
“No,” I say. “First time I hear about them.”
Ralph puts the list in his pocket and leans back. He is clearly not happy with my answer. But I really have no idea why all of a sudden three Pheasants simultaneously decided to get as far from the House as possible. In fact, from what I know of the First the question is what took them so long.
Ralph admires the view of sky through the branches, enjoying the dappled sunlight on his face. He’s got this face of a cartoon villain. No one who’s really evil would have a face like that. Only in the old movies. And not even a trace of gray in his hair, not a hint of a bald patch, even though he’s been working here for… Is it thirteen years? At least. Iron Man.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s assume you don’t know. Let’s hear what you think. What is it they fear? What are they trying to run from?”
I shrug.
“I don’t think it’s a question of fear. They’re being squeezed out. The First is good at that. And not only the First…”
I can’t stop myself in time because I remember Smoker. His name could have been right there on that piece of paper without even much of an effort from us. But then we’re not Pheasants.
“Who are you thinking about?” Ralph perks up. He has this goofy look of a bloodhound that finally picked up the scent.
“Smoker,” I say honestly. “You can add him to your list if you’d like.”
“Oh. I see…”
R One goes silent and pensive.
I keep silence too. I probably shouldn’t have told him about Smoker. Counselors are unpredictable creatures. You never know how they are going to interpret the information you give them. On the other hand, I doubt that my mentioning Smoker could do us any real harm.
“Do you remember much of the last graduation?”
I wince. There are things that just aren’t mentioned. Rope in the hanged man’s house and all that. And Ralph knows this as well as I do.
“No,” I say. “Very little. Only the night in the Biology classroom. We were locked in it. Almost nothing of the morning. Bits of it. Here and there.”
He flicks the cigarette away.
“Were you expecting something different?”
“Probably. I personally wasn’t expecting anything at all.”
To get up and leave now would be impolite. Even though it’s the most logical thing to do. And I’m very uncomfortable with the whole setup, my head being at the level of his knees.
I move to the bench next to him.
“You are a Jumper, aren’t you?”
I look Ralph in the face. He is completely out of all imaginable and even unimaginable bounds. What did I do to provoke this, I wonder. Actually answered his questions? That might be it. Anyone else in my place would have just told him to get lost. There are countless ways of doing it without resorting to open insolence. Ralph wouldn’t bat an eye if I were to say “What was that? A Jumper? How do you mean? Do I look like a kangaroo to you?” He’s most likely expecting exactly that. But as I run through the different variations of “What was that” in my head, each feels more repulsive than the next. It’s better to simply tell him to go to hell. But I can’t do that, now can I. Because last winter when we sent Blind to him, asking him to find out at least something about Noble, he didn’t tell us to go to hell. He didn’t feign surprise. He didn’t even tell us off for being impertinent. He went who knows where and did so much more there than we could have ever hoped. If I played dumb right now and started prattling about kangaroos I’d lose all respect for myself, however much I have left of it. So I say:
“Yes, I’m a Jumper. Why?”
Ralph is stunned. He looks at me with his mouth hanging open, searching for words.
“You sound very calm about it.”
“I am not calm,” I say. “I’m nervous. I’m just not showing it.”
“But other…” he stumbles over the word “Jumpers” and says “people like you” instead, “never talk about it.”
“Because I’m a bad Jumper. Defective.”
Ralph freezes, his eyes glinting hungrily. He thinks he’s found something incredibly valuable while rummaging in a dump, and can’t quite believe his luck.
“Bad, what does that mean?”
That’s when I realize that I probably need this conversation even more than he does. Because no one ever asks you about obvious things. Or things that seem obvious.
I lean back and close my eyes. The sun is directly in my face. A good excuse for not looking at the person you’re talking to.
“I don’t like it.”
I don’t need to look at him to see how surprised he is. I answer the question before he gets it out:
“I don’t Jump. You don’t have to do something only because you can. And you don’t have to like doing it either.”
I open my eyes and see him not even breathing, as if his breath might somehow spook me.
“It happened to me on that very morning. For the first time, and for six years. When I woke up and they brought me a mirror, it wasn’t that I got scared of my bald head, as everyone assumed. I was scared to see a little boy there. Because I was no longer him. If you can imagine that, you’ll understand why I haven’t Jumped since then.”
“Are you saying that ever since that time…”
“Yes, ever since that time. I haven’t and I’m not planning to. Unless it happens by itself. A nervous shock, a sudden fright. That kind of thing leads to Jumping sometimes. Isn’t it the same with you?”
“I never…” he begins.
“Of course you did. You just forgot. People forget it very quickly.”
There we go. Now he’s choking. And I’m not handy with the taps on the back. It’s very hard to gauge the strength of a slap with prosthetics. This ruins many friendly gestures for me. I pull the legs up on the bench, put my chin on the knee and look at him coughing spasmodically. A child playing with matches. Makes a fire, imitating daddy lighting them, and then is honestly surprised when real firemen show up in a real fire truck. You’d think he had those books when he was a kid where this causal relationship was featured in big letters, short words and colorful pictures.
“And now you’d like to go away,” I say to him. “Or at least for me to stop talking. Everyone gets that, so don’t worry.”
Ralph is hunched over, fingers buried deep in his hair. I can’t see his face, but the posture tells me clearly that he’s not feeling too good.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “And I would like you to continue.”
Resilient.
“Too bad,” I say. “I like this conversation less and less the longer it goes on. Besides, I’m waiting for my date here.”
He doesn’t believe me. I lean back again and close my eyes.

We banged the hell out of that door. We almost smashed it to splinters. If they hadn’t let us out I’m sure we would have. Because by morning nothing was holding us back anymore. We sat there through the night, docile and patient, respecting the will of the seniors and their big reasons. We knew we were too little to be taking part in the proceedings. The snub made us want to cry, but we held on. That night wasn’t the last for us, but it was for the seniors. It belonged to them. We spent it on two mattresses on the floor of the Biology classroom. They did remember to bring in the mattresses. And a bucket.
“There were fourteen, fifteen of us,” I say to Ralph. “They didn’t give us time to dress or put the shoes on. Siamese, Stinker and Wolf they took away separately. Must have figured that a mere locked door would never stop those. And no one was able to locate Blind. He split before they came. The only one of us who wasn’t locked up that night. All we had was the pajamas we were in, Magician’s crutch and a pack of candies. We went through the entire pack in the first half hour, and the crutch we used in the morning to bash the door. We threw everything at that door trying to break it, because by then it was obvious that they forgot about us being there, and that we could only rely on ourselves if we ever wanted to get out.”
The unpleasant memories make Ralph cringe. He was there too. Most likely he was among those who did come to let us out. They tried to corral us, but it would have been easier to hold on to fourteen streaking meteors. We swept away our saviors and tore down the hallway, screaming hoarsely. Some of us were already bawling, even as we ran. Simply because we were scared. We did not yet know what happened. Where was it we were in such a hurry to get to I still cannot understand. But I remember well what did manage to stop us. The puddle. A small pool, richly crimson, right at the Crossroads. And in the middle of it — a half-submerged white sail. A handkerchief. It still comes to me in my dreams. Was that puddle really as boundless as it seemed to us then? Anyway, it made one thing absolutely clear: no one could lose this much blood and live. I looked at it, transfixed, mesmerized, and all the time I was being jostled from behind by those who kept arriving. They shoved me in the back, forcing me to take tiny steps in its direction. A step, then another and another. Until I realized that my socks were soaked through. I don’t remember anything after that.
After six long years I returned and finally learned what had transpired that night. But it forever remained for me something remote, out of distant past. I hadn’t lived through it with the others. One of the most horrible nights of the House begins and ends for me with the crimson puddle, the half-submerged sail of the handkerchief and my own cold and sticky socks.
When I awoke, after six years by my time and a month for everyone else, I saw a strange creature in the mirror. Bald, scrawny, much too young, staring wildly… I realized that I was going to have to start my life all over again. And cried. Because I was tired, not because I had no hair anymore. “An unknown virus,” they explained. “You are most likely no longer contagious, but we’d like to keep you quarantined for just a while.” The days spent in the quarantine saved me. Gave me time to adapt. To get rid of some of my grown-up habits, to get used to the new skin. The Sepulcher staff dubbed me Prince Tut. The transformation from Prince Tut into Sphinx took me another half a year.

Ralph is silent. An eternity passes.
“Curious,” he says. “There was blood everywhere. The floor, the walls. Even the ceiling, I think. And your memory only managed to hold one single puddle.”
“Oh, it was enough,” I assure him. “More than enough. My puddle contains the whole of that Night. And also all of the days that followed.”
“And then…”
“And then nothing. I’m not telling. It’s irrelevant.”
He sighs and pulls the cigarettes out again.
“All right. Anyway, thank you. You are the first to talk to me about these things at all. The first in fifteen years. I probably shouldn’t be asking you any further?”
“You shouldn’t. The less talking about… these things, the better.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“I am,” I agree. “Trying, that is. But you are too headstrong to get properly scared. That’s not good. The House demands a reverent attitude. A sense of mystery. Respect and awe. It can accept you or not, shower you with gifts or rob of everything you have, immerse you in a fairy tale or a nightmare. Kill you, make you old, give you wings… It’s a powerful and fickle deity, and if there’s one thing it doesn’t like, it’s being reduced to words. For that it extracts payment. Now, with you duly cautioned, we can continue.”
“Risking… what?” he asks carefully.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better than mine. You know much more than you think.”
That seems to annoy him.
“Would you stop playing with words!” he demands.
Silly man. Now he thinks I’m playing with words.
“Oh, I don’t think you’ve ever heard someone really play with words,” I say. “There are grand masters in the House. I am not worthy to be in the same room with them.”
And that’s when Mermaid finally appears. Comes down the girls’ porch and shuffles across the yard towards us. Flared jeans, crocheted vest and impossible hair, almost down to her knees.
Ralph squints. Looks at her. Than at me. It’s an odd look. One I’m very familiar with. Mermaid is sixteen, but she looks all of twelve. With her looks you’d expect her to still play with dolls and believe in Santa Claus. Which is why any adult that sees me and her together looks at me as if I’m a pervert. It rubs Mermaid the wrong way. It doesn’t bother me.
She stops a fair distance from us, not wanting to interrupt. Just stands there looking at us. Those aren’t the eyes of a child at all. They’re too big for her small triangular face.
Ralph gets up. Gives his pockets a few slaps, checking that everything’s still in place. Has a good sense not to say “So, that’s your date, huh.” Mermaid lip-reads phrases like that from very far away.
“I guess that’s it,” he says. “Thanks again. I’ll go and digest what you said.”
“Good luck,” I say. “And be careful. We can walk in circles around those mysteries, write poems and sing songs, call ourselves Jumpers or Striders, but it still is what it is. We’re not the ones who decide here. It’s all being decided for us, however scary that sounds.”
Ralph is reluctant to go, aware that we are unlikely to ever return to this conversation. But all he says is:
“You be careful too.”
And walks away.