“Were you really?”
“Yes. Just like a box of fish sticks.”
“My word. If the citizens of this town weren’t running around in a state of deranged frenzy, that would be the oddest thing I’d heard all day.”
“Do you know what has caused it?”
Jamison shook his head. “I was just about to have a cool refreshing glass of water from the tap to help me think, when somebody burst into my home with an electric carving knife. It wasn’t plugged in and they don’t make cordless models, but the blades were no less sharp. Since then I’ve been on the run.”
“How terrible.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” said Jamison. “Even though I no longer need pity friendship, I’m glad you’re back.”
“Thank you.” And now it was time to finally ask the question for which Nathan wasn’t sure he truly wanted to know the answer. “Penny and Mary. How are they?”
Jamison frowned. “The Poor House is a dark, dark place, and once you’ve gone to live there, it’s very hard to get free.”
“But has it been attacked by those afflicted?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I literally just got away from the man with the electric carving knife. If I’d known you’d suddenly show after eleven years, I would have checked up on the Poor House, absolutely, but otherwise it wasn’t the first thing on my mind.”
“I have to go to them.”
Jamison nodded. “I understand. You’d be a reprehensible scoundrel if you didn’t.”
“Will you go with me?”
“Of course I will.”
They peeked over the top of the counter. A woman with a shotgun walked past the entrance, but she didn’t come inside.
“We need a plan,” said Nathan.
“No, we’ll be fine without one. It’s really just a matter of avoiding people. Move quickly, no unnecessary shouting, don’t close your eyes for extended periods of time…basic stuff like that.”
“Doesn’t that count as a plan?”
“Those are just safety precautions. See, when you become as old as I am you’ll realize these things.” Jamison considered that. “Are you eighteen or seven? How does that work?”
“I think I’m considered an eighteen-year-old in a seven-year-old’s body. I’ll have to use disclaimers for the rest of my life.”
“Wow. That’s going to get tiresome.”
“I know. As if the teeth didn’t give me enough to deal with.”
“Well, it could be worse. At least you know about things like fire and yogurt. Can you imagine if you’d be frozen eleven thousand years ago instead of eleven? You wouldn’t even understand what I’m saying right now, because I’m using words instead of grunts.”
“Or if I’d been frozen for eleven thousand years starting eleven years ago. It would be a world of spaceships and robots that train pigeons to do their bidding.”
“Yes. Well. The passage of time has obviously created a distinct difference in our maturity levels, so let’s focus on the task at hand.”
They left the building and hurried down the street.
“Do you think the citizens will get better?” Nathan asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“We should approach this matter as if they
“I agree,” said Jamison. “We wouldn’t want to have a pile of corpses at our feet and find out that their sanity could be restored with a nap.”
Fewer crazed citizens attacked them than Nathan would’ve thought—it was approximately six or seven, and he would’ve expected twelve or even thirteen. Fortunately, the fact that these citizens were insane made them relatively easy to outwit and escape.
“May I ask you a potentially awkward question?” asked Jamison, as they jogged away from a middle-aged woman who was throwing cans of carbonated beverages at them.
“Absolutely.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean while you were frozen in the ice. But after you became unfrozen, why didn’t you give somebody a heads-up that you were on your way back to town? I’m not bothered by it or anything; it just seems like it would have been a natural part of the homecoming process.”
“I honestly have no answer for that.”
“Fair enough.”
A man ran at them, wielding a pair of beagles. They evaded him and moved on.
“There,” said Jamison, pointing ahead with a trembling finger. “That’s where you’ll find poor Penny and poor Mary.”
“But it’s not even a house!”
Jamison gave him a sad nod. “If only they could afford a house.”
It was a hole in the ground, about two feet wide. They walked over to the edge and peered downward into the thick, impenetrable darkness.
“Is there a ladder?” Nathan asked.
“Ladders cost money.”
The tears began to flow and there was nothing Nathan could do to stop them. “There isn’t even a welcome mat, or a mailbox. They’ve been living in a pit because of me! A pit! They took me in, fed me, clothed me, forced me to become partially educated, and treated me with nothing but kindness, and because of it they’re living in a miserable dark pit!”
“I would comfort you and say that it wasn’t your fault,” said Jamison. “But…well, you know…”
“I’m going to make this right,” Nathan vowed. “I won’t merely get them out of this pit. I’m going to give them a life of luxury, where they live in a mansion and have twenty-five servants and unlimited grapes and where their salt comes from exotic lands yet they pour it out just to amuse themselves!”
There was a scream of terror from within the pit.
“That sounded like Penny!” Nathan exclaimed. Actually, it didn’t, not even close, but Nathan had gotten himself worked up and was ready for action. Jamison seemed to understand that Nathan needed to pretend that the scream, which quite clearly belonged to a stranger, belonged to somebody who’d loved him and cared for him, and so he did not contradict him.
“Shall I come with you?” Jamison asked. “Or is this something you must do on your own?”
“Oh, no, I definitely want you to come along,” said Nathan. “My conscience will be just as eased if you end up saving them. I’m thinking about the end result and not the process. But I’ll go first.”
And with that, Nathan took a deep breath, held his nose, and jumped into the pit.
TWENTY-TWO
He plummeted in the darkness for so long that he started to worry that his bones might be shattered upon hitting the bottom. The destitute residents of town would certainly be less of an inconvenience to the wealthy residents if their bones were all broken and they merely flopped around in this pit. But he’d heard screams, so somebody was alive down there.
The “splat” sound was not a result of Nathan’s flesh being jettisoned from his skeleton upon impact, but rather his body landing in a patch of mud. Or what he thought was mud. Poor people couldn’t afford jelly, so it was
