LITMIR.BIZ

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equal length. Runner watched for a moment, fascinated by the totality of Aline’s absorption in something so meaningless, and then she laid down her ace.

      ‘You’ll love it, I swear, on the grave of my sister who’s added her weight to my own.’

      This maxed everyone out. Suddenly the pressure was unbearable and we were all desperately in need of escape. Runner sensed it. She paused and let out some of the steam. A beat. A breath. Then she offered to read a bit – just the beginning, just the beginning of the story. He Who Saw Everything. Literature as escape. It was deftly done.

      ‘Just let me read a bit. Just a little bit. A little bit of the first words that anyone ever thought to write. Just let me read a few of the first words of the first book. And then we can see if I’m crippled for life.’

      We accepted it. It was allowed, though Missy was the only one who said, ‘Okay.’ There was no vote. Runner looked to Neil.

      ‘Neil, put down your gun.’

      Neil looked at Runner.

      ‘Now get me the first stone.’

      He did as he was told, as his sister spoke a brief editor ial preface:

      ‘There is, incidentally and for your information, Missy, a goddess at the top of the heap in this book who might sound familiar to you.’

      Neil poked around the heap and finally pulled out one of the irregularly shaped stones. What indicated its status as first among the slabs was by no means apparent, though it was certainly believable that these stones were old. We could see that there was writing, if you could call it that, on both sides, and also that there were small patches of blank space, roughly textured, as if the text had been eroded. We, or some of us, found ourselves wondering how Runner would make the leap over these gaps, these … and the word occurred to Missy alone: these lacunae. With a sense of dread as pronounced as anything she felt about her own womb, Missy caught a flickering moment of import, as if something here were being fulfilled – a prophesy, like Herod first hearing of the baby Jesus.

      What’s more, Missy realised, whatever was to come, whatever this prophesied, she herself had been the inadvertent origin of it, the namer of it. She wished she knew what it would be, this gap that held the future. This perfectly obscure lacuna.

      Had she named the Cabal for this?

      Neil handed the stone up to Runner, who sat up a little in Du’s arms and slowly began to translate the alleged first words of this alleged first book:

       In the very old days, back when years were long, like the first year of a child’s life, only this is the way things felt to adults and children alike, because it was the beginning of the world, the future was full of everything and there was nothing in the past–

      ‘I wish I could feel that way,’ murmured Emmy.

      – there was a time when everyone was happy in the beautiful city of Uruk, with its strong walls and its proud goddess Inanna –

      Neil interjected, as if on cue, ‘Who was like Missy?’

      A lot like Missy: always ready to leave if she didn’t get her way, march straight out of the universe …

      But like rabbits in the warrens of Watership Down –

      Romy forgot Emmy, for a moment.

      – for a thousand years the people were happy.

      And Runner paused and looked down at everyone from the arms where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

      Look at the walls of the city. They surround you. They were built for you, to protect you from the rain. These walls were built by one man, and he made them well, although in other ways, all other ways, he was a tyrant, with a stride as long as a league and eyes the rarest, rarest shade of …

      She paused and paused some more. She would have paused forever and Missy would have let her, quietly praying for everyone to remain silent. But Romy, with her weakness for colour, took the bait.

      ‘Of what?’

      Runner smiled, as sweetly as anything Missy might venture.

      ‘Can we vote on this?’

      Romy could not believe it. She had been manipulated once again into taking the rap for the whole group, only this time it was at the hands of someone she trusted probably more than anyone in the world: ‘Runner Coghill!’

      ‘I’m sorry, Romy. I do what I have to. Can we vote on this?’

      Missy sat stoically with eyes downcast. Calmly demurred. ‘I’m not ready to.’

      Runner’s turn to panic: ‘I have to get to the hospital!’

      ‘So we’ll take you to the hospital.’

      Romy demanded to know what was the colour of the tyrant’s eyes, but Runner kept her focus on the Missy stopgap.

      ‘But you’re interested.’

      ‘Whatever.’

      ‘You are!’

      She was. It was obvious from the hesitation that followed. This proved enough for Romy, who was holding the Book of Days and so was entrusted with proclaiming the calls to vote. She shouted the motion as Neil quietly bent over his notebook and wrote, On this very day …

      ‘The proposal is to do Runner’s stone book and also to accept the new member Anna so we can keep coming back to this building. And also learn the colour of the tyrant’s eyes. All in favour?’

      Romy, Priya and Emmy all raised their hands with Runner, who almost broke her bearer’s nose. Aline raised her hand, tipping the scales in Runner’s favour. But then Missy raised her hand too, taking our breath (the breath of the two of us) away. And as our hands (the hands of the two of us) shot up as one, faster than the speed of thought (because it was true: we were curious too), Romy shouted in tones of joy, ‘The motion carries us!’

      And Missy, standing and pulling her fists to her hips in that exquisitely Wonder Woman pose: ‘Carries. The motion carries, Romy.’ Then, turning the full weight of her attention toward Runner and her injury, she managed to take her into her arms without acknowledging the presence of the boy.

      ‘Let’s get you to the hospital, you stupid, crazy girl.’

      And she swept across the floor to the stairs, the rest of us following, like all her little dogs.

      Dumuzi would have been relieved to be alone again with Anna, were it not for the anxious revelation that Anna did not wish to be alone with Du. She was following the crowd and he couldn’t shake the thought that it was mostly to get away from him.

      In a flurry of semi-words that came out in an improbable series of W’s and B’s, he tried to inquire politely where she was going. He had longed for nothing more than to be alone with her again. Instead he got this: Anna, always moving on, always heading towards some future that did not include him, leaving him with his anxiety spikes. It was amazing how swiftly they came on. Just amazing.

      ‘I just want to see her to the hospital,’ said Anna, annoyed.

      ‘But you don’t even know her.’

      ‘I don’t know. She reminds me of … somebody.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Somebody.’ And then she flushed with her subtle anger, wounding him, as Priya might say, with the lash of an eye: ‘I don’t know who. That’s why I want to go. So that I can figure it out, you know?’

      Dumuzi felt there was only one way now. ‘But I thought you wanted to, uh.’

      A

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