Dark Matter (52 page)

Rasputin thrust the note into his pocket
and looked up. Driven now, he delved into the wardrobe.

Soon he felt the first touch of chill air
upon his cheek, just as he knew he would. His hands, outstretched in the
darkness, finding a way between coats, felt the prickle of branches. Before
long his shoes bit into snow, and above emerged a brittle, star-speckled sky.
Night in a wintering forest.

Ahead, a stone’s throw away, stood a
solitary lamp post. It shed a circle of yellow light on the snow, the only
light beside the stars.

He approached it, and knelt near its base
to look at a sapling bent over with snow. He poked at the clumps of snow bowing
it down. It was barely a foot high and naked of leaves.

He looked up and peered around, but there
was nothing to see but tree trunks and shadows and then nothing.

“Hello?” he said. The forest answered with
silence.

He returned his gaze to the forlorn
sapling. He rubbed his hands together, feeling the friction warm them. Then,
casting a final glance into the forest, placed his hands around the sapling’s
finger-thin trunk.

He left them there like that until he could
feel the wet seeping through his pants, then stood.

It could have been a minute or a day he
waited to see a solitary leaf wriggle out of the tip of a branch, uncurl, and
grow. The sight of it split his face in a grin.

When he opened his eyes, he was looking
into the bottom of his empty coffee cup.

The old man came to clear it away, and
asked if he wanted another.

“Beer, please,” said Rasputin. “
Dagon
.”

The old man leaned back at the waist, and
with smiling eyes said, “Oh ho! A celebration for Mr. Rasputin?”

“Yes, I think—” Rasputin’s gaze searched
the table, then returned to the old man. “I think, after all, I might be
growing wings.”

The old man shook his head good-naturedly
and kept his thoughts to himself.

###

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