Chương 47: “What the Guardian Does”

It stood in the garden. It did not stand threateningly, it simply stood there, at the edge where the grass met the pavement, at the outermost reach of the binding radius, and it waited. It was very large. The neighbors could not see it. Tuesday circled it once and then went back to his route, satisfied. Gerald checked on it from inside the house wall and retreated. Speck did not come out of the washing machine gap but Speck never did. Lauren saw it from the kitchen window on Saturday morning.

She stood at the sink for a long moment. Then she poured her coffee and sat at the table and opened her laptop and did not mention it, which Vorrath had come to understand was her specific version of I accept this, I have decided to accept this, we are moving on. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. June saw it after school. She stood at the garden gate and looked up at it. It was very tall, and it looked down at her.

"Is that yours?" she asked. He was in the pencil case. He glowed once. She looked at it a moment longer.

"It's sad," she said. He had not thought about whether his guardian was sad. He reconsidered it now. He thought about what it had been built for and how long it had waited to do that and whether three thousand years of dormancy, for something made to stand between, was a kind of sadness. He thought: yes. He thought: he understood that specifically.

"Does it have a name?" June asked. He glowed twice. No. She looked at it. It looked at her.

"I'll think of one," she said. He had expected nothing less.