Free The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar Page B

disappear in the fog that rises, covering the trees, the ground, blocking the sun, blocking escape. Henry lies there, hands covering his head. Scared of moving.
    Waiting for the others to come back.

36. THE FARM 1936
    – Do you understand, Oblivion says, again. And Fogg says: Yes.
    Oblivion seems embarrassed at his earlier outburst. Fogg gets the sense, looking at him, of an intensely private world locked up inside him. Of a self-contained universe, letting very little in or out. Why do they call you Oblivion, he says.
    Oblivion bends down, picks up a stone. It is a pebble, of the sort you’d find on a riverbank, made smooth and round by water and time. You might wonder what it’s doing in the middle of a Devon field. It sits in Oblivion’s palm. He has long, graceful fingers: a pianist’s, as they used to say. Oblivion touches the stone, gently, with one tip of a long, tapering finger. The stone doesn’t shimmer, doesn’t melt, or turn to dust, or crumble gently in Oblivion’s hand. It simply disappears, gone, as though it has never existed: one moment it’s in his palm and the other, it has never been there at all.
    It is surprisingly unimpressive. Like the magic tricks one sees as a child, an adult using the French Drop or palming a coin. There is nothing flash about it. Simply, Fogg thinks, it is a negation .
    – Before I could control it, Oblivion says, and stops. Starts again. Before I realised, he says. Fogg nods. There are other things in the world, other than stones.
    – How does it work? Fogg says. Oblivion only shrugs. It just happens, he says. Rubs his fingers together as though the absence of the stone had hurt them. Lets his hand drop to his side.
    – Well, I guess I’ll see you around, Oblivion says. Fogg says, Hey …
    – Yes?
    – Thanks.
    Oblivion smiles. The expression is unexpected, it changes his face, lights it up from inside. Fogg awkwardly reaches out his hand. Something between them. Perhaps it is, simply, that they are both alone. Oblivion hesitates. Then he reaches across the space between them and takes Fogg’s hand. They shake.
    – Everybody needs a friend, sometimes, Oblivion says.

37. THE FARM 1936
    And so on a lazy sunny afternoon, the Lost Boys and Girls of Never Never Land. Oblivion, Fogg, Spit, Tank, Mr Blur and Mrs Tinkle. Some we know well, some, less well. It is only the nature of things. There are others, too, though many will die in the coming war and other wars and others still are vanished, missing, location unknown: perhaps gone to their own implausible palaces of ice or bat-filled caves, hidden volcanic peaks on jungle-covered South Seas islands, forbidding chrome-and-metal skyscrapers or remote Gothic castles. Or perhaps more prosaically a cottage in Wales. The records are sealed and obscured.
    Mr Blur sits under a tree, writing a letter. The notebook on his knees. He blinks in the sun, writes deliberately, a sweetheart back home, he fashions words like a man not used to grappling with diction, for whom punctuation lines up like soldiers in a trench. Tank lies on his back in the grass, nearby in the shade. He reads a book from the Farm’s small library, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar . His massive chest rises and falls, falls and rises steadily, his lips are pursed in concentration.
    Some distance away, Spit teaches Mrs Tinkle to throw knives. Mrs Tinkle cackles in unholy glee, where is she from, this little old lady caught in the change, she is rare in that like the Old Man himself. For people like them, the extraordinary few who the change remade, ageing was slowing down, was halting. No doubt, Fogg thinks, Dr Turing has a theory to explain it. But sometimes one does not need reason, so much as a touch of magic, a sprinkle of fairy dust.
    Mrs Tinkle’s fingers wrap around the handle of a blade, manipulating it deftly, she hefts it in her hand, she throws and the blade thwacks clean into the centre of the target. Spit looks on, chewing a blade of black hair, for