Free Night Songs by Charles L. Grant Page B

flaring afterimage of a match the minister had struck against the shaft of a torch he'd taken from his boat. The cleric held up the flame until it nearly scorched his fingers before bringing it to the cloth soaked almost a day in treated oil. Blue fire, red, spiraled upward and twisted about itself as though it could be bound. Then he handed the torch to the man in the boat beside his, who lit his own torch and passed the first on around the circle until it reached Lilla. She held it close to her face, but Colin could only see the flames rising above her head. When her pause lengthened to a full minute, he thought she would douse it and he swallowed his relief when she finally passed it to her neighbor.
        Once it had reached full circle, all the torches were placed in gleaming brass brackets bolted to the sterns. They burned low, with an incessant crackling like dry wood, dark smoke in dark curls rising far above the dark surface.
        Blue fire, and red, and pale faces reflecting.
        The breakers were muted; no lights on the shore.
        The fog began crawling between the boats to the still water.
        "Gran," Reverend Otter said then. "Gran, it's time."
        Colin saw Lilla's back grow rigid, and he braced himself to grab her in case she changed her mind again. But when she only brought her hands up to take hold of her upper arms he relaxed and tried to listen to what the minister was saying. But he couldn't. He couldn't take his gaze away from the shrouded body, from Lilla's back, from the fingers of fog slipping over the sides.
        Reverend Otter droned on; there was a hymn softly sung; yet Colin couldn't help feeling that the others were just as uneasy as he. Garve had told him stories-as had Peg and Annalee, and even Bob Cameron-the highlights of which dealt with the joy of the songs that rose above the sea, the genuine belief there was a better world farther on. That feeling was absent now. And he saw signs of impatient shifting- knees bending and locking, arms swinging, heads nodding.
        They want to be gone, he thought, and not just because of Gran.
        Then he saw Lilla bend her head for a moment, and realized the reverend had stopped his preaching. Colin waited, wondering if there was something he was supposed to do and cursing Garve for not telling him, staring when Lilla suddenly knelt beside her grandfather and kissed the shroud where his mouth would have been. A slight gesture behind her to keep him where he was, and she slipped her hands under the body, her expression set and her mouth slightly parted. She lifted, shifted, held the dead man against her chest and whispered something to him. Colin strained but couldn't hear her. Then she turned to face the cleric and let the gray bundle slide from her hands into the water, effortlessly, soundlessly, as if it were little more than air.
        And despite the weight lashed about its feet, the body floated for several long seconds. Turning through the lacing of fog without disturbing it, sweeping in a complete circle like a compass seeking its direction… until it stopped in front of Lilla.
        Then nothing moved but the fog.
        Finally, the shroud began sinking, slipping smoothly into the black ocean without leaving a ripple behind. Instantly, it was over, and beginning with Otter the torches were thrown after the body until only Lilla's remained.
        And when she suddenly whirled around, he ducked instinctively as she hurled the torch as far as she could toward the horizon. He had no idea why, but he knew what she'd done was wrong. Yet she only turned around to wait for him to row her back to shore.
        
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        Matt knew Mom was restless, and suspected she might come up to join him. She'd like the movie, too-
        James Bond again in The Man with the Golden Gun. It wasn't so much the shooting and the fights he liked in this one, but the co-star, Christopher Lee, who he knew in