Free Left Behind by Dave Freer Page B

before, I remembered. When she found the crib note I prepared. Before she'd beaten me for it. I'd wondered at the time how she'd known what to look for. Now I suspected I knew. She'd said she'd had a promising academic career once, back then, in that tumbledown old house. It hadn't seemed plausible... then. She'd taken that note, saying she was going to make sure I wouldn't. It was clear now. "I'm not going to. But you are going to."
     

    "I can't."
     

    "But you must. For me. For me," I repeated, seeing the wavering, the faint widening of the eyes. "Please. For me."
     

    She nodded, almost imperceptibly. "For you," she said, quietly.
     

    I told her, sotto voce. And then settled down to write myself.
     

    Time in an exam is a version of time in Hell, interminable and yet passing too quickly. All too soon the watching devil called: "Five minutes..."and then, moments later. "Stop writing. Hand your papers to the person on your left and to the examiners. When you have done that you may leave, quietly."
     

    I looked at the paper she'd handed me, at the answer I'd given her. "I know perfectly well how to catch musselcracker," she said, quietly. "I just never told you."
     

    "No talking. You two, remain behind," said the Devil taking our papers.
     

    So we did. In silence. I watched the play of expressions that she tried to hide, and knew I was right.
     

    The Devil, the very devil that had given me the answers and crib-note, came back to us... in the fullness of Hell's time, which may have been a century. "You were observed cheating," he said, holding our papers. There was both a dark delight and, somewhere underneath it all, a resignation in his tone. He'd seen it too often before.
     

    "I cheated," said the old woman. "Ryan didn't."
     

    The Devil raised his eyebrows. "No denials, this time."
     

    "No," she said.
     

    "Ah. But you lied anyway. Because he cheated. He gave you the correct answers. And he agreed to betray you. And he cheated too, himself."
     

    I shook my head. "I'm innocent. I wouldn't cheat."
     

    The Devil smiled and laid the papers on the desk. And read. "To catch a musselcracker use a bait of..."
     

    "Fresh prawn." I said pointing to the text. "And I said a fillet of mackerel."
     

    The Devil's eyes narrowed. "Take off your coat," he said.
     

    I did. The Devil felt in my cuffs. And searched the pockets. I knew full well that he could re-create the crib note that lay in the dung pits... but I had a feeling the Judge too was watching. "You were seen talking... and heard urging the other to cheat."
     

    I shook my head. "I told her...in my own way, that I'd loved her. And she told me, knowing the price of doing so, that she loved me too. Knowing full well it was a trap, but that she did it for me. That is a sin against Hell, but it is not cheating anything except you."
     

    The Devil looked old. "He always brings it down to choices. Even my own." He pointed at us and the room was gone....
     

    I was still a small boy. She was an old, spare woman, too big for me to carry up that dark hill away from the red hot lava at my heels. But I did, taking it step by staggering step. Behind me the lava, ahead the hill.
     

    She struggled weakly in my arms. "Put me down, Ryan," she said imperiously, trying to push away. But I knew now that she wanted to hold me, and that she'd just never known how.
     

    I held tighter. Took another step up the hill. "No. You can't get there without me.
     

    "I'm too heavy for you, boy. You'll never get there with me."
     

    "I'll never get there without you, either," I said holding tight and taking another step. And another. The hill seems endless. The lava advances, boiling, just behind us.
     

    Yet there is hope. Purgatory must end somewhere. Perhaps with the lava, and perhaps at the hilltop. But at least there will be one. Hell never does end. Somewhere others sit and re-sit their versions of exams, in their private hells. I walk up the hill. The old woman is