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.He had no idea how well furies could see at night or whether they, and their two-legged masters, might still be looking for him—but they hadn't found him last night, when he'd been moving on the open water.If he made a practice of lying low every day and traveling only at night, he would escape observation by fisherfolk in other boats and by people on shore, as well as by at least some of his enemies aloft.He could not shake the idea that some of the beasts and people who'd attacked Uncle Humbert's village might still be following him downstream.Now, it seemed he'd done about all the planning he could do at the moment.The urge to do something else had been growing in the back of his mind, and now he could think of no reason to put it off any longer—he meant to take a good look at Sal's parting gift.For some reason she'd been reluctant even to tell him what it was.Not that it mattered; whether it turned out to be priceless diamonds or worthless trash, he was going to take it on to Professor Alexander—or Margaret Chalandon—or die in the attempt.But it seemed to the boy that he at least had a right to know what he was carrying.He felt inside his shirt to make sure that the strange thing was still where he had put it.It was time to take it out and give it a look.He didn't see how he could be any worse off for knowing what it was.Once more thing bothered Jeremy.Why had Sal, when her treasure was mentioned, kept saying that she was not worthy? Not worthy to do what?SIXMaking a conscious effort to distract himself from on-going hunger and pain, Jeremy sat down on the grass, holding the pouch, meaning to examine its contents carefully.His vision had always been keen at close range, and now he was working in full daylight.He tore open the crude stitches that, as he now discovered, had been holding the pouch closed.Taking out the single object it contained, he held it up against the light.It was a fragment of a carved or molded face, apparently broken or cut from a mask or statue.For one eerie moment he had an idea that the thing might be alive, for certainly something inside it was engaged in rapid movement, reminding him of the dance of sunlight on rippling water.Inside the semitransparent object, which was no thicker than his finger, he beheld a ceaseless rapid internal flow, of.of something.that might have been ice-clear water, or even light itself, if there could be light that illuminated nothing.Jeremy found it practically impossible to determine the direction or the speed of flow.The apparent internal waves kept reflecting from the edges, and they went on and on without weakening.And, stranger still, why should Jeremy have thought that the pupil of the crystal eye in the broken mask had darkened momentarily, had turned to look in his direction and even twinkled at him? For just a moment he had the fleeting impression that the eye was part of the face of someone he had known.but then again it seemed no more than a piece of strangely colored glass.Not really glass, though.This was not hard or brittle enough for glass.Whatever it might cost him, he would carry this object to Professor Alexander at the Academy.Or to Margaret Chalandon.Silently he renewed his last pledge to Sal.Brushing his hair out of his eyes, he turned the object over and over in his hands.Its thickness varied from about a quarter of an inch to half an inch.It was approximately four inches from top to bottom and six or seven along the curve from right to left.The ceaseless flow of.something or other inside it went on as tirelessly as before.Somehow Jeremy had never doubted, from his first look at this fragment of a modeled face, that it was intended to be masculine.There was no sign of beard or mustache, and it would have been hard for him to explain how he could be so sure.The most prominent feature of the fragment was the single eye that it contained—the left—which had been carved or molded from the same piece of strange warm, flexible, transparent stuff as all the rest.The eyeball showed an appropriately subtle bulge of pupil, and the details of the open lid were clear.No attempt had been made to represent eyelashes.An inch above the upper lid, another smooth small bulge suggested the eyebrow.A larger one below outlined the cheekbone.No telling what the nose looked like, because the fragment broke off cleanly just past the inner corner of the eye.On the other side it extended well back along the side of the head, far enough to include the temple and most of the left ear [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]