Unmaking Percy

Part II - IV (The Hushing Manor)

Percy sometimes mused on the indignities he might in future suffer. He could not explain why; he simply did. He thought sometimes that his mind was not unlike a cabinet of curiosities he had once seen, filled with fascinating horrors and discomforting absurdities to be revisited at his leisure. He visited often.

Of all these indignities, he especially dreaded the thought of having to run from a town. It had never occurred to him until now that to be run out of a town was worse.

The mob had followed them, and even when they had reached their horses, they had found their path blocked at every turn. Percy could not understand how rage was so quick to spread, how they left behind in their escape a blazing trail of shouts and raised fists, how the mob seemed to feed and feed on its own hunger, swelling grotesque like a glutton swallowing streets and passers-by.

Of course, while scrambling up onto his mare and then clattering out the city gates, Percy had had no time to dwell on how undignified it all was. He had been too scared. How absurdly different this was from what he had always assumed would be the parting of heroes. The chosen one and his companions were cheered on their way out of a city, weighed down with garlands, applause, and eternal gratitude; they were certainly not run out.

As Percy spurred on his horse, he realized, with sagging relief, that he was outrunning the mob. But he was not outrunning the gnawing unease that raked over him now. None of it made sense, and he had never learned how to defend against such senselessness. He had grown up hearing stories of the chosen one's rewards after confronting a curse and emerging victorious. He had never heard of anything else. And he did not know how to live beyond his own stories.

His mind, left to its own devices while he had been distracted by fear, had started to sketch the outline of strange shapes. The shapes told him, how dare they treat Evans in such a way; he risked himself to save them; he stood up to the sorceress; they should be kneeling at his feet. Such thoughts alarmed him. He quickly smudged those lines in his mind, until they started to resemble other, more familiar shapes: how dare they treat the chosen one in such a way; it could have been me; it should have been me; if it were me, I would not tolerate such behaviour; I would see them kneel.

They rode past the city gates, past fields in the spilled ink-shade of night, until they reached a small grove. They could still see the glittering lights of the city from there, and hear its humming too. That distant rumbling seemed louder to Percy now than when he had been in it, part of it, wading waist-deep in the noise. It had excited him, at first, but he did not miss it now. He could not shake the feeling he had been prised from the jaws of a roaring beast.

He dismounted, all of him heaving and gasping, and he turned to the others. They all looked ragged, though each wore it in their own way. Myrtle moved as a rag-doll with fraying seams, Valeria walked with kicks rather than steps, and Evans had gone very still and quiet, as though hoping to fade away. Percy leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees, his breath still jagged and sharp in his lungs.

"What the fuck was that?" he asked at last.

"A mob" came Valeria's answer. "Spittle that thinks it's a sea current. A little fart that thinks it's a gale."

"I know what a mob is. But we saved them!" he said, his voice struggling tattered past his lips. "What was the sense to all that?"

"You say you know what a mob is, and you ask me what the sense of it was? Percy, son, who sent you out into the world as you are?"

Her words dropped him from dizzying heights. He stood there, looking away from Evans, as though that would also keep Evans from looking at him and his nakedness. He would rather have been called vain, selfish, thoughtless or cynical. But to be called innocent or foolish while Evans watched on felt somehow more disgraceful; a child's drawing shamed by its closeness to a masterpiece. And here were those lines again in his mind, carving furrows upon him. He smudged them away once more. It did not matter what Evans thought of him. At least, it did not matter more than what anyone else thought.