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trying to remove any dirt. Prentice, eyes still watering, laughed nervously.
'Is that not a horrible smell, no, Uncle
Rory?'
Rory threw the boy's white sock at him, grinning. 'I've been to India, kid;
that ain't nuthin.'
Prentice put his shoe and sock back on and got to his feet, obviously in some
pain when he stood. 'Here; I'll give you a carry-coal-bag,' Rory said, turning
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his back to the boy and putting his arms out from his sides as he crouched.
'Really, Uncle Rory? You sure? Will I not be awful heavy?'
'Hop on; you're a bean-pole, laddie. I'll probably go faster with you on my
back; you walk too slow. Come on.'
Prentice put his arms round Rory's neck and got up onto his back; Rory set off
at a run.
Prentice whooped.
'See?' Rory said, slowing to a fast walk.
'I'm not too heavy, honest, Uncle Rory?'
'What? A skelf like you? Never.'
'Do you think this is a punishment from God for talking about walking on a
Sunday, Uncle
Rory?'
Rory laughed. 'Certainly not.'
'Do you not believe in God either, Uncle Rory?'
'No. Well; not in the Christian God. Maybe something else.' He shrugged his
shoulders and shifted Prentice into a more comfortable position on his back.
'When I was in India, I thought then I knew what it was I might believe in.
But when I came back it all seemed to go away again. I
think it was something to do with the place.' He looked to one side, at the
dazzling expanse of machair; endless emerald green scattered thick with
flowers so bright they seemed lit from inside.
'Places have an effect on people. They alter your thoughts. India does,
anyway.'
'What about when you went to America? Did that effect what you thought?'
Rory laughed gently. 'Yeah; it did that all right. Kind of in the opposite
way, though.'
'Are you going to go away again?'
'I expect so.'
Prentice elapsed his hands in front of Rory's chin. Rory glanced at his
wrists; thin and fragile looking. Prentice was still holding the little
Lifeboat flag, twirling the pin between his fingers.
'When did you stop believing in God?' Prentice asked.
Rory shrugged. 'Hard to say; I think I started to think for myself when I was
about your age, maybe a bit younger.'
'Oh.'
'I tried to imagine how the world had been created, and I imagined Sooty - you
know; the glove puppet - '
'I know; they still have him. Sooty and Sweep.' Prentice giggled.
'Well, I imagined him standing on a wee planet about the size of a football -
'
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'But he hasn't got any legs!'
Ah, but he did in the annuals I got for Christmas. Anyway, I imagined him
waving a wand, and the world came into existence. Like, I'd been to church,
been to Sunday School, so I knew all the stuff in the Bible, but I guess I
needed to envisage it. . . see it, in my own terms.'
'Uh-huh.'
'But then I thought; wait a minute; where does the planet Sooty's standing on
come from? I
thought Sooty could have waved his wand and made that appear too, but where
would he stand while he was doing it? I mean, I didn't think, Well, he could
float in space, and it never occurred to me to ask where Sooty himself had
come from, or the wand, but I was already heading towards not believing, I
suppose. It was like the dragons.'
'Dragons?' Prentice said, sounding excited and wary at once. Rory felt the boy
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tremble.
'Yeah,' Rory said. 'I used to hide under the covers of my bed at night,
imagining there were dragons out there; in the room when the light was out,
when there was nobody else there. I'd hunch down under the covers with just an
air-hole to breath through, and shelter there. The dragons couldn't get you
through the air-hole; they could only get you if you put out a foot or a hand,
or worst of all your head; that was when they struck; bit it off, or pulled
you right out and ate all of you.'
'Waa! Alien!' Prentice said. His arms squeezed Rory's neck.
'Yeah,' Rory said. .'Well, I guess a lot of horror films come from that sort
of background.
Anyway; I used to be petrified of these dragons, even though I knew they
probably didn't exist; I
mean I knew there was no Santa Claus, and no fairies and elves, but still
thought ghosts and dragons were a possibility, and it only took one to kill
you . . . I mean how did I really know I
could trust adults? Even mum and dad? There were so many things I didn't
really understand about people, about life. Most of the time you could just
ignore a lot of the stuff you didn't know;
it'd come in time, you'd be told when you needed to know . . . But how did you
know that there wasn't some big secret, some big, evil deal going down that
involves you but had been kept secret from you?
'Like, maybe your parents were just fattening you up until you would make a
decent meal for these dragons, or it was an intelligence test; the kids smart
enough to have sussed out the fact there were dragons around were the ones
that would survive, and the ones that just lay there, trusting, each night,
deserved to die, and their parents couldn't tell them or the dragons would eat
them, and stories about dragons were the only clues you were ever given; that
was all the adults could do to warn you . . . I was pretty paranoid about it.
I used to be frightened to fall asleep at night sometimes, afraid I'd stick my
head out from under the clothes while I was asleep and wake up to find my head
in a dragon's mouth, before I died.'
'Wow!'
Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight again. Kid wasn't so feather-light
after all. 'But then one night, under the covers - I was just getting older, I
guess, but anyway - I was sort of reviewing the day, and I was thinking about
school, and what we'd learned, and we'd been doing the
Second World War, and I hadn't liked the sound of this Hitler guy at all; and
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