Four Summoners Tales Part 6

Browning stayed where he was. He wasn't looking in that coffin. If there was a chance he could see his son alive, he didn't wish to see his corpse.

Was there a chance?

Dear G.o.d, let it be possible. Let his boy rise from that coffin, not the pasty-faced child with the mottled lips and eyelids, that sick child, that dead child. Let him rise as Browning remembered him.

Browning cleared his throat. "Yes, that's Charlie."

Eleazar smiled. "He's a fine boy. Well-formed. Don't you agree, Rene?"

Browning had not even noticed the old man there. Rene leaned over the coffin, and something in his face made Browning go cold. He wanted to leap forward.Yank the old man back. He swallowed hard. Rene nodded, jowls bobbing.

"You have a fine boy, sir," Rene said, and there was nothing in his clouded old eyes but kindness.

"Thank you." Browning turned to Eleazar. "You said there was more?"

Eleazar nodded. "Another price, I fear. One that cannot be negotiated." He walked back to Browning. "I said earlier that I use my powers sparingly because that is the Lord's will.There is another reason. The second price. Unlike our Lord, I am but a mortal man. I cannot return the soul to a body for nothing, as he did.There must be an exchange."

"Exchange?"

"A soul for a soul."

Browning blinked. "I . . . I don't understand."

"I do," said a voice behind him.

Browning turned to see Doc Adams in the doorway, looking ill.

"Yes," Eleazar said. "Our good doctor understands. I cannot steal a life from heaven, like a base thief. I take a soul for you, I give a soul to Him. For a child to live again, someone must die."

PreAcher Preacher was poring over a Latin book with Sophia.The words . . . well, as he'd joked to her, they could have been Greek for all he understood of them. He knew Latin, of course. At this moment, though, his mind was otherwise too occupied to translate them to English. He was trying to distract himself from what was happening at the community house and it was not working.

His wife was also trying to distract him, and had been since he'd explained when he came home.

"You can do nothing about it," Sophia said. "They must make their own choices and their own mistakes."

Which is what he'd told himself.Yet he could not shake the feeling that he ought to have done more.

"You cannot," his wife said, as if reading his thoughts. "You dare not, under the circ.u.mstances."

Again, she spoke true. His position was precarious enough of late, worse now with the baby on the way. If he were to argue against listening to these men when his daughter had survived and his wife was with child . . . ? Who knew of what they might accuse him.

"I'm going to start teaching Latin to the younger children," Sophia said, thumbing through a well-used book. "Simple words, as I do with French.The names of animals and such."

What younger children? he wanted to ask. The three below the age of eight who'd survived? He knew they could not think like that. Better to focus not on the loss but on those that remained, on how the smaller cla.s.s would mean more attention for each pupil, more work they could do, such as starting Latin sooner.

Preacher was saying just that when the front door banged open, Addie rus.h.i.+ng in, words spilling out so fast that they couldn't decipher them. Both Preacher and Sophia leaped from the table and raced over, thinking she was injured.

"No," Addie said. "I'm well. It's the men, what they're offering.To bring back the children."

"Yes, we already know," Sophia said, leading the girl inside. "It's terrible and-"

"Terrible?" Addie pulled from her grasp. "They say they can resurrect the children. It's wondrous."

Sophia winced.

Preacher moved forward, bending in front of the girl. "Yes, it would indeed be wondrous . . . if it was possible. It's not. They're taking advantage of our grief. Promising the impossible because they know we're desperate enough to pay the price."

"You're wrong," Addie said, backing away.

"So they aren't charging a fee?" Preacher asked softly.

Addie said nothing.

"Adeline?" Sophia said, her voice equally soft but firm. "Did they say there would be a cost?"

"Yes, but they're reducing it, on account of there being so many children-"