“You don’t tell me what to do,” he said. “You can’t tell me what to do. I want to know what I am, how we’re possible, and if you can’t help, then you can leave now.”
The winds blew colder, smelling now of the golem’s side of the mountain, of clay and the dry bones of their kills, which they arrayed on the walls of their cavern.
The golem stood stock still.
“Does it… understand?” Marci asked. Davey snickered again.
“It’s not stupid,” Alan said, calming a little. “It’s… slow. It thinks slowly and acts slowly. But it’s not stupid.” He paused for a moment. “It taught me to speak,” he said.
That did it. He began to cry, biting his lip to keep from making a sound, but the tears rolled down his cheeks and his shoulders shook. The flashlight’s beam pinned him, and he wanted to run to his mother and hide behind her, wanted to escape the light.
“Go,” he said softly to the golem, touching its elbow. “It’ll be all right.”
Slowly, gratingly, the golem turned and lumbered out of the cave, clumsy and ponderous.
Marci put her arm around him and he buried his face in her skinny neck, the hot tears coursing down her collarbones.