Bonnie disappeared. Hip said, ‘Leave me alone with him for a while.’
Janie opened her mouth to speak then turned and fled through the door. Beanie vanished.
Hip walked over to the prone figure and stood looking down at it. He did not think. He had his thought; all he had to do was hold it there.
Bonnie came through the door. She held a length of black velvet and a dagger with an eleven-inch blade. Her eyes were very big and her mouth was very small.
‘Thanks, Bonnie.’ He took them. The knife was beautiful. Finnish, with an edge he could have shaved with, and a point drawn down almost to invisibility. ‘Beat it, Bonnie!’
She left—blip!—like a squirted appleseed. Hip put the knife and the cloth down on a table and dragged Thompson to a chair. He gazed about him, found a bell-pull and tore it down. He did not mind if a bell rang somewhere; he was rather sure he would not be interrupted. He tied Thompson’s elbows and ankles to the chair, tipped the head back and made the blindfold.
He drew up another chair and sat close. He moved his knife hand gently, not quite tossing it, just feeling the scend of its superb balance in his palm. He waited.
And while he was waiting he took his thought, all of it, and placed it like a patterned drape across the entrance to his mind. He hung it fairly, attended to its folds and saw with meticulous care that it reached quite to the bottom, quite to the top, and that there were no gaps at the sides.
The pattern read:
Listen to me, orphan boy, I am a hated boy too. You were persecuted; so was I.