Page 87 of A Rare Find
How strangely easy it was to speak with Georgie about what mattered to her. In their presence, she said things she’d never gotten the chance to say, things she’d barely articulated to herself.
“A building can die,” they said, musingly, “when it loses its connection to what it was?”
She met their eyes. “The stains of age on a stone, the divots worn by centuries of feet or fingers—they create something like a voice.”
They were smiling at her, not a dazzling smile, a vague smile, a little misty. A lump formed in her throat. Were they feeling nostalgic already? This golden day already behind them? They’d always remembered her. They would remember her. From miles and miles away.
“Will you do the honors?” They said it with an odd formality.
She tore her gaze from them, separated their arms, and pushed open the church door.
The nave was empty, narrow, with high, blank walls. The only light slanted from two tiny windows set high overhead.
Georgie moved into it, blanched face floating in darkness, and then out again, footsteps muted, whispering on the stone.
She said nothing as they wandered into the chancel. Finally, she shook herself, and called out.
“It’s over here.” She crossed to the font, set just inside the main entrance, badly decayed and recently blocked off. The basin was about three feet deep, devoid of ornament, the pedestal knee-high, carved with a simple geometric design.
She peered into the basin—dry, of course—and her skin tightened at the imagined cold, the phantom cries. How many lives now over had begun right here?
The thick air stirred as Georgie came to stand beside her. They laid their hands on the font’s stone lip.
“So this is it,” they said, voice low. “A thousand years ago, a baby was born in Twynham, and dipped in this font. And some Saxon girl, his older sister, felt dull during the service, and cut off another girl’s braid—with a knife, probably. I doubt Saxons had grape scissors.”
Elf’s laugh was also low. She put her hands on the font. Georgie was joking, and yet she could detect the note of wonderment.
“Vanished like foam,” they whispered, and with a start she recognized her own words. “Those Saxon girls have vanished. And yet the generations go on.”
Her fingers bumped theirs.
They looked at her through the shadows. “These walls heard them, and us too, and who knows who else, years from now, if they’re still standing.”
She nodded. Only their fingers touched, and the light from their eyes. It was a kind of touch, that blue shining into her.
“I’m going to slide the font over.” They adjusted their position. “To see if there’s anything beneath.”
She nodded again, anticipation prickling down her spine. The floor was stone, but it could have been dug out, the font positioned over the hole, lidding the precious contents.
Georgie drew a breath and pulled, fingers flattening inside the basin. The font didn’t budge. She gripped as best she could and tugged with them. Something audible happened, stone grating on stone.
“Nearly there,” they said, and pulled harder, leaning back.
“No.” She let go, but it was too late. The basin was moving but not the pedestal. They hadn’t been carved as one piece, and stupid, stupid of her not to have thought.
And not to push. She needed to push. To counter gravity, which had begun to do its work. She flung her weight against the basin, her pulse gone wiry, her underarms slicked by sudden sweat. Muscles she’d strained yesterday began instantly to scream, and a sound escaped her, not unlike a scream itself. Something hooked her around the waist—hard—and she went over sideways, the blow of her body against the floor cushioned by Georgie, who sprawled beneath her.
The next noise was a crack as loud as a cannon.
Her insides flinched. She extricated her limbs, crawled from Georgie onto unforgiving stone.
“It’s not broken!” She patted the basin everywhere in time with her erratic heartbeats, all but sobbing with relief. “It’s not broken.”
Further noises turned her head.
A thump, a rattle, a creak, a booming voice…
“What’s going on in there?”
