Slater felt Melanie take a firmer grip on his hand. "We don't need to," she said. "We can feel it."
"I can't," Tom declared in some kind of triumph.
"I don't think I can either," Amy said.
Melanie turned towards their father and squeezed his hand. "Close your eyes and you will."
For an instant he glimpsed that she'd seen the same as he had. How could he have imagined otherwise? "Hold our hands, you two," he said with an urgency that he knew was prompted by the shrinking landscape. "We'll all close our eyes and feel the sun together."
As they faced the children hand in hand, Amy and then Tom turned to meet them. Slater found Tom's hand, which felt disconcertingly small and frail, hardly even there. Melanie took Amy's, and the girl fumbled for her brother's. The last thing Slater saw was the trust in the children's eyes. "All shut now," Melanie said, and he thought he did begin to feel the sunlight. Surely that explained why, despite the altitude, he hadn't been able to see anyone's breath. He remembered hearing that no amount of cloud could entirely block off the sun.
What else ought he to recall? Something about children—perhaps that someone was supposed to be like a little child, though weren't you also meant to put childish things away? He was glad the children were there, at any rate. Perhaps their beliefs, whatever they were, would carry the day somehow; they could well have more beliefs than he'd retained, though he couldn't speak for Melanie. Was he thinking too much in a desperate bid to cling to some sense of himself? What would happen if he failed? Suppose you couldn't feel the light if you thought about it? He had an idea that someone might be singing wordlessly, but couldn't tell whether it was him. Then the impression seemed to be overwhelmed by if not transformed into light, which was pervading every sense. He didn't know whether he was seeing it or experiencing it in some way that left words behind, but it might have been all there was to the world.
The Pretence Page 10
