The Shape Stealer Read Online Free PDF Page B

of you would be improved if you went to her able to tell her that you have destroyed Marduk.”
    “She certainly wouldn’t be able to call me silly then!”
    “No, she certainly wouldn’t.”
    “But how will I destroy Marduk if I don’t know where he is?”
    Kepler grinned, showing so many teeth that Will almost shivered at his glee. “Because I am almost certain where he is. In my previous encounter with him, he hid in the catacombs. He is a creature of habit. I assure you that is where he is now—and I can lead you to him.”
    Will considered, his desire to see Garet again warring with his wish to see the light of admiration in her eyes when he told her that he had vanquished Marduk. “I’ll do it!” he answered. “Let us go!”
    Once again Kepler lay a restraining hand on Will’s arm. “I admire your spirit, young man, but don’t you think you should let your lady know where you are going? A note never goes amiss.”
    “Yes, you are absolutely right.” Will patted his pockets for a pen, but Kepler suggested he use the printing contraption instead. Kepler showed him how to press down on each letter to form an image of that letter on the page. At first it was laborious, but soon Will found that he liked the brisk clatter of metal striking paper and longed to compose something more substantial in this new medium. But he constrained himself to brevity.
    Garet , he wrote, I have gone to find Marduk in the catacombs. If I survive the encounter I will meet you on the Pont Saint Michel at dawn. Yours (I hope), Will Hughes.
    “Excellent,” Kepler said, smiling over Will’s shoulder as they pinned the note to the wall. “I have no doubt that this note will have the desired effect upon your lady.”

 
    5
    The Grim Book
    “A love letter … to me?” I repeated, dumbstruck—and not a little embarrassed. A number of the chronologistes were smiling at their books in a way that I suspected didn’t come from the contents of those books. Annick was frankly studying me through her horn-rimmed glasses as if trying to assess my worthiness for a four-hundred-year-long love letter. “I hardly think … I mean, you don’t really know that . I’m sure Will had other things to think about in four hundred years.”
    “Not that I can see,” Claudine said, looking up from a handsomely bound volume entitled The World’s Greatest Love Poems. “Here’s something he wrote to you in 1823:”
    These trees adore each other endlessly;
    The way they’ve grown together lulls the mind
    With thoughts of Paradise, sweetens the eye.
    And yet their love’s nothing to what we’ve found.
    Their branches have eloped for centuries;
    A mingling of two crowns and many leaves
    That just this moment’s blessed by a mild breeze,
    But leaves could never love like you and me. I weave
    This sonnet for you just as trees have spun
    Their interlocking branchery. Which lasts
    For eons but will someday join the past,
    Unlike these words immortal as the sun.
    And even if the sun shall one day die,
    we Will go on forever, you and I.
    “And here’s a haiku he wrote while traveling through Japan in 1959,” Jean-Luc said, “called ‘In the Distance’:”
    No beauty great as
    snow on mountaintop, sunset
    except Garet’s eyes.
    “And here is a song he wrote to you in the twenties,” Annick added, turning on a phonograph, “called ‘You’re the Art of Art.’” A rich, smoky man’s voice sang,
    You’re made by Michelangelo, I know,
    allure so bright that even V. Van Gogh
    took off his smock, breathless, and could not paint:
    Picasso froze, had no choice but to faint.
    “Hey, that sounds like Cole Porter,” I said.
    “It is,” Annick confirmed, “but the jacket notes credit the composition of the song to ‘my dear friend W. H.’ and clearly it’s Will talking about you.” Annick beamed at me. “C’est très romantique, n’est-ce pas?” Her bottom lip trembled and she removed a handkerchief from the pocket of her snug peplum