Chapter 153

I had been taught all my life not to touch what was not mine.

I took his hand.

Both of mine, round his one, as it came down at me open and red to the wrist. I pressed my palms against it as I would press a blotter on a wet page, the whole of each palm at once, and opened the door in me all the way.

For the space of a breath he allowed it, and looked down at me with that mild, pleased interest, as if he had waited a long time for exactly this and could not quite believe it had been offered.

Then I began to read, and he stopped being pleased.

***

It was not a hand. It was a pen.

On a coin, on a banner, on my own tongue, I had thought I was feeling where he had touched. I had been feeling the nib. Here was the hand that held it, and running out of it, as ink runs out of a pen that is never lifted from the page, was the line.

One line. Lyra had said so, with her finger held up, and she had been right.

It ran out of his palm into mine