How Alan and his brothers killed Davey: very deliberately.Alan spent the rest of the winter in the cave, and Davey spent the spring in the golem’s cave, and through that spring, neither of them went down to the school, so that the younger brothers had to escort themselves to class. When the thaws came and icy meltoff carved temporary streams in the mountainside, they stopped going to school, too—instead, they played on the mountainside, making dams and canals and locks with rocks and imagination.Their father was livid. The mountain rumbled as it warmed unevenly, as the sheets of ice slid off its slopes and skittered down toward the highway. The sons of the mountain reveled in their dark ignorance, their separation from the school and from the nonsensical and nonmagical society of the town. They snared small animals and ate them raw, and didn’t wash their clothes, and grew fierce and guttural through the slow spring.Alan kept silent through those months, becoming almost nocturnal, refusing to talk to any brother who dared to talk to him. When Ed-Fred-George brought home a note from the vice principal asking when he thought he’d be coming back to school, Alan shoved it into his mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed, until the paper was reduced to gruel, then he spat it by the matted pile of his bedding.The mountain grumbled and he didn’t care. The golems came to parley, and he turned his back to them. The stalactites crashed to the cave’s floor until it was carpeted in ankle-deep chips of stone, and he waded through them.He waited and bided. He waited for Davey to try to come home.
How Alan and his brothers killed Davey: very deliberately.
Alan spent the rest of the winter in the cave, and Davey spent the spring in the golem’s cave, and through that spring, neither of them went down to the school, so that the younger brothers had to escort themselves to class. When the thaws came and icy meltoff carved temporary streams in the mountainside, they stopped going to school, too—instead, they played on the mountainside, making dams and canals and locks with rocks and imagination.
Their father was livid. The mountain rumbled as it warmed unevenly, as the sheets of ice slid off its slopes and skittered down toward the highway. The sons of the mountain reveled in their dark ignorance, their separation from the school and from the nonsensical and nonmagical society of the town. They snared small animals and ate them raw, and didn’t wash their clothes, and grew fierce and guttural through the slow spring.
Alan kept silent through those months, becoming almost nocturnal, refusing to talk to any brother who dared to talk to him. When Ed-Fred-George brought home a note from the vice principal asking when he thought he’d be coming back to school, Alan shoved it into his mouth and chewed and chewed and chewed, until the paper was reduced to gruel, then he spat it by the matted pile of his bedding.
The mountain grumbled and he didn’t care. The golems came to parley, and he turned his back to them. The stalactites crashed to the cave’s floor until it was carpeted in ankle-deep chips of stone, and he waded through them.
He waited and bided. He waited for Davey to try to come home.