And yet this vast chunk of wintry glass held nothing but frozen river water.

No. Not quite empty.

Halloway felt his heart pound one special time.

Within the huge winter gem was there not a special vacuum? a voluptuous hollow, a prolonged emptiness which undulated from tip to toe of the ice? and wasn’t this vacuum, this emptiness waiting to be filled with summer flesh, was it not shaped somewhat like a… woman?

Yes.

The ice. And the lovely hollows, the horizontal flow of emptiness within the ice. The lovely nothingness. The exquisite flow of an invisible mermaid daring the ice to capture it.

The ice was cold.

The emptiness within the ice was warm.

He wanted to go away from here.

But Charles Halloway stood in the strange night for a long time looking in at the empty shop and the two sawhorses and the cold waiting arctic coffin set there like a vast Star of India in the dark…

Chapter 6

Jim Nightshade stopped at the corner of Hickory and Main, breathing easily, his eyes fixed tenderly on the leafy darkness of Hickory Street.

“Will…?”

“No!” Will stopped, surprised at his own violence.

“It is just there. The fifth house. Just one minute, Will,” Jim pleaded, softly.

“Minute…?” Will glanced down the street.

Which was the street of the Theatre.