Pim is not a Hand. He has no seat and no Mouth, and he has not said anything out loud since the fourth stair, which was a very long time ago, in the cellar, in the dark.
What he has is a count.
He keeps it the way other children keep a stone in their pocket. It is small and smooth and it fits in his fist, and when he is frightened he takes it out and rubs it with his thumb, and the rubbing makes him feel that there is still something in his hand that belongs to him. The count is not for anybody. It is only for him. It goes on in the back of the body, under the table of the Great Hall and under the floor of the Undercroft, where the Hands cannot quite hear it and the Writ cannot quite reach, and it has been going on for a very long time.
Tonight he counts the candles.
The wake is in the eel-wives’ lane. The neighbours have set one candle on the ledge of every window in the house where the girl lies, and one on the step outside the door, and one on the sill of the back room where her mother’s sister sits with the baby. Pim can see them from the lane’s end, where he is sitting on the wall with his heels knocking against the stones. They are small yellow flames in the dark. They look like the lamps in…
