Page 3 of The Salt King

Li waited for them to quiet down. “The young man in the video is indeed missing. He was supposed to get on a plane six hours after this was filmed. He missed his flight. His family haven’t heard from him, and nor has anyone else.”

Avelyn tried to shove the vault door closed on that deep chamber where the hope-fire was burning. “So his sister posted this.”

“She went out with him to help him travel. They operate this account together. It’s part of their respective missions: it’s just about different aspects of Catholicism. They go into why this or that is dogma but this or that isn’t, questions about the order of Mass, a few serious ones about the scandals and the Church’s position on abortion, that kind of thing. Not . . . stunts.”

Avelyn looked through the other videos posted by the same account. Li was right. The videos had names like “The Worst Baptism EVER” and “What Confession Is Like for Priests” and “Nuns Answer Ten Questions from Atheists.” Just little insights into life in holy orders. Nothing designed to go viral. Perhaps because of that, the turning-to-salt post didn’t have an extraordinary number of views. In the comments, lots of people were complaining that Matthew and Mary didn’t usually do silly fake things.

“Have the police been involved?” he asked.

“Unfortunately. Mary called them straightaway. But they in their supreme bloody wisdom thought she was having a psychotic break and arrested her.” Li was routinely told by American priests that swearing let in the Evil One, and he told them in return that if there was one certain way to provoke any normal person to murder, it was to go around saying “gosh dang” at them. “She then contacted the diocese, on the reasoning that they had some distant chance of actually believing her. The bishop went to find out what had happened, and immediately found witnesses. The stable master at the paddock, which is just out of shot here, saw it too, and swears it happened just like the video shows. So do two people who were behind them on the path. And so”—he took the tablet back to show Avelyn a new video, this time grainy and distant, but still clear enough—“does the CCTV in front of the Hreodwater border station. Which was also not tampered with.”

Avelyn watched it twice. It was a much shorter clip, but it showed Matthew and his sister. It also showed her yell and drop her phone, and tear at the salt, clearly trying to find her brother inside it, then collapse next to it. The stable master, a big Hreod man, ran over then, and so did two people from further behind on the path.

“Well, it must be fake, because he didn’t turn to salt, did he,” Avelyn said.

The hymn was singing itself in his head.

Bring him oak and bring him silver now,

And carve the black salt crown . . .

Li was giving him a painful, sympathetic study. “Those standing stones on the fen, the . . .?”

“The Northmen.”

“How many are there?”

“Forty-eight.”

“Forty-nine now,” Li said. “And . . . they look the same. Isn’t there a Hreod story that the Northmen themselves were . . . people? Real Vikings, who tried to attack the town, but ran afoul of . . .”

Avelyn scanned Li for a tell. This felt like a test. Maybe Li was showing him this because even after twelve years, Avelyn hadn’t done enough to prove he truly believed there was nothing at Hreodwater except a cult. No magic in the deep, no truth in the stories, and no Salt King.

Well, he could pass that test. He was an incredible liar now.

“Of course there are stories,” he said, “but why are we talking about Hreod stories in any context except their borderline personality disorders? The Northmen are red halite, it looks like blood, and it isn’t local to the area. So people made up a story about how some Vikings came to attack the town and the Salt King turned them to salt, but it’s rubbish, of course it is. The Northmen will have been imported from another salt mine because they’re pretty, but a story about the King and raiders is more fun than—you know, ‘We did a trade deal in the year nine seventy-whatever with Eric the Uninspiringly Bald, who did give us very reasonable prices.’”

“But,” Father Li said, “I don’t think Eric the Uninspiringly Bald is still in business.”

Avelyn waited to see if anything else was forthcoming, but it wasn’t. “Father, I’ve spent twelve years trying to convince you I understand that I was brought up in a cult. Can I ask why . . . you’re suddenly not so sure?”

Father Li dragged his hand over his face, and all at once, Avelyn realized it wasn’t a test.

“I’m sorry. I know,” Li said. “God knows I know, but—this morning, Matthew’s doctor in Chicago sent through the X-rays that showed his spine was irreparably damaged. I’ve spoken to her, and to his parents. He was in that chair for two years. It’s real.”

Avelyn stayed quiet. Before, he had felt like he was crouched behind a parapet, judging when and where to run to dodge all the arrows and javelins, but now that part of him was straightening up and peering over the battlements, just in case Li wasn’t trying to hit him after all.

“That boy was cured, and then he turned to salt. The Church is investigating it as a miracle.”

“What?” It came out with a lot more force than Avelyn ever would normally have used with Father Li, and he raised both hands to apologise while Li, at the same time, drew his through the air in a Don’t worry sign. “Why in God’s name would it be a miracle? That man is dead. Miracles are supposed to inspire joy and faith, not total bloody horror. We’re not in the Old Testament.”

“Except we . . . of course . . . are, a little bit.” Li coughed, as though he were having an allergic reaction to what he was about to say. “The last time anyone turned to salt in a . . . in a documented way, was at . . .” Li gave Avelyn a look that begged him to understand without making anybody say it.

Li was a theologian, and like almost everyone with that training, he was loath to talk about the more mystical side of the Church with anything approaching literal thinking. If you were a Catholic, and especially a priest, you could never outright deny that there were angels and demons and miracles because that was doctrine, but scholars sometimes sidled around this by saying, Yes, well, but not literally. The Bible does say there was a lady who turned to salt once, but you see, “turn to salt” is probably just an ancient Hebrew way of saying she was frightened, in the same way that today, one might say that one freezes; one does not mean one literally grows icicles.

Which worked very well until some inconsiderate sod turned literally to salt.

It was one of the few points where the two of them differed. Avelyn very extremely literally did believe in those things. There was no doubt in his mind that there were demons. He knew one well. He didn’t doubt, either, that long ago a woman had fled a burning city, looked back, and been turned to salt by what was besieging it.