Зенна Гендерсон Гендерсон - No different flesh

"Oh, poor Home," whispered Lytha. "poor hurting Home! It's dying!" And then, on the family band, Lytha whispered to me Timmy's my love, for sure, Gramma, and I am his, but we're willing to let the Power hold our love for us, until your promise is kept.
I gathered the two to me and I guess we all wept a little, but we had no words to exchange, no platitudes, only the promise, the acquiescence, the trust-and the sorrow.
We went home. Neil met us just beyond our feather-pen and received Timmy with a quiet thankfulness and they went home together. Lytha and I went first into our household's Quiet Place and then to our patient beds.
I stood with the other Old Ones high on the cliff above the narrow valley, staring down with them at the raw heap of stones and earth that scarred the smooth valley floor. All eyes were intent on the excavation and every mind so much with the Oldest as he toiled out of sight, that our concentrations were almost visible flames above each head.
I heard myself gasp with the others as the Oldest slowly emerged, his clumsy heavy shielding hampering his lifting. The brisk mountain breeze whined as it whipped past suddenly activated personal shields as we reacted automatically to possible danger even though our shields were tissue paper to tornadoes against this unseen death should it be loosed. The Oldest stepped back from the hole until the sheer rock face stopped him. Slowly a stirring began in the shadowy depths and then the heavy square that shielded the thumb-sized block within lifted into the light. It trembled and turned and set itself into the heavy metal box prepared for it. The lid clicked shut. By the time six boxes were filled, I felt the old-or rather, the painfully new-weariness seize me and I clung to David's arm. He patted my hand, but his eyes were wide with dreaming and I forced myself upright. "I don't like me any more," I thought. "Why do I do things like this? Where has my enthusiasm and wonder gone? I am truly old and yet-" I wiped the cold beads of sweat from my upper lip and, lifting with the others, hovered over the canyon, preparatory to conveying the six boxes to the six shells of ships that they were to sting into life.
It was the last day. The sun was shining with a brilliance it hadn't known in weeks. The winds that wandered down from the hills were warm and sweet. The earth beneath us that had so recently learned to tremble and shift was quietly solid for a small while. Everything about the Home was suddenly so dear that it seemed a delirious dream that death was less than a week away for it. Maybe
it was only some preadolescent, unpatterned behavior-But one look at Simon convinced me. His eyes were aching with things he had had to See. His face was hard under the soft contours of childhood and his hands trembled as he clasped them. I hugged him with my heart and he smiled a thank you and relaxed a little. 'Chell and I set the house to rights and filled the vases with fresh water and scarlet leaves because there were no flowers. David opened the corral gate and watched the beasts walk slowly out into the tarnished meadows. He threw wide the door of the feather-pen and watched the ruffle of feathers, the inquiring peering, the hesitant walk into freedom. He smiled as the master of the pen strutted vocally before the flock. Then Eve gathered up the four eggs that lay rosy and new in the nests and carried them into the house to put them in the green egg dish.
The family stood quietly together. "Go say good-by," said David. "Each of you say good-by to the Home."
And everyone went, each by himself, to his favorite spot. Even Eve burrowed herself out of sight in the koomatka bush where the leaves locked above her head and made a tiny Eve-sized green twilight. I could hear her soft croon, "Inna blaza glory, play-People! Inna blaza glory!"
I sighed to see Lytha's straight-as-an-arrow flight toward Timmy's home. Already Timmy was coming, I turned away with a pang. Supposing even after the lake they-No, I comforted myself. They trust the Power­
How could I go to any one place I wondered, standing by the windows of my room. All of the Home was too dear to leave. When I went I would truly be leaving Thann-all the paths he walked with me, the grass that bent to his step, the trees that shaded him in summer, the very ground that held his cast-aside. I slid to my knees and pressed my cheek against the side of the window frame. "Thann, Thann!" I whispered. "Be with me. Go with me since I must go. Be my strength!" And clasping my hands tight, I pressed my thumbs hard against my crying mouth.
We all gathered again, solemn and tear-stained. Lytha was still frowning and swallowing to hold back her sobs. Simon looked at her, his eyes big and golden, but he said nothing and turned away. 'Chell left the room quietly and, before she returned, the soft sound of music swelled from the walls. We all made the Sign and prayed the Parting prayers, for truly we were dying to this world. The whole house, the whole of the Home was a Quiet Place today and each of us without words laid the anguishing of this day of parting before the Presence and received comfort and strength.
Then each of us took up his share of personal belongings and was ready to go. We left the house, the music reaching after us as we went. I felt a part of me die when we could no longer hear the melody. We joined the neighboring families on the path to the ships and there were murmurs and gestures and even an occasional excited laugh. No one seemed to want to lift. Our feet savored every step of this last walk on the Home. No one lifted, that is, except Eve, who was still intrigued by her new accomplishment. Her short little hops amused everyone and, by the time she had picked herself out of the dust three times and had been disentangled from the branches of overhanging trees twice and finally firmly set in place on David's shoulder, there were smiles and tender laughter and the road lightened even though clouds were banking again.
I stood at the foot of the long lift to the door of the ship and stared upward. People brushing past me were only whisperings and passing shadows.
"How can they?" I thought despairingly out of the surge of weakness that left me clinging to the wall. "How can they do it? Leaving the Home so casually!" Then a warm hand crept into mine and I looked down into Simon's eyes. "Come on, Gramma," he said. "It'll be all right."
"I-I-" I looked around me helplessly, then, kneeling swiftly, I took up a handful of dirt-a handful of the Home-and, holding it tightly, I lifted up the long slant with Simon.
Inside the ship we put our things away in their allotted spaces and Simon
tugged me out into the corridor and into a room banked with dials and switches and all the vast array of incomprehensibles that we had all called into being for this terrible moment. No one was in the room except the two of us. Simon walked briskly to a chair in front of a panel and sat down.
"It's all set," he said, "for the sector of the sky they gave us, but it's wrong." Before I could stop him, his hands moved over the panels, shifting, adjusting, changing.
"Oh, Simon!" I whispered, "you mustn't!"
"I must," said Simon. "Now it's set for the sky I See."
"But they'll notice and change them all back," I trembled.
"No," said Simon. "It's such a small change that they won't notice it. And we will be where we have to be when we have to be."
It was as I stood there in the control room that I left the Home. I felt it fade away and become as faint as a dream. I said good-by to it so completely that it startled me to catch a glimpse of a mountaintop through one of the ports as we hurried back to our spaces. Suddenly my heart was light and lifting, so much so that my feet didn't even touch the floor. Oh, how wonderful! What adventures ahead! I felt as though I were spiraling up into a bright Glory that outshone the sun­
Then, suddenly, came the weakness. My very bones dissolved in me and collapsed me down on my couch. Darkness rolled across me and breathing was a task that took an my weakness to keep going. I felt vaguely the tightening of the restraining straps around me and the clasp of Simon's hand around my clenched fist.
"Half an hour," the Oldest murmured.
"Half an hour," the People echoed, amplifying the murmur. I felt myself slipping into the corporate band of communication, feeling with the rest of the Group the incredible length and heartbreaking shortness of the time.
Then I lost the world again. I was encased in blackness. I was suspended, waiting, hardly even wondering.
And then it came-the Call.
How unmistakable! I was Called back into the Presence! My hours were totaled. It was all finished. This-side was a preoccupation that concerned me no longer. My face must have lighted as Thann's had. All the struggle, all the sorrow, all the separation-finished. Now would come the three or four days during which I must prepare, dispose of my possessions, say my good-bys-Good-bys? I struggled up against the restraining straps. But we were leaving! In less than half an hour I would have no quiet, cool bed to lay me down upon when I left my body, no fragrant grass to have pulled up over my cast-aside, no solemn sweet remembrance by my family in the next Festival for those Called during the year!
Simon I called subvocally. You know! I cried. What shall 1 do?
I See you staying. His answer came placidly.
Staying? Oh how quickly I caught the picture! How quickly my own words came back to me, coldly white against the darkness of my confusion. Such space and emptiness from horizon to horizon, from pole to pole, from skytop to ground. And only me. Nobody else anywhere, anywhere!
Stay here all alone? I asked Simon. But he wasn't Seeing me any more. Already I was alone. I felt the frightened tears start and then I heard Lytha's trusting voice-until your promise is kept. All my fear dissolved. All my panic and fright blazed up suddenly in a repeat of the Call.
"Listen!" I cried, my voice high and excited, my heart surging joyously, "Listen!"
"Oh, David! Oh, 'Chell! I've been Called! Don't you hear it? Don't you hear it!" "Oh, Mother, no! No! You must be mistaken!" David loosed himself and bent over me.
"No," whispered 'Chell. "I feel it. She is Called."
"Now I can stay," I said, fumbling at the straps. "Help me, David, help me."
"But you're not summoned right now!" cried David. "Father knew four days
before he was received into the Presence. We can't leave you alone in a doomed, empty world!"
"An empty world!" I stood up quickly, holding to David to steady myself. "Oh, David! A world full of all dearness and nearness and remembering! And doomed? It will be a week yet. I will be received before then. Let me out! Oh, let me out!"
"Stay with us, Mother!" cried David, taking both my hands in his. "We need you. We can't let you go. All the tumult and upheaval that's to start so soon for the Home-"
"How do we know what tumult and upheaval you will be going through in the Crossing?" I asked. "But beyond whatever comes there's a chance of a new life waiting for you. But for me-What of four days from now? What would you do with my cast-aside? What could you do but push it out into the black nothingness. Let it be with the Home. Let it at least become dust among familiar dust!" I felt as excited as a teener. "Oh, David! To be with Thann again!"
I turned to Lytha and quickly unfastened her belt.
"There'll be room for one more in this ship," I said.
For a long moment, we looked into each other's eyes and then, almost swifter than thought, Lytha was up and running for the big door. My thoughts went ahead of her and before Lytha's feet lifted out into the open air, all the Old Ones in the ship knew what had happened and their thoughts went out. Before Lytha was halfway up the little hills that separated ship from ship, Timmy surged into sight and gathered her close as they swung around toward our ship.
Minutes ran out of the half hour like icy beads from a broken string, but finally I was slanting down from the ship, my cheeks wet with my own tears and those of my family. Clearly above the clang of the closing door I heard Simon's call. Good-by, Gramma! I told you it'd be all right. See-you-soon!
Hurry hurry hurry whispered my feet as I ran. Hurry hurry hurry whispered the wind as I lifted away from the towering ships. Now now now whispered my heart as I turned back from a safe distance, my skirts whipped by the rising wind, my hair lashing across my face.
The six slender ships pointing at the sky were like silver needles against the rolling black clouds. Suddenly there were only five-then four-then three. Before I could blink the tears from my eyes, the rest were gone, and the ground where they had stood flowed back on itself and crackled with cooling.
The fingers of the music drew me back into the home. I breathed deeply of the dear familiar odors. I straightened a branch of the scarlet leaves that had slipped awry in the blue vase. I steadied myself against a sudden shifting under my feet and my shield activated as hail spattered briefly through the window. I looked out, filled with a great peace, to the swell of browning hills, to the upward reach of snow-whitened mountains, to the brilliant huddled clumps of trees sowing their leaves on the icy wind. "My Home!" I whispered, folding my heart around it all, knowing what my terror and lostness would have been had I stayed behind without the Call.
With a sigh, I went out to the kitchen and counted the four rosy eggs in the green dish. I fingered the stove into flame and, lifting one of the eggs, cracked it briskly against the pan.
That night there were no stars, but the heavy rolls of clouds were lighted with fitful lightnings and somewhere far over the horizon the molten heart of a mountain range was crimson and orange against the night. I lay on my bed letting the weakness wash over me, a tide that would soon bear me away. The soul is a lonely voyager at any time, but the knowledge that I was the last person in a dying world was like a weight crushing me. I was struggling against the feeling when I caught a clear, distinct call-"Gramma!"
"Simon!" My lips moved to his name.
"We're all fine, Gramma, and I just Saw Eve with two children of her own, so they will make it to a new Home."
"Oh, Simon! I'm so glad you told me!" I clutched my bed as it rocked and twisted. I heard stones falling from the garden wall, then one wall of my room
dissolved into dust that glowed redly before it settled.
"Things are a little untidy here," I said. "I must get out another blanket. It's a little drafty, too." "You'll be all right, Gramma," Simon's thought came warmly. "Will you wait for me when you get Otherside?"
"If I can," I promised.
"Good night, Gramma," said Simon.
"Good night, Simon." I cradled my face on my dusty pillow. "Good night."
"Oh!" breathed Meris, out of her absorption. "All alone like that! The last, last anyone, anywhere-"
"But she had the Home longer than anyone else," said Valancy. "She had that dear familiarity to close her eyes upon before opening them in the Presence-"
"But how could Bethie possibly remember-" began Meris.
"It's something we can't quite explain," said Jemmy. "It's a Group consciousness that unites us across time and distance. I guess Simon's communicating with Eva-lee before he was Called brought her Assembling more directly to us. Eve, you know, was Bethie's mother."
"It's overwhelming," said Karen soberly. "We know, of course, about the Home and how it was lost, but until you're actually inside an emotion, you can't really comprehend it. Just imagine, to know that the solidness of earth beneath your feet is to become dust scattered across the sky so soon-so soon!"
The group was silent for a while, listening to memories and to a Past that was so Present.
The silence was suddenly shattered by a crashing roar that startled everyone into an awareness of Now.
"Good heavens!" cried Meris. "What's that!"
"Adonday veeah!" muttered Jemmy. "They've got that old clunker going again. Johannan must have done something drastic to it."
"Well, he started it just in time to stop it," said Valancy. "We've got a journey to go and we'd better eat and run. Karen, is it all ready?"
"Yes," said Karen, heading for the shadowy house. "Meris has a lovely kitchen. I move that we move in there to eat. It's chilling a little out here now. Jemmy, will you get the boys?"
"I'll set the table!" cried Lala, launching herself airborne toward the kitchen door.
"Lala." Valancy's voice was quiet, but Lala checked in mid-flight and tumbled down to her feet. "Oh!" she said, her hands over her mouth. "I did forget, after I promised!"
"Yes, you did forget," said Valancy. her voice disappointed, "and after you promised."
"I guess I need some more discipline," said Lala solemnly.
"A promise is not lightly broken."
"What would you suggest?" asked Karen from the kitchen door, as solemnly as Lala.
"Not set the table?" suggested Lala, with a visible reluctance. "Not tonight," she went on gauging carefully the adult reaction. "Not for a week?" She sighed and capitulated. "Not set the table for a whole month. And every meal remember a promise is not lightly broken. Control is necessary. Never be un-Earth away from the Group unless I'm told to." And she trudged, conscientiously heavy-footed, into the house with Karen.
"Isn't that a little harsh?" asked Marls. "She does so love to set the table."
"She chose the discipline," said Valancy. "She must learn not to act thoughtlessly. Maybe she has a little more to remember in the way of rules and regulations than the usual small child, but it must become an automatic part of her behavior."
"But at six-" protested Meris, then laughed "-or is it five!"
"Five or six, she understands," said Valancy. "An undisciplined child is an abomination under any circumstances. And doubly so when it's possible to show
off as spectacularly as Lala could. Debbie had quite a problem concerning control when she returned from the New Home, and she was no child."
"Returned from the New Home?" said Meris, pausing in the door. "Someone else? Oh, Valancy, do you have to go home tonight? Couldn't you stay for a while and tell me some more? You want to Assemble anyway, don't you? Couldn't you now? You can't leave me hanging like this!"
"Well," Valancy smiled and followed Meris into the kitchen. "That's an idea. We'll take it up after supper."
Jemmy sipped his after-supper coffee and leaned back in his chair. "I've been thinking," he said. "This business of Assembling. We have already Assembled our history from when Valancy joined our Group up to the time Lala and the ship came. We did it while we were all trying to make up our minds whether to leave Earth or stay. Davy's recording gadget has preserved it for us. I think it would be an excellent idea for us to get Eva-lee's story recorded, too, and whatever other ones are available to us or can be made available."
"Mother Assembled a lot because she was separated from the People when she was so young," said Bethie softly.
"Assembling was almost her only comfort, especially before and after Father. She didn't know anything about the rest of her family-" Bethie whitened. "Oh, must we remember the bad times! The aching, hurting, cruel times?"
"There was kindness and love and sacrifice for us interwoven with the cruel times, too, you know," said Jemmy. "If we refuse to remember those times, we automatically refuse to remember the goodness that we found along with the evil."
"Yes," admitted Bethie. "Yes, of course."
"Well, if I can't persuade all of you to stay, why can't Bethie stay a while longer and Assemble?" asked Meris.
"Then she'll have a lot of material ready for Davy's gadget when she gets home."
And so it was that Meris, Mark, and Bethie stood in the driveway and watched the rest of the party depart prosaically by car for the canyon-if you can call prosaic the shuddering, slam-bang departing of the Overland, now making up clamorously for its long afternoon of silence.
Assembling is not a matter of turning a faucet on and dodging the gushing of memories. For several days Bethie drifted, speechless and perhaps quite literally millions of miles away, through the house, around the patio, up and down the quiet street and back into the patio. She came to the table at mealtimes and sometimes ate. Other times her eyes were too intent on far away and long ago to notice food. At times tears streaked her face and once she woke Mark and Meris with a sharp cry in the night. Meris was worried by her pallor and the shadows on her face as the days passed.
Then finally came the day when Bethie's eyes were suddenly back in focus and, relaxing with a sigh onto the couch, she smiled at Meris.
"Hi!" she said shyly. "I'm back."
"And all in one piece again," said Maria. "And about time, too! 'Licia has a drake-tail in her hair now-all both of them. And she smiled once when it couldn't possibly have been a gas pain!" So, after supper that night, Mark and Meris sat in the deepening dusk of the patio, each holding lightly one of Bethie's hands.
"This one," said Bethie, her smile fading, "is one I didn't enjoy. Not all of it. But, as Jemmy said, it had good things mixed in."
Hands tightened on hands, then relaxed as the two listened to Bethie Assembling, subvocally
ANGELS UNAWARES
HEBREWS 13:2
I still have it, the odd, flower-shaped piece of metal, showing the flow marks on top and the pocking of sand and gravel on its bottom. It fits my palm comfortably with my fingers clasped around it, and has fitted it so often that the edges are smooth and burnished now, smooth against the fine white line of the scar where the sharp, shining, still-hot edge gashed me when I snatched it up, unbelievingly, from where it had dripped, molten, from the sloping wall to the sandy floor of the canyon beyond Margin. It is a Remembrance thing and, as I handled it just now, looking unseeingly out across the multiple roofs of Margin Today, it recalled to me vividly Margin Yesterday-and even before Margin.
We had been on the road only an hour when we came upon the scene. For fifteen minutes or so before, however, there had been an odd smell on the wind, one that crinkled my nose and made old Nig snort and toss his head, shaking the harness and disturbing Prince, who lifted his patient head, looked around briefly, then returned to the task.
We were the task, Nils and I and our wagonload of personal belongings, trailing behind us Molly, our young Jersey cow. We were on our way to Margin to establish a home. Nils was to start his shining new mining engineering career, beginning as superintendent of the mine that had given birth to Margin. This was to be a first step only, of course, leading to more accomplished, more rewarding positions culminating in all the vague, bright, but most wonderful of futures that could blossom from this rather unprepossessing present seed. We were as yet three days' journey from Margin when we rounded the sharp twist of the trail, our iron tires grating in the sand of the wash, and discovered the flat.
Nils pulled the horses up to a stop. A little below us and near the protective bulge of the gray granite hillside were the ruins of a house and the crumpled remains of sheds at one end of a staggering corral. A plume of smoke lifted finger-straight in the early morning air. There was not a sign of life anywhere.
Nils flapped the reins and clucked to the horses. We crossed the flat, lurching a little when the left wheels dipped down into one of the cuts that, after scoring the flat disappeared into the creek.
"Must have burned down last night," said Nils, securing the reins and jumping down. He lifted his arms to help me from the high seat and held me in a tight, brief hug as he always does. Then he released me and we walked over to the crumple of the corral.
"All the sheds went," he said, "and. apparently the animals, too." He twisted his face at the smell that rose from the smoldering mass.
"They surely would have saved the animals," I said, frowning. "They wouldn't have left them locked in a burning shed."
"If they were here when the fire hit," said Nils.
I looked over at the house. "Not much of a house. It doesn't look lived in at all. Maybe this is an abandoned homestead. In that case, though, what about the animals?"
Nils said nothing. He had picked up a length of stick and was prodding in the ashes.
"I'm going to look at the house," I said, glad of an excuse to turn away from the heavy odor of charred flesh.
The house was falling in on itself. The door wouldn't open and the drunken windows spilled a few shards of splintered glass out onto the sagging front perch. I went around to the back. It had been built so close to the rock that there was only a narrow roofed-over passage between the rock and the house. The back door sagged on one hinge and I could see the splintered floor behind. It must have been quite a nice place at one time-glass in the windows-a board floor-when most of us in the Territory made do with a hard trampled dirt floor and butter muslin in the windows.
I edged through the door and cautiously picked my way across the creaking, groaning floor. I looked up to see if there was a loft of any kind and felt my whole body throb one huge throb of terror and surprise! Up against the sharp splintering of daylight through a shattered roof, was a face-looking down at me! It was a wild, smudged, dirty face, surrounded by a frizz of dark hair that tangled and wisped across the filthy cheeks. It stared down at me from up among the tatters of what had been a muslin ceiling, then the mouth opened soundlessly, and the eyes rolled and went shut. I lunged forward, almost instinctively, and caught the falling body full in my arms, crumpling under it to the floor. Beneath me the splintered planks gave way and sagged down into the shallow air space under the floor.
I screamed, "Nils!" and heard an answering, "Gail!" and the pounding of his running feet.
We carried the creature outside the ruined house and laid it on the scanty six-weeks grass that followed over the sand like a small green river the folds in the earth that held moisture the longest. We straightened the crumpled arms and legs and it was a creature no longer but a girl-child. I tried to pull down the tattered skirt to cover more seemly, but the bottom edge gave way without tearing and I had the soft smudge of burned fabric and soot between my fingers. I lifted the head to smooth the sand under it and stopped, my attention caught.
"Look, Nils the hair. Half of it's burned away. This poor child must have been in the fire. She must have tried to free the animals-"
"It's not animals," said Nils, his voice tight and angered.
"They're people."
"People!" I gasped. "Oh, no!"
"At least four," nodded Nils.
"Oh, how awful!" I said, smoothing the stub of hair away from the quiet face. "The fire must have struck in the night."
"They were tied," said Nils shortly. "Hand and foot."
"Tied? But, Nils-"
"Tied. Deliberately burned-"
"Indians!" I gasped, scrambling to my feet through the confusion of my skirts. "Oh, Nils!"
"There have been no Indian raids in the Territory for almost five years. And the last one was on the other side of the Territory. They told me at Margin that there had never been any raids around here. There are no Indians in this area."
"Then who-what-" I dropped down beside the still figure. "Oh, Nils," I whispered. "What kind of a country have we come to?" "No matter what kind it is," said Nils, "we have a problem here. Is the child dead?"
"No." My hand on the thin chest felt the slight rise and fall of breathing. Quickly I flexed arms and legs and probed lightly. "I can't find any big hurt. But so dirty and ragged!"
We found the spring under a granite overhang halfway between the house and the corral. Nils rummaged among our things in the wagon and found me the hand basin, some rags, and soap. We lighted a small fire and heated water in a battered bucket Nils dredged out of the sand below the spring. While the water was heating, I stripped away the ragged clothing. The child had on some sort of a one-piece undergarment that fitted as closely as her skin and as flexible. It covered her from shoulder to upper thigh and the rounding of her body under it made me revise my estimate of her age upward a little. The garment was undamaged by the fire but I couldn't find any way to unfasten it to remove it so I finally left it and wrapped the still unconscious girl in a quilt. Then carefully I bathed her, except for her hair, wiping the undergarment, which came clean and bright without any effort at all. I put her into one of my nightgowns, which came close enough to fitting her since I am of no great size myself.
"What shall I do about her hair?" I asked Nils, looking at the snarled,
singed tousle of it. "Half of it is burned off clear up to her ear."
"Cut the rest of it to match," said Nils. "Is she burned anywhere?"
"No," I replied, puzzled. "Not a sign of a burn, and yet her clothing was almost burned away and her hair-" I felt a shiver across my shoulders and looked around the flat apprehensively, though nothing could be more flatly commonplace than the scene. Except-except for the occasional sullen wisp of smoke from the shed ruins.
"Here are the scissors." Nils brought them from the wagon. Reluctantly, because of the heavy flow of the tresses across my wrist, I cut away the long dark hair until both sides of her head matched, more or less. Then, scooping out the sand to lower the basin beneath her head, I wet and lathered and rinsed until the water came clear, then carefully dried the hair, which, released from length and dirt, sprang into profuse curls all over her head.
"What a shame to have cut it," I said to Nils, holding the damp head in the curve of my elbow. "How lovely it must have been." Then I nearly dropped my burden. The eyes were open and looking at me blankly. I managed a smile and said, "Hello! Nils, hand me a cup of water."
At first she looked at the water as though at a cup of poison, then, with a shuddering little sigh, drank it down in large hasty gulps.
"That's better now, isn't it?" I said, hugging her a little. There was no answering word or smile, but only a slow tightening of the muscles under my hands until, still in my arms, the girl had withdrawn from me completely. I ran my hand over her curls. "I'm sorry we had to cut it, but it was-" I bit back my words. I felt muscles lifting, so I helped the girl sit up. She looked around in a daze and then her eyes were caught by a sullen up-puff of smoke. Seeing what she was seeing, I swung my shoulder between her and the ashes of the shed. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her fingers bit into my arm as she dragged herself to see past me.
"Let her look," Nils said. "She knows what happened. Let her see the end of it. Otherwise she'll wonder all her life." He took her from me and carried her over to the corral. I couldn't go. I busied myself with emptying the basin and burying the charred clothing. I spread the quilt out to receive the child when they returned.
Nils finally brought her back and put her down on the quilt. She lay, eyes shut, as still as if breath had left her, too. Then two tears worked themselves out of her closed lids, coursed down the sides of her checks, and lost themselves in the tumble of curls around her ears. Nils took the shovel and grimly tackled the task of burying the bodies.
I built up the fire again and began to fix dinner. The day was spending itself rapidly but, late or not, when Nils finished, we would leave. Eating a large meal now, we could piece for supper and travel, if necessary, into the hours of darkness until this place was left far behind.
Nils finally came back, pausing at the spring to snort and blow through double handful after double handful of water. I met him with a towel.
"Dinner's ready," I said. "We can leave as soon as we're finished."
"Look what I found." He handed me a smudged tatter of paper. "It was nailed to the door of the shed. The door didn't burn."
I held the paper gingerly and puzzled over it. The writing was almost illegible-Ex. 22:18.
"What is it?" I asked. "It doesn't say anything." "Quotation," said Nile. "That's a quotation from the Bible."
"Oh," I said. "Yes. Let's see. Exodus, Chapter 22, verse 18. Do you know it?"
"I'm not sure, but I have an idea. Can you get at the Bible? I'll verify it."
"It's packed in one of my boxes at the bottom of the load.. Shall we-"
"Not now," said Nils. "Tonight when we make camp."
"What do you think it is?" I asked.
"I'd rather wait," said Nils. "I hope I'm wrong."
We ate. I tried to rouse the girl, but she turned away from me. I put half a slice of bread in her hand and closed her fingers over it and tucked it close
to her mouth. Halfway through our silent meal, a movement caught my eye. The girl had turned to hunch herself over her two hands that now clasped the bread, tremblingly. She was chewing cautiously. She swallowed with an effort and stuffed her mouth again with bread, tears streaking down her face. She ate as one starved, and, when she had finished the bread, I brought her a cup of milk. I lifted her shoulders and held her as she drank. I took the empty cup and lowered her head to the quilt. For a moment my hand was caught under her head and I felt a brief deliberate pressure of her cheek against my wrist. Then she turned away.
Before we left the flat, we prayed over the single mound Nils had raised over the multiple grave. We had brought the girl over with us and she lay quietly, watching us. When we turned from our prayers, she held out in a shaking hand a white flower, so white that it almost seemed to cast a light across her face. I took it from her and put it gently on the mound. Then Nils lifted her and carried her to the wagon. I stayed a moment, not wanting to leave the grave lonely so soon. I shifted the white flower. In the sunlight its petals seemed to glow with an inner light, the golden center almost fluid. I wondered what kind of flower it could be. I lifted it and saw that it was just a daisy-looking flower after all, withering already in the heat of the day. I put it down again, gave a last pat to the mound, a last tag of prayer, and went back to the wagon.
By the time we made camp that night we were too exhausted from the forced miles and the heat and the events of the day to do anything but care for the animals and fall onto our pallets spread on the ground near the wagon. We had not made the next water hole because of the delay, but we carried enough water to tide us over. I was too tired to eat, but I roused enough to feed Nils on leftovers from dinner and to strain Molly's milk into the milk crock. I gave the girl a cup of the fresh, warm milk and some more bread. She downed them both with a contained eagerness as though still starved. Looking at her slender shaking wrists and the dark hollows of her face, I wondered how long she had been so hungry.
We all slept heavily under the star-clustered sky, hut I was awakened somewhere in the shivery coolness of the night and reached to be sure the girl was covered. She was sitting up on the pallet, legs crossed tailor-fashion, looking up at the sky. I could see the turning of her head as she scanned the whole sky, back and forth, around and around, from zenith to horizon. Then she straightened slowly back down onto the quilt with an audible sigh.
I looked at the sky, too. It was spectacular with the stars of a moonless night here in the region of mountains and plains, but what had she been looking for? Perhaps she had just been enjoying being alive and able, still, to see the stars.
We started on again, very early, and made the next watering place while the shadows were still long with dawn.
"The wagons were here," said Nils, "night before last, I guess."
"What wagons?" I asked, pausing in my dipping of water.
"We've been in their tracks ever since the flat back there," said Nils. "Two light wagons and several riders."
"Probably old tracks-" I started. "Oh, but you said they were here night before last. Do you suppose they had anything to do with the fire back there?"
"No signs of them before we got to the flat," said Nils.
"Two recent campfires here-as if they stayed the night here and made a special trip to the flat and back here again for the next night."
"A special trip." I shivered. "Surely you can't think that civilized people in this nineteenth century could be so violent-so-so-I mean people just don't-" My words died before the awful image in my mind.
"Don't tie up other people and burn them?" Nils started shifting the water keg back toward the wagon. "Gail, our next camp is supposed to be at Grafton's Vow. I think we'd better take time to dig out the Bible before we go on."
So we did. And we looked at each other over Nils's pointing finger and the flattened paper he had taken from the shed door.
"Oh, surely not!" I cried horrified. "It can't be! Not in this day and age!"
"It can be," said Nils. "In any age when people pervert goodness, love, and obedience and set up a god small enough to fit their shrunken souls." And his finger traced again the brief lines: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
"Why did you want to check that quotation before we got to Grafton's Vow?" I asked.
"Because it's that kind of place," said Nils. "They warned me at the county seat. In fact, some thought it might be wise to take the other trail-a day longer-one dry camp-but avoid Grafton's Vow. There have been tales of stonings and-"
"What kind of place is it, anyway?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," said Nils. "I've heard some very odd stories about it though. It was founded about twenty years ago by Arnold Grafton. He brought his little flock of followers out here to establish the new Jerusalem. They're very strict and narrow. Don't argue with them and no levity or lewdness. No breaking of God's laws of which they say they have all. When they ran out of Biblical ones, they received a lot more from Grafton to fill in where God forgot."
"But," I was troubled, "aren't they Christians?"
"They say so." I helped Nils lift the keg. "Except they believe they have to conform to all the Old Testament laws, supplemented by all those that Grafton has dictated. Then, if they obey enough of them well enough after a lifetime of struggle, Christ welcomes them into a heaven of no laws. Every law they succeed in keeping on earth, they will be exempted from keeping for all of eternity. So the stricter observance here, the greater freedom there. Imagine what their heaven must be-teetotaler here-rigidly chaste here-never kill here-never steal here-just save up for the promised Grand Release!"
"And Mr. Grafton had enough followers of that doctrine to found a town?" I asked, a little stunned.
"A whole town," said Nits, "into which we will not be admitted. There is a campground outside the place where we will be tolerated for the night if they decide we won't contaminate the area."
At noon we stopped just after topping out at Millman's Pass. The horses, lathered and breathing heavily, and poor dragged-along Molly, drooped grateful heads in the shadows of the aspen and pines.
I busied myself with the chuck box and was startled to see the girl sliding out of the wagon where we had bedded her down for the trip. She clung to the side of the wagon and winced as her feet landed on the gravelly hillside. She looked very young and slender and lost in the fullness of my nightgown, but her eyes weren't quite so sunken and her mouth was tinged with color.
I smiled at her. "That gown is sort of long for mountain climbing. Tonight I'll try to get to my other clothes and see if I can find something, I think my old blue skirt-" I stopped because she very obviously wasn't understanding a word I was saying. I took a fold of the gown she wore and said, "Gown."
She looked down at the crumpled white muslin and then at me but said nothing.
I put a piece of bread into her hands and said, "Bread." She put the bread down carefully on the plate where I had stacked the other slices for dinner and said nothing. Then she glanced around, looked at me and, turning, walked briskly into the thick underbrush, her elbows high to hold the extra length of gown up above her bare feet.
"Nils!" I called in sudden panic. "She's leaving!"
Nils laughed at me across the tarp he was spreading.
"Even the best of us," he said, "have to duck into the bushes once in a while!"
"Oh, Nils!" I protested and felt my face redden as I carried the bread plate to the tarp. "Anyway, she shouldn't be running around in a nightgown like that. What would Mr. Grafton say! And have you noticed? She hasn't made a sound since we found her." I brought the eating things to the tarp.
"Not one word. Not one sound."
"Hmm," said Nils, "you're right. Maybe she's a deaf-mute."
"She hears," I said, "I'm sure she hears,"
"Maybe she doesn't speak English," he suggested. "Her hair is dark. Maybe she's Mexican. Or even Italian. We get all kinds out here on the frontier. No telling where she might be from."
"But you'd think she'd make some sound. Or try to say something," I insisted.
"Might be the shock," said Nils soberly. "That was an awful thing to live through."
"That's probably it, poor child." I looked over to where she had disappeared. "An awful thing. Let's call her Marnie, Nils," I suggested. "We need some sort of name to call her by." Nils laughed. "Would having the name close to you reconcile you a little to being separated from your little sister?"
I smiled back. "It does sound homey-Marnie, Marnie."
As if I had called her, the girl, Marnie, came back from the bushes, the long gown not quite trailing the slope, completely covering her bare feet. Both her hands were occupied with the long stem of red bells she was examining closely. How graceful she is, I thought, How smoothly-Then my breath went out and I clutched the plate I held. That gown was a good foot too long for Marnie! She couldn't possibly be walking with it not quite trailing the ground without holding it up! And where was the pausing that came between steps? I hissed at Nils. "Look!" I whispered hoarsely, "she's-she's floating! She's not even touching the ground!"
Just at that moment Marnie looked up and saw us and read our faces. Her face crumpled into terror and she dropped down to the ground. Not only down to her feet, but on down into a huddle on the ground with the spray of flowers crushed under her.
I ran to her and tried to lift her, but she suddenly convulsed into a mad struggle to escape me. Nils came to help. We fought to hold the child who was so violent that I was afraid she'd hurt herself.
"She's-she's afraid!" I gasped. "Maybe she thinks-we'll-kill her!"
"Here!" Nils finally caught a last flailing arm and pinioned it. "Talk to her! Do something! I can't hold her much longer!"
"Marnie, Marnie!" I smoothed the tangled curls back from her blank, tense face, trying to catch her attention.
"Marnie, don't be afraid!" I tried a smile. "Relax, honey, don't be scared." I wiped her sweat-and tear-streaked face with the corner of my apron. "There, there, it doesn't matter-we won't hurt you-" I murmured on and on, wondering if she was taking in any of it, but finally the tightness began to go out of her body and at last she drooped, exhausted, in Nils's arms. I gathered her to me and comforted her against my shoulder.
"Get her a cup of milk," I said to Nils, "and bring me one, too." My smile wavered. "This is hard work!"
In the struggle I had almost forgotten what had started it, but it came back to me as I led Marnie to the spring and demonstrated that she should wash her face and hands. She did so, following my example, and dried herself on the flour-sack towel I handed her. Then, when I started to turn away, she sat down on a rock by the flowing water, lifted the sadly bedraggled gown, and slipped her feet into the stream. When she lifted each to dry it, I saw the reddened, bruised soles and said, "No wonder you didn't want to walk. Wait a minute." I went back to the wagon and got my old slippers, and, as an afterthought, several pins. Marnie was still sitting by the stream, leaning over the water, letting it flow between her fingers. She put on the slippers-woefully large for her, and stood watching with interest as I turned up the bottom of the gown and pinned it at intervals.
"Now," I said, "now at least you can walk. But this gown will be ruined if we don't get you into some other clothes."
We ate dinner and Marnie ate some of everything we did, after a cautious tasting and a waiting to see how we handled it. She helped me gather up and put away the leftovers and clear the tarp. She even helped with the dishes-all with an absorbed interest as if learning a whole new set of skills.
As our wagon rolled on down the road, Nils and I talked quietly, not to disturb Marnie as she slept in the back of the wagon.
"She's an odd child," I said. "Nils, do you think she really was floating? How could she have? It's impossible."
"Well, it looked as if she was floating," he said. "And she acted as if she had done something wrong-something-" Nils's words stopped and he frowned intently as he flicked at a roadside branch with the whip "-something we would hurt her for. Gail, maybe that's why-I mean, we found that witch quotation. Maybe those other people were like Marnie. Maybe someone thought they were witches and burned them-"
"But witches are evil!" I cried. "What's evil about floating-"
"Anything is evil," said Nils. "It lies on the other side of the line you draw around what you will accept as good. Some people's lines are awfully narrow."
"But that's murder!" I said, "to kill-"
"Murder or execution-again, a matter of interpretation," said Nils. "We call it murder, but it could never be proved-"
"Marnie," I suggested. "She saw-"
"Can't talk-or won't," said Nils.
I hated the shallow valley of Grafton's Vow at first glance. For me it was shadowed from one side to the other in spite of the down-flooding sun that made us so grateful for the shade of the overhanging branches. The road was running between rail fences now as we approached the town. Even the horses seemed jumpy and uneasy as we rattled along.
"Look," I said, "there's a notice or something on that fence post."
Nils pulled up alongside the post and I leaned over to read: "'Ex. 20:16' That's all it says!"
"Another reference," said Nils. "'Thou shalt not bear false witness.' This must be a habit with them, putting up memorials on the spot where a law is broken."
"I wonder what happened here." I shivered as we went on.
We were met at a gate by a man with a shotgun in his hands who said, "God have mercy," and directed us to the campgrounds safely separated from town by a palisade kind of log wall. There we were questioned severely by an anxious-faced man, also clutching a shotgun, who peered up at the sky at intervals as though expecting the wrath of heaven at any moment.
"Only one wagon?" he asked,
"Yes," said Nils. "My wife and I and-"
"You have your marriage lines?" came the sharp question.
"Yes," said Nils patiently, "they're packed in the trunk."
"And your Bible is probably packed away, too!" the man accused.
"No," said Nils, "here it is." He took it from under the seat. The man sniffed and shifted.
"Who's that?" He nodded at the back of Marnie's dark head where she lay silently, sleeping or not, I don't now.
"My niece," Nils said steadily, and I clamped my mouth shut. "She's sick."
"Sick!"' The man backed away from the wagon. "What sin did she commit?"
"Nothing catching," said Nils shortly.
"Which way you come?" asked the man.
"Through Millman's Pass," Nils answered, his eyes unwavering on the anxious questioning face. The man paled and clutched his gun tighter, the skin of his face seeming to stretch down tight and then flush loose and sweaty again.
"What-" he began, then he licked dry lips and tried again. "Did you-was there-"
"Was there what?" asked Nils shortly. "Did we what?"
"Nothing," stammered the man, backing away. "Nothing.
"Gotta see her," he said, coming reluctantly back to the wagon. "Too easy to bear false witness-" Roughly he grabbed the quilt and pulled it back, rolling Marnie's head toward him I thought he was going to collapse. "That's-that's
the one!" he whimpered hoarsely. "How did she get-Where did you-" Then his lips clamped shut. "If you say it's your niece, it's your niece.
"You can stay the night," he said with an effort. "Spring just outside the wall. Otherwise keep to the compound. Remember your prayers. Comport yourself in the fear of God." Then he scuttled away.
"Niece!" I breathed. "Oh, Nils! Shall I write out an Ex. 20:16 for you to nail on the wagon?"
"She'll have to be someone," said Nils. "When we get to Margin, we'll have to explain her somehow. She's named for your sister, so she's our niece. Simple, isn't it?"
"Sounds so," I said. "But, Nils who is she? How did that man know-? If those were her people that died back there, where are their wagons? Their belongings? People don't just drop out of the sky-"
"Maybe these Graftonites took the people there to execute them," he suggested, "and confiscated their goods."
"Be more characteristic if they burned the people in the town square," I said shivering. "And their wagons, too."
We made camp. Marnie followed me to the spring. I glanced around, embarrassed for her in the nightgown, but no one else was around and darkness was failing. We went through the wall by a little gate and were able for the first time to see the houses of the village. They were very ordinary looking except for the pale flutter of papers posted profusely on everything a nail could hold to. How could they think of anything but sinning, with all these ghosty reminders?
While we were dipping the water, a small girl, enveloped in gray calico from slender neck to thin wrists and down to clumsy shoes, came pattering down to the spring, eyeing us as though she expected us to leap upon her with a roar.
"Hello," I said and smiled.
"God have mercy," she answered in a breathless whisper.
"Are you right with God?"
"I trust so," I answered, not knowing if the question required an answer.
"She's wearing white," said the child, nodding at Marnie.
"Is she dying?"
"No," I said, "but she's been ill. That is her nightgown."
"Oh!" The child's eyes widened and her hand covered her mouth. "How wicked! To use such a bad word! To be in her-her-to be like that outside the house! In the daytime!" She plopped her heavy bucket into the spring and, dragging it out, staggered away from us, slopping water as she went. She was met halfway up the slope by a grim-faced woman, who set the pail aside, switched the weeping child unmercifully with a heavy willow switch, took a paper from her pocket, impaled it on a nail on a tree, seized the child with one hand and the bucket with the other, and plodded back to town.
I looked at the paper. Ex. 20:12. "Well!" I let out an astonished breath. "And she had it already written!" Then I went back to Marnie. Her eyes were big and empty again, the planes of her face sharply sunken.
"Marnie," I said, touching her shoulder. There was no response, no consciousness of me as I led her back to the wagon.
Nils retrieved the bucket of water and we ate a slender, unhappy supper by the glow of our campfire. Marnie ate nothing and sat in a motionless daze until we put her to bed.
"Maybe she's subject to seizures," I suggested.
"It was more likely watching the child being beaten," said Nils. "What had she done?"
"Nothing except to talk to us and be shocked that Marnie should be in her nightgown in public."
"What was the paper the mother posted?" asked Nils.
"Exodus, 20:12," I said. "The child must have disobeyed her mother by carrying on a conversation with us."
After a fitful, restless night the first thin light of dawn looked wonderful and we broke camp almost before we had shadows separate from the night. Just before we rode away, Nils wrote large and blackly on a piece of paper and
fastened it to the wall near our wagon with loud accusing hammer blows. As we drove away, I asked, "What does it say?"
"Exodus, Chapter 22, verses 21 through 24," he said. "If they want wrath, let it fall on them!"
I was too unhappy and worn out to pursue the matter. I only knew it must be another Shalt Not and was thankful that I had been led by my parents through the Rejoice and Love passages instead of into the darkness.
Half an hour later, we heard the clatter of hooves behind us and, looking back, saw someone riding toward us, waving an arm urgently. Nils pulled up and laid his hand on his rifle. We waited.
It was the anxious man who had directed us to the campsite. He had Nils's paper clutched in his hand. At first he couldn't get his words out, then he said, "Drive on! Don't stop! They might be coming after me!" He gulped and wiped his nervous forehead, Nils slapped the reins and we moved off down the road. "Y-you left this-" He jerked the paper toward us. "'Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him-'" the words came in gasps. "'Ye shalt not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any wise, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath shall wax hot-'" He sagged in the saddle, struggling for breath. "This is exactly what I told them," he said finally. "I showed it to them-the very next verses-but they couldn't see past 22:18. They-they went anyway. That Archibold told them about the people. He said they did things only witches could do. I had to go along. Oh, God have mercy! And help them tie them and watch them set the shed afire!"
"Who were they?" asked Nils.
"I don't know." The man sucked air noisily. "Archibold said he saw them flying up in the trees and laughing. He said they floated rocks around and started to build a house with them. He said they-they walked on the water and didn't fall in. He said one of them held a piece of wood up in the air and it caught on fire and other wood came and made a pile on the ground and that piece went down and lighted the rest." The man wiped his face again. "They must have been witches! Or else how could they do such things! We caught them. They were sleeping. They fluttered up like birds. I caught that little girl you've got there, only her hair was long then. We tied them up. I didn't want to!" Tears jerked out of his eyes. "I didn't put any knots in my rope and after the roof caved in, the little girl flew out all on fire and hid in the dark! I didn't know the Graftonites were like that! I only came last year. They-they tell you exactly what to do to be saved. You don't have to think or worry or wonder-" He rubbed his coat sleeve across his face. "Now all my life I'll see the shed burning. What about the others?"
"We buried them," I said shortly. "The charred remains of them."
"God have mercy!" he whispered.
"Where did the people come from?" asked Nils. "Where are their wagons?"
"There weren't any," said the man. "Archibold says they came in a flash of lightning and a thunderclap out of a clear sky-not a cloud anywhere. He waited, and watched them three days before he came and told us. Wouldn't you think they were witches?" He wiped his face again and glanced hack down the road. "They might follow me. Don't tell them. Don't say I told." He gathered up the reins, his face drawn and anxious, and spurred his horse into a gallop, cutting away from the road, across the flat. But before the hurried hoofbeats were muffled by distance, he whirled around and galloped back.
"But!" he gasped, back by our wagon side. "She must be a witch! She should be dead. You are compromising with evil-"
"Shall I drag her out so you can finish burning her here and now?" snapped Nils. "So you can watch her sizzle in her sin!"
"Don't!" The man doubled across the saddle horn in an agony of indecision. " 'No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom.' What they're right? What if the Devil is tempting me? Lead me not into temptation! Maybe it's not too late! Maybe if I confess!" And he tore back down the road toward Grafton's Vow faster than he had come.
"Well!" I drew a deep breath. "What Scripture would you quote for that?"
"I'm wondering," said Nils. "This Archibold. I wonder if he was in his right mind-"
"'They fluttered up like birds,'" I reminded him, "and Marnie was floating."
"But floating rocks and making fire and coming in a flash of lightning out of a clear sky!" Nils protested.
"Maybe it was some kind of a balloon," I suggested.
"Maybe it exploded. Maybe Marnie doesn't speak English. If the balloon sailed a long way-"
"It couldn't sail too far," said Nils. "The gas cools and it would come down. But how else could they come through the air?"
I felt a movement behind me and turned. Marnie was sitting up on the pallet. But what a different Marnie! It was as though her ears had been unstopped or a window had opened into her mind. There was an eager listening look on her tilted face. There was light in her eyes and the possibility of smiles around her mouth. She looked at me. "Through the air!" she said.
"Nils!" I cried. "Did you hear that! How did you come through the air, Marnie?"
She smiled apologetically and fingered the collar of the garment she wore and said, "Gown."
"Yes, gown," I said, settling for a word when I wanted a volume. Then I thought, Can I reach the bread box? Marnie's bright eyes left my face and she rummaged among the boxes and bundles. With a pleased little sound, she came up with a piece of bread. "Bread," she said, "bread!" And it floated through the air into my astonished hands.
"Well!" said Nils. "Communication has begun!" Then he sobered. "And we have a child, apparently. From what that man said, there is no one left to be responsible for her. She seems to be ours."
When we stopped at noon for dinner, we were tired. More from endless speculation than from the journey. There had been no signs of pursuit and Marnie had subsided onto the pallet again, eyes closed.
We camped by a small creek and I had Nils get my trunk out before he cared for the animals. I opened the trunk with Marnie close beside me, watching my every move. I had packed an old skirt and shirtwaist on the top till so they would be ready for house cleaning and settling-in when we arrived at Margin. I held the skirt up to Marnie. It was too big and too long, but it would do with the help of a few strategic pins and by fastening the skirt up almost under her arms. Immediately, to my surprise and discomfort, Marnie skinned the nightgown off over her head in one motion and stood arrow-slim and straight, dressed only in that undergarment of hers. I glanced around quickly to see where Nils was and urged the skirt and blouse on Marnie. She glanced around too, puzzled, and slipped the clothing on, holding the skirt up on both sides. I showed her the buttons and hooks and eyes and, between the two of us and four pins, we got her put together.
When Nils came to the dinner tarp, he was confronted by Marnie, all dressed, even to my clumping slippers.
"Well!" he said, "a fine young lady we have! It's too bad we had to cut her hair."
"We can pretend she's just recovering from typhoid," I said, smiling. But the light had gone out of Marnie's face as if she knew what we were saying. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped curls, her eyes on my heavy braids I let swing free, Indian-fashion, traveling as we were, alone and unobserved.
"Don't you mind," I said, hugging her in one arm. "It'll grow again."
She lifted one of my braids and looked at me. "Hair," I said.
"Hair," she said and stretched out a curl from her own head. "Curl."
What a wonderful feeling it was to top out on the flat above Margin and to know we were almost home. Home! As I wound my braids around my head in a more seemly fashion, I looked back at the boxes and bundles in the wagon. With these and very little else we must make a home out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, with Nils, it would suffice.
The sound of our wheels down the grade into town brought out eager, curious
people from the scattering of houses and scanty town buildings that made up Margin. Margin clung to the side of a hill-that is, it was in the rounded embrace of the hill on three sides. On the other side, hundreds and hundreds of miles of territory lost themselves finally in the remote blueness of distance. It was a place where you could breathe free and unhampered and yet still feel the protectiveness of the everlasting hills. We were escorted happily to our house at the other end of town by a growing crowd of people. Marnie had fallen silent and withdrawn again, her eyes wide and wondering, her hand clutching the edge of the seat with white-knuckled intensity as she tried to lose herself between Nils and me.
Well, the first few days in a new place are always uncomfortable and confused. All the settling-in and the worry about whether Marnie would go floating off like a balloon or send something floating through the air as she had the bread combined to wear me to a frazzle. Fortunately Marnie was very shy of anyone but us, so painfully so that as soon as the gown was washed and clean again and we borrowed a cot, I put Marnie into both of them, and she lay in a sort of doze all day long, gone to some far place I couldn't even guess at.
Of course we had to explain her. There had been no mention of her when we arranged to come, and she had no clothes and I didn't have enough to cover both of us decently. So I listened to myself spin the most outrageous stories to Mrs. Wardlow. Her husband was the schoolmaster-lay-preacher and every other function of a learned man in a frontier settlement. She was the unofficial news spreader and guardian of public morals.
"Marnie is our niece," I said. "She's my younger sister's girl. She is just recovering from typhoid and-and brain fever."
"Oh, my!" said Mrs. Wardlow. "Both at once?"
"No," I said, warming to my task. "She was weakened by the typhoid and went into a brain fever. She lost her hair from all the fever. We thought we were going to lose her, too." It didn't take play acting to shiver, as, unbidden into my mind, came the vision of the smoke pluming slowly up-"My sister sent her with us, hoping that the climate out here will keep Marnie from developing a consumption. She hopes, too, that I can help the child learn to talk again."
"I've heard of people having to learn to walk again after typhoid, but not to talk-"
"The technical name for the affliction is aphasia," I said glibly. "Remember the brain fever. She had just begun to make some progress in talking, but the trip has set her back."
"She-she isn't-unbalanced, is she?" whispered Mrs. Wardlow piercingly.
"Of course not!" I said indignantly. "And, please! She can hear perfectly."
"Oh," said Mrs. Wardlow, reddening, "of course. I didn't mean to offend. When she is recovered enough, Mr. Wardlow would be pleased to set her lessons for her until she can come to school."
"Thank you," I said, "that would be very kind of him." Then I changed the subject by introducing tea.
After she left, I sat down by Marnie, whose eyes brightened for my solitary presence.
"Marnie," I said, "I don't know how much you understand of what I say, but you are my niece. You must call me Aunt Gail and Nils, Uncle Nils. You have been sick. You are having to learn to speak all over again." Her eyes had been watching me attentively, but not one flick of understanding answered me. I sighed heavily and turned away. Marnie's hand caught my arm. She held me, as she lay, eyes closed. Finally I made a movement as if to free myself, and she opened her eyes and smiled.
"Aunt Gail, I have been sick. My hair is gone. I want bread!" she recited carefully.
"Oh, Marnie!" I cried, hugging her to me in delight. "Bless you! You are learning to talk!'" I hugged my face into the top of her curls, then I let her go. "As to bread, I mixed a batch this morning. It'll be in the oven as soon as it rises again. There's nothing like the smell of baking bread to make a
place seem like home."
As soon as Marnie was strong enough, I began teaching her the necessary household skills and found it most disconcerting to see her holding a broom gingerly, not knowing, literally, which end to use, or what to do with it. Anybody knows what a needle and thread are for! But Marnie looked upon them as if they were baffling wonders from another world. She watched the needle swing back and forth sliding down the thread until it fell to the floor because she didn't know enough to put a knot in the end.
She learned to talk, but very slowly at first. She had to struggle and wait for words. I asked her about it one day. Her slow answer came. "I don't know your language," she said. "I have to change the words to my language to see what they say, then change them again to be in your language." She sighed. "It's so slow! But soon I will be able to take words from your mind and not have to change them."
I blinked, not quite sure I wanted anything taken from my mind by anyone!
The people of Margin had sort of adopted Marnie and were very pleased with her progress. Even the young ones learned to wait for her slow responses. She found it more comfortable to play with the younger children because they didn't require such a high performance in the matter of words, and because their play was with fundamental things of the house and the community, translated into the simplest forms and acted out in endless repetition.
I found out, to my discomfort, a little of how Marnie was able to get along so well with the small ones-the day Merwin Wardlow came roaring to me in seven-year-old indignation.
"Marnie and that old sister of mine won't let me play!" he tattled wrathfully.
"Oh, I'm sure they will, if you play nicely," I said, shifting my crochet hook as I hurried with the edging of Marnie's new petticoat.
"They won't neither!" And he prepared to bellow again. His bellow rivaled the six o'clock closing whistle at the mine, so I sighed, and laying my work down, took him out to the children's play place under the aspens.
Marnie was playing with five-year-old Tessie Wardlow. They were engrossed in building a playhouse. They had already outlined the various rooms with rocks and were now furnishing them with sticks and stones, shingles, old cans and bottles, and remnants of broken dishes. Marnie was arranging flowers in a broken vase she had propped between two rocks. Tessie was busily bringing her flowers and sprays of leaves. And not one single word was being exchanged! Tessie watched Marnie, then trotted off to get another flower. Before she could pick the one she intended, she stopped, her hand actually on the flower, glanced at Marnie's busy back, left that flower and, picking another, trotted happily back with it. "Marnie," I called, and blinked to feel a wisp of something say Yes? inside my mind. Marnie!" I called again. Marnie jumped and turned her face to me. "Yes, Aunt Gail," she said carefully.
"Merwin says you won't let him play."
"Oh, he's telling stories!" cried Tessie indignantly. "He won't do anything Marnie says and she's the boss today."
"She don't tell me nothing to do!" yelled Merwin, betraying in his indignation, his father's careful grammar.
"She does so!" Tessie stamped her foot. "She tells you just as much as she tells me! And you don't do it."
I was saved from having to arbitrate between the warring two by Mrs. Wardlow's calling them in to supper. Relieved, I sank down on the southwest corner of the parlor-a sizable moss-grown rock. Marnie sat down on the ground beside me.
"Marnie," I said. "How did Tessie know what flowers to bring you?"
"I told her," said Marnie, surprised. "They said I was boss today. Merwin just wouldn't play."
"Did you tell him things to do?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," said Marnie. "But he didn't do nothing."
"Did nothing," I corrected.
"Did nothing," she echoed.
"The last flower Tessie brought," I went on. "Did you ask for that special one?"
"Yes," said Marnie. "She started to pick the one with bad petals on one side."
"Marnie," I said patiently, "I was here and I didn't hear a word. Did you talk to Tessie?"
"Oh, yes," said Marnie.
"With words? Out loud?" I pursued.
"I think-" Marnie started, then she sighed and sagged against my knees, tracing a curve in the dirt with her forefinger. "I guess not. It is so much more easy ("Easier," I corrected.) easier to catch her thoughts before they are words. I can tell Tessie without words. But Merwin-I guess he needs words."
"Marnie," I said, taking reluctant steps into the wilderness of my ignorance of what to do with a child who found "no words more easy," "you must always use words. It might seem easier to you-the other way, but you must speak. You see, most people don't understand not using words. When people don't understand, they get frightened. When they are frightened, they get angry. And when they get angry, they-they have to hurt." I sat quietly watching Marnie manipulate my words, frame a reply, and make it into words for her stricken, unhappy lips.
"Then it was because they didn't understand, that they killed us," she said. "They made the fire."
"Yes," I said, "exactly.
"Marnie," I went on, feeling that I was prying, but needing to know. "You have never cried for the people who died in the fire. You were sad, but-weren't they your own people?"
"Yes," said Marnie, after an interval. "My father, my mother, and my brother-" She firmed her lips and swallowed. "And a neighbor of ours. One brother was Called in the skies when our ship broke and my little sister's life-slip didn't come with ours."
And I saw them! Vividly, I saw them all as she named them. The father, I noticed before his living, smiling image faded from my mind, had thick dark curls like Marnie's. The neighbor was a plump little woman.
"But," I blinked, "don't you grieve for them? Aren't you sad because they are dead?"
"I am sad because they aren't with me," said Marnie slowly. "But I do not grieve that the Power Called them back to the Presence. Their bodies were so hurt and broken." She swallowed again. "My days are not finished yet, but no matter how long until I am Called, my people will come to meet me. They will laugh and run to me when I arrive and I-" She leaned against my skirt, averting her face. After a moment she lifted her chin and said, "I am sad to be here without them, but my biggest sorrow is not knowing where my little sister is, or whether Timmy has been Called. We were two-ing, Timmy and I." Her hand closed over the hem of my skirt. "But, praise the Presence, I have you and Uncle Nils, who do not hurt just because you don't understand."
"But where on Earth-" I began.
"Is this called Earth?" Marnie looked about her. "Is Earth the place we came to?"
"The whole world is Earth," I said. "Everything-as far as you can see-as far as you can go. You came to this Territory-"
"Earth-" Marnie was musing. "So this refuge in the sky is called Earth!" She scrambled to her feet. "I'm sorry I troubled you, Aunt Gail," she said. "Here, this is to promise not to be un-Earth-" She snatched up the last flower she had put in the playhouse vase and pushed it into my hands. "I will set the table for supper," she called back to me as she hurried to the house. "This time forks at each place-not in a row down the middle."
I sighed and twirled the flower in my fingers. Then I laughed helplessly. The
flower that had so prosaically grown on, and had been plucked from our hillside, was glowing with a deep radiance, its burning gold center flicking the shadows of the petals across my lingers, and all the petals tinkled softly from the dewdrop-clear bits of light that were finely pendant along the edges of them. Not un-Earth! But when I showed Nils the flower that evening as I retold our day, the flower was just a flower again, limp and withering.
"Either you or Marnie have a wonderful imagination," Nils said.
"Then it's Marnie," I replied. "I would never in a million years think up anything like the things she said. Only, Nils, how can we be sure it isn't true?"
"That what isn't true?" he asked. "What do you think she has told you?"
"Why-why-" I groped, "that she can read minds, Tessie's anyway. And that this is a strange world to her. And-and-"
"If this is the way she wants to make the loss of her family bearable, let her. It's better than hysterics or melancholia. Besides, it's more exciting, isn't it?" Nils laughed.
That reaction wasn't much help in soothing my imagination! But he didn't have to spend his days wrestling hand to hand with Marnie and her ways. He hadn't had to insist that Marnie learn to make the beds by hand instead of floating the covers into place-nor insist that young ladies wear shoes in preference to drifting a few inches above the sharp gravel and beds of stickers in the back yard. And he didn't have to persuade her that, no matter how dark the moonless night, one doesn't cut out paper flowers and set them to blooming like little candies around the comers of the rooms. Nils had been to the county seat that weekend. I don't know where she was from, but this was a New World to her and whatever one she was native to, I had no memory of reading about or of seeing on a globe.
When Marnie started taking classes in Mr. Wardlow's one-room school, she finally began to make friends with the few children her age in Margin. Guessing at her age, she seemed to be somewhere in her teens. Among her friends were Kenny, the son of the mine foreman, and Loolie, the daughter of the boardinghouse cook. The three of them ranged the hills together, and Marnie picked up a large vocabulary from them and became a little wiser in the ways of behaving unexceptionally. She startled them a time or two by doing impossible things, but they reacted with anger and withdrawal which she had to wait out more or less patiently before being accepted back into their companionship. One doesn't forget again very quickly under such circumstances.
During this time, her hair grew and she grew, too, so much so that she finally had to give up the undergarment she had worn when we found her. She sighed as she laid it aside, tucking it into the bottom dresser drawer. "At Home," she said, "there would be a ceremony and a pledging. All of us girls would know that our adult responsibilities were almost upon us-" Somehow, she seemed less different, less, well I suppose, alien, after that day.
It wasn't very long after this that Marnie began to stop suddenly in the middle of a sentence and listen intently, or clatter down the plates she was patterning on the supper table and hurry to the window. I watched her anxiously for a while, wondering if she was sickening for something, then, one night, after I blew out the lamp, I thought I heard something moving in the other room. I went in barefootedly quiet. Marnie was at the window.
"Marnie?" Her shadowy figure turned to me. "What's troubling you?" I stood close beside her and looked out at the moonlight-flooded emptiness of hills around the house.
"Something is out there," she said. "Something scared and bad-frightened and evil-" She took the more adult words from my mind. I was pleased that being conscious of her doing this didn't frighten me any more the way it did the first few times. "It goes around the house and around the house and is afraid to come."
"Perhaps an animal," I suggested.
"Perhaps," she conceded, turning away from the window.
"I don't know your world. An animal who walks upright and sobs, 'God have
mercy!'"
Which incident was startling in itself, but doubly so when Nils said casually next day as he helped himself to mashed potatoes at the dinner table, "Guess who I saw today. They say he's been around a week or so." He flooded his plate with brown meat gravy. "Our friend of the double mind."
"Double mind?" I blinked uncomprehendingly.
"Yes." Nils reached for a slice of bread. "To burn or not to burn, that is the question-"
"Oh!" I felt a quiver up my arms. "You mean the man at Grafton's Vow. What was his name anyway?" "He never said, did he?" Nils's fork paused in mid-air as the thought caught him.
"Derwent," said Marnie shortly, her lips pressing to a narrow line. "Caleb Derwent, God have mercy."
"How do you know?" I asked. "Did he tell you?"
"No," she said, "I took it from him to remember him with gratitude." She pushed away from the table, her eyes widening. "That's it-that's the frightened evil that walks around the house at night! And passes by during the day! But he saved me from the fire! Why does he come now?"
"She's been feeling that something evil is lurking outside," I explained to Nils's questioning look.
"Hmm," he said, "the two minds. Marnie, if ever he-"
"May I go?" Marnie stood up. "I'm sorry. I can't eat when I think of someone repenting of good." And she was gone, the kitchen door clicking behind her.
"And she's right," said Nils, resuming his dinner. "He slithered around a stack of nail kegs at the store and muttered to me about still compromising with evil, harboring a known witch. I sort of pinned him in the corner until he told me he had finally-after all this time-confessed his sin of omission to his superiors at Grafton's Vow and they've excommunicated him until he redeems himself-" Nils stared at me, listening to his own words. "Gail! You don't suppose he has any mad idea about taking her back to Grafton's Vow, do you!"
"Or killing her!" I cried, clattering my chair back from the table. "Marnie!" Then I subsided with an attempt at a smile.
"But she's witch enough to sense his being around," I said.
"He won't be able to take her by surprise."
"Sensing or not," Nils said, eating hastily, "next time I get within reach of this Derwent person, I'm going to persuade him that he'll be healthier elsewhere."
In the days that followed, we got used to seeing half of Derwent's face peering around a building, or a pale slice of his face appearing through bushes or branches, but he seemed to take out his hostility in watching Marnie from a safe distance, and we decided to let things ride-watchfully.
Then one evening Marnie shot through the back door and, shutting it, leaned against it, panting.
"Marnie," I chided. "I didn't hear your steps on the porch. You must remember-"
"I-I'm sorry, Aunt Gail," she said, "but I had to hurry. Aunt Gail, I have a trouble!" She was actually shaking. "What have you done now to upset Kenny and Loolie?" I asked, smiling.
"Not-not that," she said. "Oh, Aunt Gail! He's down in the shaft and I can't get him up. I know the inanimate lift, but he's not inanimate-"
"Marnie, sit down," I said, sobering. "Calm down and tell me what's wrong."
She sat, if that tense tentative conforming to a chair could be called sitting.
"I was out at East Shaft," she said. "My people are Identifiers, some of them are, anyway-my family is especially-I mean-" She gulped and let loose all over. I could almost see the tension drain out of her, but it came flooding back as soon as she started talking again. "Identifiers can locate metals and minerals. I felt a pretty piece of chrysocolla down in the shaft and I wanted to get it for you for your collection. I climbed through the fence-oh, I know
I shouldn't have, but I did-and I was checking to see how far down in the shaft the mineral was when-when I looked up and he was there!" She clasped her hands. "He said, 'Evil must die. I can't go back because you're not dead. I let you out of a little fire in this life, so I'll burn forever. "He who endures to the end-"' Then he pushed me into the shaft-"
"Into the-" I gasped.
"Of course, I didn't fall," she hastened. "I just lifted to the other side of the shaft out of reach, but-but he had pushed me so hard that he-he fell!"
"He fell!" I started up in horror. "He fell? Child, that's hundreds of feet down onto rocks and water-"
"I-I caught him before he fell all the way," said Marnie, apologetically. "But I had to do it our way. I stopped his falling-only-only he's just staying there! In the air! In the shaft! I know the inanimate lift, but he's alive. And I-don't-know-how-to-get-him-up!" She burst into tears.
"And if I let him go, he will fall to death. And if I leave him there, he'll bob up and down and up and-I can't leave him there!" She flung herself against me, wailing. It was the first time she'd ever let go like that.
Nils had come in at the tail end of her explanation and I filled him in between my muttered comforting of the top of Marnie's head. He went to the shed and came back with a coil of rope.
"With a reasonable amount of luck, no one will see us," he said. "It's a good thing that we're out here by ourselves."
Evening was all around us as we climbed the slope behind the house. The sky was high and a clear, transparent blue, shading to apricot, with a metallic orange backing the surrounding hills. One star was out, high above the evening-hazy immensity of distance beyond Margin. We panted up the hill to East Shaft. It was the one dangerous abandoned shaft among all the shallow prospect holes that dotted the hills around us. It had been fenced with barbwire and was forbidden territory to the children of Margin-including Marnie. Nils held down one strand of the barbwire with his foot and lifted the other above it. Marnie slithered through and I scrambled through, snatching the ruffle of my petticoat free from where it had caught on the lower barbs.
We lay down on the rocky ground and edged up to the brink of the shaft. It was darker than the inside of a hat.
"Derwent!" Nils's voice echoed eerily down past the tangle of vegetation clinging to the upper reaches of the shaft.
"Here I am, Lord." The voice rolled up flatly, drained of emotion. "Death caught me in the midst of my sin. Cast me into the fire-the everlasting fire I traded a piddlin' little shed fire for. Kids-dime a dozen! I sold my soul for a seared face. Here I am, Lord. Cast me into the fire."
Nils made a sound. If what I was feeling was any indication, a deep sickness was tightening his throat. "Derwent!" he called again, "I'm letting down a rope. Put the loop around your waist so we can pull you up!" He laid the rope out across a timber that slanted over the shaft. Down it went into the darkness-and hung swaying slightly.
"Derwent!" Nils shouted. "Caleb Derwent! Get hold of that rope!"
"Here I am, Lord," came the flat voice again, much closer this time. "Death caught me in the midst of my sin-"
"Marnie," Nile said over the mindless mechanical reiteration that was now receding below. "Can you do anything?"
"May I?" she asked. "May I, Uncle Nils?"
"Of course," said Nils. "There's no one here to be offended. Here, take hold of the rope and-and go down along it so we'll know where you are."
So Marnie stepped lightly into the nothingness of the shaft and, hand circling the rope, sank down into the darkness. Nils mopped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm.
"No weight," he muttered, "not an ounce of weight on the rope!"
Then there was a shriek and a threshing below us. "No! No!" bellowed Derwent, "I repent! I repent! Don't shove me down into everlasting-I" His words broke off and the rope jerked.
"Marnie!" I cried. "What-what-"
"He's-his eyes turned up and his mouth went open and he doesn't talk," she called up fearfully from the blackness. "I can't find his thoughts-"
"Fainted!" said Nils. Then he called. "It's all right, Marnie. He's only unconscious from fright. Put the rope around him."
So we drew him up from the shaft. Once the rope snatched out of our hands for several inches, but he didn't fall! The rope slacked, but he didn't fall! Marnie's anxious face came into sight beside his bowed head. "I can hold him from falling," she said, "but you must do all the pulling. I can't lift him."
Then we had him out on the ground, lying flat, but in the brief interval that Nils used to straighten him out he drifted up from the ground about four inches. Marnie pressed him back.
"He-he isn't fastened to the Earth with all the fastenings. I loosed some when I stopped his fall. The shaft helped hold him. But now I-I've got to fasten them all back again. I didn't learn that part very well at home. Everyone can do it for himself. I got so scared when he fell that I forgot all I knew. But I couldn't have done it with him still in the shaft anyway. He would have fallen." She looked around in the deepening dusk. "I need a source of light-"
Light? We looked around us. The only lights in sight were the one star and a pinprick or so in the shadows of the fiat below us.
"A lantern?" asked Nils.
"No," said Marnie. "'Moonlight or sunlight or enough starlight. It takes light to 'platt'-" She shrugged with her open hands.
"The moon is just past full," said Nils. "It'll be up soon-"
So we crouched there on boulders, rocks, and pebbles, holding Derwent down, waiting for the moonrise to become an ingredient in fastening him to the Earth again. I felt an inappropriate bubble of laughter shaking my frightened shoulders. What a story to tell to my grandchildren! If I live through this ever to have any!
Finally the moon came, a sudden flood through the transparency of the evening air. Marnie took a deep breath, her face very white in the moonlight. "It's-it's frightening!" she said. " 'Platting' with moonlight is an adult activity. Any child can 'platt' with sunlight, but," she shivered, "only the Old Ones dare use moonlight and sunlight together! I-I think I can handle the moonlight. I hope!"
She lifted her two cupped hands. They quickly filled with a double handful of moonlight. The light flowed and wound across her palms and between her fingers, flickering live and lovely. Then she was weaving the living light into an intricate design that moved and changed and grew until it hid her arms to the elbows and cast light up into her intent face. One curve of it touched me. It was like nothing I'd ever felt before, so I jerked away from it. But, fascinated, I reached for it again. A gasp from Marnie stopped my hand.
"It's too big," she gasped. "It's too powerful! I-I don't know enough to control-" Her fingers flicked and the intricate light enveloped Derwent from head to foot. Then there was a jarring and a shifting. The slopes around us suddenly became unstable and almost fluid. There was a grinding and a rumbling. Rocks clattered down the slopes beyond us and the lip of East Shaft crumpled. The ground dimpled in around where the shaft had been. A little puff of dust rose from the spot and drifted slowly away in the cooling night air. We sorted ourselves out from where we had tumbled, clutched in each other's arms. Marnie looked down at the completely relaxed Derwent. "It got too big, too fast," she apologized. "I'm afraid it spoiled the shaft."
Nils and I exchanged glances and we both smiled weakly.
"It's all right, Marnie," I said, "it doesn't matter. Is he all right now?"
"Yes," said Marnie, "his thoughts are coming back."
"Everything's fine," muttered Nils to me. "But what do you suppose that little earth-shaking has done to the mine?"
My eyes widened and I felt my hands tighten. What, indeed, had it done to the mine?
Derwent's thoughts came back enough that he left us the next day, sagging in his saddle, moving only because his horse did, headed for nowhere-just away-away from Margin, from Grafton's Vow, from Marnie. We watched him go, Marnie's face troubled.
"He is so confused," she said. "If only I were a Sorter. I could help his mind-"
"He tried to kill you!" I burst out, impatient with her compassion.
"He thought he would never be able to come into the Presence because of me," she said quickly. "What might I have done if I had believed that of him?" So Derwent was gone-and so was the mine, irretrievably. The shaft, laboriously drilled and blasted through solid rock, the radiating drifts, hardly needing timbering to support them because of the composition of the rock-all had splintered and collapsed. From the mine entrance, crushed to a cabin-sized cave, you could hear the murmur of waters that had broken through into, and drowned, the wreckage of the mine. The second day a trickle of water began a pool in the entrance. The third day the stream began to run down the slope toward town. It was soaked up almost immediately by the bone-dry ground, but the muddy wetness spread farther and farther and a small channel began to etch itself down the hill.
It doesn't take long for a town to die. The workmen milled around at the mine entrance for a day or two, murmuring of earthquakes and other awesome dispensations from the hand of God, hardly believing that they weren't at work. It was like a death that had chopped off things abruptly instead of letting them grow or decrease gradually. Then the first of the families left, their good-bys brief and unemotional to hide the sorrow and worry in their eyes. Then others followed, either leaving their shacks behind them to fall into eventual ruin, or else their houses moved off down the road like shingled turtles, leaving behind them only the concrete foundation blocks.
We, of course, stayed to the last, Nils paying the men off, making arrangements about what was left of the mining equipment, taking care of all the details attendant on the last rites of his career that had started so hopefully here in Margin. But, finally, we would have been packing, too, except for one thing. Marnie was missing.
She had been horrified when she found what had happened to the mine. She was too crushed to cry when Loolie and Kenny and the Wardlows came to say good-by. We didn't know what to say to her or how to comfort her. Finally, late one evening, I found her sitting, hunched on her cot, her face wet with tears.
"It's all right, Marnie," I said, "we won't go hungry. Nils will always find a way to-"
"I am not crying for the mine," said Marnie and I felt an illogical stab of resentment that she wasn't. "It is a year," she went on. "Just a year."
"A year?" Then remembrance flooded in. A year since the sullen smoke plumed up from the burning shed, since I felt the damp curling of freshly cut hair under my fingers-since Nils grimly dug the multiple grave. "But it should be a little easier now," I said.
"It's only that on the Home it would have been Festival time-time to bring our flowers and lift into the skies and sing to remember all who had been Called during the year. We kept Festival only three days before the angry ones came and killed us." She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. "That was a difficult Festival because we were so separated by the Crossing. We didn't know how many of us were echoing our songs from Otherside."
"I'm not sure I understand," I said. "But go on-cry for your dead. It will ease you."
"I am not crying for those who have been Called," said Marnie. "They are in the Presence and need no tears. I am crying for the ones-if there are any-who are alive on this Earth we found. I am crying because-Oh, Aunt Gail!" She clung to me. "What if I'm the only one who was not Called? The only one!"
I patted her shaking shoulders, wishing I could comfort her.
"There was Timmy," she sniffed and accepted the handkerchief I gave her. "He-he was in our ship. Only at the last moment before Lift Off was there room
for him to come with us. But when the ship melted and broke and we each had to get into our life-slips, we scattered like the baby quail Kenny showed me the other day. And only a few life-slips managed to stay together. Oh, I wish I knew!" She closed her wet eyes, her trembling chin lifting. "If only I knew whether or not Timmy is in the Presence!"
I did all that I could to comfort her. My all was just being there.
"I keep silent Festival tonight," she said finally, "trusting in the Power-"
"This is a solemn night for us, too," I said. "We will start packing tomorrow. Nils thinks he can find a job nearer the Valley-" I sighed. "This would have been such a nice place to watch grow up. All it lacked was a running stream, and now we're even getting that. Oh, well-such is Life in the wild and woolly West!"
And the next morning, she was gone. On her pillow was a piece of paper that merely said, "Wait."
What could we do? Where could we look? Footprints were impossible on the rocky slopes. And for a Marnie, there could well be no footprints at all, even if the surroundings were pure sand. I looked helplessly at Nils. "Three days," he said, tightly angry. "The traditional three days before a funeral. If she isn't back by then, we leave."
By the end of the second day of waiting in the echoless ghostliness of the dead town, I had tears enough dammed up in me to rival the new little stream that was cutting deeper and deeper into its channel. Nils was up at the mine entrance watching the waters gush out from where they had oozed at first. I was hunched over the stream where it made the corner by the empty foundation blocks of the mine office, when I heard-or felt-or perceived-a presence. My innards lurched and I turned cautiously. It was Marnie.
"Where have you been?" I asked flatly.
"Looking for another mine," she said matter-of-factly.
"Another mine?" My shaking hands pulled her down to me and we wordlessly hugged the breath out of each other. Then I let her go.
"I spoiled the other one," she went on as though uninterrupted. "I have found another, but I'm not sure you will want it."
"Another? Not want it?" My mind wasn't functioning on a very high level, so I stood up and screamed, "Nils!"
His figure popped out from behind a boulder and, after hesitating long enough to see there were two of us, he made it down the slope in massive leaps and stood panting, looking at Marnie. Then he was hugging the breath out of her and I was weeping over the two of them, finding my tears considerably fewer than I had thought. We finally all shared my apron to dry our faces and sat happily shaken on the edge of our front porch, our feet dangling.
"It's over on the other side of the flat," said Marnie. "In a little canyon there. It's close enough so Margin can grow again here in the same place, only now with a running stream."
"But a new mine! What do you know about mining?" asked Nils, hope, against his better judgment, lightening his face.
"Nothing," admitted Marnie. "But I can identify and I took these-" She held out her hands. "A penny for copper. Your little locket," she nodded at me apologetically, "for gold. A dollar-" she turned it on her palm, "for silver. By the identity of these I can find other metals like them. Copper-there is not as much as in the old mine, but there is some in the new one. There is quite a bit of gold. It feels like much more than in the old mine, and," she faltered, "I'm sorry, but mostly there is only silver. Much, much more than copper. Maybe if I looked farther-"
"But, Marnie," I cried, "silver is better! Silver is better!"
"Are you serious?" asked Nils, the planes of his face stark and bony in the sunlight. "Do you really think you have found a possible mine?"
"I don't know about mines," repeated Marnie, "but I know these metals are there. I can feel them tangling all over in the mountainside and up and down as the ground goes. Much of it is mixed with other matter, but it's like the ore they used to send out of Margin in the wagons with the high wheels. Only
some of it is penny and locket and dollar feeling. I didn't know it could come
that way in the ground."
"Native silver," I murmured, "native copper and gold."
"I-I could try to open the hill for you so you could see," suggested Marnie timidly to Nils's still face.
"No," I said hastily. "No, Marnie. Nils, couldn't we at least take a look?"
So we went, squeezing our way through the underbrush and through a narrow entrance into a box canyon beyond the far side of the flat. Pausing to catch my breath, almost pinned between two towering slabs of tawny orange granite, I glanced up to the segment of blue sky overhead. A white cloud edged into sight and suddenly the movement wasn't in the cloud, but in the mountain of granite. It reeled and leaned and seemed to be toppling. I snatched my eyes away from the sky with a gasp and wiggled on through, following Marnie and followed by Nils.
Nils looked around the canyon wonderingly. "Didn't even know this was here," he said. "No one's filed on this area. It's ours-if it's worth filing on. Our own mine-"
Marnie knelt at the base of the cliff that formed one side of the canyon. "Here is the most," she said, rubbing her hand over the crumbling stone. "It is all through the mountain, but there is some silver very close here." She looked up at Nils and read his skepticism.
"Well," she sighed. "Well-" And she sank down with the pool of her skirts around her on the sandy ground. She clasped her hands and stared down at them. I could see her shoulders tighten and felt something move-or change-or begin. Then, about shoulder high on the face of the rock wall, there was a coloring and a crumbling. Then a thin, bright trickle came from the rock and ran molten down to the sand, spreading flowerlike into a palm-sized disk of pure silver! "There," said Marnie, her shoulders relaxing. "That was close to the outside-"
"Nils!" I cried. "Look!" and snatching up the still-hot metallic blossom, I dropped it again, the bright blood flowing across the ball of my thumb from the gashing of the sharp silver edge.
It doesn't take long for a town to grow. Not if there's a productive mine and an ideal flat for straight, wide business streets. And hills and trees and a running stream for residential areas. The three of us watch with delighted wonder the miracle of Margin growing and expanding. Only occasionally does Marnie stand at the window in the dark and wonder if she is the only one-the last one-of her People left upon Earth. And only occasionally do I look at her and wonder where on Earth-or off it-did this casual miracle, this angel unawares, come from.
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