Ширли Мерфи - The Grass Tower

He got up slowly and went to rummage in his desk, returning at last with a picture, which he handed to Bethany, beckoning Ninea over so they stood side by side, looking down at a woman whose hair blew like a red cape about her, her face turned into the wind.

“Yes. Oh yes,” Bethany breathed. “But who is she?”

“She used to climb the grass tower and walk on the shore, and the villagers thought she was strange. Her name was Natalie, and she—”

“Our grandmother,” Ninea cried, her gaze piercing his. “Oh, she was our grandmother, Natalie McAllister.”

“I have never told you all about your mother, Justin,” Zebulon said quietly. “Though I suspect you may have guessed some of it. I never told you that it was from Natalie that you got your own powers. You were only four when she died, and I thought at first I would wait until you were older and better able to handle this ability before I reinforced your sense of its importance by telling you that your mother possessed it, too. Or maybe I thought, if I didn’t tell you, the talent would be more likely to go away. I wanted to protect you from what Natalie suffered, I suppose. And then, after Mark’s accident, which you saw so clearly, when the ability was apparently gone, I turned coward again and decided there was no reason to tell you.

“But it was Natalie who stood on that hill; it was Natalie who saw the futures of those around her, of those in the village; and when that knowledge was frightening it rested heavily on her so that she could not be still until she had tried to prevent whatever it was. Sometimes people listened, but more often they did not, and often they hated her and were afraid of her. Your grandfather, Reid, would not listen. Natalie went to him in tears, begging him not to take John out, begging him to go over the gas system, she said she could see flames on the sea.

Bethany stared at him. “Was that what Aunt Bett knew? Did she know about Natalie?”

“Everyone in the village knew. Natalie was— She was too open sometimes, if she had a fault at all. The children called her witch because they heard their parents speak unkindly of her, I think. And of course Bett and Selma and Kathleen had to hear all that. You were too little, Justin; she was dead and the talk was stilled before you were old enough to understand.”

“That’s why Aunt Bett’s so against anything—anything occult,” Bethany said thoughtfully. “And anything about telepathy, like it’s some kind of disease. That’s what she was hiding. That it was someone in her own family.”

“Yes. And it’s why Selma is so interested, so differently did they react. After the accident Bob Krupp, who had always been our friend, was beside himself with grief, and with remorse at what he could have prevented, and with a growing fear of Natalie. He began to hate her. Even after she died, he hated her; he has lived hating and fearing something because he could not—because he refused to understand it.

“The grass tower drew Natalie. I don’t know why, nor did she; she said that from its peak she could see such a distance, could touch a reality far beyond the everyday. She knew her talent caused her pain, but she thought that through it she could help others.”

“She tried, and they hated her for it,” Bethany whispered. She felt almost as if she and Ninea could reach back into a time now vanished and speak to Natalie, or that perhaps somewhere in the future lay a time when the three of them would meet, their spirits coming together, then drawing apart again to go their separate ways. She sat hugging this thought to her as the fire spat, and blue flames leaped from some impurity in the driftwood. Reid, moved by Bethany’s silence and wondering look, came to sit beside her.

“I saw her,” Bethany said at last. “Through Mr. Krupp’s vision, I saw my grandmother.”

“He remembered her as beautiful,” Reid said. “What did you feel from his thoughts? Was it only hatred?”

“No. Oh no.” she cried, turning to look at him. “Hatred, yes, but before that a kind of longing. And wonder, Reid. And then the fear.” She could feel again Mr. Krupp’s twisted emotions. “What did he really feel? Before the accident, did he—?” She looked uncertainly at Grandfather.

”Go on,” Zebulon said.

“Before the accident, could he have felt love for her? Is that why, all these years—”

“I think it may have been,” Zebulon said reflectively. “I think it could be possible that Bob Krupp, unknown to me, might have felt some stirring of love for Natalie. I can’t blame him; she was the most beautiful woman in the village. Sometimes I thought that was part of the reason people were so cruel. If she had been homely— Many times she would go out of her way to avoid seeing Bob, was almost formal with him.”

They sat silently for a long time watching the fire, cut off from the world by the fog, which pushed thick and soft against the windows.

“Nothing is ever simple,” Bethany said at last, thinking of Bob Krupp’s love turning to such twisted hatred. “Nothing is ever just one way, is it?”

“Sometimes,” Reid said, watching her. “Sometimes the way people feel is.” And she could feel his strength and sureness, the steadiness of his feeling for her.

The fog horns bellowed; the fire cracked; and out on the shrouded dunes the grass tower stood hushed by the damp and silence, still and waiting. Bethany sighed and smiled across at Justin, and at Ninea, and looked solemnly at Grandfather. It was as if the five of them were held still and content for a few moments, in a little pocket of waiting, a time given in which they could see, and come to terms with, something that surrounded them.