The Grass Tower

Chapter 1

The village was set in a nitch between the cypress-dark hills on one side, and the white, lonely dunes. Beyond the dunes the empty sea stretched, and all was roofed over with the luminous bowl of the sky, which seemed to block out the rest of the world that might exist beyond the village. On a spring day, as now, the sky was high and blue, but it could lay in low, leaden with the weight of clouds, or thick with fog. The village was a cluster of people as tightly packed together as the houses and shops were packed, as if they cowered away from the dark hills and the lonely, empty dunes; all around the village there was the emptiness of hills and dunes, and the sea wind brought the sand over the streets at night as if it would bury the very houses and the three blocks of shops. Bethany loved the dunes and the loneliness.

But now she stood with Colin staring into the old store, the wind whipping her long red hair sharply across her face. A cascade of dry eucalyptus leaves blew scuttling down the street and whirled around her ankles like something alive. She glanced irritably up at Colin —he was completely taken up with what was going on beyond the dirty glass. This store, with its gray, peeling paint, was the only neglected building in the three blocks of neat little shops.

Sometimes she felt as if nothing existed in the world beyond the village, as if even the small fishing harbor to the north, and the scattered lumbering camps and little cattle ranches were in a distant place, that San Francisco, which was so close, was in another world entirely.

She turned back to the window and crowded closer to Colin, putting him between her and the wind, and peered through the smeared circle she had made on the dirty glass. The store had always been empty, as long as she could remember. The interior was as mysterious as a cave, its ancient broken counters piled together in the middle, and the pea green walls splotched with squares of lavender where display cases had been wrenched away. The floor was strewn with old bottles, rags, and jagged pieces of wood. Beside her, Colin bent his lanky frame clumsily to scratch his ankle, and when he turned to look at her there was a smear of dust across his forehead and on the tip of his nose; the wind blew his pale hair across his eyes. He cupped his hands again and peered in at Aunt Selma.

“What’s she measuring the walls for? She looks,” Colin snickered, “like an inchworm going along like that with the tape.”

‘To cover them with black cloth. I heard her telling in the drygoods store: bolts and bolts of black cloth, and she’s going to paint spirit symbols on it with red paint,” Bethany said, wondering at Aunt Selma, trying to fathom what made her so determined and stubborn about transforming the old place, trying to understand in her own mind the desire that drove Aunt Selma.

“Will it be like a spiritualist’s then, do you think?”

“That’s not what she said; she said it only seems like that. You heard her. Ask Jack, here he comes—” Ask him if you dare, she thought. Jack came and stood beside her so she was cramped between the two boys, but warmer. He peered in casually, as if only to check on his mother’s progress, but his body was taut with anger. Bethany grinned unkindly at his discomfort and contemplated the store with increased interest. Then suddenly her mind opened to Jack’s so she was swept with the sour tide of his anger and resentment; she turned away from him and leaned her forehead against the dirty glass, feeling a dizziness of knowledge, an unwelcome touching of the private feelings of another that sickened her. It had come on her less as she grew older, and the thoughts did not come now in pictures and words as they had when she was little—that had stopped after her parents were killed—now she only felt it, Jack’s resentful anger at his mother’s new project inflicting itself on her mind almost as though she were the angry one.

When the feeling had faded at last, she breathed deeply, but she was angry down inside that Jack, that anyone, could do this to her, could make her feel emotions she did not want to feel. Well, Selma’s venture had caused enough talk in the village to make him angry, that was sure. Staid and hidebound as most of the village was, this idea of a spirit church was like a fire in its midst. Maybe Aunt Selma’s project would appeal more to the summer people, and to the tourists who would descend into the battered tourist cabins.

“I don’t see how she can make anything of that mess, let alone a—a church,” Colin said. He had a hard time saying church; the family didn’t think of Selma’s project as a church, but more as a den of sin and darkness. “Whatever made her—” Colin began uncertainly, then glanced at Jack and was still.

Colin and Jack and Bethany were cousins, their three mothers were sisters—well, Bethany’s adopted mother. She glanced at the boys’ reflections pressing into the glass; exact opposites, Jack and Colin. Jack was like his mother, black hair, and eyes the same, green as a cat’s.

Colin, on the other hand, was blotched looking, as if his dimensions were uncertain; Colin was often uncertain, in the way he looked at things, in the way he acted. Not positive like Jack. Peering again he repeated, “She can’t make any kind of church in there.” He seemed awfully interested, though, for all he disapproved.

“But she will,” Bethany said with conviction. She had observed Aunt Selma, had thought about what Aunt Selma did, long enough to be quite sure of that. She pulled up her socks and hitched her skirt around, trying to understand what made Selma the kind of person who always got what she wanted, who always got what she set her mind on. Selma saw them peering, and stared back in annoyance. The new sign, CHURCH OF THE ZAGDESHA—DOOR TO THE MIRROR SPIRIT —KEY TO THE UNITY OF THE SOUL, was black with red letters and had, painted below the words, two hands reaching toward each other not touching. It would hang over the street, but now it leaned against an inner wall beside a bucket. Ever since Dr. Claybelle had moved up from San Francisco and started dating Aunt Selma, things had gotten more and more interesting. Could they be having an affair, as Aunt Bett called it? Maybe that was one reason Jack was so angry. How could Claybelle be a minister? He was too fat and flashy and—cheap looking. How could Aunt Selma be attracted to him?

“What kind of symbols will she paint on it?” Colin asked. Jack glared then, with a black, hurt anger, upset at their lack of sympathy and understanding, and left them abruptly, going up the street with the wind pushing at him.

Bethany looked after him coolly. ‘Tentacles,” she said. “And triads, whatever they are. And—and runes, I think she said. And she’s going to put benches in rows for the services. For the seances, I mean,” she said with sudden conviction.

“Do you think it’s evil?” he asked as they started toward home.

“It’s—I guess I think it’s silly. I mean, how can anyone believe all that? I don’t see why Aunt Bett’s so mad, though. What harm can it do?”

She tried to imagine what it would be like, Aunt Selma holding seances there, but she could not. Aunt Selma and Aunt Bett were just as different as Jack and Colin were—Aunt Selma sleek and sophisticated and sure of herself, and Aunt Bett square and motherly and very often too concerned with things, too upset, too emotional—almost as uncertain as Colin sometimes. Still, Aunt Bett was definite about the Church of the Zagdesha; she said it was against God, that the family had enough problems without this kind of thing, that Selma ought to have outgrown this prurient interest long before now, that the whole town was talking, and that it was cheap and embarrassing and a bad influence on the children, meaning Colin and Jack and Bethany, and Colin’s older sister Marylou.

Bethany had lived in this village all her life, first with Mama and Papa, after they adopted her as a baby, and then with Aunt Bett and Uncle Jimmie and their children.

She had been with Aunt Bett and Uncle Jimmie for three years now. Before that she had spent occasional weekends with them when her parents were in San Francisco, though when she was small she had never looked forward to that. Aunt Bett had watched her so, and hadn’t liked her going alone on the dunes, didn’t like her playing alone. And Aunt Selma, who was often at Bett’s for coffee, had shown her disdain too clearly.

“Why they adopted such a homely child is beyond me. Couldn’t they have picked a pretty one? That red hair on another child would be striking, but with Bethany’s bony face it only adds insult to injury.”

“Why did they adopt you?” Jack said once. “Did they know a secret about you?” He was a year older, and often he was cruel. “Did they know about you even when they first got you? How did they, when you were only a bawling baby?”

“What do you mean?” Bethany flared.

“You know, Miss Nosy, your special talent, don’t put on with me. How else could you have told about the cat? Not from seeing!” He had brought his face close to hers, menacing.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But she had known.

Jack and two of his friends had hung a cat by its neck from the rafter of an abandoned barn, a poor frightened animal that fought and clawed at them, and Bethany had seen it, seen it in her mind when she still saw pictures. She had run to Aunt Bett, and Aunt Bett, dashing out, had not thought to ask how Bethany, alone in the bedroom with a book, had known.

But Jack had asked later, and when Bethany tried to ignore him he had hit her. “However you knew, you won’t do that again, will you?”

The next time she saw something to do with Jack in the odd way she had of seeing, she hadn’t gone to Aunt Bett, she had gone to Mama. Jack and his friends had been in the barn again, they called it their club. They had taken off their clothes. She saw them naked, and she saw what they did then. She told her mother, hot with shame.

She would always remember that day. It was raining outside. Her mother had listened to her quietly, then had sat Bethany down in her favorite corner of the couch while she laid a fire and lit it against the cold and cheerlessness. She had made hot cocoa and brought it to have with cookies. Then she had taken Bethany in her lap, warm and safe, and stroked her hair, and Bethany had felt comforted. At last Mama had said quietly, “You are going to see all kinds of ugliness in your life, Bethany. You’re seeing things now that most children are just not ready to see.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You’re going to have to learn to make a special place in your mind for things like this. A place where you can put the ugly things away. Take them out and look at them, but put them away when you are done.

“Sometimes, too, you must learn what is natural to small boys. You above all others, I think, will have to learn very quickly to take people for what they are, not what you want them to be.” She hugged Bethany, and they sat close together for a long time, watching the fire.

After her parents were killed, there was no one else she could talk to, no one who would understand when she was upset by the things that came to her. Aunt Bett would be shocked and uneasy at hearing such things. Bethany knew this without question. Sometimes she wished she could talk to Justin, but of course Justin was abroad helping her father with research. Mama and Justin had been very close when they were growing up, two cousins both much younger than their older sisters.

Bethany and Aunt Bett had always been at odds, even when Bethany was small, and after Mama and Papa died, their sudden forced proximity seemed to magnify the friction, though Aunt Bett did everything she knew how to ease the pain of the death. But Aunt Bett had never understood Bethany’s need to be alone. She had fussed at Mama about it. “How you can let her roam the dunes all by herself—except for that dog— is beyond me, Marjory. Most children want to be with other children.” And Bethany, sitting quietly in a corner while Aunt Bett talked in front of her, caught the dark, strange unease of Aunt Bett’s feelings so sharply that she stared up in dismay, not understanding the fear that stood so abruptly in the room for a moment.

But Mama paid no attention to Aunt Bett, and Bethany continued to roam the dunes, with the Labrador as her eager, tongue-lolling companion, and later a pony, too. She loved the pale, empty dunes, the little bays and salt marshes; she would not share this world with other children who were noisy and destructive of birds’ eggs and small animals, and whose thoughts forced themselves on her too often. Later when she was governed solely by Aunt Bett, she was encouraged to go to children’s parties and do things in groups, but she was as stubborn as Aunt Bett, and when she was forced to go, she sneaked off from the others and lied about it later.

She turned now to Colin as they hurried home, wondering why he was so interested in Aunt Selma’s church. They had left the shops and could smell suppers cooking; a few men, reeking of fish, were getting off the bus that came down from the harbor. They cut through the yards to their own white board house and banged open the back screen; Colin dropped his jacket on the service porch and they scuffed into the kitchen. Marylou, an apron tight around her slim waist, stood over the stove frying round steak, her face flushed from the heat. She turned, her blond hair swinging, and sighed. “How come you two are always late when it’s your turn to help with dinner? Don’t eat before dinner, Colin,” she added automatically as Colin reached for the bread. Bethany sat down at the table and began to peel potatoes.

“How come you’re so late?” Marylou said, turning the steak.

“Looking in the mercantile,” Colin answered with his mouth full, “Watching Aunt Selma measure the walls.”

“You’ll ruin your skin. Can’t you ever remember that diet? Mama paid enough for it with the doctor bill and all. Why was she measuring the walls?”

“Lay off, will you,” Colin grumbled.

“Black cloth, to cover the paint,” Bethany said.

Aunt Bett pushed the back door open, edged her packages and her square hips through, and closed it with her elbow; she was wearing her church-ladies-meeting hat, the one with the flowers; she set her cake plate on the counter. Colin lifted the lid; there was half a carrot cake left, the three of them eyed it hungrily. “It’s for dinner,” Aunt Bett said, and pushed it to the back. “It’s report card day.”

Colin buttered another piece of bread. Bethany took her card from her pocket and laid it on the table. Aunt Bett’s gaze never left Colin. “Did you get your report card?”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so? Where is it?”

Colin began to spread jelly, not looking at her.

“I said get it, Colin!”

He fidgeted, concentrating on the jelly. It slicked over the butter and soaked into the edges of the bread.

She picked up his books and began to riffle through them.

Marylou laid her own card beside Bethany’s and glared at Colin. “I don’t see why you have to be so obstinate. Did you flunk something?”

“You can’t flunk, it’s only quarter grades.”

“I told you, Colin,” Aunt Bett said, “one C or D, and it’s no more allowance until summer, and no movies for a month.”

She found the card in his English book and snatched it out impatiently. But as she read it, her expression changed entirely. Aunt Bett had salt and pepper hair done in careful waves, and when something unsettling or unexpected happened she bit the corner of her mouth, making a funny little twist on one side. She stared at Colin. “But son, this is wonderful! A’s, all A’s and B’s! Why didn’t you show it to me? Show Marylou! Why wouldn’t you show me a card like this after all the trouble we’ve had over it? If I’d made this kind of grades when I was young, I’d have whipped them right out and—”

Bethany fled the kitchen to stand on the back porch; she stared down at the oblong back yard with its high board fence and listened to the distant rumble of the sea, wishing she dared go out on the dunes and miss dinner. Couldn’t Aunt Bett see why Colin hadn’t given her his card! Couldn’t she see she made too much fuss? Like a gigantic I told you so! It seemed to Bethany that Aunt Bett lived on a plane quite removed from Colin’s feelings.

What made people so blind to the needs of others? Aunt Bett pushed and goaded and made Colin shrink away from her. Bethany stood hugging herself. She didn’t understand people, she didn’t understand why they couldn’t see such things. She puzzled, staring at the setting sun, until Aunt Bett called her in for dinner.

Uncle Jimmie was home, but Aunt Bett was still at it. Colin had turned belligerent, and the atmosphere over dinner was as uncompromising as a mortar attack. Uncle Jimmie had the good sense to keep still. A pale, overweight man, he worked in the laundry, and Bethany wondered sometimes if it was the heat and the steam that made him look so sweaty all the time. Marylou, sighing at the tirade, asked for potatoes in a loud voice. “And the butter please.” And, to distract Aunt Bett further, “Aunt Selma has started on the mercantile. She’s going to cover the walls with black cloth. Bethany saw her measuring them.”

This drew Aunt Bett’s attention. “What does she want the black cloth for, how can she… . What were you doing there, Bethany? I don’t think you—”

“To hide the paint—” Bethany said hastily, “I guess she doesn’t like stucco, and the paint is ugly. I wasn’t inside, just looking in the window on the way home.” She didn’t mention Colin. A hard lump was growing in her stomach. Aunt Bett’s voice was so forceful.

“There’s talk it isn’t all Dr. Claybelle’s money, that Aunt Selma put money in, and that other couple, the Blakeys,” Marylou said.

“What in Heaven’s name does Selma think she’s doing with that old place?” Uncle Jimmie offered. “Astrology was one thing, and those tarot cards, but at least she kept it behind her own door.”

“It’s a travesty on the Lord.” Aunt Bett tore her bread in two angrily. “Colin and you girls, you keep away from that place. I don’t know how my own sister could get herself involved in such a thing. Mirror spirits! It’s seances, is what I heard, regular black masses and I don’t want—”

“Oh, not black masses,” Colin grumbled.

“Don’t interrupt, Colin. Every time I start to say something you don’t agree with you interrupt me. I don’t like your interest in this, I want you to remember that!” Colin turned pink. The atmosphere was brittle as glass. Privately, Bethany thought Aunt Bett was right, it was sacrilegious. Then why did Aunt Bett’s talking about it make her so angry when she really agreed with her? And Colin—she felt a sudden quick fury at Colin, he was always so fascinated with offbeat things. Like the comic books he read, he couldn’t just put them aside like other kids. You’d think she’d understand people better when she could see so much more of them, could catch their private thoughts, but her sudden and unasked for insights, her sudden touching of the mind of another, seemed only to confuse her, to make her feel the whole terrible impact of a person’s emotions without giving her the slightest reasons why. She escaped at last to the dishes, though over the running water she could still hear Aunt Bett going on and on about Aunt Selma’s project. When the dishes were finished, she slipped out quickly and fled through the twilight toward the dunes. “Don’t go far, Bethany,” Aunt Bett called after her, “It’ll be dark soon and you—”

“I won’t, Aunt Bett. I’ll be right back.”

She ran headlong between the dunes, hot with anger, with a twisting inside that Aunt Bett’s too-loud, constant pressure always made in her. I should be grateful for a home, she thought ungratefully, and flung herself between the pale dunes toward the sea. A gull flew up, screaming.

In the fading light at the edge of the sea she stopped, breathing hard and trying to collect herself, to let the silence and the space of the sea and dunes soothe her. The sea’s surface was glazed with a coppery sheen over the dark, cold blue. There was not a soul on the shore, there never was except riders until summer, and this time of night the horses would all be bedded and munching hay, warm and fragrant in their stalls. She had a sudden terrible desire to ride—it had been such a long time—to gallop a horse along the shore and into the water. Instead, she stripped out of her clothes— against all Aunt Bett’s orders—and ran into the surf in her pants and bra, belly flopping onto the breakers and swimming violently until she was nearly out of breath, and the freezing cold had turned to a warmth that tingled all through her.

Finally, the tenseness gone, she dressed, her clothes clinging, and went north between the empty, silent dunes that humped pale against the darkening sky. As white as bleached bone they were, and only at one point was the white expanse broken, where the tall, cone-shaped hill pushed high above them like a shaggy pyramid. A monolith, it hurled itself skyward, its dark gold grasses sweeping in the wind like waves tossed on the sea. A sacred, lonely tower.

She pushed the grasses back with a dry, rushing sound, and slipped into her narrow, grass-barred trail so the great fans of grass closed around her shoulders; and she climbed upward in a tangle of itching, warm-smelling dusk; the seeds clung to her sweater and tangled into her hair, and the climbing itself, the rustle and the warmth, were soothing and peaceful.

When she reached the top where the grass lay matted down by the constant wind, she felt as she always did, that she was part of the sky. The golden grasses dropped away from her feet rattling and whispering in the wind, and far below, the bleached dunes were marked with the curving shadows of their cupped forms. She settled into her nest of flattened grass and lay back to watch the night come down around her.

Why had she gotten so angry at Aunt Bett? Colin didn’t seem to mind half as much as she did when Aunt Bett was so unfeeling with him. At least he didn’t go storming off in a temper the way she did. Well, you couldn’t talk to Aunt Bett, that was what made her so mad. At least the family’s private thoughts and angers hadn’t intruded upon her as they sometimes did—as Jack’s had done today.

Before the sky went completely dark, the light from a half-moon began to pour down, silvering the grass blades, and when she stood to look, the dunes were like the silvered naked bodies of sleeping giants clustered beside the sea. She sighed. She needed this peacefulness, this privacy that she could not get at home. Sometimes she felt very close to something, to some presence that she could touch only here, away from the confusion of living so close to others. Didn’t other people have this terrible need for quiet, just to be by themselves? She put her hand out as if she could touch the silvered dunes, and felt the cold night air like clear water.

Maybe other people didn’t worry at things so, trying to sort them into some kind of sense. Maybe that was what made her come away from people feeling so tense and cross.

Chapter 2

Aunt Bett’s back yard was small, and the fence so high the wind did not come in but just flew over: you could see it moving the tips of the branches, running free, plucking feathers from the low cloud of barbeque smoke. Bethany sighed and drew her feet in to avoid the tumbling children. With all the family and three sets of neighbors, the yard was impossibly crowded, but this monthly gathering was important to Aunt Bett. The shouting of the children and the talk and endless talk seemed to push up at the wind, trying in vain to explode outward. Dr. Claybelle laughed stridently—Aunt Selma had brought him uninvited; the voice of the radio plunged; the clatter of laughter and talk gained volume: “He didn’t say—” “I don’t want” “Give it back” “Mama!” The voices clashed, a baby bawled, the heavy box of sound forced in and in.

“When we were girls, but it was different then, the sand didn’t used to come in like that, it seems to me all I do now is sweep and sweep the sand—”

“—it’s not like spiritualism, you don’t even try to understand. It’s new, it’s a new, enlightened religion; it has nothing to do with that sort of thing.” Aunt Selma ceased her argument to light a cigarette.

“What else would you call it when you say you bring forth spirits?” Uncle Jimmie’s voice was edgy. “What do you—”

Bethany got up and went to the far corner of the fence to sit with Colin. They slumped, watching the others, removed from them and slightly incredulous. Aunt Selma, dressed in a black sunsuit, looked— “witching,” Bethany thought, watching her enviously. Like a model, her black hair done up high with that cerise scarf around it and everything else in black, her sunsuit and sandals, and her skin against the black like rich cream. She sat very close to Dr. Claybelle and was smiling at him in that way she had, and he, leaning back with his white patent shoes propped on Aunt Bett’s picnic table, was receiving looks from Aunt Bett that should have withered him. His striped pants and red sports shirt over that bulging stomach were something to contemplate. How could Selma like him! Bethany became engrossed in trying to winnow out some charm or attraction the man had. Even his eyes were small and cold.

Every morning on their way to school she and Colin would see Dr. Claybelle walking from the Inn to meet Aunt Selma at the drugstore for breakfast, or glance into the drugstore and see them already ensconced on the stools. Why didn’t they eat at the Inn? Maybe he was too cheap to buy breakfast there or maybe they thought it would look like they were having an affair. And if they were, where did they go? To Aunt Selma’s place in the dark hours? She couldn’t see Aunt Selma sneaking into the Inn. The argument had grown more heated now, and Uncle Jimmie, sweating over the barbeque, looked unhappily at Selma—as if he wished she’d leave off and go away.

Bethany shook her Coke bottle, making the liquid fizz. “Are they really supposed to call spirits, or the other half of your soul or whatever?” The idea both intrigued and repelled her.

Colin shrugged. He looked at her a minute rather sheepishly, then pulled a blue printed flier out of his pocket and handed it over. She unfolded it and read:

Communicate with the lonely, lost half of your soul. Become a whole person. Know joy for the first time. Join the Church of the Zagdesha.

The Reverend Dr. Barnham Claybelle

“The Reverend!” Bethany snorted. “What does it mean, a missing half of your soul? I don’t feel like anything’s missing in me.” She knew she was being nasty, but she didn’t care. The Church of the Zagdesha had begun to make a dark, prickling unease in her, an unease she couldn’t understand. She watched Aunt Selma and Dr. Claybelle with uncomfortable curiosity. “It’s got to be a put on,” she said. “Maybe to make money.”

Colin sighed. “It’s—I only know what the book says; Aunt Selma gave me their book. It says that once the world was split in two, like there was another dimension and it split away. That was when sin and crime began. It says that when Eve gave Adam the apple and he ate it, the world crashed with thunder and evil and it split, and our souls split in half. And the other half is there in that other dimension.”

“And we can only reach it through the Church of the Zagdesha,” Bethany said sarcastically.

“Well—” Colin began, not knowing how to argue with her. “Well it says that when Cain slew Abel that it was a kind of allegory, to show mankind what had happened, that half a soul had slain the other half.”

Bethany just looked at him.

“She’s—Aunt Selma’s serious about it. I don’t think it’s for money. You should hear her. She says this is why people go around doing things in the occult, because they feel that something’s missing, but they don’t know what. Like spiritualism, and that crystal ball she had. She says people want to find their Zagdesha, but they don’t know how. That they have this kind of need to find it.”

They watched Selma laughing and patting Dr. Claybelle on the shoulder. Aunt Bett said loudly, “It’s a sin, a place like that. And you confirmed in the church, Selma.” Bethany felt a quick stab of embarrassment for Aunt Bett, but she could not think why. Unless it was because behind that fetching smile, Aunt Selma was probably laughing at her.

“What one must understand,” Dr. Claybelle said, “is that we don’t conflict with the church in any way. We simply go beyond the church in interpreting the Bible.”

“Not my Bible,” Aunt Bett snapped, and turned away angrily. Bethany and Colin glanced at each other and couldn’t help but grin. There was a moment of silence when everyone stopped talking; it hung in the air while the sea crashed once, then the voices surged again, “—and he said if she didn’t it was the operating table for sure, but you know—” “It’s not yours, Mama gave it to me!” “—in the union hall and waited for three hours before—” Then suddenly the yard before Bethany faded and a feeling swept her, a feeling so overpowering that she almost cried out, a surge of dark excitement like a black wind. She was standing in the old mercantile store; half-dark it was with the dusty windows, and the pile of trash loomed— And then the trash faded abruptly; the room brightened with sunlight for an instant, then went darker still; now only a dark gray haze came through black curtains. And then there was a terrible, stomach-shaking guttering of light as candlelight flared and shapes moved strangely across the walls, and black robed figures—she thought she was seeing the future, seeing some awful ritual.

There was Selma, her face like a white moon, framed by the cowl of a long dark robe. She had never seen a future event, always it was something that was. Even her parents’ death was seen, as far as she knew, at the moment that they died. But this—she pushed the image back and back in her mind and rose to stand staring across at Selma with trembling confusion; but the scene clung to her, hazy and superimposed over the yard. Selma was completely unaware of her, she was— Oh! This was not the future at all, this was from Selma’s mind. This thing she saw was Selma imagining what she meant to do, she could feel the emotions now, of Selma’s planning, surrounding her. And yet it made a fear in Bethany so she turned away toward the fence and stood bracing herself against it. How could Selma’s imaginings make her so afraid? But then something bright flashed across the other scene, reflecting light in a dizzying pattern. She was staring into an ornate oval mirror, seeing her own image in a lurching moment, her dark eyes staring back at her so she drew in her breath sharply: her own face, her own expression, seemed so full of a secret, so full of some determined intent, that she shivered; a dark alertness seemed to touch her, terrifying her; then the vision vanished.

When she was in bed, alone at last, she couldn’t sleep and lay sweating and tossing. What had touched her in that dark moment in the yard? Selma’s thoughts, yes. But something more, something that beckoned to her, something that drew her though she did not know where. And then she realized that she had seen visions, seen pictures for the first time in years, for the first time since her parents died. She lay thinking of that almost with excitement, so her fear was dulled. What did it mean? Something was happening, something was going to happen—a cold thrill of anticipation made her shiver.

At last she rose, opened the dresser drawer, and took her parents’ picture in her hands. The heavy frame felt comforting, and even in the darkness she knew how the picture looked. She got into bed again and held it close to her.

In the photograph, Mama’s brown hair was braided around her head, and Papa wore a suit. It was a prim, proper picture, yet she never thought of them as prim, but laughing, running across the dunes in the wind, Mama’s hair all blowing loose.

She turned over, pressed her face into the pillow, and felt the sickness overtake her. She clenched her fists and tried to push it away, but she could not and she felt it all again almost as if it had just happened —the rain, the blood—even now her mind insisted on going over it all, asking why.

She had come to Aunt Bett’s for a few days, bringing Ollie of course, though Aunt Bett was not overjoyed at having a dog in the house. It was just two weeks after Bethany’s twelfth birthday, and she wore her new red coat. Mama was wearing her yellow suit, and Papa looked very handsome as they kissed her good-by. After dinner she watched Colin unfold his bed from the living room couch—Colin didn’t have a bedroom— then, in her pajamas, she had curled up on her bed and watched Marylou brushing her pale hair so it shone like the flashing wing of a bird. After Marylou was asleep, she had lain in the darkness staring at the silver square of mirror over the dresser, wishing she could turn on the light and read, wishing she could sneak Ollie in from the service porch to sleep with her. She could feel the cluttered house all around her, as if everything in it, the people included, were packed in too tight and there was no room to move or to breathe.

Finally she slept, but she woke in the middle of the night shivering with cold. The square mirror did not hang before her, she was not in bed. She was standing in the rain. Standing on a dark highway with the cold rain pelting down, water streaming down her soaking nightgown. She shivered uncontrollably. Water swirled across the pavement, making small eddies around her ankles. There were no cars on the highway, and no lights except one that shone dimly from around a curve, shooting up into the rain-driven sky. Confused, she started toward it.

When she rounded the curve she could see that there were two lights. They came from an overturned car.

Mama lay pinned beneath the car. Her yellow suit was bloody and soaking up mud from the ditch, and her face was turned away. She was dead. Bethany knew that she was dead. For a moment she could not move, hard as she tried. Then something shifted subtly, as if the world itself had shifted, and she was kneeling over Mama.

Papa was on the other side covered by the car. He could not have lived. At last Bethany turned from them and stood still in the center of the highway. The world was falling away from her, she could feel it dropping, and herself with it. Her stomach churned. Faint and dizzy, she threw up on the highway. Then she began to scream.

Suddenly she was back in bed facing the mirror, still screaming.

The light flared on. Marylou was shaking her. Aunt Bett put her arms around her. But Bethany could not stop screaming: terror held her, she knew if she stopped she would fall. Even when Aunt Bett slapped her, she didn’t stop. Finally, though, she did stop and stared at the frightened faces of her aunt and uncle and her cousins. “Mama and Papa are dead!” she shouted at them, hating them because they couldn’t understand. Then she began that hard, searing scream again.

And the next day, of course, everyone knew.

They came to look at her—Aunt Selma, Jack, the neighbors—to stare with a strange fascination.

Aunt Bett said, “It was a dream the child had. She runs to bad dreams; she’s a peculiar child. It was only a dream, a coincidence.”

Bethany could not remember much about those first weeks. Aunt Bett tried to help her, but Bethany wouldn’t have it, she wanted only to be left alone. It was many months that she was morose and silent, refusing any attention, responding to nothing. She would sit in the empty, midday living room alone, huddled in a dim corner between the fireplace and the couch, holding Mama’s wooden jewelry box in which she kept her treasures, fingering the two birds carved on its front. She could not remember, now, what her thoughts had been, but she could remember clearly being there, in the silence.

It was a hard time for Ollie, too; he was too big for the house, and he was made to sleep on the service porch among the sacks of potatoes and empty pop bottles. He was always underfoot, and as miserable and lonely as Bethany, but she was too unhappy to think of him, and she supposed there was a good deal of grumbling about him before she awakened to the fact that they were talking of getting rid of him. That was the best thing that could have happened to her: it shocked her out of her lethargy so she went off in terror with Ollie. The big dog ranged far from her, ecstatic to be out with her at last; but she slogged along feeling so tired that she was close to weeping. She thought melodramatically that she might get lost in the dunes and die and they would find her and Ollie, two bodies. Or two white skeletons in the sand.

When she looked up at last, she saw the grass tower, and knew she was headed there, though she had always been a little afraid of it. It seemed to draw her now, the strange brown hill. Tall as a castle it rose, thrusting up from the pale dunes. The wind rippled the grass around its sides in great coiling waves as if immense snakes crawled there; and its sharp peak above the dunes, its shaggy dark aliveness in that pale expanse of sand, made an excitement stir in her. She knew, suddenly, that she must climb it.

The grass rose tall above her head as she plunged in, and closed around her. She shivered. She could see nothing but the blades pushing at her face, making a light-shot roof overhead. In the fingering wind, the grass spilled its seeds down her neck as she pulled upward through the dimness; the sword-sharp spears cut her bare hands; little bugs clung to her skin and darted into her eyes. She was frightened of what she might meet in the grass ahead of her, but she knew she must reach the peak. Her fear and her determination were the first real emotions she had known in many weeks.

Finally she stood on the peak, looking far down at the white dunes. The wind brushed her body and pushed at her, and she felt the dizziness of height, as if she were suspended. Ollie came up finally, ranging through the grass like a hunting lion, and she settled into the grass with him, pushing the blades down into a nest. He licked her arms and face, and she hugged him close to her.

She could not remember later what she thought or dreamed, but she knew that something had happened to her there. Sitting in the sky with the world so small below her, she began to change; a new Bethany began to be born out of her younger self. Not so very different —she was still twelve—yet different entirely. She put the death away from her that day, put it in a place where she could touch it, but it would not suffocate her. The thick, hypnotized state she had been in all those weeks began to lift away, and the world pushed in at her to make itself felt.

She thought then about her parents. Where had they gone when they died? They could not be nothing, that was not possible. Aunt Bett said they went to heaven, but Bethany didn’t understand what heaven was. She tried to make herself think of graves and decay, but this self-inflicted pain was so horrible that her mind would not accept it; she could see no picture save the dead faces of her mother and father.

She thought about the mind, about the fact that she could reach into the mind of another, even see what another person saw in a place far removed from where she was. This part of a person, that could do this, was not trapped in a body. Uncle Zebulon had told her once that the mind and the brain were not the same thing, that the brain was only a temporary dwelling place, like a house, for the mind for as long as it would need such a place. She thought of Uncle Zebulon, and she felt warm and comforted.

She slept. When she woke, it seemed to her she had traveled a long way and seen things she could not comprehend. But she woke refreshed, and somewhere in her middle, a feeling of quiet contentment had been laid gently over the sadness.

Her parents’ death, it seemed to Bethany now, looking back, seemed to have divided her life in two. Before, she had been, though wholly herself, an extension, in a way, of her parents—when there was something she could not face alone, they had been there to reinforce her, giving her strength. But afterward, first in her terrible seclusion, then later, she had been utterly on her own.

Chapter 3

They were in McCaber’s barn after school, their books scattered across the moldy bales of hay. Bethany had not wanted to come, she could still remember the poor hanging cat, and the little boys naked and touching each other. Now that she was fifteen, the naked boys seemed only funny, but the memory of the cat still made her sick. She didn’t want to be here anyway, with Jack and the three girls conjuring up dark talk of spirits and lost, incomplete souls. They were draped across the ancient bales of hay with the girls all over Jack so that Bethany turned away in embarrassment. Colin, sitting apart from the others, watching the girls play up to Jack, looked uneasy, too.

Why did she always let herself get roped into things? It was Colin, he could look so in need of her sympathy. Why couldn’t she learn to be firm with him. You’d think she was years older instead of only one. And why did Jack want them there anyway, when he hardly spoke to them at school? “Jack’s into it now,” Colin had said, leaning against the science room door while she rearranged her falling books. “He thinks there’s really a spirit, or he wouldn’t—”

“It’s that Beverly Parker’s changed his mind,” Bethany had answered crossly, “I heard her in gym, big woman on campus. She’s decided it would be exciting to have a Zagdesha, so now Jack’s falling all over himself.”

“But there is something,” Colin said defensively. “There’s the church in San Francisco that Dr. Claybelle was the head of.”

“I don’t know anything about the church in San Francisco.” She had stared at him defiantly, wishing he’d go on to the barn by himself, and wondering why talking about the Zagdesha made her so cross.

“Well there is a church there. And there are regular classes of instruction. They teach you to contact your Zagdesha.”

“Contact it how? Can you see it?” She was ashamed of her sarcasm, really.

“You—well I don’t know exactly.”

“And how come it doesn’t call you if it’s your other half? How come it doesn’t make you come to it?”

“You’re just like Ma. You can’t believe anything you don’t see right in front of your face.”

“You don’t even know how stupid that is!” She had flung herself away then, meaning to go on home, but the look on his face had made her stop.

“Will you come with me, then?” Colin had asked hopefully. The bumps on his face looked terrible; Bethany guessed it must be pretty awful to have skin like that.

“Just this once?” he begged. “They’re going to try an experiment.”

“What kind of experiment?” She wished he would leave it alone, leave her alone. But at last she had let him badger her into relenting, and now she watched the five of them on the hay, sorry she had come.

“Jack said you wouldn’t,” Ciel Rapp said. She had a pretty face, but weaselly under the makeup.

“Why not?” Bethany said belligerently. She knew she was embarrassing Colin.

“He said you’d be afraid.”

“What, of Jack? Afraid of Jack?” Bethany snorted.

“Of your Zagdesha,” Beverly Parker said. She had begun to set out black votive candles on a plank that was laid across two bales of hay. “He says you know it’s real and you’re afraid of it.” Bethany held her tongue, watching Beverly’s long blond hair fall like silk as she bent over the plank.

“Anyway, you don’t need to act so put upon,” Jack said coolly. “You didn’t have to come.” He stretched and made himself comfortable on the hay, leering smugly at busty May Farr as she took a glass bottle out of a sack, a bottle filled with red liquid. It looked as if it might be her parents’ liquor decanter.

“Jack said you’d help us,” May said. “We’re going to call the Zagdesha, we’re going to have a real seance and Jack said—”

“I said you had the power for it.” Jack gave May a look.

“I think it’s stupid,” Bethany said quickly, alarmed at his talking like that. “It’s a dumb thing to be fooling around with. There isn’t any such thing as half a spirit or soul or whatever.”

“Why would Dr. Claybelle bother if it wasn’t true,” Beverly said. “Why would he take his lunchtime to give us instructions? We had a real experience today, we could feel the spirits all around us.” Her voice was smooth as silk. Bethany stared at her. She hadn’t known about that. So that was where Colin had been.

“It was …” Ciel Rapp began. “It was like a promise. Almost like we were hypnotized; he did an incantation and he—it made you feel wonderful.”

Jack’s face showed no expression.

“Why don’t you have your seance there, then, if he’s teaching you?”

“We’re going to do it differently,” Ciel said, rubbing up against Jack. She began to giggle inanely.

Bethany felt her face go pink. “Come on Colin, let’s go”

“But—” Colin began, glancing at Jack. “You go on, Bethany. I guess I’ll stay a while.”

But when she got home she found Colin already sitting on the back porch, pale and edgy. “I thought you were staying,” she said. “I only went around through the village and stopped at the library; you must have come straight home.”

“They—they tried to do the ritual Aunt Selma and Dr. Claybelle taught us, but then they started to giggle. I don’t think they— well, then they started necking. Ciel laid down beside me and ran her hand up my leg.” He blushed furiously. “I left.”

Bethany was quiet.

Finally she said, “That’s just what you should have expected.”

He stared at her stonily.

“I’m sorry, Colin. I just think it’s dumb.”

He was quiet for a long time, then he went into the house, and she was sorry she had said anything. He didn’t mention it again, or act as if he’d ever heard of The Church of the Zagdesha until the morning he maneuvered them all past the mercantile on their way to church.

Bethany had risen that morning, as every Sunday morning, with a depressed feeling of distaste, due partly to church and partly to the navy crepe dress she was made to wear every Sunday.

She pulled on the dress and stared into the mirror with disgust. It wasn’t only the dress, it was all of her. She snatched her carroty hair back away from her face and clipped on Marylou’s barrette, but that only made her face look bonier. She flung the barrette to the dresser in anger. She didn’t want to go to church anyway. But Aunt Bett said Sunday was for the Lord. Bethany didn’t see why it couldn’t be for the Lord on the dunes, but Aunt Bett did not agree. She guessed if you liked church, if you wanted to go, that was fine. Aunt Bett took a quiet joy in the service, Bethany knew. But she couldn’t see that her own feelings had improved with exposure at all. Maybe some people took to regular religion and others didn’t. Maybe some people had to find their own way. There were a lot of ways of believing. There was something she felt, a huge encompassing something that she could almost touch sometimes when she was on the dunes in the wind and the wide, ever-changing sky rolled above her. Maybe the same power she had felt very strongly once or twice when she had touched the mind of another, almost a reverence, an awe at her own powers and what had given them to her.

She pushed back the lace curtain and stared out the window; the morning was white with fog; she could hear the horn from the point. The sea would be muffled and the dunes would be lovely, she could take a thermos and— Oh, she wished for Ollie suddenly. He had died a year ago, when she was fourteen, a quiet death in his sleep. Aunt Bett, to Bethany’s surprise, had let her dig him a grave under the apple tree in the back yard. And Aunt Bett had shed a tear for him, which had moved Bethany more than anything else could have.

She wished for Ollie to be with her, and for the pony, Joey, with a longing that made her feel desolate. Yet a hope rose within her. There was Mr. Grady to see today. She thrust the thought aside, not daring to encourage herself.

“Hurry up, Bethany, you always make us late,” Aunt Bett called. “It’s the same every Sunday, child. You don’t see Marylou and Colin dawdling.” Colin scowled and made a face behind Aunt Bett’s back, and when he opened his closet door—he had the big hall closet because he didn’t have any bedroom—Bethany caught a glimpse of the blue flier from the Church of the Zagdesha sticking out of a pocket.

Walking to church through the fog, Colin led them by way of the main street and Aunt Selma’s church, and Aunt Bett didn’t seem to notice until they were right on it. Colin and Bethany and Marylou lagged behind to peer in. Aunt Selma was there all right, wearing blue jeans and a smock, of all things … and painting red symbols on a long length of black cloth that was spread across a table. Some cans of paint stood by a stack of wooden benches, and the door had been painted red and was sticky when Bethany touched it. When Aunt Bett came back to hurry them on, she said little, but she was tight-lipped, furious that Selma was in there on Sunday.

Bethany wondered why Selma was doing it, really why. She climbed the church steps deep in thought, wondering what Selma imagined would happen when the Church of the Zagdesha started having seances. Did Selma really think some kind of spirit would appear? Then she turned her attention back to this church, to the white satin altar covers and the rack of votive candles flaming red and yellow near the pulpit; she sighed softly, and filed in between the benches behind Colin.

The church smelled of damp wool and varnish, and the kneeling rail was cold and hard. Bethany’s red hair caught uncomfortably on the itching navy crepe. She made no attempt at all to hear the mass. She rose when everyone rose, sat down with the rest, and knelt when Colin, next to her, knelt. But her mind was out in the fog, swimming in the fog-shrouded sea, then galloping a phantom horse along the wet shore. To ride in the fog again, to have a horse again—she savored the hope she had thrust aside in her mind, hardly daring to believe it could happen. But maybe Mr. Grady would take her.

She had met Reid Young when she was coming from the store last night, had almost run into him so that he caught her unbalanced grocery bag and grinned down at her. “Hey, Bethany, come have a coke, I want to talk to you.” And, when they had ordered, “I never see you at school except a mile down the hall, and you haven’t been to the stables since—”

“Since Mr. Grady sold Joey,” Bethany said. “I guess that’s stupid, isn’t it. I’d grown too big for him anyway, only—”

“Only you miss him,” Reid said.

“Is that dumb?”

“No, it’s not dumb. But why don’t you come back, other horses aren’t the same, but—listen, Bethany, I’m only working for Mr. Grady weekends. I’ve got a job with Mr. Hickby after school and part of the summer building that house on the hill. Joe Roberts is quitting the stables, and Mr. Grady needs some help for the summer. That was why I wanted to see you.”

“Me? You’re asking me? Would Mr. Grady hire a girl?”

“You’ve worked for him before.”

“But only just for rides, not all the time. Won’t he want a boy? With muscles?”

“Guys don’t care about horses. They fool around too much.”

“Did he tell you to ask me? Did he say I could work for him?”

“He said to look round for someone, and I said I thought you’d do. He said he’d think about it. Why don’t you go see him?”

“Yes. Oh, I will. Right now. Oh,” she had stared at the grocery bag then, “Aunt Bett has dinner almost ready, she’ll … in the morning I will, after church.”

When mass was ended at last, she made herself move slowly up the aisle; but finally she was through the door behind Aunt Bett, who began at once to talk to dowdy Mrs. Clay. The fog had thickened, it lapped at the steps like a sea. Bethany pulled at Aunt Bett’s arm, interrupting her rudely. “I’ll be right back, I’m going to the stables for a minute …”

“In your good clothes? Can’t you take time to change, it’s so damp and cold, you …”

“No,” she cried and was gone.

When the dark barn loomed out of the fog suddenly, she was quite close to it, and the lights in the alleyway made yellow fuzzy circles. She could see Mr. Grady and Reid, dark shadows, moving about saddling horses for a class. Bethany went in and began to help them, in her dress.

The horses snorted, blowing their noses in the dampness and eyeing the fog-shrouded world with some suspicion, horses warm and gently nuzzling and rich with the heady horse smell of clean, grain-fed animals, horses as loving and familiar as if she had been in the barn every day, and never had left it at all. When they were done saddling, Mr. Grady gave her a wink, making no comment about the dress, but waiting silently for her to have her say. He was a small wiry man. She had never seen him without a hat on.

“I came for the job, for Joe Robert’s job,” she said anxiously.

He looked her over then. “You’ve grown some. Can you still pitch hay?”

“Yes! Oh yes!”

“Well I guess I could try you, Bethany. You can work weekends until school’s out. Then if you’re all right, every day but Monday and Tuesday. That suit you?”

She paused, afraid to ask about the riding.

“And ride weekday afternoons whenever there’s a horse,” he added, grinning. “Reid, take her out to Danny and see if he likes her.”

Reid led her to the paddock and whistled. There was a nicker and the pounding of hooves, then a flying shape appeared in the fog, jerking to a halt and snorting. The pony thrust a demanding nose at Reid, expecting sugar and, finding none, tried to bite him. He was a bay, about thirteen hands, and stood jauntily.

“He’s spoiled,” Reid said. “He’s here for mannering; the little girl can’t handle him. Barn sour, nasty. He’s too little for me, you’ll have to ride him.” The pony stuck his nose at Bethany and pulled back his lips. But his big dark eyes looked at her appraisingly, and when she stepped back, he continued to watch her with interest.

She went away enchanted.

But after Sunday dinner, after the dishes were done and Colin and Marylou had gone off somewhere, she was reluctant to tell Aunt Bett—to ask Aunt Bett. She felt she would die if Aunt Bett refused her. And after she had told her, she could not be still but kept on arguing in favor of the job until Aunt Bett held up a restraining hand and sighed crossly. “All right, yes all right, Bethany. But I wish you’d asked me first.”

“But I didn’t know if he’d take me, Aunt Bett.” If she had asked first and then Mr. Grady had turned her down, it would have been something for Aunt Bett to hold over her, she felt, something so later Aunt Bett could say, about something else, “You couldn’t do that, no, no one would take you, no one would want you—”

“You could have just come to me and said you wanted to get a job. I don’t think that stable is the best place in the world. I should think that the library or one of the shops—”

“Bett,” Uncle Jimmie said from under the reading lamp, “Bett, let her alone.” The light from the lamp reflected from his sweaty high forehead. “She’s got the job, so just let her be with it.”

And when she went to work the next Saturday morning, she pitched in with such vigor, starting the stalls, that little gray Molly snorted and pulled back and looked at her reproachfully. Finally, leading out the chestnut gelding to tie him by the water trough, she had settled into a quieter routine. She forked the manure from each stall into the wheelbarrow and piled the clean straw around the edges of the stall until it would come down again in the evening to make a bed. When she finished the last stall, she began to rake the alley, tired now on her first day, her muscles not used to it. By midafternoon when she caught Danny and began to brush him, she was half-asleep on her feet. “Danny’ll wake you up,” Reid said, saddling the tall chestnut for himself, “A quarter says you can’t get him out the gate.”

“Make it a dollar,” Bethany said, grinning, and tightened Danny’s girth.

When they were on the trail at last, headed for the beach, she collected the dollar. Danny was sweating but happy now, eager to get on once she had settled it with him. Her tiredness had gone, and she was inordinately pleased with herself. The sea wind came at them salt and cold, and she pulled her collar up. The horses snorted, and Danny pretended amazement at the breakers, sidling and watching them, and blowing softly.

The chestnut fussed, mouthing his bit, and would not settle. Reid talked to him gently, sitting steady and calming him until finally he was walking. Reid was good with a horse; he had worked at the stables ever since he was small. His mother did the menial work of the village, and Reid did any work he could get; his father had left them many years before, and Reid’s grandfather drank up a good share of Mrs. Young’s wages, Bethany knew. People said, in private, that Mrs. Young ought to throw the old man out, but how can you throw out your own father, and where would he go, Bethany wondered. Still, it would be easier for Reid not having to scrape pennies and do two jobs at once. She was ashamed she had taken his dollar and wished she could give it back. But how could she?

She’d always thought Reid was destined for better things than his mother had gotten out of life; there was something about him, a gentleness that made him different from other boys. Not that he was a sissy, she had seen him beat up three boys for hurting a little wild rabbit they had caught. He was tall and played basketball at school; she didn’t see him in classes because he was a year ahead. Anyway, his classes were all chemistry and woodshop and the kinds of math that drove her up the wall.

He said, of Aunt Selma’s church, “Your cousin Jack’s really into it. What exactly do they do there, Jack and the girls, when Claybelle gives them lessons?”

“They— I wish I knew. Jack started out hating the idea. It was Beverly Parker who changed his mind. I wish Colin wouldn’t go with them; he’s— well I don’t know, he’s not so sure of himself.”

Reid nodded.

“They go to McCaber’s barn and try to do seances and—well you can guess what else.”

Reid grinned. “I can guess. It’s the older people who are getting into it mostly, though, the lonely ones, the ones with nothing to do. My mom—they talk to her about it, the ladies she works for—they talk about giving donations. They—he has them thinking that once they find their Zagdesha, they’ll be cured of all their aches and pains, and almost be young again. That’s what angers Ma, that he’s told them it can cure their sicknesses. That’s why some of them give donations even if they can’t afford it—though I guess some of the weekend people can. What do you think, is it for money your Aunt Selma’s doing it, or does she really believe all that?”

“I keep wondering. She seems pretty gone on it. She’s always had a thing about astrology and tarot cards and things like that. She used to tell our fortunes, all of us, even Aunt Bett sometimes.”

“I wouldn’t have thought your Aunt Bett would have anything to do with fortune-telling. My mother says she’s always been against anything like that ever since they were children. Ma says they used to play with a ouija board and your Aunt Bett wouldn’t have any part of it. Your mother and her cousin Justin were younger, just little, but Ma says they were good at it. Anyway, the Church of the Zagdesha’s beginning to attract a lot of attention; it’s—well it’s like a place you’d find in San Francisco more than here, maybe.”

“Your grandfather, Reid, he’s pretty much against it, isn’t he? I mean, he’s been saying things about how evil it is.”

“Saying things! He’s been yelling them in the street.” Reid grinned and shook his head. “I’ve never seen him so worked up. He claims it’s the corruption of the devil, you know how he goes on. He’d have your aunt and Dr. Claybelle burned at the stake if he had his way.” Reid settled the chestnut again, then loosened the reins. “He says the whole village is responsible, that it’s letting evil flourish. Something about how demons have arisen again to tempt us, whatever that means.”

Bethany stared at him. Even old Mr. Krupp’s drunken rantings made her uneasy. What was the matter with her? She didn’t even believe in spirits, and yet this whole business unnerved her more than she liked to admit. Maybe she believed in evil though, maybe it was something touching her own mind from Aunt Selma’s pressing interest that had her so edgy.

“It isn’t a church, Reid. Sometimes I think if they called it something else, anything else, there wouldn’t be so much fuss about it. I wonder what Justin will think of it. She and Uncle Zebulon might be coming back here to live. They won’t approve of it, I know they won’t. It’s funny how much I think about Justin and Uncle Zebulon. Sometimes I remember things they said for no reason.”

She studied Reid. Under his joking about his grandfather, there had been a hard core of disgust and the laugh lines around his mouth had gone taut, as they did when he was angry. Reid’s grandfather had been the joke of the village for as long as she could remember, coming into shops periodically very loud and abusive, sometimes insulting people in such a crude way that the police would be called. People said he’d been like that ever since his boy John was killed in the fishing accident when Mr. Krupp’s boat burned.

Mr. Krupp kept his own small church congregation in constant turmoil with his drinking and his loud interpretations of the Bible. Bethany knew he embarrassed them, but most of its members felt it would be uncharitable to throw him out of the church. Now, with him criticizing Aunt Selma’s new venture, she wondered what kind of anger he’d stir up. Maybe some people would believe him.

“Do you go to church, Reid?”

“No. I never felt the need of it.”

Bethany waited, not sure whether to be pleased.

“I suppose with Grandfather the way he is, always spouting Bible quotations, it sort of turned me off. Anyway, I guess I think that whatever you believe—well, that you ought to work it out for yourself.”

“If you can work it out,” she said, admiring him. “But, what about people like Aunt Selma, what about the way she’s worked it out?”

“Grandfather says she was always a little peculiar that way. Lured toward darkness, he says.” He grinned at her. “He says it runs in the family.”

His humor was lost on her, and she stared at him in a strange, quick panic. “Why would it run in the family? I never heard that,” she said rather tightly.

“I don’t know. He’s a funny old duck, you can’t ask him anything. When I did ask him, he just grumbled something about your Uncle Zebulon. Like he hates him.”

“Uncle Zebulon? I guess they grew up together, but I never heard they hated each other. Why does he?”

“Who knows? I don’t think he knows himself what goes on in that fried brain of his.”

Bethany watched Reid, thinking she wouldn’t want to have to live with old Mr. Krupp. It must take a lot of guts to ignore the embarrassments and just get on with your own life. “Anyway, if liking spirits and occult things runs in the family, Aunt Selma got all of it, because Aunt Bett sure didn’t inherit it, nor did Mama. And I couldn’t have, I’m not related.” Even if she had been, knowing other’s thoughts, that hadn’t anything to do with spirits, she had read enough to know that. When she was younger she had read everything she could find in a terrible desperation to understand herself. Telepathy, another sense, a latent sense in man that could, in the future, become better developed. The textbook words were printed on her mind so strongly she could almost close her eyes and see them. They were a kind of strange, dry comfort when she needed comforting. She glanced at Reid, grinned, kicked the pony into a gallop, and they raced, the horses pounding the wet sand and the two of them hunched in the wind and laughing.

Chapter 4

But you promised,” Colin grumbled, scuffing his feet along the curb. “It’s the first seance, and you said you’d go with me.” He shifted his school books and glowered. Across the street, people were going in, some hesitantly, and some quickly as if they didn’t want to be seen.

She wished she hadn’t promised. “Besides, I have homework.”

“Everyone has homework. Come on Bethany.” She picked up a handful of eucalyptus leaves, breathed in their heady scent, and flung them down again. The black expanse of windows and the red door looked out of place next to the clean white inn. Colin was staring at her, looking sullen and hopeful all at once. “If I did promise,” she said quickly, “then I’ve changed my mind. Anyway you don’t need me. Just walk across the street and go in.” She pushed her hair back and turned away from him.

“But I do need you!” He moved around in front of her. “Listen, Bethany, I don’t want to go in alone.”

“Well I don’t want to go at all.” She studied him, annoyed. “Anyway, Jack and the girls are in there, aren’t they?” Why did she have to argue? Why didn’t she just walk off?

His face had grown red with frustration. “The girls aren’t coming; their mothers wouldn’t let them.”

She waited, trying to hide her curiosity, while he fidgeted.

“You know the candles,” he said at last, “the seances in McCaber’s barn? Well, one got tipped over, and the hay got on fire.”

She caught her breath. “But when? There wasn’t— The whole village would have heard—”

“We got it out with gunny sacks. But dumb Ciel went and told her mother—about the seances, everything. So their mothers wouldn’t let them come; they won’t let them even speak to Jack.”

Bethany grinned spitefully.

“You don’t even want to understand!”

“Come on, Colin, I only— What about the money, though? Do you think it’s right for Aunt Selma to go around collecting donations like she’s been doing? What does she use it for? And how can they tell people they’ll cure them of—of arthritis and things! That’s almost illegal. What do they do with all that money?”

“Listen, Bethany, the church needs money for research—” She snorted at this. “—and for books and things. You don’t— Those people get what they pay for. There really is something; you haven’t heard Dr. Claybelle and seen what he can do.”

“If it’s so great, why don’t you go on in, Colin?” “I—I just want you to come with me, that’s all.” She stared across the street, and when she looked back at Colin, he seemed so unhappy that she sighed. “Come on,” she said at last, against her better judgment. The place made her uneasy, but it stirred her curiosity, too, though she would never have admitted it to Colin. “We can sit by the door so if I get bored I can leave.”

The room was dim after the bright street. Its only light was from the candles on the table in front. The black cloth covering the walls was painted with blood red signs: pentacles, a ram’s head, a goat; and the candlelight shifting across them gave the room a pulsing quality, as if the symbols themselves moved and shifted. Bethany pushed Colin in ahead of her and sat down as near the door as she could get.

The bloodiness of the symbols in the uncertain light made her feel rather light-headed, and when the music began, a high pulsing dissonance, the effect was nearly too much for her. She tried to make fun of it in her own mind, but her wrists prickled in spite of herself.

This isn’t like me, she thought angrily; but she couldn’t seem to help it. And then, in spite of her uncertain feelings, she began to look around at the people who were there, and to wonder what they were thinking. How rapt some of them looked. She started up in alarm when the curtains at the back began to draw apart— the two red serpents painted across them writhed as if they were alive. Her skin crawled, and she frowned, annoyed at herself, as Aunt Selma stepped out from the darkness between the coiling serpents. She was dressed in a long black robe, and her face, framed by a cowl, shone like a pale, oval moon. She stood with her white hands lightly together in an attitude of prayer; then after a long time, she looked up, and raised her arms to trace a sign across the heads of the audience. Even as she lowered her hands so they moved softly above the flaming candles like white moths, something in Bethany stirred; almost overwhelmed with sudden interest, still she felt a panic to get away. She put her hand on Colin’s arm; she wanted to tell him she would leave now. But the street door opened and Dr. Claybelle stood blocking the sun-smeared entrance. Dressed in a long purple robe, he stared around him coldly, then started down the aisle with a slow, measured step; and behind him came the robed, pacing figures of Mr. and Mrs. Blakey. When the slow procession of three reached the table, they sat down facing the audience and bent their heads solemnly to stare at their folded hands. Bethany glanced sideways at Colin. He seemed completely caught up in the ceremony; the candles on the table guttered so that tall shadows glided strangely across the black draped walls. Bethany felt cold, the room was very cold.

When Selma raised her voice, the tone of it was totally unfamiliar, imperative and hoarse. “Arise, Serpent. Arise and come forth upon this plane as the sea rises and the winds tear at the heavens—” Puzzled and tense, Bethany sat still to listen in spite of her fear, “Arise, and harken, Serpent, thou art bidden in the name of unity—unity to be set upon this world that was torn asunder. Extend your everlasting power and bring forth thunder, and heal the wound that has divided us. In the name of the spirit that dwells on this side, and in the name of its twin, take this blood as my blood and make of us one blood—” Selma lifted the chalice from the table and held it out before her, and Bethany gasped: It was exactly like the chalice the priest used at mass. When Selma raised it to her lips, a thrill of sick dread ran through Bethany. She stared at the black-draped table, at the candles, and at the shadows writhing—and she turned away, holding Colin for support as the room swam around her.

She didn’t know she had risen until she was standing in the aisle. The figures on the drapes seemed to be larger and coming toward her. She was so dizzy.

The dimensions of the room seemed uncertain, but Selma’s voice pulled at her. “I drink of the blood,” Selma whispered, and her words echoed in Bethany’s head. “By the Power, lay yourself to my command; by the Power—”

Bethany began to walk slowly toward the altar.

It was an altar, she could see that now. Yes! And the words were leaping in her mind before Selma spoke them— “Take this blood and the blood of my sister,” Bethany whispered. “Make of us one blood.” Bethany had almost reached the altar, her pulse was pounding. Yes, that was the way—the blood, drink the blood. She reached forward at last and accepted the chalice from Selma’s outstretched hands.

The silver was warm from Selma’s hands. Bethany lifted the tall cup and drank from it, and she stared into the green eyes of Selma Krake as if she were staring into the eyes of the Serpent itself. The thrill in her, the surging wild thrill in her was terrible. As she turned to face the room, she thought, I can’t be doing this— But she could not resist, and no one stirred before her, not a hand moved, no weight was shifted—

“By the power,” Bethany’s voice seemed to come without her bidding, nor did she wonder how she knew the words; “kneel, Serpent, and bid the spirit which awaits reveal itself to me.” The thrill within her surged, and the air before her began to gather and to warp, to form a darkness that made her catch her breath in silence, a darkness that grew and seemed to have depth, a darkness that rose up at last to blot out the audience, then condensed slowly to form the shape of a figure; fear crawled up Bethany’s spine, but the whole of her being was concentrated on that shifting stir of air—

The shape moved toward her, seemed almost to engulf her. It was a human shape, and the feeling of power in her grew, almost lifting her— Then cold fear spun in her stomach. Her face blanched, drained of blood. What was she doing? Get out. Get out—

It was gone, the shape had disappeared; the power she had felt was gone. In its place, fear made her tremble; strangers stared at her; she was utterly alone. She felt naked and exposed. She fled for the door, wrenched it open, and ran.

She sat huddled on the grass tower, retching. What had happened to her? What had she done in there? Her hands shook, there was a shaking all through her. She closed her eyes and tried to think about how the gulls were wheeling below her, how dry the grass felt brushing her arms; but the dark insanity pushed in at her, terrifying her. Something had been in that room, something strange and remote. Something she had called. Nothing in her experience, nothing that had ever happened to her had prepared her for this. As frightening as it was to touch another’s mind, she had made that understandable to herself, mostly by reading, by finding out it was not a thing to be feared. But this—this was beyond all she understood as natural. She huddled, her arms around herself, clammy with fear.

She went down from the grass tower finally and walked along the wet tide line, needing to walk, to be doing something. She crossed the dunes and got Danny, but even Danny was no help, for suddenly she could not bear to be alone. The calm security that aloneness had always brought had quite left her. She had a terrible need to be with someone, to talk to someone. She took Danny back and walked up the hills to the house site where Reid was working. She needed his quiet strength, in spite of her shame at having to tell him.

He was sitting on a stack of two-by-fours eating his dinner, a sandwich and coffee. His brown hair had sawdust in it, and the smile lines around his mouth were touched with fine sawdust like golden pollen. She sat down next to him, the scent of resin from the new lumber rising sharply in her nostrils. She looked at him, then began to make a pattern on the ground with a stick, a five-sided pentacle. She caught her breath, rubbed it out, and flung the stick from her, then sat silent and shaken.

“I heard about it,” Reid said at last, offering her a sandwich.

“What did you hear? From who?”

“That there was something there, something in that room that—like a ghost, Joe Simm’s wife said. I had to stop in the hardware for some nails.”

She was embarrassed at his knowing. And yet hadn’t she come to talk to him? “What exactly did Mrs. Simms say?”

“That something formed in the middle of the room, in front of you. That it blocked out the people on the other side of the aisle. That you made it happen.” He looked at her with concern.

Until that moment she had almost been able to think it was her imagination; but suddenly now she was shivering again. Reid put his arm around her comfortably, letting her hide her embarrassment and fear, and they sat staring silently at the bare timbers of the unfinished house. The new lumber was bright and raw against the dark, subtle colors of the eucalyptus grove. She glanced sideways at Reid; he was very calm and steady. Someone she could trust.

“Colin wanted me to go with him. I guess I always do what Colin wants, he makes me feel sorry for him. He does it on purpose. And—and maybe I wanted to go, too. I was afraid, but I—I don’t know. I wasn’t going to stay; I almost left and then— Oh, I wish I had.” She told him all of it then, what she had felt, the terrible surge of power that had swept her. When she finished, she sat silent, waiting for him to speak. Waiting for him to tell her something that would make it all right. A breeze sloughed through the tops of the eucalyptus trees, the scent mingling with the scents of lumber and of earth. A chipmunk came silently out of his hole, his small body poised for flight, then scampered across under the flooring of the house as if he had already started a nest there in spite of Reid’s pounding.

“Well you’re not going crazy,” Reid said at last. “Other people saw it. And there’s a logical explanation for everything. I don’t believe in ghosts and spirits; there’s some explanation other than that.”

Before it happened, she would have agreed. Now, she didn’t know. And yet somehow his words calmed her.

“It might be some kind of telepathy,” he said, offering her his coffee. “You might be getting someone’s thoughts; there’s plenty of proof that it happens. There’ve even been experiments in Russia to try to use telepathy to run machines. You might have gotten the thoughts of someone who wanted a spirit to appear.”

She stared at him and felt grateful that he could think of that. That he didn’t scoff. “But how could anyone else see it if it was telepathy: how could Mrs. Simms?”

“They all could have seen it. It could have been some kind of— Well, like mass hypnotism. With everyone in the room wanting it to happen maybe—”

“But I didn’t want it to happen. I wasn’t even serious about it. Yet I was the one who— How could I have hypnotized them all?”

“Could your aunt have?”

“No. I don’t know, I don’t think so. I mean—I felt such power, Reid.”

“That could have been part of it, though. You said before, your aunt wanted to believe in that kind of thing. Maybe she, maybe her wanting—”

“Reid, sometimes I— Ever since I can remember I’ve known things. Gotten things from people. It—it’s a feeling in me. That feeling was there today.”

“You mean, gotten thoughts from other people?”

She looked at him, then nodded.

“Can you do it whenever you want?” he asked uneasily. “Can you read my mind?”

She grinned. “It’s funny, I never could. Usually I can’t make it happen, it just comes. But with you it never has.”

“I’m glad of that. But does it happen a lot? I mean— I don’t know, I just never thought about you—” He studied her, a look full of curiosity.

“It did more when I was small. But when Mama and Papa died—after they died, it didn’t happen for a long time. When I was little, though, it used to happen in school and it always upset me. I guess it made me shy and— Well I didn’t like to be with other children. I didn’t like to be in crowds, and sometimes the teachers— Do you remember Miss Spidel?”

“Spider Spidel?” He grimaced.

“She was more horrible than you ever knew, than anyone ever knew.” She looked at him bleakly. “One time I—I won’t tell you what her thoughts were like, but I ran out of the room and was sick from it.” She was silent for a moment, watching him. “I’m glad you just—that you’re so matter-of-fact about it.”

She sat for a long time watching him cut two-by-fours and nail up framing, the smell of the cut wood bitter and rich on the chill air. Then they walked home in the late summer twilight with the smell of wood following them on Reid’s hands and clothes. They went the long way, down around the crests of two hills where they could see the dunes and the sea laid out below them, through a narrow valley where they rode sometimes, past the marshes all coppery in the evening light, then skirting the upper part of the village to its other side and her house—Aunt Bett’s house. They did not talk much, Reid asked some more questions about the seance until she said she couldn’t bear to talk about it. Then he was quiet and smiled at her, and in the village he bought her a candy bar. When he left her at Aunt Bett’s front porch, he put his arm around her. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said, giving her a deep solemn look. “It isn’t spirits, that’s all rubbish. It’s just some kind of hypnotic thing, a mass hypnotism. And don’t forget, Bethany, if you need someone to talk to, I’m here.” He patted her shoulder and was gone.

She went in feeling peaceful.

But the peace did not last, Aunt Bett was waiting; she had heard and was tight-lipped, the little twitch plain on one side of her mouth. Colin had been sent to bed like a child, his bed blocking the living room and his face turned to the wall. Aunt Bett took Bethany into the kitchen and set her dinner before her, warm from the oven. She was silent and grim, turning to rinse some plates at the sink. When the tirade that Bethany expected did not come, she grew more and more uneasy, picking at her food, until finally she could stand it no longer. “Aunt Bett, if you have something to say, I guess I wish you’d just say it.”

Her aunt turned from the sink and looked down at her. “Finish your dinner.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, and when Bethany had eaten all she could manage, Aunt Bett sat down opposite her. Bethany could not read the expression in her eyes.

“I have had the story from others, Bethany, now suppose you tell me. I want to know exactly what you did and what you saw.”

“I don’t know exactly, Aunt Bett. I don’t know what happened, really.”

“Tell me what you do know.”

She told as honestly as she could, except leaving out the feeling of power that had accompanied it. But that very feel of power was what Aunt Bett seemed to sense, that was where she concentrated her venom—on the heady sense of power that had risen in Bethany’s breast. Afterward in bed, Bethany wondered how she knew, but when she went back over Aunt Bett’s words she could see that she did not necessarily have to know, she was only voicing the greatest fear that she could imagine, her fear for Bethany’s soul.

And then in the night her dreams were terrifying; and when she woke she was not sure that the place where she had found herself had been a dream at all. She had been standing in a room with stone walls that broke jagged at the top to let in the sky; above her, dark clouds blew, edged in one place with light from the hidden sun, and beneath her feet, cropped grass grew very green. The stones of the room seemed extremely old, set without mortar and roughly cut, with patches of lichen growing on them. Across from her in the opposite wall was a closed door made of rough wood. She knew, as if she had been there many times, that outside the door lay a clipped, grassy field, stretching away toward other stone walls, remains of ancient buildings; between the walls would be huge symmetrical trees with wide spreading branches and leaves like fine lace. She stepped to the door and pushed it open.

It was as she had imagined. The grass seemed an incredibly bright green, almost iridescent, perhaps because the blue gray sky hung low and dark behind it. There was no person or animal in sight. Beyond the ruins lay a shimmering sea without surf.

A figure moved swiftly beyond the ruins. Bethany watched, and soon it appeared again, a woman she knew well. Yet she didn’t know her at all, she had never seen her before. The landscape seemed to quiver as heated air does above a summer pavement. And it was hot, very hot, a humid summer evening. The woman stooped to pluck something from the grass then turned away, the elaborate swirl of her silver hair catching the orange light of the low sun; she started away toward a low wooden building that stood beyond the ruins. Bethany followed her.

The small, thatched building faced the water. It seemed to be a shop, for a bell tinkled as the woman disappeared inside and there was a small display window set beside the door; in it flashed a brilliant red square of cloth, intricately worked into a picture of a bird in a tree.

As Bethany stepped past the window and reached for the door—she was moving with a kind of slow compulsion, as if she had no decision in the matter—she caught a glimpse of herself reflected against the red cloth. She stopped, turned back, and stared. It was not only the cloth that flashed red from the glass, it was her dress. She drew back and looked down at herself. She was wearing a red cotton dress with piping round the hem. But she had no such dress! She put her hand to the glass, displaced and shaken, and stared in confusion at her reflection. Her red hair and black eyes stared back at her, and though she could find nothing wrong, an unaccountable terror gripped her; she reached wildly for the door and plunged through it; she must speak to the woman, she must speak to someone.

She stood in the dimness with her back to the door, conscious only of her own confusion, of the wrongness of everything. And yet beneath this feeling there was a sense that if she would just let go, just relax, it would come right and she would feel safe here. The heat of the room made her dizzy; at the back of the shop a door stood open to the sea; perhaps the woman had gone through there. But when she stood in the doorway, the pale strip of beach was empty except for five riders on small dark ponies; they shouted in a strange language as they galloped toward her, and halted in front of her, jerking the ponies so they reared up, fighting the bits; the boys laughed and she, though angered by their cruelty, felt an eagerness for a moment that she could not explain … and she was awake.

She lay prickling with heat and fear, not knowing for a long time where she was, then surprised it had been a dream. Then she became aware that it was still very hot, and that she was not in her own bed even now. The silvered square of mirror was not before her; on the opposite wall a smaller, oval mirror glimmered palely in the darkness. The bed in which she lay was wider and softer than her own. She sat up. There was a little light from the glass door to her left. This was not a dream, it could not be. A night bird was calling, a strange, lilting cry, and the air was hot and smelled of flowers. Frantically she pawed in the dark until she found a lamp and switched it on. The room flared into myriad rich colors and patterns, red print wallpaper, a deep oriental rug, red blankets over her. The frame on the oval mirror was deeply carved gold, and the curtained glass doors had been left ajar to let in the breeze; she stared around her with increasing interest. A short red robe had been thrown across a chair, half covering a pile of books—and then a dizziness came over her, and a dark confusion swept her so she put her head down on her knees.

When she felt better, she wondered why she was sitting there like that; she got out of bed at once and went straight to the door that led into the hall, opened it quietly, and started along the corridor, the tiles cold beneath her bare feet. She knew exactly where she was going, guiding herself in the darkness by the railing on her left; below the rail, the living room lay like a dark pool—though she didn’t know how she knew that, for she could see nothing. There was something she wanted, some reason she had come out; she was not afraid in the darkness. When she reached the room at the end of the corridor, she opened the door quietly and, knowing just where, began to rifle blindly through cupboards and drawers, running her hands through silk and soft thin wool. Her hands felt for a small piece of metal. Jewelry? She could not make it out; but it would have uneven protrusions—a winged thing, she felt. Part of her was terrified at what she was doing, and part of her knew the room was empty.

It was as if there were layers to her mind; she was afraid, and yet she was not afraid. She knew this house, and she did not know it. She felt as if there were things in her mind she could not describe even to herself; she felt a strange presence around her, and yet she felt more alone than she had ever been in her life.

There was a sound from below as if a door had closed; she turned at once, slipped out of the room and hurried down the corridor as a light flashed on below. She was back in bed when steps sounded on the stair. She lay listening, thinking incomprehensibly: A few more nights and I will have it.

She must have slept, and when she woke the familiar square mirror faced her and dawn was coming. She sat up in bed and stared thankfully at the messy room, with clothes strewn over chairs, the window shade awry, and Marylou sleeping soundly.

The dream, she thought. It—but it wasn’t a dream. The first time, in the ruins, that was a dream. But not the other place. She had been out of this room, and in a different bed. The corridor, the light downstairs— Oh, it was never a dream. Confused and shaken, she rose and looked at herself in the mirror. She was very pale. She felt her cheek in a panic, as if to be sure it was her own. Nothing in her experience had ever been like this. The seance, and now this dream where she had seen not just some scene from a remote place, but where she had moved around, where she had thought things and had a purpose that she could not understand. It was incomprehensible, as if her whole life had canted suddenly, had taken a twist that left her unbalanced and ready to fall.

And yet, terrified as she was, her thoughts insisted on returning to the details of that room, and to her blind search for she knew not what. She felt too shaken to go to school; she would tell Aunt Bett she was sick. It must be early, the alarm hadn’t gone—then she realized it was Saturday. She would be late for work. She almost didn’t care, she almost got back into bed. But that would be worse. She made herself dress, then went into the kitchen to heat some rolls and make cocoa. She felt weak all at once, famished, as if every ounce of strength had been drained from her. When she saw Colin peering from his bed, she took her breakfast in, reluctantly, to share with him. She would rather have stayed to herself.

“It was real,” Colin said, and she thought he meant her dream, and the red bedroom, and she stared at him, incredulous. Then she realized he had meant the seance, and the terror of the black image washed over her again on top of the other. “I told you the Zagdesha was real,” he said smugly. “Now do you believe me?” She looked at him helplessly, but he went on, not seeing how she felt. “I wanted to come after you but—why did you run off? Tell me how it made you feel.” Then, when she did not answer, he really looked at her at last, and his eyes widened. “It scared you,” he said accusingly.

“Yes, it scared me!” She was furious at him. “But then,” she lied, not wanting to share her fears with Colin, “I realized it wasn’t anything, just some kind of mass hypnotism. A book I read once explained it,” she said coolly. “There’ve been lots of experiments.”

“It wasn’t hypnotism!” He jerked away, upsetting his cocoa, and she was glad she had shaken him like that. But she wanted to be away from his prying. She pushed their napkins hurriedly into the brown pool of cocoa, almost spilling her own cup, finished her breakfast quickly, burning her mouth, then snatched up her coat and left.

Outdoors, she turned up her collar and lifted her face to the bright cold air. Think of horses, she thought. Think of nothing but horses. Think of Danny. Think of hay and pitchforks and riding on the sand—nothing else is real, only this morning is real. She made herself see Danny’s dark eyes watching her, his teeth ready to bite.

A gray sedan pulled to the curb beside her, and Aunt Selma put out her gloved hand. “Won’t you get in for a minute, Bethany? I’d like to talk to you. Have you had your breakfast?”

“I’ve eaten,” Bethany said shortly, studying her aunt with displeasure, then turned and walked on.

Selma drove beside her. “Won’t you sit in the car for a minute? I can’t hurt you, you know.”

“What do you want?” Bethany stood stolidly on the sidewalk. It was still so early that the birds’ first morning calls were loud and eager all around them.

Selma smiled. “You showed a fascinating talent yesterday, Bethany. Dr. Claybelle and the Blakey’s were very impressed. I had no idea—” She let her words drift, as if in great admiration. “It’s—it was remarkable. I can’t imagine what you’d be able to do with some practice. Something spoiled it, though. Can you tell me what made you run away?”

“My own good sense,” Bethany said rudely.

Selma occupied herself lighting a cigarette, dark lashes fringing her smooth pale cheeks. Her hair was coiled around a pink scarf, and she was wearing a pink sweater. Bethany tried to get some thought from her but she could not, and when Selma looked up again her green eyes were innocent and warm. “Bethany, I —it means so much to me. It’s— There’s something there, something real and wonderful. I want so much to know. Won’t you come back? Won’t you come again and bring the Zagdesha for us? You’ve proven that it’s real; Mrs. Blakey was convinced it was her Zagdesha that began to form there. Could you tell? Could you see its face?” Her voice was so eager. “Will you come back and help us?”

“Aunt Bett won’t let me,” Bethany said, grateful, now, for Aunt Bett’s anger.

“Bett wouldn’t need to know, not if there’s no audience. Bett doesn’t need to know anything. We could do it privately, could see what you are really capable of.”

“No!” Bethany hissed. “No I won’t! I don’t want anything to do with it.” She flung away, furious, and turned into a vacant lot where Selma could not drive. She heard the car go off at last, gunning harshly.

She walked fast through the village, kicking at the sand. The streets were silent, no one about yet, and the sand lay deep in the gutters and up against the doors where it had blown during the night. When the village began to stir, the shopkeepers would all come out to sweep the sand. Why did Selma have to be so insistent? She was used to getting her own way. Then she thought suddenly: if it was a trick yesterday, a trick Selma played, then she wouldn’t need me, it could be anyone. She stopped dead still, staring at nothing. What if it wasn’t a trick? What if it was something in her doing it? Or Selma and her together, and Selma knew it? At last she went on, feeling very uncertain. A gull rose up screaming. Maybe Aunt Bett was right, she thought distractedly, maybe she should be terrified for her immortal soul.

Aunt Bett had shown real fear, and a deep concern for Bethany. “Something much stronger than you was at work, child. You have no idea what it is capable of, and you must not tempt it again.” Maybe she was right; that was what it had felt like, some terrible power that no one would want to get involved with. And yet underneath that, something else, something she could not define had touched her for a moment, something gentler—or at least she thought it had been gentle, a quick flash gone almost at once.

Aunt Bett had been curiously unemotional about the whole thing. She must have been very upset to hold herself so tightly; as if, if she really let go, she might do irreparable damage to Bethany on the shaky ground where she stood. This alone made Bethany know the gravity with which she viewed yesterday’s incident.

“When you were small,” Aunt Bett had said at last, “do you remember that you came to me once with something Jack had done?”

Bethany had blanched and nodded.

“How did you know that, Bethany? I never wanted to ask. I simply pretended to myself it had not happened. How did you know?”

“Sometimes—sometimes I just know, Aunt Bett. I don’t know how.”

“Do you do this often?”

Bethany had lied without compunction. “No, Aunt Bett,” she said quietly, “Not any more.” and she had felt Aunt Bett’s relief clearly. Then for a moment she had had a flashing sense of something more from Aunt Bett, something—but it was gone too suddenly, she could make nothing of it.

She was late to the stables, uncommunicative and preoccupied. She got to work at once, almost frantically, trying to drive out her thoughts. Neither Reid nor Mr. Grady said much, and Bethany wondered if Mr. Grady knew about yesterday. If he did, he would have considered it not his business to mention it, though he would have disapproved heartily, Bethany felt sure. Late in the morning, as she was raking the alleyway, Reid took the rake gently from her. “Do you know that’s the second time you’ve raked it? Do the tack, will you?”

She tried to pull herself together and pay attention to what she was about, but the rhythm of rubbing soap into the leather, like the rhythm of raking, only increased her preoccupation. Her thoughts kept returning to Selma’s insistent voice, and to the dark figure forming there before her—then to the ruins, and the bedroom where she had awakened—puzzling at it all, trying to find some clue that would help her unravel the mystery. When Reid put a horse in the alleyway and began to clean its feet, she was glad for his company. But she couldn’t bring herself to say anything; she knew if she started to talk she would tell him about the dream, and she didn’t want to. He too was silent for so long that her thoughts turned again to the red room, moving about in it, trying to make sense of why it seemed familiar; then she thought of Selma’s terrible gall this morning, and her anger rose again unbidden.

“You’re pretty quiet this morning,” Reid said at last as he picked up the chestnut’s hind leg. “Are you sorry we talked last night?” His gray eyes, in the dim stable light, took on the color of the rusty chestnut gelding. A lock of hair was down over his forehead, and the tail of his shirt was half out.

“Oh no. No I’m not; it helped me. I felt nice afterward. But then Aunt Bett was waiting; she knew all about it. She was pretty grim. What she said made me think, though. Reid, I had such strange dreams last night. Then this morning Colin was all excited about the—Zagdesha. He—oh, I don’t know, he’s so eager about it. But the dream I had— I don’t think it was a dream, it was like I was really there.” She was beginning to feel shaken again, to be out of control. Her voice shook, but she steadied it. “Then Aunt Selma drove up this morning when I was coming to work and wanted— She wanted me to do another seance. Just like that!” Tears sprung maddeningly. “Why can’t she leave me alone!” She turned, wiped her face with her soapy hand, and fled into the tack room.

Chapter 5

Bethany, I’ve asked you three times, pass the strawberry jam.” Aunt Bett frowned and bit her lip. Bethany stared at the tablecloth and passed the jam with hardly a glance upward. Keep everything out, draw in tight and keep everything out! She felt twisted and cramped with it. For the dream had continued to haunt her, coming again and again for four nights in a row, so that she had been sleepy and cross in school, all her attention turned inward toward the dreams. She had not heard the teachers, she had missed assignments, and she had been impossible at home, too, she supposed. And the most frightening part of the dreams was that each time, when she left the red bedroom, she had searched in a different place. She was moving about in a world that was— That was what? That was not real? That was on another plane, the plane of the Zagdesha? And each time, she had felt the strong presence of emotions that could not be her own.

“Bethany, the salt,” Uncle Jimmie said gently. “Could I have the salt?” His eyes searched hers. She looked down and felt his gaze on her, wanting to understand, wanting to help.

“Daydreaming,” Marylou said. “It’s that boy at the stables, that Reid Young.” Bethany scowled at her, and Marylou grinned maliciously. “Don’t be so touchy. Maybe it’s not a boy at all, maybe the Zagdesha’s got your tongue.” Bethany’s face grew hot. She wished she were away from the table. She wished Marylou would be sick.

“Stop it, Marylou. Your mother’s had enough of this Zagdesha business,” Uncle Jimmie said crossly. “Maybe,” he said to Aunt Bett, “maybe when Justin comes she can talk some sense into Selma. Or maybe Zebulon can.”

“Justin won’t be bothered,” Aunt Bett said shortly. “She—and Zebulon wouldn’t.” She gave Uncle Jimmie a look.

Once when Bethany was small, and Justin and Zebulon had come to stay with them, Bethany and Papa had slept on couches before the fire, and Zebulon had had her room; she had heard him snoring through the wall. “Aunt Justin and Great-Uncle Zebulon,” Aunt Bett had said emphatically. “He’s a famous man, and you are to respect him.” But famous men could go barefoot on the shore just as well as anyone else, Bethany had found. Leathery brown and lean, Zebulon McAllister swam with her at daybreak and returned to the cottage salty and sandy and ravenous with Bethany balanced on his shoulders. She could remember him kneeling before an infinitesimal crab in the sand, picking it up and showing her how delicate and finely made it was.

There was something about Uncle Zebulon, a quality —a kind of rightness, a kind of—well, the way she felt on the dunes, that was the way she thought of him. Justin had it too, but in a different way; Justin who was so like Mama in the way she moved, light and easy and small boned. Bethany had a fellow feeling for Justin. They would ride together when Justin came, they always did. That would be nice; she needed someone to talk to. Someone— Reid was almost too matter-of-fact sometimes. But I can’t tell Justin! I can’t tell her anything! I don’t want Justin and Zebulon to know. What exactly did Aunt Bett mean, that Justin and Zebulon wouldn’t be bothered with talk about the Zagdesha, with talking to Aunt Selma?

“They haven’t bought the Tabor place! That’s a tourist cabin!” Marylou cried indignantly.

Aunt Bett sighed. You could tell she thought it a strange thing to do. “They’re coming here to settle, to finish the last volume of Zebulon’s history. They’ve had enough of Europe, I suppose. Maybe the Tabor place is only temporary until they can find something— I wish Selma had never started this Zagdesha business!”

“There’s a lot of talk in the village,” Uncle Jimmie said, carefully not looking at Bethany. “Some people are saying the priest and Reverends Thomas and Blake ought to close the place down and run Claybelle out of town. They don’t say Selma too, but you can tell what they mean.”

“Old Mr. Krupp was shouting and ranting in the store today,” Marylou said. “About the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, and the sins of this family are finally visited—what did he mean by all that!”

“Drunken raving,” Aunt Bett said quickly. “That’s what drink does to you. That old man will only make matters worse; someone ought to run him out of town. He’s always been a troublemaker. Bethany, I don’t want you talking about this Zagdesha business with that Reid Young; he’s the old man’s grandson and he—”

“Reid wouldn’t!” Bethany cried, furious.

“Of course Reid wouldn’t,” Uncle Jimmie said. “That boy can’t help what the old man does. He knows better than to give old Krupp anything to talk about.”

Marylou looked around the table. “She’s never married, has she? Justin’s never married.” Then, smiling smugly, she began to clear the table.

As if marrying, Bethany thought, was the ultimate goal.

“She’s helped Uncle Zebulon,” Colin said unexpectedly. “But you wouldn’t know about anything as brainy as doing research.”

“And maybe she stayed with him because her sister died so young,” Aunt Bett said quietly. “It must have been a terrible shock for the old man, after losing his wife, too. I imagine Justin has resigned herself to being an old maid, though I suppose— Well she’s only thirty-some.”

Bethany puzzled for some days over Aunt Bett’s quick, nervous response to Marylou’s comments about Mr. Krupp, but she could make no sense of it. With the impending arrival of Justin, to fix up the tourist cottage while Zebulon remained in New York to finish some work, the whole routine of the family was changed. Aunt Bett decided to give the entire house a needless scrubbing, and all three children were pressed into helping—though Bethany, with her job, got less of it than Colin and Marylou. There was a good deal of baking, too, which no one objected to, and so much bustle that her own preoccupation went nearly unnoticed. Fog came and stayed for days, hanging low over the dunes so that Bethany rode Danny—when she had time to ride—in a deliciously mysterious white world; Danny snorting as the dunes loomed out of the white ahead of them, and Bethany turning in the saddle to watch them melt into the fog again behind. After she bedded Danny one evening she went out along the shore wondering if she could get lost with the world so shrouded, wondering if she would miss the grass tower, when it loomed out of the fog suddenly, quite close. As she climbed, the grass brushing against her was muffled and wet, and when she reached the peak her

Levi’s and boots were soaked. She looked out over the fog. The tops of the tallest dunes were like round islands in a white and silent sea, with the real sea hidden beneath the fog. But the evening breeze was strengthening, and when the fog began to lift, a line of dark shapes moved out of it along the edge of the shore; Mr. Grady had the beginners out for an evening class. She watched as they drew closer, the children riding sedately at the water’s edge, and grinned to herself, knowing that when they were more experienced and the weather grew warmer, Mr. Grady would let them ride bareback into the breakers; she could imagine them screaming and laughing as the waves washed over their bare feet. The grass was like wet silk in her hands as she parted it to see better… .

… and suddenly the grass was gone, her hands were clutching metal, the iron railing of a balcony; she was looking down on a city, red roofed with great trees blowing, the sky a boiling mass of dark clouds, and beyond the city, a silvered bay shone. Close to her the shining leaves of a great tree tapped and rattled against the railing. She had been crying, there was a wet handkerchief in her hand and her cheeks were wet and salt; the tempest that she knew had shaken her, the fury and tears, lay within her as real, but as incomprehensible, as if she had begun reading in the middle of a book. Behind her, the glass doors stood open to the red bedroom. She wanted to look, but she could not bring herself to. It was there, behind her, but this was the first time she had come to it like this, from the balcony. Was it the same room? Or would there be some subtle change? She stood irresolute, staring at the glass doors, until a few huge drops of rain began to fall. And very soon it was raining in a drenching torrent, hammering the leaves like gunshot. She drew back under the roof of the house and even the tree was blotted out in the downpour, the balcony awash; rain blew through the open doors onto the oriental carpet; she flew to close the doors, saw the room in minute detail, and, unwilling to go in, turned back to huddle against the wall.

The drenching ceased as suddenly as it had begun; the falling sheet of water drew away slowly, as if a great hand were pulling it back, until it was only a silver curtain falling far out over the bay. Near to her the wet rooftops glistened red in the suddenly bright sun, then began to steam with the sun’s heat.

A woman’s voice began to call from within the house, then there was a sudden pounding on the inner door; she had a sharp picture of a tall woman with silver hair, and furious tears started again; she refused to stay here and be patronized! She grabbed the closest branch of the big tree, swung into it, and began to climb down through the slippery wet, dark green flickering world. She knew exactly where to put her feet, as if she had done this a hundred times. Water ran down her face, and jagged scraps of light flashed between the dark luminous leaves. Some creature near to her scrambled, rustling, and was gone.

When she reached the lawn, she ran down the sidewalk past the shops and into a narrow side street. The smell of rotting garbage came at her suddenly; the sun was hot on her back, and the wet pavement steamed in the heat; the houses were dilapidated, their colors faded to muted patches of turquoise and olive; the tall grass in front of them was bent now from the weight of the rain, the roofs dripped, and soaking laundry hung limp from the porch and balcony railings; the sound and glint of water filled the street.

In a narrow doorway a boy stood watching her.

Another boy slouched against a door, and two bigger boys came into a sideyard carrying sticks, their faces dark with interest. A spasm of fear ran through her. One started toward her, then another.

Fear gripped her. She faced them, saw their faces, and fled.

Sand and grass flickered by her once, and her hair was caught in the sea wind. Then she was running in the hot street, the gutter smell thick in her nostrils, dodging dark-haired, brightly dressed people. Once as she rounded a corner, she thought she heard the surf again, but the noise turned into crowds of people gathered in an outdoor market; she ran beside raw meat hanging in great bloody carcasses and saw the boys leap into the crowd behind her; she ducked into an alley so narrow she could have touched both walls at once, a dim alley that stunk of cess. It’s cobblestones were slimy. The space at the end was clear for a moment, then the five boys burst in screaming one word over and over, and Bethany turned cold with fear.

She stood watching them, terrified. Then suddenly a thrill rose up in her: instead of cowering, she jeered. They yelled with rage and were almost on her when she opened a wooden door beside her, stepped through it, and bolted it behind her.

She stood inside laughing while they pounded and swore. She was in a small dingy room with a dirt floor that had been swept to hard smoothness. There were wooden boxes for chairs, a crude unpainted table, and in one corner, a narrow wooden cot made up with a sheet. A door at the back led into what appeared to be an inner garden. Then suddenly she was on the grass tower, flicking in and out briefly, then in another place: she could see the shabby room through it for a minute, then she was standing in a big square room bright with windows and furnished with yellow tapestries and yellow furniture, and with rows of books beside a fireplace. Its colors glowed like sunlight, and it smelled of apples.

But in a moment she was back in the drab little room, smelling the stench from the alley. A woman was standing before her, an old black lady. She was very slight, not much taller than Bethany. Her faded cotton dress came nearly to her ankles and she was barefoot; her feet, all the bones of her body, seemed unusually delicate and beautiful; her skin was drawn and wrinkled, her kinky gray hair cut short like a little cap, and her face was long and thin and the bones of it were lovely; her eyes were as black as Bethany’s own, and angry. “You have been at it again, you tease those boys and one day they will catch you and—”

“Not me! Never me!” Bethany shouted, and laughed scornfully at the old woman so a look of hurt came into the woman’s dark eyes and Bethany was sorry. But still underneath she felt glee.

“Look at your dress,” the old woman said quietly. “I must wash and mend it.”

Bethany looked down at the red dress, the one with the piping around the hem, the one she had dreamed, and saw that it was torn. When she looked up, the woman’s dark eyes were staring into hers with love and exasperation, and her words had turned to another language—then she faded. Bethany could see the garden through her. Then it faded, too. Nothing went quickly, there was just the soft fading; for a second in time there was black emptiness.

Then she was on the grass tower, wearing her Levi’s. She ran her hands down their roughness, clutched a handful of grass desperately as if it would hold her there, then stood for a long time staring blindly into the wind and seeing that other world.

Other world—but what other world? For days after that she puzzled about it, worried at it, knowing she ought to try not to think about it, but incapable of that. She was unable even to talk to Reid about it without getting shaky. Marylou said she looked pale; Colin asked her a hundred times what the matter was. Then, the day she forgot half the groceries she was supposed to buy, Aunt Bett said with tense irritation, “Child, if you don’t stop this daydreaming, I’m going to call Dr. Loren. You’re acting as witless as a sick dog.”

Dr. Loren! Bethany gave the grocery sack a shove and turned away in disgust. Still, Aunt Bett had reason enough to be angry; she had been cross and forgetful and done everything wrong, not answering when she was spoken to and letting her homework go completely. She was addlebrained enough to make a saint cross, she guessed, let alone Aunt Bett. But she couldn’t seem to help it, the visions and the dreams would come; it was no wonder she’d forgotten the bread and soup and mustard. Aunt Bett should be glad she’d gotten anything at all. What would Aunt Bett think if she knew? Bethany looked at Aunt Bett, stricken, wanting to tell her, but knowing she never could. Aunt Bett, seeing her confusion, put her arms around her, and Bethany found herself shaking with sudden, uncontrollable sobs. “Child, child, whatever is it? What ever is the matter?”

“Nothing, Aunt Bett, it’s nothing. Maybe I’m getting a cold.”

She couldn’t tell Aunt Bett; there was no one she could tell but Reid. And now even the comfort of the grass tower had been taken from her, for if she climbed it again, she was convinced she would be plunged into that other world.

“I’ve never seen you like this, Bethany. I don’t think working at the stables is wise if it’s going to make you so tired and irritable.”

“It’s not the stables! I like the stable.” She pulled away from Aunt Bett and dashed into the bedroom, slamming the door in frustration.

Marylou looked up at her smugly. “You’re all nerves and temperament. Adolescence must be terrible.”

“You ought to know, you’ve been afflicted with it ever since I can remember!” She hated Marylou; she hated everyone. She flung herself down on her bed and hid her face in the pillow. Even Reid refused to understand sometimes. Well, but how could he understand, it wasn’t happening to him! Why did she find his steady attitude so comforting sometimes, and so frustrating and impossible at other times? Maybe if Selma would leave her alone, if people wouldn’t badger her—

Selma had been at her, had met her twice after school so adroitly that Bethany could not duck into a shop. “But why?” Bethany had asked both times. “Why do you want me?”

“Because I want to know. Because there’s something there, something marvelous, and you made it come. I can’t, I’ve tried.”

“You don’t believe all that,” Bethany said as airily as she could.

But Selma only stared at her. “Would you do it for money?”

“No, Aunt Selma.”

“What, then?”

“I won’t; I told you I won’t!”

“But you must. It’s so important, the whole Book of the Zagdesha—”

“No, Aunt Selma. I don’t believe in the Zagdesha!” Bethany had pushed past her and run.

“But she’s right, you know,” Colin had said. “If there’s something to know, and you’re the only one who can bring it, then you—”

“I won’t!” Bethany had turned on him so furiously that he had stared back at her in surprise.

She heard Marylou go out, and turned over on the bed to find a Kleenex; but Marylou came back before she could hide her face again. She stood in the doorway, staring. “Ma says you don’t have to help with dinner,” she said crossly. “You left your books all over the table.” She banged them down on the dresser. “I don’t see—” She gave an exasperated sigh and turned on her heel, then flung over her shoulder, “You’re just getting spoiled, and you think you can get away with it and leave everything for me to do!”

It was too much. Bethany grabbed her sweater, pushed past Marylou, and fled out the back door.

“Bethany, you come back in this house, you—” Aunt Bett called.

“No!” she shouted back, muffled and seething. She ran toward the shore almost falling over a tricycle left in the sand, to collapse at last among the dunes where she could see neither village nor ocean, only the endless sand, and twilight, and the first stars coming out. No one understood, no one, all they did was criticize. And, she was losing touch with what to believe. Was there a real power of evil, the way Aunt Bett said? Was that what she had touched? She felt that there was, and yet she could not put it all to that; there was something else, something she felt that was different from the bleak touch of evil—almost a kind of longing, a feeling that tormented and confused her more and more.

What do I believe? she thought. She wanted to go to the grass tower. Do I believe in God? If I did, could I pray to Him about this? But if there is a God, Aunt Bett’s kind of God, then why would He make this happen? She didn’t know the answers.

When she returned very late, Aunt Bett sat down at the table and cut some pie for her. She looked upset, very upset. But calm on top of it, holding herself tight and calm. She didn’t waste any time, but got right to what she wanted to say, which surprised Bethany a little. “Child, Colin says I’ve been pretty hard on you. He says if you have a problem, my nagging doesn’t help, and I suppose he’s right. I suppose I have been unfeeling. He says that I have.” Bethany stared at her. This was not at all like Aunt Bett. “Is it Selma’s church that’s bothering you; has Selma been at you to go back?”

“No, Aunt Bett!” She lied, alarmed. What had Colin said? “No,” she said again, “Selma hasn’t bothered me. I’ll be all right, I guess it’s my period coming. I’m sorry I’ve been so cross.” She saw at once that Aunt Bett did not believe her—and she knew suddenly that Aunt Bett wasn’t sure how far she could push Bethany without— Without what? That part wasn’t clear. She studied Aunt Bett, but could get no more than that; she saw only a square, motherly woman who was trying her best to help, but was too uncertain, too afraid of harming Bethany. But why? Aunt Bett wanted to tell her something more, she felt certain of it. She tried to reach her thoughts, willed it as hard as she could; it was so close, something that might help her understand. But she could not.

And Aunt Bett said nothing more that would help. “This Zagdesha business has upset you more than you care to admit, Bethany. It’s a harmful thing, and not something to play with as Jack seems to think. You must do your best to keep your mind off of it.”

My mind off it! she screamed silently. How could she keep her mind off of it! She drew herself tight, trying to control her emotions, trying to keep from screaming at Aunt Bett. “I’ll try,” she said at last. “I’ll try, really I will.”

To her own surprise, she did try. Maybe it was because of Aunt Bett’s concern, or perhaps because of her own increasing fear, but she began to discipline herself rigidly. It’s no different from mannering Danny, she thought. When he’s stubborn, I can’t give in or I’ll spoil him. I can’t give in to this either. Aunt Bett’s concern and strange secrecy had truly alarmed her; but it had also set her on a surer course. She found she could will herself to be strong and disciplined, could will herself to pay attention to what she was supposed to do and do it properly. She finished her back homework and handed in two term papers, and knew that her grades would be all right, that she could pass her final tests. She did her stable work without stupid mistakes and forgetting things, and she tried, really tried, to be cheerful; or at least not to be glum. She tried very hard not to think about her shiftings and falls into that other world, not to think of them once they had happened. But they came often, a scene flickering briefly across her consciousness. Almost, though, she could pretend they hadn’t.

But then suddenly she was shaken again, the calm she had built around herself quite destroyed. It was the morning of the last day of school. She was standing in the bathroom brushing her teeth when she began to wonder if she could do something with her limp hair. It was such a mop, it blew and tangled when she rode, and it did nothing for her long, homely face. She tried piling it on top her head, but that only made her forehead seem taller and more prominent. She tried parting it in the center and letting it droop over both sides of her forehead, held loosely back, but that was terrible. Then she pulled a handful down over her forehead, making bangs.

She studied her face with growing excitement.

Under the bangs her dark eyes did not seem to stare so. Her whole face seemed to shorten, and the long cheekbones took on a proper proportion, looked almost interesting. She hardly knew herself. Quickly, eagerly, she wet her hair to keep it in place, found Aunt Bett’s scissors, and began to cut bangs straight across her forehead.

When she was finished, the reflection that looked back at her was completely new. For the first time in her life she liked the way she looked. She stood staring at herself, then she began to cut the back, making a curving line at mid-neck. Her hair fell away to the basin… .

… but it was not the basin. It was a dresser, her hair lay in rusty hanks across a red dresser scarf. She was in the red bedroom staring at her reflection in the gold-framed mirror, and the scissors in her hand were not Aunt Bett’s big shears but a small, delicate pair, filigreed with gold. She laid them down and stared at them with horror. To have cut her hair with something —something—the scissors lay across the lengths of her hair, and there were lengths of hair on the oriental carpet. She was not wearing her old blue robe, but white silk pajamas. She stared at her reflection; she examined her hands, felt the dresser and the texture of the scarf, and turned to study the room. Why was this time so unlike the others? She turned back to the mirror and saw the panic in her face… .

… then pounding on the bathroom door made her jump. She was back in the bathroom, opening the door to let Marylou come in. Her hair lay scattered across the bathroom rug, and in the basin.

“You could be neater,” Marylou said, brushing past her. “You could have put a paper down. Let me look.” She stared at Bethany with what was real surprise. “I like it,” she said slowly. “Why you’re—you’re almost a different person.”

Chapter 6

Colin’s hands were black from polishing silver, and there was a black streak across his chin; he stood gazing remotely out the kitchen window, then sighed. “If we had hamburgers in the yard,” he said absently, “I wouldn’t have to polish all this stuff. Why do we have to for Justin anyway?”

“Aunt Justin,” Aunt Bett said. “When you’re done, wash those forks and dry them real well. And,” she flung back, her head in the refrigerator, “get the platter down from the top shelf.”

Bethany laid the white linen cloth on the table and began to unfold it one section at a time, thinking of last night, of her first date with Reid, a date so casually asked for, as if he had asked her to hand him a bridle from the tackroom; and it had been as casually accepted, her heart thudding underneath. She turned the last section of the cloth, making it fall down over the edges of the table, and began to smooth out the creases with her hands, thinking of walking with Reid under the yellow street lights with the smell of crushed eucalyptus leaves all around them, stopping to watch a little cat leap at moths under the last street light, coming back on the other side of the street to have a soda. She had tried, during the movie, to get some thought from him but she could not, and had sat in the darkness wondering if he would kiss her good night. It would be her first kiss, and she knew she wanted him to, she had been dizzy with it really, she could think of nothing else. Did he feel it too? He must feel something, how could he not? And yet she couldn’t tell. Did he look at her differently? He was very solemn, but Reid was always solemn, when he did smile it made her weak and happy. And when at last he kissed her, in the darkness of Aunt Bett’s front porch, she felt as unattached to the world as she did when she was flung between two worlds, unattached and confused with the feelings that rose in her.

She had gone to sleep in a delicious haze. How come she had known Reid all her life and had just now discovered him? Did cutting her hair make him think of her differently? Even Jack had noticed, raising an eyebrow and whistling softly when she met him on the street. And her reflection in the store windows, and in her own mirror, made her tingle with pleasure.

She laid the silver out, and the good china, and the special glasses for water, and wished there were flowers, blue flowers to match the willow patterned china. But there were flowers, for when Justin arrived she had a handful of batchelor buttons gathered along the fields, their stems wrapped in her wet handkerchief. They were as blue as Justin’s eyes. It was good to see Justin, very good. Bethany took the flowers, and Justin’s jacket, glancing, puzzled, at the red patch pockets with their appliques of birds. She felt as if she recognized them. Well, maybe she had seen Justin wear it before. She looked back at Justin herself, Justin who looked so much like Mama. Really, it was not that they looked alike, but that they were alike somehow, light-boned, with a simple grace of movement that was the same. Where Mama’s hair had been brown and her skin tanned, Justin’s hair was blond and her skin always seemed transparent, with tiny peach-colored veins that, seen from a little distance, made a peach-colored glow, very scrubbed looking. And yet, beneath Justin’s brightness you could often sense something withdrawn, something kept apart. That was not like Mama.

Bethany tried to imagine Justin and Mama as children, two little girls running on the shore. They had been so much younger than Aunt Bett and Aunt Selma, and Justin’s sister Kathleen. “Two muddy, disgraceful little girls,” Aunt Bett said at dinner. “You and Marjory, dirty-faced tomboys. You never did like to wear dresses.

And Kathleen was nearly as bad, Mama used to say your older sister should be a better influence on you and not in pants all the time. But at least Kathleen was cleaner.”

“You and Selma tried so hard to get us into dresses,” Justin said. “And hair ribbons! I can remember you chasing Marjory and me, and even Kathleen, with hair ribbons.”

Bethany grinned. It was a story Mama had told her often, how Bett and Selma had tried to make ladies of their own younger sister and of Justin, both of whom preferred Levi’s to dresses, and mud to tea parties.

But Aunt Bett did not see the humor in it. “You know it worried Mama, Justin, to have Marjory always dressed like a boy. And she never could do anything with Marjory as long as you were in it with her. Papa only egged her on as bad as Uncle Zebulon did.” Justin’s mother had died when Justin was four, and Zebulon had raised her and her older sister Kathleen the way he thought girls ought to be raised—a far cry from the view Aunt Bett’s mother took of the matter, even if she was Zebulon’s own sister. Marjory, being so much younger than Bett and Selma, had clung more to Justin than to her own sisters.

“But the worst thing of all,” Aunt Bett said indignantly, “was when Zebulon used to slip Marjory out the window at night to look at the stars and build bonfires ! A child of six! If I’d known about it then—”

“If you’d known about it, you’d have told on us,” Justin said simply.

“Well I never did understand why he did it. What if the child had been hurt, out there in the night, what would he have said—”

Bethany wondered privately if Aunt Bett was jealous of those long ago times.

“Oh, I think your father knew, don’t you, Bett?” Justin winked at Bethany. “Father said Marjory needed something secret and all her own, without rules, just a wild free thing—to grow on. Maybe because she was so much younger. Maybe because she was different—” she said softly. “A child—just a child who needed those things.” Bethany could see Mama, the smallest, the most vulnerable, holding that one secret thing close.

She must have shown her feelings very plainly, for Uncle Jimmie was looking at her with a shy, almost secret, expression. “Justin and your mother used to ride on the beach,” he said softly. “I can remember standing among the dunes where they wouldn’t see me, a great hulk of a boy, watching those two little girls no bigger than puffs of smoke galloping along the beach, and feeling awash with jealousy.”

Justin smiled. “Mr. Grady taught us, he was a good teacher. I feel as if the village wouldn’t be the same without him.” And, at Bethany’s look of surprise, “You must have known he taught your mother to ride.”

“I’d forgotten; it seems so long ago.”

“He’s sixty,” Justin said. “He was in his thirties then, that’s not so long when you’re looking from my end of the path. But from where you stand, I suppose it seems an impossible distance.”

“Yes, I guess it does.” Bethany watched her. That shadow of sadness had touched her again, briefly. “Are you going to ride with me, or will it be all arranging furniture, and books and papers to unpack?”

“I’d like to ride,” Justin said; and when they met at the stables the next afternoon, Justin was very bright, and as much at home at the stables as Bethany. The day was dark around them, though, clouded over and threatening, but Justin didn’t seem to mind it. Or did she find it exhilarating? Her blond hair was tied in a pony tail, and her Levi’s were rolled up so she looked no older than Bethany, sitting bareback on Mrs. Grady’s pinto gelding. Mr. Grady sent them off with a pat on Justin’s knee and a slap on Juniper’s rump so he jumped through the open gate, almost unseating Justin. This was the first of many rides. Usually they went out between the dunes, the horses stepping high in the deep sand, then cantered along the hard shore before they took the horses, fighting and rearing, into the breakers. It was comfortable being with Justin, no matter her mood; but Bethany puzzled over the changes in her sometimes, more sudden changes in mood than on earlier visits, the quietness coming suddenly, and disappearing again all at once. She liked watching Justin’s sudden bright pleasure in the places she had loved as a child, the places she had explored with Mama. “But if you came here with Mama,” Bethany said once, when they discovered a small rock island that Justin remembered, “why didn’t she ever show me. She never showed me anything on the dunes.”

“You found it, though, didn’t you?” Justin said gently. “She wanted you to find everything for yourself. To Marjory that was one of the wonders, discovering it yourself and not having someone else show you.”

It was true, each discovery of a new meadow, a new copse of trees or outcropping of rock had been as wonderful, to her six-year-old self, as the discovery of a new world could have been. It made her tight in the throat to think that Mama had known how she would feel, and had wanted her to have her childhood in this way. She glanced sideways at Justin. How had she known this about Mama? Had Marjory told her, or had Justin simply known what she would do?

You could tell Justin anything, Bethany thought suddenly. There was something deep and calm about her, like a quiet pool, in spite of her changes of mood, something reassuring, as if no emotional upheaval could really shake that deep, solid core. And she was beginning to feel that Justin’s withdrawn moods had something more to them than sadness, something Bethany could not quite fathom. She thought if she tried, if she reached out she could almost—could perhaps see into Justin’s mind as clearly as anything she had ever seen in her life.

If I told her, Bethany thought with sudden excitement, if I told Justin! It was all very well to tell Reid about the perplexing world she kept falling into, that grasped her up and shook her so, unsettling her and making her increasingly frightened, while at the same time making her long for more. But sometimes Reid was almost too steady and comforting. She felt with growing excitement that telling Justin would be different, that perhaps Justin’s response might be more attuned to the wild feeling that accompanied those chaotic, impossible moments. But still, time and again when she was on the verge of telling Justin, she turned to Reid instead.

Perhaps she felt that somehow, if she told Justin, she might touch a chaos in herself that was best left alone. But still the thought of doing so would not go away, and on an afternoon when they had galloped a long way down the beach to explore a tide pool in the rocks, she could think of nothing else; as they mounted again she turned to watch Justin intently. What would Justin say if she told her? It seemed to Bethany she would understand—that perhaps, with her wider experience, Justin could shed some light on the strange occurrences. Still, there was a lot about Justin she didn’t know; maybe she would be as shocked as Aunt Bett. No, that was impossible. Though really, she hadn’t even any idea what Justin’s everyday life was like. Did Justin work with the same changes of mood that Bethany had seen, or was there another side to her where the discipline of work did not allow for such moods? She tried to imagine Justin turning the pages of dusty tomes, and, “Do you like to do research?” she asked suddenly. “Isn’t it awfully dull?” And she thought, is it really the kind of thing you wanted to do with your life? Or is it because of Zebulon that you do it?

Justin glanced at her, her blue eyes surprised, then laughing. “Oh, not dull. Sometimes tiring and aggravating, sometimes very demanding, but you never know what you’re going to turn up, it’s like parts of a huge puzzle. In past centuries knowledge of the real world was building so slowly, among all the misconceptions and superstitions about medicine and the human body, about the earth and, oh, everything. About what the suns and planets were. It’s—doing this kind of research is like having your finger on the very heart of man, what he was, and what he has become.”

“And what he will become?” Bethany asked, her interest stirred.

“Yes. That’s the most exciting of all. We’ve evolved so much, but people tend to forget that we have.” Justin gave Bethany a clear, eager look. “Evolved not only in knowledge, but in civility and kindness to each other. There were times in the past when men were thrown into vats of boiling oil for being cowards, and murderers and traitors were drawn and quartered, alive. There were the most terrible atrocities in centuries past. And prisons and mad houses were unbelievable, with people stacked like cordwood almost, lying in human filth and fed on perhaps one bowl of thin gruel a day. And people who were tel—who had some special talent, or who appeared different, were treated as if they were possessed of the devil. So many people were accused of evil and witchcraft. As much as I disapprove of Selma’s church venture, I think I disapprove even more of the talk I hear about it. That old man with the baseball cap shouting scriptures in the street reminds me of the Dark Ages when people were mired in superstition. He came right up to me and shouted in my face, ‘Those who consort with wizards and mediums are doomed to the fires of hell!’ It was almost as if we were right back in the tenth century.”

“That was Reid’s grandfather,” Bethany said slowly. “He’s like that when he’s drunk.”

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry,” Justin said, dismayed.

“No, don’t be. He—he’s just an old drunk, everyone knows it, Reid most of all. Don’t you remember him, though? John Krupp, he’s lived in the village all his life and people say he’s been like that ever since his son was killed, crazy like that and drinking.”

Justin looked surprised, then was silent for a long time. “Yes,” she said at last. “Yes, now I remember him. His son died in a boat fire.” She glanced at Bethany and seemed to draw into herself; then suddenly she put Juniper into a fast canter, pounding ahead down the beach. Bethany felt again that strength underneath, even when Justin was upset; she leaned over Danny and followed, galloping inland along the edge of a small bay where willows thrust their whipping branches across the trail.

Then, with a sudden decision, she reached out with her mind and tried to touch the thing in Justin’s mind that she thought, with clear conviction now, she must reach. The shadow of knowing— She could almost touch, almost see—

The images flashed at her sharp and vivid; the branches seen through Justin’s eyes came at her so vividly that she ducked with Justin, gasping, her own progress completely unheeded until she was slapped hard by a branch, almost falling.

At a bare stretch she tried again, and again it came, the images in Justin’s mind sharp in her own: she was crouched over Juniper’s brown and white mane instead of Danny’s bay neck.

But when she tried to go deeper, seeking the depths she sensed so clearly, she was stopped by a cool, waiting-to-see feeling: Justin knew what she was doing.

Justin was watching her. Shocked, Bethany pulled Danny up and turned to stare.

They sat regarding each other silently. The horses fidgeted. Bethany did not know what to say, she did not know how to handle this. Justin’s blue eyes were as clear as the sunlit sea. Not angry. Not even shocked.

Then slowly something began to pull away, to fold back as if a veil were being drawn aside, and a raw part of Justin’s mind began to show itself: something, Bethany perceived, that had lain long dormant. It began to take form, to open out and grow in depth until it seemed to fill Bethany’s own mind completely. It was like music, but music she could touch. There was great hurt in it. And sadness. But beneath these there was a many-faceted, comforting knowledge of something fundamental and huge, something so steady that it held the sadness back. This was what she had seen, this was what had shown itself behind Justin’s eyes, this was what she had probed in to find—

But now that she had found it, she felt only ashamed and dismayed, as if she had invaded Justin’s privacy quite beyond the boundaries of forgiving.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, so inadequately. The horses pawed, and she pulled Danny’s head up.

“Could you see why the sadness is there?” Justin asked at last, very simply.

“No, I couldn’t. I don’t want to.” She wanted to turn and ride away, to get away. “Please, I—”

Justin settled her with a calm long look, so that Bethany became silent. “When we were small,” Justin said, “I stayed away from other children, except my sister Kathleen and your mother. I could not touch other people’s thoughts so easily as you do, but I would see things happen. I was hurt many times before I learned to hide this, and later to stifle it. When I was twenty, I was engaged to be married. You may have heard Marjory speak of it.” She gave Bethany only the bare facts, but the thoughts behind them, the emotions released, were overpowering. “I flew back to New York for the wedding, and Mark drove out to La Guardia to meet my plane.

“He was killed in a wreck five minutes before my plane landed.

“I saw it happen, Bethany. Sitting in that plane I saw it happen, and there was nothing I could do.

“I’ve never told anyone except Papa. After that the visions were stilled, for when they began again I stopped them. With pure, outraged will, I stopped them. I didn’t want to know, not anything, not ever again.”

Bethany sat staring at her, shocked, and cold with guilt. She had probed where she shouldn’t have, she had opened a wound that was not hers to touch. Her desire to comfort Justin was overshadowed by her feeling of having pried, having thrust herself in where she had no right to be. She put out her hand, wanting to say something but not knowing what to say, feeling terribly uncomfortable and inadequate.

“Maybe this was necessary,” Justin said at last. “Maybe you can’t go through life hiding part of yourself.” She looked at Bethany solemnly. “I had shut it out so completely that I knew nothing about it when my sister Kathleen died.” She studied Bethany with open curiosity. “But you must have hidden your own talent—only not so deeply. Not from yourself. But from others? Bett can’t know,” she said with absolute certainty.

“She does, though, sort of. I mean, she knows about when I was younger, though at the time I think she really didn’t want to know. When she asked me recently, I lied to her; I said I wasn’t like that any more. Maybe that was wrong of me, but she was very relieved.” Her eyes searched Justin’s. “She didn’t want to know, Justin. How could anyone want not to know something? Reid says people refuse to see what’s right in front of them, that they stick their heads in the ground like moles. I think he means his grandfather, though.”

“Reid seems like a bright boy, don’t underrate him. That remark could have more meaning than you imagine.”

They rode in silence for a while, the horses nudging each other, and Danny trying to snatch at passing bushes. Bethany looked at Justin with curiosity. “Did your sister Kathleen have—was she able to do what you can do?”

“No. Never. Perhaps if she had been, if we had had that kind of tie between us, I would have known more about what was going on in her life. Papa always blamed himself for Kathleen’s death, though he was not to blame. There was a young man she wanted very much to marry and Papa wouldn’t give his permission; he had done some criminal things, and Papa was torn up that Kathleen wanted him. She didn’t marry him, but months later she died of pneumonia, and Papa always felt that if he had permitted the marriage, well, that different things would have happened in her life, that somehow she might not have gotten sick.”

“Oh,” Bethany said, not knowing how to give comfort. “That must have been awful for him. Awful for everyone.”

“And I knew nothing about it,” Justin repeated. “I might have been able to—well, to do something. Gotten other doctors. She was so far from home.”

“Does Uncle Zebulon blame you, do you think?”

“I don’t know whether he’s ever thought about it. If he has, he must blame me in a way, though he would never admit it even to himself. He seems— He knew I had this ability until Mark was killed, and I used to think he was sorry that I did. It wasn’t anything he said, just—oh, a kind of sadness sometimes that I thought centered around me. A kind of reluctance that’s hard to explain.”

“Did Aunt Bett know? When you were growing up?”

Justin studied her. “I don’t think so. What makes you ask that?”

“Sometimes I think there’s something she might tell me. But then she never does—something that bothers her.”

By the time they stabled the horses, storm clouds had blown in heavily and it was beginning to rain. That night, though rain usually soothed her, Bethany slept fitfully, dreaming of Justin, confusing herself with Justin so that it was she who saw Mark’s accident. It was late in the night when she woke groggily to hear sirens; the rain had stopped; she was asleep again at once, hearing sirens in her dreams. In the morning she was tired and depressed, and didn’t want any breakfast—working at the stables had advantages; rising before everyone else, she didn’t have to eat if she didn’t want to. When she had dressed, she found Colin awake and went in to sit on the edge of his bed. He looked up at her as if he, too, had had a bad night.

“Didn’t you hear the fire engine last night?”

“I—I guess I did. What was it?”

“We set fire to the barn last night doing a seance; a candle fell over. Ma thought I was in bed. Jack was burned getting Ciel out.”

Her heart lurched with fear. “How bad?”

“His arm and his side. He’s all right; he’s home and walking around, but all bandages. I called Aunt Selma to find out.”

“Did he—did he tell her how it started?”

“Aunt Selma didn’t say anything. I don’t know. Bethany, I just got out and ran home, I didn’t even wait to help them—”

She put her arm around him. “No one was hurt. No one was badly hurt.”

“But they could have been—”

She could see the inside of the barn, could imagine Jack and Colin there trying to put out a fire that must have eaten hungrily at the too-dry hay, licked at the timbers; she could see the flames blaze up red, everything red. She bowed her head on her knees, feeling sick and dizzy, and red seethed in her mind, fire— then a red door and symbols painted in blood. Red serpents and blazing candle flames filled her mind, as if all the world were suddenly flaming red that swirled and changed and centered down on something that held all of her attention: in the field of flame and blood a picture came clear suddenly and hung for a moment; it was of two birds done in red, pockets done in red cloth applique. She sat up, staring at space: red in a window, a bird in a tree done in red applique with her own reflection shining through it, a red applique picture that was the same kind of cloth work as the pockets on Justin’s jacket!

She turned blindly to Colin, said something she couldn’t remember later, and fled. It was as if she were doing a jigsaw puzzle and dropped several pieces so they fell of themselves, uncannily, into their proper places. Some unseen pattern was taking shape, and in it she and Justin were somehow, but undeniably, connected.

Chapter 7

The sun lay warm on the sea, and she swam for nearly an hour; she was forbidden to swim alone, and she knew it was foolish, but the release it gave her, the feeling of freedom was worth defying Aunt Bett for, and she came out at last refreshed, lightened, washed clean of everything but the immediate moment and the cold salt sea and the heat of the sun on her body. Gulls cried on the wind; she was alone in the world at that moment; then something caught her up and twisted her, and she was in a strange room, leaf shadows flickering across the high ceiling, and she was shouting—shouting with no volition, no effort on her part—shouting, “It is! It is for me to know!” She was shaken with a terrible fury. She was standing in an old-fashioned kitchen, a tree was blowing outside the window; the black lady stared back at her stubbornly from where she was working dough at a table, her hands all floury. The old woman sighed as if her patience were at an end. Bethany felt suddenly that she could almost make sense of this, if she could just think deeper, just reach deeper, but something in herself held too tightly, something that tried to control emotions she could not control at all. Her anger flared as sharply as the slash of sunlight that flickered across the old woman’s cheek, a hurt, righteous anger, making her cry furiously, “You know, Corrinne, you have always known. It’s about me, and I have a right to it!”

“I cannot tell you, child. It distresses me, but I have given my word.”

“Which is more important, your word or my life?”

The old woman looked hurt and Bethany was sorry, but a terrible stubbornness made her stand irresolute, wanting to apologize, but unwilling to, until the door to her left opened suddenly, and the woman with silver hair stood looking at her. The sight of her wrenched Bethany out of herself so she almost knew—almost knew …

… and the sea wind hit her, she was on the shore. The chestnut mare was beside her, Reid staring down at her with a look of concern, the line of his mouth tight and his gray eyes pale; and Bethany had lost the knowledge she had almost grasped, it was utterly gone. The mare moved to the side, mouthing the bit. “Bethany? Bethany!”

“What was I doing?” she asked stupidly, confusion engulfing her.

“You didn’t answer when I called, and when I got up to you and Ginger nudged you— Bethany, didn’t you feel her? Look at your arm.”

She held out her arm. It was covered with Ginger’s slobber.

“You were standing as if— You had your arms half-raised, and you seemed to be looking at someone standing just a few feet away.”

“I was. Oh, I was.” And the confusion of it hit her so she felt faint and uncertain. Reid dismounted, but she shook her head and moved away from him, trying to regain her composure. They walked along close to the water, Reid leading the mare. “It was a kitchen,” Bethany said. “An old-fashioned kitchen with this big table where the black lady was making dough, and the leaves were all blowing outside. Her name is Corrinne. She—I was accusing her of keeping some secret from me. From me, Reid. I was so angry.” Her thoughts reeled, and the anger rose in her again unbidden. All her curiosity had fled; she could think now only of the terror of it. To feel emotions that were not her own, to surge with anger that was not hers— She couldn’t bear for it to happen again, it seemed as terrible to her now as when she had seen the dark shape forming. “I don’t understand! I don’t understand anything! And it all started with that horrible seance!” A turmoil of emotions swept her; she kicked at the sand, torn between fury and tears. The mare pulled back, snorting and rolling her eyes.

Reid settled Ginger, making her come up on a loose rein. “You keep thinking the two are connected,” he said evenly. “It could be just coincidence, Bethany; the seance might not have anything to do with this. You don’t even—”

“How can you think that? I know what I feel, don’t I?”

“But feeling isn’t reason,” he said gently. “It isn’t fact.”

“Fact! Who can talk about facts when— Facts!” She turned on him, glaring. “You’re always so cool about it. It isn’t your insides that are being torn apart—facts and logic!” Fury swept her again, a terrible surge of helplessness and torment. “That’s just the trouble, there isn’t any logic. Facts aren’t facts if they don’t make any sense.” How could he be so unwilling to understand! “You’re not the one who has to feel yourself jerked away, who finds yourself standing in some place— Oh, I shouldn’t expect you to understand!” She flung away from him, walking fast up the beach.

When at last she heard the pounding of hooves she did not turn to look. Even when he pulled the mare up beside her, she only stared sullenly at the sea. She could feel Reid’s hurt, and his anger. Finally when she did not turn or speak, he rode off, leaving her alone on the shore feeling desolate.

For a long time she sat huddled and miserable between the dunes in a little cup-shaped valley, in shadow and shivering with cold but not willing to move into the sun. I don’t even have sense enough to put my clothes on, she thought at last, pulling her Levi’s and sweat shirt over her damp suit. Too unhappy to go home, she slouched into the village finally and mooched along the street feeling sullen and hateful. She was angry, she knew deep inside, partly because Reid hadn’t forced her to make up—she had a sudden stirring daydream of Reid leaping off the mare and taking her in his arms. She searched the street ahead hoping— hoping—but of course he was not there, would he come clattering down the concrete on the mare, did she think? When Selma came out of the drugstore right in front of her, she didn’t even bother to avoid her. Then, seeing Selma’s face, she stopped. Selma had been crying. “Is it Jack?” Bethany asked hesitantly. “Is he worse?”

“Jack? Oh, no. He’s all right, he’s just inside with Colin. It’s—I shouldn’t be out looking like this.” Selma sniffed and dabbed at her nose.

“It’s Dr. Claybelle,” Colin said, coming out behind her. “That bastard! Aunt Selma was upset about the fire and thought she helped cause it, but Claybelle only laughed at her. He said no one was so stupid as to light candles in a barn and—and what were we doing playing around in the barn anyway, that the seances were meant for an audience, that they were a money-making proposition, not for games.”

Bethany stared at Selma, shocked, anger and elation leaping in her by turns. She couldn’t sort out her emotions. Was it only a trick, then? A trick of Dr. Claybelle’s, after all?

“He said you can’t—can’t run an operation like this if you’re going to be sentimental,” Selma stuttered. “I —” She was crying again, as if the sobs were being jerked painfully out of her.

“Aunt Selma, how—” Bethany began, and in spite of Selma’s misery—because of Selma’s misery—hope was winging in her suddenly. “Was it a trick, then? Was it?” And when Selma stood silent, mopping tears, Bethany took her by the shoulders, wanting to shake it out of her. “Was it a trick, Aunt Selma? Oh, please.” But Selma’s look was almost without comprehension. “Tell me, Aunt Selma.” Her need to know was terrible. “If it was a trick— If it was a trick—”

“It wasn’t. Oh, it wasn’t,” Selma said at last. And then, hesitantly, “It can’t have been.” They stared at each other, Selma’s jade eyes faded and spoiled from crying. “It wasn’t a trick. He told me, when we first started, that it was all real; he told me wonderful things. But then after that first seance, he was strange; he changed everything he had said, and he began talking about the organization and about making people believe, how if you could make them believe they would do anything.”

“But he saw the Zagdesha, how could he—?”

“He laughed,” Selma said. “He said it was shadows, and people wanting to believe. But Bethany,” she said, looking very young and disheveled, “he was pale from it.”

“But curing people,” Bethany said. “He says he can cure people.”

Selma shook her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes— sometimes they want to be cured and it makes them— Oh, I don’t know, Bethany.”

“But he—the money! You mean he was just taking the money?”

Selma gulped and nodded. “All of it, just— He just laughed at me.”

“But the Zagdesha, whatever we saw—” Bethany was furious now. “He was afraid of it!”

Selma nodded.

“And he won’t admit it,” Bethany said, incredulous. “He won’t admit it was there. And he laughed at you.” She put her arm around Selma. How slight boned she was. “He was afraid of it.” An elation, a triumph, was rising in her; she turned to stare at Jack. “Get him, Jack. Get him, and open up the church.”

“It’s unlocked,” Jack said, excitement darkening his eyes. The bandages on his left arm and side, under his sweater, made him look lopsided and lumpy, and there was a red jagged patch down his neck. He took Bethany’s hand and smiled an evil and charming smile, then left them. Colin, pale with anticipation, went to hold the door open nervously.

Blinded from the sun, Bethany thought the room was totally dark, but then the gray wash of almost-light that seeped through the black curtains began to pick out shapes; and when Selma lit the candles, the room swarmed around her, red symbols undulating in the flickering light. Selma brought two cowled robes from the back and held one for Bethany, pulling the cowl up for her so her ice-cold hands lay for a moment against Bethany’s cheek.

“What was in the chalice before?” Bethany whispered hoarsely.

“Blood. Lamb’s blood.”

“I won’t drink that again.”

“There isn’t any, it doesn’t keep. I’ll use wine.”

Bethany was almost too numb to feel shocked at the idea of wine in the chalice like in church. At another time, she might have refused it—wine in a chalice would be Christ’s blood. But of course it would not, not without a priest. Here it was only a crude blasphemy, a crude mimicking. She shuddered though, watching Selma pour it out. Her bravado and anger were fading. She wanted to run out into the sunlit street, into the hot, open street, out of this threatening room. Oh, why had she come? Why had she started this?

Then Claybelle came, a hulking dark shape in the open doorway against the swath of sunlight. Jack was there behind him, and they came directly to the table, Claybelle walking heavily and scowling at Bethany; he sat down abruptly, his annoyance and disdain making a tight pressure in the room. He gave Selma a superior look, as if she were about to make a fool of herself and he intended to enjoy her embarrassment.

Bethany turned her back on them all, torn between her sudden loss of nerve and her hate for Claybelle. If she didn’t start, she would lose her nerve entirely; she turned to face them at last and made herself take up the chalice from between the candles. She tried to be calm; and when she began to say the ritual, it was with a deliberate slowness; but suddenly and inexplicably she wanted to bring the dark presence, wanted it very much. As she began the ritual, her words seemed to make an echo in the room. She had no idea whether she was getting the words from Selma’s mind, or whether she remembered them, but they came to her almost as if she were hearing them. “Arise, Serpent. Arise and come forth upon this plane as the sea rises and the winds tear at the heavens—” Her palms were beginning to sweat, and it was with shaking hands that she traced the signs across the candles; the disturbed, heated air warped and distorted the room, and she felt her blood stir and an eagerness take hold of her, a sudden heady thrill of power; her voice lifted:

“Take this blood as my blood and the blood of my sister, and make of us one blood—” She raised the chalice to her lips, “Bid the spirit which awaits reveal itself to me—” She tasted the wine, and the feeling of power rose within her, and almost at once, as if something had been waiting, the air began to darken; the benches became indistinct, the air drew in, gathered in, the darkness was swift, and she felt a dizziness as if she were floating. She heard Dr. Claybelle catch his breath, rasping and quick—and she was staring at a figure so black it was like a hole cut in cloth, a hole into negative space, into utter emptiness. No detail could be seen, only its outline, and that was the outline of a girl; the curve of her body was clear. Bethany stood frozen. The shimmer of something hovered, and was lost as if a wind had passed. Was it the quick shimmer of thoughts that were not her own? Then the black shape became suddenly more than the outline of a girl; her hands became visible against the void of her body; young hands with smooth skin, holding a wooden jewelry box with two birds carved across its front. As the figure turned, the outline of her hair swung slightly and her profile was clear, arms outstretched as if she were placing the box on a table; and the edge of a dresser shimmered before her, and a gold framed oval mirror hung suspended for a moment… .

Then it was gone, the figure, the glimpse of the room, all gone. But still the feeling of power surged in Bethany strong as a tide, and she yearned after the figure, wanting it to stay almost as if it were part of her. She turned at last to observe the others, the image still so clear in her mind that the four who faced her seemed as unreal as faded posters; they were staring, frozen, at the spot where the figure had formed.

Selma raised her eyes first, and the wonder in them caught Bethany off guard so the two shared a moment of rapport; and then their looks were shielded.

Dr. Claybelle turned a long look of white hatred on Bethany. Then he rose and left them abruptly, etched in sunlight for a moment before banging the door.

Colin spoke at last. “Did you see her face?”

“There was nothing, only darkness,” Bethany said, suddenly and unaccountably annoyed.

Selma drew in her breath. “Her face, her profile. It was yours, Bethany. It was your Zagdesha,” she whispered with dry excitement.

“There was only blackness, there was no face,” Bethany hissed. “She—it only turned for a second, you couldn’t see anything.”

“I saw it,” Colin breathed.

Jack, strangely tense, said nothing.

“There was only blackness,” Bethany repeated, and the power welled up in her in a throbbing pressure. She met Jack’s green gaze once, coldly, pulled off her robe and threw it on the floor, and went slowly and silently out, carrying within herself a storm of terrible violence.

She surveyed the street with disgust. Disgust for her aunt, for stupid gullible Colin-—disgust mixed with humor when she thought of the fat, unimaginative Claybelle pale with fear. Disgust for the seedy village that she faced, with its ragged trees and the sickening smell of eucalyptus and salt. Then she knew Jack was standing behind her. She felt his hands grip her shoulders roughly, and he forced his arm around her. “I’ll take you home,” he said, and there was a tension in him, too. When he had her home, he would not let her go in, but pushed her brutally against the porch rail. “Aunt Bett—” she began, confused.

“Aunt Bett isn’t home, and Marylou’s at her club meeting. Where’s your key?”

“I don’t—I don’t have it.”

“You’re lying.” He looked down at her, a piercing look, then he pressed her hard against the rail and was kissing her over and over—and she eager with it, kissing him back hungrily so a blackness folded around them, engulfing them.

Then someone was jerking them apart: she was pulled roughly away from Jack and spun around to face Aunt Bett’s fury. Aunt Bett pushed her aside and slapped Jack across the face. And the black power that had possessed Bethany burst like a nauseous bubble so she stood there limp, and petrified with shame.

Aunt Bett said no word. She opened the door and marched Bethany in. Inside the house she remained silent, looking coldly at Bethany until Bethany fled to her room.

She stood leaning against the door, cold and sick. At last she knelt on the floor, her face pressed against her bed. When the sickness had left her, she curled up on the floor like a hurt animal. Had she been only herself when she kissed Jack? She could still feel the wild rebellious spirit of someone else—someone young, someone angry and lost and young.

When she woke, she smelled dinner cooking. She lay staring at the carpet and the hem of the bedspread, wondering why she had gone to sleep on the floor, then knowing why and feeling utterly desolate once more. At last she rose to her knees and began, hesitantly at first and then in a frenzy, to rummage under her bed for the carton that held her childhood belongings. She dug frantically among the toys until the wooden box lay in her hands and the two birds caught the light. It was the box the Zagdesha had held; she opened it and dumped its contents in her lap as if it might contain something that could tell her. But there were only some pencil stubs, three small glass horses wrapped in cotton, and a clam shell.

At last when she had put everything back, jumbled the box in with the toys, and shoved the carton as far under her bed as she could, she lay in bed huddled and cold and, when the night came, pretending sleep. Marylou came and went, she could hear the rattle of dishes, and dishwater running, then later the silence of the sleeping house. She was utterly alone, revolted at what she had felt within herself, terrified at what she had encountered in that bizarre room; but the most horrible thing of all was the reality of the box. It proved something unprovable, something she could not begin to understand. She could only lie there numb and miserable, seeing again and again, and trying not to see, the black void, the hands, the box. And hearing Selma say, “Her face was yours, Bethany. Was your face—was your face—”

When first light came, she dressed and went alone through the empty village to the church. The door was unlocked and she knelt in a pew close to the statue of Christ. She wished she could cleanse herself and perhaps find some ease. She sat in the pew weeping weakly; and when she tried to hold her hands in prayer, they shook so that she had to press them hard to her mouth to steady herself.

She stayed in the church for a long time, but no peace came. She went away at last, depressed and shaken, and stood on the steps in the harsh, bright wind. She was so tired. She wanted to sit for a while on a bench with her eyes closed and let the sun warm her as she had seen old people do, but the wind was too chill; she went, at last, through the village to the dunes and out onto them alone.

She didn’t believe in the Zagdesha, she had never believed in it. And yet she knew that whatever had possessed her had been real beyond anything she had ever known. It can’t have been my box, she thought wildly. It can’t have been! Then, she can’t have looked like me! She wanted to run and never stop running, but she was so tired. She yearned to go to the grass tower, and yet the thought terrified her. The wind was cold, biting at her. She wanted Reid, she wanted to be comforted. She wanted his steady common sense, she wanted him to tell her it was all right, that it could be explained and she mustn’t be frightened. But then she remembered they had fought. She went at last to the meadows and wandered along the edge of a little marsh getting her feet soaked, her arms wrapped around herself and her head down, watching the intricate, changing patterns that her feet made as they pressed the marsh grasses into the amber water. When she looked up at last, she was surprised to see how dark the sky had grown. And she was warm, so warm; she was standing on the balcony, deliriously warm and her feet dry, and holding the wooden box. She stared at the carved birds as if they could move and speak to her; the evening wind murmured in the tree, and all across the city, lights were coming on; orange plumes of sunset flared in the sky, and the breeze was silken. When she turned at last to go into the bedroom, it was with a strong sense of peace, and with a heady feeling of triumph, too, though she did not know why —then her thoughts fuzzed and the room she entered spun, the colors jarring so the light around her warped. She didn’t know where she was. Go back! Go back! She thought. But she didn’t know what was meant by that— When at last the room steadied, she set the box on the dresser and stood staring at herself in the mirror. She could smell plantain cooking, Corrinne was frying plantain. She was wearing her white slip, it was getting too small, she would— But it was not her mirror, not her room! Her curiosity flared, and was stifled by a shattering fear; she whirled wildly to stare at the unfamiliar room:. I don’t belong here! She flung open the door, ran down the hall, and fled down the long curving stairs, terrified.

She heard a door open above her and quickly she pulled the heavy bolt on the front door and ran into the street. Behind her a woman’s voice began calling, but she could not make out the words. She started to run—the city was strange and frightening—people stared, then moved away from her… .

… she was running in a meadow. The wind was harsh in her face, and her shoes were soaking from the marshy ground.

She stopped, panting with fear.

This was not her world either! This world, into which she had fallen, it was not hers. She turned in panic— then she saw the dunes, the familiar dunes. The wind was blowing across them catching up the sand, and she collapsed, sobbing, on the mud.

Much later she sat up, knowing she must find out. She thought of going home and looking at the box again, but that would tell her nothing. She knew what she must do.

Light-headed from hunger, and with the dusk coming down, she started toward the village. The wind pelted her with sand, jerked at her hair and her clothes and laid the grass of the meadow flat before her. In the village the wind rattled the eucalyptus trees and beat at the plate glass windows so their reflections warped and flowed like water.

She stood for a moment uncertain, then went on toward the Church of the Zagdesha.

At last she stood inside, in darkness. She felt her way clumsily, and found and lit the candles. Then she put on the black robe. She started to fill the chalice with wine, then stopped. Was this necessary? She was afraid not to do it, and yet the thought of filling the chalice made her skin crawl. She set the bottle down and stood facing the room. How empty it was, how dank and chill. She tried to make herself begin the ritual, but she was afraid. She stared numbly at the empty benches, at the candles before her. I can’t, she thought. What am I doing here? But she knew that she would do it, though all the fear of the unknown, of the things of the unknown, swept over her. If she didn’t do it, she would never know, she could never be free. Already something seemed to be reaching out to her; the urging was completely outside of her, but she could not cope with it. The power was strong, pulling at her until at last she abandoned reason, abandoned questions, and raised her trembling hands to make the signs across the hot, flickering candles. The shadows leaped around her, and the wind rattled the door and seemed to shake the very walls. She began the incantation, and the terror in her was almost a joy.

When the figure came, it came swiftly, forming very close to her, and it seemed to pause as if in expectation of something she would do, as if it were responsive to her thoughts—as if it expected her to reach farther; but she could not. Breathlessly, before she could lose her nerve, she tried to form a question. Her voice came dry and hollow, “The box,” she whispered, shuddering. “Show me the box. Tell me what it means.” There was a surge of response, a surge of coming toward her— and the shape warped. She was dizzy, dizzy—the shape was gone, the room gone; she was in blackness, dizzy and breathless. Somewhere the wind was blowing, she could see nothing, only hear the wind. She could feel nothing but dizziness. Tiny lights were flickering far away from her, and someone was calling, speaking rhythmic words that seemed to pull at her. The lights came closer; now she could see they were candles; she should know what they meant, she should know where she was, but she was too dizzy to think. A girl stood before the table, a girl—her wrists turned to ice. A girl dressed in a black robe, the cowl hanging around her shoulders, her hair ruby in the candlelight: It was herself she saw, standing silently before the candles. It was herself. The room spun, she was sick with dizziness —her own face shimmered before her, and she slumped to the floor.

Chapter 8

“Is she all right?”

“She’s only fainted I think, bring the light closer.”

“What was she doing in here, how could she—?” That was Aunt Bett.

Bethany tried to sit up, saw the candles set on the floor beside her, felt dizzy again, and lay back. A flashlight shone across the floor, then the lights went on, glaring, and she was staring up at Aunt Bett. Justin blew out the candles, and Reid came out from the back carrying the flashlight.

“I think—try to sit up,” Justin said, kneeling down and putting her hand behind Bethany’s shoulders. “Did you faint? You didn’t hit your head?”

“No, I—” she was so cold, shivering uncontrollably.

“Your coat, Reid,” Justin said, taking off her sweater and tucking it around Bethany’s legs. “And something hot to drink, hot water will do.”

Reid wrapped his jacket around her, and she thought desperately, I’m not going to tell what happened, not to Aunt Bett.

They bundled her into the car at last, and she huddled down into Reid’s coat with her face turned away. She didn’t want to talk. And in the house—the house seemed strange, where was she?—Justin undressed her like a child while the tub water ran, steaming. She was still shivering, and the tub felt wonderful when Justin helped her in. Like a child she was tucked into bed, and it was lovely to be treated so. Justin didn’t try to talk to her, but when she lay warm in bed, and Justin stood poking up the fire, she felt somehow compelled to talk. “I wanted—” she began, needing so much to make Justin see. “I wanted to find out. Selma said she looked like me, the girl looked like me and— Oh, she did, Justin! Not just looked alike, but—” She began to shiver again.

Justin pulled another blanket over her, and sat down beside her. “Don’t talk, don’t talk now, it’s all right now—”

When she woke, sunlight was washing across high rafters and across the yellow walls, a brilliant cascade of sunlight. But she did not know where she was; she was not in a room she knew at all. Then she came fully awake, and the blackness of last night crushed her so she went heavy as lead, remembering. Her head throbbed, and she felt sick. She turned over and tried to escape into sleep again, but the horror of seeing her own face in the candlelight held her frozen. She heard Justin come into the room; she didn’t want to talk; she lay as if she were sleeping for a long time, but at last she turned over reluctantly and stared out at the room. Why did it seem so familiar? Yellow— yellow tapestries— Then she remembered this room flashing across the other visions as she stood facing the old black lady; and she remembered last night, with the firelight and the warmth; this room had sheltered her last night when she was frightened and cold. It was a room full of brightness, the tall stone fireplace catching the sunlight through the three bay windows. Justin was sitting at her desk with her back to Bethany. She did not turn around, and she appeared to be working at something.

Why had they brought her here instead of home to Aunt Bett’s? Maybe Aunt Bett didn’t want her any more, after last night. And how had they found her? It was all so hazy in her mind, pictures coming and going. She lay trying to make sense of it, trying to remember what she had told Justin, what she had told Aunt Bett. She had a strong feeling that Aunt Bett knew everything, though she could not remember telling her. The more she puzzled over it, the more she thought she had told Justin, late in the night before the dying fire. She thought she had awakened, and Justin had come—with hot cocoa and sandwiches, yes! She could remember sitting up in bed, weak and shaken still. She could remember hoping she could keep the sandwiches down.

Yes, she had told Justin all of it, she remembered now. She covered her face with her arm as if she were still asleep, and lay thinking about it.

Justin had made no comment, but had simply listened, nodding, asking an occasional question. She had remained silent, unanswering, when Bethany asked her, distraught, what it was. Then at last, “I don’t know. I can’t answer you, Bethany, when I don’t know. Don’t try to make it easier for yourself by asking for easy answers.”

She had stared crossly at Justin, but still she knew Justin was right. She had touched something in that dark room, and there was no easy answer to what it was. It had not been a simple thing, either, for besides the figure there had been a feeling of something else, something huge, as huge as the night sky, but darker and without that breath of space. Something that, she thought, had nothing to do with the figure. The figure itself—herself, seeing her own self—the terror of that was quite apart from the huge darkness, in some way she could not understand.

Maybe there was no figure, she thought suddenly. Maybe what she saw was simply a trick of the dark— as a hand shadow is really only the absence of light in a certain pattern, and is part of a larger, permanent darkness. She shook her head. Could the shadows seen by one’s mind form themselves into the familiar, into the shapes you most expected? Into yourself? But why would she expect that shape? Had she really been more influenced by the idea of the Zagdesha than she thought?

And what about the box? That was the last thing in the world she would have expected. That there could actually be a Zagdesha she had discarded long ago, and yet—she rolled over, her face in the pillow—there was something else, something else that nagged at her, but she could make nothing of it. She only knew she had seen herself in that dark room, standing by the candles. She shuddered in a long sigh and wished she had never gone, wished it were yesterday again.

“You’re lying there worrying yourself,” Justin said softly. “Here, sit up and take this.” Bethany smelled cocoa suddenly, as Justin put the tray down on the night table. She had not even heard Justin go out of the room. “I’ll have eggs in a minute, and some ham. Start on the cereal.”

She sat up, pushing the pillows behind her, and took the tray. She was famished suddenly.

But it was more than hunger that made her weak, and after breakfast she settled into a vague, not-wanting-to-face-the-day feeling; she had no desire at all to get up, no desire to do anything. Justin poured more cocoa for her, took the tray away, and went back to her desk.

“Does Aunt Bett know?” Bethany blurted suddenly. “I told you everything last night, didn’t I?”

“I guess it was everything,” Justin said wryly. “Yes, Bethany, I told Bett. You and I agreed last night that she had a right to know. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I guess I do. Yes. Everything’s so mixed-up. What did she say? Is that why I’m here? She doesn’t want me home.”

“She didn’t say that. She was upset, of course. We had a long talk. You’re here, though, because I thought it would be good for Bett; it wasn’t Bett’s idea. And maybe good for you, too. This sort of thing doesn’t upset me as it does Bett. I don’t think you realize just how upset she has been these last weeks—how could you know, as confused as you were yourself?

“But maybe between us we can sort this out a bit, when you feel better. I’m a little like Reid, though, I think there has to be a logical explanation. Certainly something more than a pseudo-doctor of religion could make up to bilk money out of unsuspecting old ladies.”

“Pseudo-doctor? But how could he—?”

“He only calls himself doctor; he has no degree at all. I’ve been on the phone talking with the District Attorney in San Francisco. They have quite a long list of complaints against his organization; but it’s all so vague. When something like this is called a church, it’s released from all kinds of responsibilities regarding the law—anything goes. Those who give money in payment for healing of illnesses and unhappiness do so of their own free will. They call it donations, and there’s nothing illegal about that. Evidently Claybelle never comes right out and says he’s going to heal someone, he always talks around the subject.”

“But I—”

“But you saw something. I’m not questioning that. I’m only saying it had nothing to do with Claybelle.”

“But why there, then? In that place—?”

“I don’t know, Bethany. Maybe the heightened feeling from everyone, from Selma especially, triggered something in you. Maybe, if you’ll stay here with me for a little while, where you won’t have the pressure of trying to hide it from Bett, maybe between us we can sort it out a little—would you want to do that?”

“Yes! Oh, yes!” She looked up at Justin. “Did you ever think there could be—oh, something like—well, like a great power, a dark power, Justin?”

“You mean witchcraft?”

“No, not witchcraft. Something—well, like air, like an invisible essence, I guess you’d say.”

Justin looked interested.

“I thought— I was thinking this morning, that what I saw, seeing the figure and even myself, that wasn’t all of it. As if, behind me, all around me, there was something like a breath, like— Well I don’t know how to describe it, but that it wasn’t coming from what I saw. That what I saw was reflected from that in some way. Maybe only a shadow.”

Justin looked at her first with some curiosity, then with eagerness. “I’ve always felt,” she began slowly, “that there was something, an aura of darkness, of evil if you will, just as there is of goodness. I’ve wondered if perhaps the appearance of spirits, witchcraft and plasma and all that, is really—oh, a tapping into that dark power—not peopled with spirits at all, but an inanimate power that somehow becomes stronger when it’s drawn to people who want it. That in becoming stronger it generates a force that makes people see things, makes them imagine things in the shapes they want to see. Am I making any sense?”

“Yes. Oh yes.”

“And I’ve thought that that power has its opposite, just as everything in nature has an opposite. Positive and negative. I think there is a great opposite power for good. A force of absolute goodness.”

“You mean God?”

“I suppose you could say God, only not like an old man with a beard—definitely not with the attributes of a person that some people give Him, like anger and jealousy.” Justin grinned. “I suppose talk like this would sound like blasphemy to Bett.”

“But if a person is only trying to see what’s true—”

“Yes. How can it be wrong to seek for what is true?”

“Still, witch cults say they’re seeking truth, too. And so did Dr. Claybelle.”

“Yes, but Claybelle was lying. And I believe that in their hearts, those who practice witchcraft must admit they’re not really seeking truth at all, that they’re seeking after power, or at the very best, after a magic, painless way to solve difficult human problems, a way that really denies truth.”

Late in the afternoon, after dozing and lying cozily in bed most of the day—as if she were sick, weak as if she had had a fever—Bethany dressed and went to Aunt Bett’s for some clothes and her toothbrush. She didn’t much want to go, she didn’t want to see Aunt Bett. She really didn’t know what to say to her. But Justin insisted, “The longer you put it off, the harder it will be,” until at last she agreed. The cold fresh air felt good, brought her alive a little, though she felt disoriented, as if she had really had a long illness, and had lost touch with the world.

Aunt Bett had the vacuum out and the house torn apart so Bethany thought she could just slip in and get her clothes and leave with a minimum of talk. Aunt Bett was never very communicative on cleaning day. But she turned off the vacuum and went unhurriedly into the kitchen to cut a piece of cake and pour milk for Bethany and coffee for herself so that Bethany, coming out with her suitcase, was trapped. She sat down warily. “Where’s Colin?”

“He went to the store for me. Do you want ice cream on that?”

“No, Aunt Bett. No thanks.”

“I suppose you are as uncomfortable as I am.” Aunt Bett began to cut her cake into tiny little pieces. “Bethany, you didn’t tell me the truth about not having this ability any more.”

“I guess I didn’t, Aunt Bett. I guess I—” She wished she hadn’t come.

Aunt Bett put her hand on Bethany’s arm. “I can understand why, child. It’s something you’ve had to live with alone for too long. And I am responsible for that.”

“Oh no, Aunt Bett, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have changed anything even if you knew.”

“There were times when you surely must have wanted someone to talk to, though. You must have felt very alone after Marjory and Tom were killed, much more alone than I could guess. Perhaps I can understand a little better, now, why you always went off by yourself, and disliked playing with other children. It must be terrible to be so sensitive to other people. Justin and I talked for a long time last night, and I spent a lot of time thinking after I got home. I didn’t sleep very well. I suppose that’s why I’m cleaning house today, to work off some of the thoughts that have been plaguing me.”

“Oh, Aunt Bett. Please don’t, you—” She dropped her fork and put her arms around Aunt Bett, and tears came. Aunt Bett held her and patted her shoulder, and Bethany thought, Why didn’t I tell her at first, and make her understand! But it would not have been possible, she knew it wouldn’t have. She sat back at last and blew her nose and tried to smile at Aunt Bett. “I’m sorry it’s the way it is, that I’m the way I am.” But she meant, sorry for the sake of their relationship, sorry for Aunt Bett’s sake, not sorry for herself, for what she had, no matter how painful it was.

When Colin banged in with the groceries, he looked at her accusingly, opened his mouth to say something, then wisely closed it again and turned away from her. But when Bethany was ready to leave, he walked with her toward the village, carrying her suitcase—a flowered overnight bag dug out of three year’s accumulation of rubbish in the attic of the garage, a child’s suitcase, and battered. “Are you going to tell me what’s been going on?” Colin said. He stopped and turned to face her, looking very left out. He pushed his hair back and began to finger a blotch on his face, staring at Bethany unhappily.

They sat down on a fallen eucalyptus tree that lay across the lot behind the grocery, and she began idly picking pieces of loose bark off the trunk. She wanted to tell him. He kept staring at her, waiting. But she couldn’t, she simply couldn’t. She didn’t want to think about it. “I will someday,” she said at last. “Now I—Well hasn’t there ever been anything it just upset you too much to talk about?”

He nodded, childishly disappointed, but she thought he was pleased, in a way, because she had compared her feelings to his. “Someday I will,” she repeated, and put her hand on his arm. “Thank you, though, for— well, just for caring, Colin.” She looked up, and Jack was coming toward them grinning. He looked in such a good mood that Bethany wanted to kick him. Colin picked up her suitcase.

“Running away from home?” Jack ogled the flowered suitcase as if it were Colin’s, and smirked.

“I’m going to stay with Justin for a while,” Bethany said. “To help her get the house ready for Zebulon and unpack his books and papers.”

“Well free labor’s better than hiring a maid,” Jack said, and fell into step with them. Then, haughtily, “Claybelle’s leaving. Mother signed the lease, so I guess she’s stuck with the store. It’s your fault, you know,” he said, looking down at Bethany.

“Mine! But you wanted me to do it, you practically—” She searched his face, but saw only sarcasm there. “Go away, Jack. Go on away,” she said irritably.

“Come on Bethany,” he put his arm around her, and she jerked away from him, but he pushed closer and held her shoulder so tight it hurt. Colin pushed Jack ineffectually—then they all stopped and stared at the police car that skidded around the corner past them, its siren starting.

In front of the hardware store a small crowd had gathered, many were summer people, and the police car stood in the middle of the street with its doors open and its radio sputtering. “It’s old Krupp,” Jack said. “He was just getting warmed up when I went by. You’d think Reid would come and take the old sot home. But I guess it would take more of a man than Reid to do that.”

Bethany hated Jack vehemently. But she wasn’t going to show it, she wasn’t going to show him how furious he made her. “Don’t be such an ass, Jack,” she said coolly. “Let’s go see what’s happened.” It pleased her to think that was the kind of retort Beverly or Ciel would have made.

Mr. Krupp was inside the hardware store standing on top of a display counter, his baseball cap in his hand and his gray hair in strings over his forehead. He had already kicked more than half the display onto the floor. “The Lord is coming, I tell you! The time is drawing near. You sinners, all of you will burn in hell—”

It upset her to hear the old man speak of evil like that. Could what she thought she saw and felt have no more substance than the rantings of this old man? “False and evil spirits,” he roared; then he stopped suddenly, staring down into the crowd where Bethany and Jack and Colin stood, and pointed his finger. “That’s her!” Krupp shouted, “She who casts evil prophesies upon us, she who sins against us—”

She stared up at him, perplexed, and then alarmed. He was pointing at her.

Jack looked amused. Colin stood frozen for a moment, then, “He’s talking about you!” he hissed and began to pull at her. “Let’s get out of here!” He tried to make an opening in the crowd for her, but she was too shocked to follow him. “Come on,” he urged. “Oh, don’t just stand there, Bethany—”

“The prophesies of doom surround her, she carries the curse of the prophesies!” Krupp shouted. Colin pulled at her frantically. “Come on, Bethany!” And his expression was of such pain that she followed him at last as he opened the way, pushing at the people who stood in their path staring. She felt cold inside. And indignant.

“Evil will be visited on the daughter—” Krupp shouted after her. Bethany turned to stare back at him, but Colin forced her along, and Ciel Bapp’s face shone for a moment in the crowd, smirking.

The next day Reid made her tell him what the old man had said. He had come too late; his grandfather was already in jail.

“Let him rot in there,” he muttered now, and she thought she’d never seen him so angry. He was practically cross-examining her.

Finally, driven to anger herself, she turned on him, scowling. “That’s all he said, Reid! He didn’t say anything else!” His grip on her arm tightened, and when she put her hand across his knuckles, he took her by both shoulders, hard, and stared down at her almost as if she had been drunk in Bear’s Hardware. But his look was as much perplexed as angry, and he didn’t say anything. It was almost as if he didn’t trust himself to. “Reid,” she said at last, “he was only drunk, he didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t hurt me.” She felt terrible for him; she wished she could make things easier. She took his hand, and they went on silently. “Some people never seem to have any real problems,” she said at last, puzzling. “Except just little everyday things. And some people—your grandfather losing his son like that, with the boat burning and all— Well if there were really a God watching over us like Aunt Bett says, then why would it all be so unequal?”

Reid brought his attention back to her as if from a long way off, and looked at her quietly for a minute. “It’s not that,” he said at last. “It’s that you have to have chance.” His anger had subsided a little, his face was gentler. He unwrapped a Hershey bar and handed her half. “Without chance, there wouldn’t be any point in it. I mean, did you ever wonder why we’re here? It doesn’t make any sense to me that we’re here just to venerate God, or just to be good so we can get into Heaven. And what would be the good of God taking care of you so you didn’t have any problems? I think you have to have chance to be able to—well, I guess I mean to prove yourself. I guess I think the whole point is proving yourself.”

Bethany watched the shadows glide under her feet. “Do you believe in God, then?”

“I don’t know. I believe in something; not the kind of God my grandfather raves about, though. Whatever it is, chance has to be part of it. If things were predetermined, or controlled, then what you do, the decisions you make, wouldn’t mean anything. And if there’s chance, then unpleasant things are just naturally going to happen. Maybe it’s how you handle the problems that shows—well, like a testing.”

“A testing,” she said, and a little spark of something eager kindled in her. “Like we are being tested.”

“He hasn’t done his best,” Reid said suddenly and angrily. “Other people have things happen to them, even worse things. That old man hasn’t used what was in him to use.”

“I—” She looked up, they were approaching the stables.

Danny was in the cross-ties. Mr. Grady was grooming him. His bridle lay across his neatly folded blanket on the saddle rack, and the trailer was hitched to Mr. Grady’s car.