The Grass Tower

Bethany stared, then turned like a child to run away. But Mr. Grady spoke her name so imperatively that she turned back and went in to him. “Danny is ready to go home, Bethany,” he said more gently. “You knew he had to go. You did a good job with him. But now that job is done and his little girl wants him back.”

He looked at her kindly, his hat jammed low on his head. Bethany stood with her knuckles pressed against her mouth, desolate, and when Danny was ready to be loaded in the trailer, she cried against his neck; he nickered to her from the trailer as the car was pulling out the gate. You knew he had to go, she told herself harshly. You always knew. But that didn’t make it any easier. Reid put his arms around her while she cried against him, and he didn’t say, even once, that she’d get over it. He just held her and let her cry.

Late in the afternoon, though the sky was dark and threatening, she saddled little gray Molly and went out alone, missing Danny terribly, and feeling depressed. It was as they reached the hard-packed shore that she began to feel almost shaky for no reason, as if something lay waiting at the edges of the storm-dark sky. The dunes were utterly lonely and silent, not a gull, no sign of life. Even Molly seemed nervous, though she was a willing little soul, thrusting her nose dutifully into the wind. But her ears were cocked with tension, and she snorted now and then. It was as they were headed home, Molly eager for her hay and walking fast, that Bethany felt the heat come down around her suddenly and felt the difference in the gait of the horse under her. The sky brightened and quivered with heat, and she saw, wavering indistinctly through Molly’s white mane, the dark neck of another horse, felt the difference through the reins, the two horses superimposed one over the other. She felt her hands tighten on the reins and in spite of herself she felt a terrible desire to jerk the reins and dig in her heels so that the horse under her would thrust forward into the bit and be jerked upward, rearing. Her hands trembled, she could feel the desire so strongly. “No!” she hissed aloud. “Stop it!” The heat and the wind fought each other, the sky wavered between darkness and sun—the horse beneath her wavered. “No! Go away!” Bethany sat stubbornly, forcing her hands to lay lightly. Molly was trembling under her. “Go away!” Something—someone was trying stubbornly, forcefully, to make her do something. She felt the strength, the power, that she had felt in Selma’s church—only this time it was against her. She gritted her teeth stubbornly and fought it.

Finally it was gone; Molly settled to a steady walk, and the sky was dark once more, dark and comforting now, with the familiar dunes around her. She patted the mare’s sweating neck. “Angry!” she told the mare suddenly, so Molly swiveled her ears around to listen. “Something—someone was angry! Angry because I fought back!”

When she told Justin later, she felt almost excited. “I’m beginning to think—to see—I don’t know exactly, but it’s as if it’s someone, Justin. Not a spirit, really not a spirit! Someone—someone as—”

“As willful as you are,” Justin finished for her, smiling.

“And as stubborn, maybe,” Bethany said. “Am I really stubborn, Justin, like Aunt Bett says sometimes?”

“It’s not a bad quality, you know.” Justin grinned. “Yes, stubborn. You keep digging for answers with a fine tenacity, I’d say. There’s nothing wrong with that, there’s nothing wrong with staying at something until you’ve defeated it.”

“If I can—” she said hesitantly. She wished she knew what it was she had to defeat.

It was while she was helping Justin unpack Zebulon’s books that she caught the strange, rich sense from Justin’s thoughts again, this time so strongly that it made her start. They had been arranging the books according to subject in the order in which Justin had packed them, books on history and geology and mythology, on the occult, nearly every facet of man’s life, and suddenly Bethany had such an overwhelming sense of people, centuries and centuries of people going back in time to a beginning so remote—and moving forward past her in time like hundreds of transparent pictures one over the other, people reaching and building, not just the physical things, she thought, but something of the mind, too, linking ideas together. The concept held a message that Bethany could almost, but not quite, fathom.

They transfered Justin’s research from boxes to metal files in her room; and in between readying the house for Zebulon, Justin was embarked on errands of her own. She spent hours writing letters and making phone calls.

Then one afternoon Justin came to Bethany tense with excitement and made her relate every detail she could remember about the other house and the city. How many stories was the house? What kind of furniture? What did the rest of the city look like? Describe the people on the streets. And when Bethany thought about it, it seemed to her that most of the people had dark hair and that many were black, especially around the market. “The house is three stories,” she knew that clearly. “And the kitchen is old-fashioned, like kitchens might have been fifty years ago. But there are new things too, new furniture, and there are cars on the streets. And on the third floor there are bedrooms that are closed off, maids used to live there, and once bats got loose in one, from the attic. Corrinne stays at the house only part of the time, then she goes home to the little room off the alley and—” Justin was regarding her with the oddest expression.

“What’s the matter?” Bethany asked.

“You’re talking about it as if—as if you live there,” Justin said softly.

And once, when Bethany awoke in the red bedroom and heard parakeets squawking like squeaky hinges outside her window, she said afterward to Justin, “I got out of bed and opened the glass doors and watched them until they flew away, then I went back to bed,” which brought a snort of laughter from Justin.

“You’re getting very blase, going back to bed.”

“What else is there to do, though? I mean, I’m either there or I’m here—but whatever I do I don’t seem able to control it, so I might as well be in bed as anyplace.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Ever tried what?”

“Controlling it. Getting back. Have you ever tried to make yourself come back?”

Bethany stared at her. There was that once, on Molly. But most of the time she just let it come and go as it chose.

“I feel— I don’t like this happening to you, Bethany. The more it happens—I don’t know, it’s as if—” Justin paused, studying her. “I want you to be able to get back.”

“As if I’m losing myself.” Bethany breathed slowly. She hadn’t wanted to face that idea, but once expressed, fear took her suddenly.

But could she come back if she willed it, when she willed it? And before she knew it, her thoughts had turned themselves around, and she was thinking, Could I go when I want to? Could I make myself be there? And the excitement of that, and the terror of it, fought themselves in her so she turned away sick with alarm, and not wanting Justin to see.

But Justin did see that something was wrong; she had guessed, and was staring at Bethany and frowning. “No! You can’t do that, Bethany. I won’t allow it! You don’t know how dangerous it would be, you don’t know what it is—” She stopped, steadying herself. “You want to get away from it, not let it run you! If you went to it, whatever it is, the power would have you stronger.”

Bethany’s thoughts were leaping and would not be stilled even for Justin. She had been passive until now, letting the power move her as it wished. Except for the last seances, of course; and the time on Molly. But if she could do it, would it be a dark power that would help her? She shuddered. Or would it be something else entirely, something as impersonal as a kind of electrical impulse, something that could touch the dark powers—or the forces of light—but was not a part of them? The thought excited her. And if she could find out more about what this was— She turned away from Justin. “No, I won’t do that,” she lied. “I would be afraid to.” And the shame she felt, at lying to Justin, was awful.

Chapter 9

The sand pulled at her feet as she ran. The afternoon light was strange and raw, with clouds piled high along the horizons. She stood for a moment watching the grass tower shining golden in the pulsing light. Why had she come here to do it? It could happen anywhere; she had fallen into that other world in a dozen different places. But she felt safer here, felt somehow protected on the grass tower, and surer of herself.

It was as she parted the grass at her familiar place of ascending, where the tall blades were worn back to make a narrow corridor, that she looked down at her feet and saw the placard lying askew across the path. There was a spider web across it so the sign might have lain there for several days. The crayon printing was large and childlike: SATAN WORSHIP DAMNS THE SOUL. REBUKE THE PLEASURES OF EVIL AND DARKNESS. EXPOSE THEM AND YOU CAN BE SAVED.

The chill of it, the vileness of it, sickened her. She turned, half-expecting Mr. Krupp to be standing behind her; then she snatched up the sign, ripped it off the stick, and tore it furiously into pieces. She felt utterly betrayed by what one human being would do to another.

She climbed at last, not really understanding her own emotions, watching the grass ahead of her apprehensively for some further sign of the old man’s presence. “The old drunk,” she muttered, and this made her feel better. When in her haste she cut her finger on a grass blade, she thought of how she had done this the first time she had ever climbed the grass tower, and she felt very much like twelve years old again. Only this time a very helpless twelve, badgered by that horrible old man, and she almost turned back to go home. But instead she grasped great handfuls of grass, pulling herself upward, clinging to the grass tower as if it were the only safety in the world, climbing fearfully, uncertain and hurrying by turns, up the last stretch until she stood at last in the sky. She tried to feel the power of the grass tower under her, its animal warmth and strength, but she could feel nothing now but fear.

She stood facing the sea, and resolutely tried to imagine the heat of the other place, tried to imagine the balcony doors standing open behind her, to make them be there, determined that when she opened her eyes— and before she lost her nerve—the red-roofed city would lie below her.

After a long time though, the cold sea wind was still on her face, and the grass still blew against her, and when she opened her eyes nothing had changed. She clenched them tight and thought of a young girl, she must be a young girl. She thought of her smooth hands holding the box, hands so like her own, thought of them jerking Molly’s reins angrily. She forced herself to feel the heat of that other place, itching heat, and smell the city smells—but it was not until she had thought of the girl for some time, tried to think what she was like, cared about her, cared about how she might feel, that she was on the balcony. The heat made her reel; sun slashed across the shining leaves and bounced off the rooftops, nearly blinding her. She could hear a muddle of city noises, and a strange rhythmic calling, “Buy my oranges—naranjas, mangoes, papaya, naranja—” she leaned over the rail and watched a peddler wheel his cart along the street below her. At last, with a pulsing reluctance, but with a terrible eagerness too, she turned and made herself enter the red room. Then she stopped short: a skirt had swung around her ankles as she turned, and now she could not be sure it was her own reflection in the gold framed mirror—she was wearing a low-cut white blouse and a full red skirt, and her face was made up so she looked older, looked—oh! she looked elegant. The skirt was very full, a red cotton skirt in which red appliqued squares had been sewn, red squares with colors fused into them, gold and green, black, blue, pink, laid into the red in such small lines and shapes that the overall effect was jewel-like; she swung around so the skirt caught the light richly, and she felt a sudden lilting feeling of satisfaction, almost as if she had had to fight to get this skirt. She stood admiring her tan against the low-necked white blouse, then she took up the carved box from the dresser and opened it. She held it for a moment, undecided, her heart pounding—

I will, she thought at last; but she did not understand what it was she meant to do, and the empty interior of the box stared up at her, goading, until finally, almost afraid, she put the box back on the dresser and closed the lid.

She whirled once again so that the skirt flared out, and stood admiring herself. But the thing in the box —in the empty box—nagged at her, and she had a dizzying vision of something flashing golden at her throat, something she wanted very much to wear, and yet was afraid to wear. She stepped away from the box, her mind muddled and unclear as if something impenetrable lay across her thoughts. She felt a sudden cold terror at losing herself, at being torn away from reality. She wanted to get out, to get away—but where? Her thoughts blurred again, and chimes were ringing somewhere far away in the house.

They were door chimes; they had been ringing off and on for some time, and there were voices rising and falling—party voices, many voices raised in lightness and joviality. She knew she was expected down there; she had a picture of herself descending that long curved stairway, with faces looking upward. Looking once more in the mirror, smugly pleased with her reflection —but puzzling at some thought that had escaped her —she let herself out and stood for a moment at the railing gazing down upon the living room, upon a sea of people. The dissonant mixture of voices drifting upward reminded her of something long ago, but she could not remember what. A few people looked up to watch her descend; she drifted in among them, her own will in the matter quite extinguished. She was greeted, exclaimed over, her skirt exhibited with little cries of envy from some of the women: “Molas,” they said. “Your mola skirt!” And one of the younger men spoke in that singing tongue and smiled into her eyes, flirting, a dark-eyed young man. When a hand reached for hers in the crowd, she took it, and looked up at her grandmother with a little feeling of stubbornness, still, that she had been made to attend this grown-up party. But when her grandmother, elegant in a silver-white dress that matched her swirled hair, introduced her, she smiled properly and said the proper things, and was altogether, as Grandmother would put it, above reproach. The faces, the voices, were immediately blurred back into the general sea as new ones were thrust before her, “I would like to present … Ninea, I want you to meet … Yes, my dear, this is my granddaughter Ninea… .”

The hors d’oeuvres table was filled with the most delectable things to eat, and when she could escape finally she made her way toward it, took up a plate, and began to fill it, knowing full well Grandmother would raise an eyebrow. Hot little meat pies shaped like crescent moons, small hot meatballs flavored with curry, a cold spiced shrimp, and ladyfinger sandwiches, olives, on and on down the line she went disregarding propriety. Then she found herself a sheltered place beside a potted tree, with people’s backs to her.

It was strange, sitting here looking out at this mass of people, their voices clashing and rising; it reminded her so terribly of that something she could not bring to the surface. Some long ago time when she had been sitting and watching a party just this way and felt a sudden surge of fear take her, as if she had seen—as if she had seen—and she sat bolt upright, for overlaid against this party was that other time: the high board fence with the sky so blue above it and the wind racing across the treetops, the children fighting and the hamburgers cooking, and Aunt Selma—

Then she almost dropped the plate, for she realized she was Bethany. Not Ninea, but Bethany. A great, gripping silence held her—and suddenly she was in a whirling, wind-howling sphere of darkness, fighting fearfully to keep hold of herself, clutching fearfully to keep her own identity. I am Bethany! Bethany!

The girl was facing her, shouting Ninea! Ninea! Ninea! And it occurred to Bethany that she was frightened, too, the other one—though she was bolder. In spite of her fear, her face was full of glee as they spun in black space. They touched only to draw back spinning, and Bethany clutched at her own self, tried to wrap her own identity around her. I am me! Bethany Light! And the other one terrified and intrigued her, shouting, Ninea! Ninea! Bethany wanted to run, but there was no place, there was only blackness. Then Ninea shouted, It was me, it was me in that black place with the snakes and the candles, didn’t you know we were two?

I didn’t know, Bethany cried silently, and she could feel Ninea’s quick thrill at the thought of the seances, as if she had been eager and rapt in them. What do you mean, two? she thought—then, The seances, she thought disjointedly, how did you come there? Who are you?

I am Ninea. 1 saw you on that place with the grass showing through you as if you were a shadow, and your hair long. Your hair—don’t you remember? Don’t you know we cut our hair together?

I— But who are you? Not just to say you are Ninea, but who? Who are we?

Ninea grinned like a bright ghost as the light spun and they spun in a dimension they could not fathom, all light and motion. I dreamed of you; then later 1 came there when you—when you helped me, Ninea said. With the candles burning, you helped me. And we changed places once. Bethany could feel her laughter. You saw yourself through my mind, and you were afraid. Fear spun in Bethany again. And you came here, Ninea continued. Not always when I wanted you, though, sometimes you just came. But you wouldn’t give in, only that first time— You touched my mind and could see and feel through me, but you wouldn’t let go, you wouldn’t let your own self go, you never let yourself know all that I knew, you held back—

I couldn’t, I couldn’t, Bethany cried, and even now she held back, fearful. And then they were on the grass tower, the grasses dead still in the last twilight. And they could remember; Bethany could remember Ninea’s memory of running and running on the sand, could remember Ninea remembering kissing Jack! It was you! Bethany cried. You made me feel like that, wanting to kiss him! Why? It was your thoughts I got. Who are you?

We have to go back, Ninea said. I want to show you —oh! And they were falling away from each other. Try! Ninea commanded, and Bethany did. They fell, but pulling and twisting until they fell together, and in that swirling instant Ninea gave Bethany one more memory. She remembered climbing the back stairs to the old shut-off servants rooms above her own— Ninea’s own—room, remembered opening the door into Grandmother’s box room—Ninea’s grandmother —and searching among the trunks and cartons; remembered feeling in the lining of the black velvet evening bag, that hard, hidden object, remembered ripping frantically at the lining, listening to footsteps in the hall below, hearing Grandmother call. She had ripped open the lining and seen, in the dim light, the heavy, golden, two-headed eagle. It hung on a thick gold chain. Its wings were outstretched, and the two heads faced away from each other, one to the left and one to the right, with mouths open as if both were screaming. It looked old, was made by ancient hands, she knew, and the scrollwork on its back held her attention for a long moment before she slipped the chain over her head and dropped the eagle down the front of her blouse. She found a bit of loose wood on one of the rafters to stuff into the lining—she would come back later and sew it up, she thought. The cathedral bells were ringing, she could feel their vibrations in the wall as she hesitated with her hand on the closed door.

But what does it mean? Bethany thought, letting go Ninea’s memory; then Ninea stiffened slightly, and they were back in the room. Ninea began to move with determination between the groups of people, and though Bethany knew it was Ninea pressing through the crowd, yet she felt as if she were. Ninea slipped out through a little side door into the pantry and up the back stairs to the red bedroom, and there she stood facing the mirror, smiling, the white blouse and red skirt reflecting back sharply. She took up the box— Bethany could feel the wood in her hands, in Ninea’s hands—and slowly Ninea opened the lid. She looked up at her reflection. I’m Bethany! Bethany Light! Bethany thought wildly. Ninea smiled that little smile again —it was Ninea’s face there in the glass, not her own— then Ninea looked down at the empty box, and Bethany’s attention was riveted there.

Slowly, Ninea reached into the empty box and pressed on the bottom until it slid away, revealing a hidden compartment.

There it lay in the lamplight, its two heads screaming.

Its gold was rich against Ninea’s brown hand. She lifted it out and put the chain around her neck so the eagle lay glowing against her skin. And Bethany understood nothing about why it was important except that Ninea’s grandmother had kept it secret from her, and it had been Ninea’s father’s; Ninea herself knew no more.

But there are two boxes, Bethany thought with excitement; and she gave Ninea the memory of her own box. They drew away then, and were separate, as if their minds were whole again, and Bethany understood at last that what she had done, what she had seen in this room was a telepathy more real than anything she had known. It had been Ninea’s thoughts she had received, and it was Ninea’s thoughts now that showed her the reflection, showed her the room. She had never been really here, her mind had been drawn here by Ninea’s power, greater than her own—or perhaps a power they made together. But why did they look alike, what link was there if their powers did work together? And the boxes— There were two, two boxes alike, and what they proved hovered at the edges of their thoughts. When Ninea looked up into the mirror, it was as if they were facing each other, and the thoughts flamed between them, Why are we alike? And, If there are two boxes, could there be an eagle in the other? Could there be two eagles? And abruptly Ninea was gone, and Bethany was lying in darkness.

A small light burned near her, disorienting and confusing her; a cold breeze touched her. Then she became aware of the grass matted under her, and the light diffusing and feathering across the gently blowing grass around her, and she felt the solidness of the grass tower thankfully. She had been out of herself, so terribly out of herself; she lay feeling the wholeness of being herself; and she thought, I can’t do that again, never again, to let my mind be taken. She felt a great repugnance for the other one, whoever she was. Bethany knew she must withdraw from her further—though she was gripped with terrible curiosity now. She felt thankful in an entirely new way for her own reality, her own wholeness. She turned over to face the light, and there was Reid, looking down at her, cupping the flashlight away from her. The whole world was a nest of grass with Reid sitting close to her. She smiled at him, very thankful for him suddenly, in a way she could not have been before. She felt utterly protected and safe with him watching over her. Then she remembered the eagle and pushed herself up to stare at Reid, trying to speak and finding it impossible. “The box,” she said at last, hardly able to get it out. She didn’t know how to tell him without blurting it all incoherently. She had to tell him what had happened to her, but she could not speak of it, not yet. “We have to get the box,” she said slowly as if she were just learning to speak, and, seeing his expression, “We can’t wait for tomorrow}”

He studied her, trying to make sense of what she was talking about, trying to understand. “Justin’s pretty worried,” he said quietly. “When you didn’t come home— You went in on purpose, didn’t you? She was afraid you might have. She was going to come herself, but I— Come on, we have to tell her you’re all right.” He took her hand and pulled her up.

But she resisted, she had to make him see. “It won’t take long; it won’t take twenty minutes. The answer is there, Reid, I know it is. In the box—” She was pulling him, frantic now. “Yes, I did it on purpose.” She stopped and stared up at him solemnly. “But I never will again. Not ever. I felt— It was horrible, Reid. I felt as if I’d lost myself.” They stood staring at each other, Reid alarmed at her terror, and the world seemed to spin faster for a moment. Then they started down the grass tower, toward the village. Reid didn’t urge her to talk. There was no moon, and they walked by the light from his flashlight, a yellow circle before their feet. Her growing sense of Ninea as another, as an entity quite separate from herself, became stronger, so the feeling of displacement she had experienced faded a little; but her revulsion at having gone in on purpose, and worse, at never having resisted going, was beginning to make her feel quite depressed. It was as if she were less than her own person because of it, to have committed herself to those things, committed herself to Ninea. For it was her fault, she felt. She could have fought it harder. But it did no good to think of that now; and she was reluctant to think of the box and what might be inside, and what it might mean if there were two eagles. For objects, things, were the only real link she and Ninea had so far, the only link that could be looked at and handled and shown to other people, the only link that did not come from her own mind.

It was nearly eleven when they reached Aunt Bett’s house, and the windows were all dark. Bethany took the key from under the back porch and fitted it as quietly as she could. “Stay here,” she said, and was gone.

It was hard to do it all silently, feeling for the carton, and rummaging through the toys, but Marylou was a sound sleeper and soon Bethany was on the porch again, clutching the box. She couldn’t wait, she sat down on the step, and Reid held the light. She opened the lid, dumped the contents in her sweater, and stared into the empty interior; then she took a long breath, put her hand in, and pressed against the bottom panel. Her hand looked so like Ninea’s pressing on that other box that she shuddered. The panel slid back, and Reid caught his breath, for under the harsh light lay a two-headed golden eagle. “Oh,” she said, staring. “Oh—”

They heard the scraping of an inner door. Reid switched off the light. She grabbed up her sweater, and they ran. Later she said, “Why did we run?” And neither of them could say. But what could they have told Aunt Bett, sitting there on the porch in the middle of the night?

Chapter 10

“Yes,” she said, facing Justin, “I did do it, and I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry, not just because you told me not to, though that’s bad enough, but because—because I was terrified.” She stopped and stared at Justin, wanting to make her understand all that she was feeling; because in spite of the fear and the repugnance of that spinning black lostness, a thrill was growing in her, a thrill of almost knowing, of almost having the answer, and the need to know was terrible.

“You’re safe,” Justin said quietly. “I know you had a reason for what you did.” She put her arms around her. “And,” she said, yawning against her, then holding her away, “you’re all fizzy with something that you’ve learned. Can you tell me?” She studied Bethany, then shook her head slightly. “It’s a secret still,” she said at last, hesitantly. “It’s something—all right, I won’t ask you.” She glanced at Reid.

“Let him stay, please Justin. I promise— I want to sort it out in my mind before I tell you— I don’t know anything, I just—it’s just all in bits and pieces. I want to look up something in Zebulon’s books. Could we? I’m not sleepy.”

Justin looked uncertain, studied the two of them, and yawned. “All right. If you make a fire, drown it before you come to bed, and lock the door.” She laid a hand on Reid’s arm. “If it were anyone but Reid—” Then she kissed Bethany lightly. “I’m very glad you’re all right. We’ll talk about the disobedience part tomorrow.” She gave Bethany a searching look, then turned back to her own room.

Zebulon’s room, paneled and raftered, washed by shadows from the fire Reid built, was like a medieval chamber; shadows hovered tall across the bookshelves, and the sound of the sea beat a rhythm that hushed and spoke to Bethany of timelessness. It was into the centuries they dipped as Bethany crouched before the fire with books strewn before her, and Reid prowled in the shadows along the opposite wall, taking down books and perusing them, bringing one occasionally to her. Across the Kirman rug lay books open and stacked, one atop the other, and dozens of golden objects from Egypt and India shone up from the pages. But nothing they had found so far looked anything like the eagle. “And we have to look for a country,” Bethany said. “I can’t even think how to begin.

“I know I heard names, if only I could remember. Cherokee, was that it? Yes. Cherokee Indian?” she asked with confusion. “And Al-Almeranty or something.” But the words meant nothing to either of them. “They’re places, though,” Bethany said. “Someone said—oh, I wish I’d paid more attention. Someone said, ‘Up in Almeranty.’ And, ‘When we go to Cherokee.’ “

There seemed to be no atlas in the bookshelves. She could not remember unpacking one.

“Listen,” Reid said. “Listen to this: ‘There was a garden where the earth was of gold, and sewn with golden stalks bearing gold corn, and twenty golden sheep with their lambs stood about, and shepherds of gold, and huge vessels of gold and silver and emerald, and there was a great image of the sun, and golden fountains whose water flowed into golden bowls where there were birds of different kinds and men drawing water, all of gold, even spiders and small lizards and insects, and there were flowers of gold. It was one of the richest temples in the world.’”

“Oh, where?” Bethany breathed, enchanted. “It sounds like a fairy tale.”

“No, it was real. In the Inca Empire, in Peru. The Spanish destroyed nearly all of it.”

“Are there pictures?”

“Not of any eagle. Only human figures, and a gold llama. And a clay cat.”

“Let me see.” And, looking, “But they’re like it. I mean, they’re made like it, a kind of boldness like it. Peru,” she said. “Does Almeranty sound Spanish? And —and Boketie!” She remembered suddenly.

At last they found the atlas, a huge tome hidden beneath a stack of oversized books. They had some trouble because they didn’t know the spellings, but finally they were able to match names to country, locating them on the map. And at last Bethany sat back with what should have been satisfaction, but felt a good deal more like fear quivering in her middle. “It seems as if I knew that it was Panama,” she said slowly. “It’s as if I know something but don’t know I know it until something prods me. Could things be buried in my mind, things Ninea knows? Things Ninea knows! Oh Reid, she’s real! She’s a real person!” They stared at each other. “Isn’t she?” Bethany said. “What else could she be? Oh, she’s alive, Reid, I know she is. She’s too— She feels too alive! She wouldn’t have dreamed of me, she wouldn’t have reached out to the seances, if she weren’t—” She stopped, staring at him, confusion engulfing her. “But the other thing, the power I felt, that wasn’t Ninea. That was—” She grew silent and uncertain.

He put his arm around her, it steadied her. It was safe in this room with Reid so close to her. It was all right, she knew it would be all right. It was almost as if, in the dark attic of the truth that she could not yet comprehend, everything was waiting, poised, waiting for her to see.

And then at last they found pictures of golden eagles; not the two-headed one, but single-headed eagles so like it that Bethany’s pulse raced. Province of Veragas, the book said. Eagle pendant, Panama. 1000 to 1530 a.d. And here the towns they had located were repeated, Almirante and Boquetie, and Colon and Chiriqui. “Now that I know this much,” Bethany said, “I feel—I don’t know how exactly, but strange. Should I wake Justin? No, not yet. But who is she, Reid? Who is Ninea?”

“You’re white as a sheet. I’m going to make some coffee. Will I wake Justin?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe I should wake her, but— Oh, I do feel all fizzy!”

He made coffee, and cheese and onion sandwiches, and Bethany found she was ravenous. But, gulping it down, there was such a fluttering inside her that she wondered if she would be sick afterward. “We were together once,” she said at last. “We must have been. Before we can remember. When we were babies, because it must have been then we were given the boxes and the eagles. By our parents, do you think? Then are we sisters, Reid? But Ninea—” And the thought struck her so suddenly: “Nina knows who her father was! Ruiz. Her grandmother was Senora Ruiz.”

“You didn’t say that before,” he said accusingly, stifling a yawn.

“Someone called her that. I remember it now. It’s as if there are clouds, and something just jumps out. Senora Ruiz said Ninea was her son’s child, so Ninea’s name would have to be Ruiz, wouldn’t it? Ninea Ruiz! Could—could—”

“It could be traced,” Reid answered.

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

It was Reid who was paying attention to the underlinings in Zebulon’s books; his curiosity about Zebulon McAllister, whom his grandfather called evil, made him read many of them. “He’s not evil,” Reid said at last. “He’s the opposite of that, at least if the underlining means anything. But why would he have such an interest in psychic powers and telepathy?”

“Does he? What are you reading?” Then, “Because of Justin, I guess,” she said thoughtfully.

He handed her the book, pointing to the neatly underlined passage:

If a scientific study of such perception has proven that man can reach across hundreds of miles with his mind to touch the mind of another, then surely science has proven that more than the body-man exists: that there is another, and spirit, man dwelling within the body. And thus surely science will have, not as skeptics insist disproved the existence of a spiritual and higher plane, but have proved it.

“Reach across hundreds of miles—” Bethany whispered. She got up and took several of Zebulon’s own books from a shelf beside the fireplace, turning to the back flap of each until she found the one with his picture. They studied it together, heads bent over the page. A thin man, with short-cropped gray hair, a lean man, with dark, intense eyes.

The sky was beginning to show streaks of dawn when Bethany found, among some magazines and old albums on a top shelf, a stack of travel folders of Panama tied together with a string. She and Reid were both yawning, though they had drunk the whole pot of coffee, and Bethany, pouring over the folders in a rather fuzzy state, came wide awake suddenly at the sight of the stone ruins. “That’s where I stood,” she said. “There! There’s the shop, way in the back.” And when she came to the picture of a small plaza with a fountain in the center, she knew she had run through that square with the shouting boys chasing her. In many of the pictures there was a similarity in the shapes of the trees and in the way laundry hung on balconies and porch railings.

And then she found the picture of the molas. Red, red, they shone back at her, appliqued cloth squares showing birds and animals; and a light exploded in her mind: “I have to wake Justin!” she said, jumping up. But Reid pulled her back, pulled her down beside him. “But Justin,” she said, “Justin has some molas. Why would they have travel folders of Panama and—”

“I know, but wait.” He handed her a folder in which someone had written in the margin: We had dinner here last night. You would have loved it, the air was heavenly warm and there were parrots in the patio. The note was signed K.

“Could it be Kathleen?” Bethany whispered. “Justin’s sister Kathleen?”

“But maybe,” Reid said, laying silver on the table while Bethany fried pancakes, “maybe it just means that Kathleen sent the mola pockets to Justin when she visited Panama.”

“But if Kathleen was in Panama before she died, and if Ninea is in Panama—” she searched his face, eager and confused, and then yawned.

“That was a long time ago. You said Kathleen died ages ago. It could be—”

“It’s not coincidence!” She stormed, cross suddenly with lack of sleep, and with Reid’s too-cautious logic. And with anxiety, for it was as if layers and layers of tissue were turning back one by one, and something underneath was about to be revealed, something that she could not yet fathom, something that she was almost afraid of.

Reid put his arm around her. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so practical I upset you. It’s just—” He looked deeply at her, trying to make her understand. “It’s just— Oh, forget it, it’s not coincidence, it couldn’t be. It’s just my nature to be skeptical, I guess. Come on, we’ll burn the pancakes.” And Justin, smelling pancakes, came sleepily to the door, her hair tangled over the shoulders of her robe. She yawned, looked questioningly at them, poured herself some coffee—and then she saw the box.

She stood silent for a long moment before she reached out and took it in her hands, running her finger over the birds, stroking them. Her blue eyes, when she looked up, were wide. “Wherever did you find it? It used to hold my toys when I was small.”

“Yours?” Bethany stared at her, knowing but afraid to see that there was a truth here. “I’ve always had it,” she said, searching Justin’s face.

“Oh, of course,” Justin said, smiling, taking her coffee and the box to the table and making herself comfortable. “It was your mother’s; I gave it to Marjory years ago.”

There was a long silence.

“But was there another?” Reid asked at last, so tensely that Justin stared at him. “Were there two?”

“Yes, Kathleen had one. She used to keep a set of toy soldiers in hers. She let Marjory and me play with them when she got too old.”

Bethany stood staring and feeling very strange. The pancakes burned, the smell of burning filled the room. She looked at them distractedly. Reid pushed her aside and began to scrape them out of the skillet.

“Is this the box the Zagdesha had?” Justin asked softly.

“Yes,” Bethany stammered. “But where—where—”

“Where is Kathleen’s box?” Reid asked for her.

“I don’t know.” A tone of excitement rose in Justin’s voice. “I haven’t seen it in years. Maybe Selma— Could Selma have it? Could she have used it to—?”

Bethany shook her head mutely, getting in Reid’s way so he took her by the shoulders and sat her down in a chair, then started making more pancakes.

“What—what—” What was in the box, Bethany wanted to say, but as she stared, the box itself seemed to grow more solid and Justin and the table to fade, to become almost transparent; then Ninea was there, a transparent shape too, superimposed over Justin’s reaching hand, and there were two boxes, one superimposed over the other, and Ninea was slowly opening the one that had not been there a moment before, sliding back the panel. Then Bethany’s head was bent with Ninea’s over the fine scrollwork on the back of the eagle, the tangle of curving lines. She could see Justin staring at her, bewildered, heard Justin say, as if she were a long way off, “What are you doing? What are you looking at?” Bethany put her hand to the eagle, but her fingers went right through it; and then Ninea faded, the box and the eagle faded; Justin and the kitchen table were solid once more and Justin was still staring, tense with curiosity.

Bethany stayed still for a long moment. Then, “What was in the box?” she asked breathlessly. “Open the box, Justin.”

Watching Bethany closely, Justin lifted the lid.

“Open it more,” Bethany whispered.

Justin reached inside the box and pushed the inner panel. It slid back, and the eagle shone up, catching the light so that Justin gasped. After a moment, she lifted the eagle out, its two heads screaming, and held it on the palm of her hand. She stared at Bethany, perplexed. “I’ve never seen this before. You wanted to know if I knew about the secret compartment, and I did. But I have never seen this. You want to know—”

She stopped short and studied Bethany, and the atmosphere of the room seemed to steady. Their minds touched easily for an instant. “You want to know the name of the man Kathleen had planned to marry,” Justin said. “It was Ruiz. Teodoro Peron Ruiz. But you—you already knew it was Ruiz, didn’t you? How did you know, Bethany?”

“Ninea told me. Well in a way she did. Ninea Ruiz,” Bethany said, watching Justin. She took the eagle from Justin, turned it over, and held it under the light. Why had Ninea—? She peered, trying to find a clue in the mass of tiny intricate lines that seemed to change their patterns depending on the way you looked at them. She glanced up, staring at the reflection of light on the kitchen table, and when she looked at the eagle again the lines seemed to have converged in a different way. They had taken shapes she could now recognize; and all at once she saw it: the letters woven into the pattern, letters that spelled Bethany—

Bethany McAllister Ruiz.

Wordlessly, stunned, she handed the eagle to Justin.

The smell of pancakes filled the room. Justin sat silently studying the scrollwork. But Bethany’s mind led her, could not help but show her, and she read the name with widening eyes, then looked up. Reid, turning pancakes, could only remain puzzled, watching them both.

“You are,” Justin breathed, “you are—oh, Bethany!”

And their arms were around each other, spilling Justin’s coffee.

“I have to confess,” Justin said over her second stack of pancakes, “that I thought—that I suspected it. But I couldn’t tell you, not and have it come, perhaps, to nothing. What did you think I was doing on the phone for days, and writing all those letters?”

“Well—research,” Bethany said vaguely.

“It was research all right, but research about you. There were such strong clues. For one thing, the way you described the city and the heat and the rain pelting down so suddenly was just the way Kathleen had described it. And then I started thinking about dates, because several months after Kathleen’s death, Marjory and Tom took a rather unexpected trip, no one knew where, and returned with an adopted baby. Fifteen years ago, Bethany. Marjory said something vague about a friend putting the baby up for adoption. When I began to work all this out in my mind, I telegraphed the hospital where Kathleen died. I received an answer two days ago, but it said only that they had no record of her death, or of her having ever been confined there for childbirth, nor could they locate a birth record for you. But these Latin countries’ record keeping isn’t always— Well, they did locate a doctor who had had, as a patient, a Senora Ruiz, and could give me her address. I wrote to her, and also several other letters to inquire about records; but I’ve had no answers yet.”

She put her arm around Bethany. “There’s no need for all that now, though. Except—who is Ninea?”

“There could have been twins,” Bethany said slowly. “I think we are twins. But why did they give me away and keep Ninea? Or why didn’t Mama take us both to adopt? I don’t think she could have known there were two of us,” she said reflectively. “She would never have separated us.”

It was two days later that the letter from the Ruiz household arrived. Teodoro’s mother had not answered Justin’s letter; Corrinne had answered it. Her handwriting was delicate, and her words and phrases were sometimes strange, English being her second language. But her meaning was very clear.

Dear Miss McAllister:

You have recently directed an inquiry to Sra. Ruiz regarding a possible child of her son. I believe truly that she will never answer you. Perhaps I am forward, and will make trouble by writing to you, but I have thought for a long time that I must one day do this.

To try to begin, yes, your sister, Kathleen McAllister was married, as you asked, to Sra. Ruiz’s son, Teodoro Peron Ruiz, on September 9, 19—. There was a birth, not one baby, but two. Both were girls, and both did live, but their mother died in childbirth. The babies were named and baptized three weeks before Sr. Ruiz was shot in the political riots of that year.

I cared for the babies in Sra. Mendoza Ruiz’s home. It was I who sent the cablegram to Mrs. Marjory Light, after Sr. Teodoro was killed, asking that she come. It was Sra. Kathleens last request, that if anything should happen to her, I would do this. I did so without Sra. Mendoza Ruiz’s knowledge. When Mrs. Light arrived, Sra. Ruiz found not time to deny the existence of a child, for Mrs. Light gave no warning, and baby things were everywhere.

But she sent me out the back with one baby, and I have raised Ninea ever since. Sra. Ruiz could not bear to give up all that was left of her son.

There existed in Sra. Kathleen’s home two huacas, two golden eagles that Sr. Ruiz had had engraved with the babies names, for their luck. Ninea McAllister Ruiz and Bethany McAllister Ruiz. I took them because they were the only proof I knew of the babies’ family. Although I promised Sra. Ruiz not to tell about Ninea, I felt inside that someday this proof might be needed.

I sent Bethany’s huaca to Mrs. Light. It proved nothing about the two babies, but it did show Bethany’s heritage.

Several months ago Ninea overheard an argument between Sra. Ruiz and me, in which Sra. Ruiz accused me of taking the huacas, as she had many times before. At last, for some reason I cannot explain, I felt I must tell the truth. 1 gave the huaca to her. Later Ninea, unknown to me, searched for the huaca and finally found it, and just today she has come to me asking about her middle name, McAllister. I have told her nothing, but she is very persistent. She has been a disturbed child these last months, for she knows truly inside herself that there is much she has not been told. All Sra. Ruiz ever said was that her mother, a Panamanian woman, had died and there were no relatives.

Ninea has always been an angry child, with hate rising sometimes in her, and for this I blame Sra. Ruiz. She is a fine woman in many ways, but she knows little of children, and Ninea has never been happy with her. The hate that grows in the child is painful to me. Now she says she has strange visions of a girl so like herself one could not tell them apart, and I know it must be Bethany.

I do believe that it is God’s intervention that has made Ninea aware of her sister. For this reason, and because the child is unhappy, and because you write that perhaps the same thing is happening to Bethany, then I must break my promise to Sra. Ruiz and write to you.

I may have caused pain by this letter. Surely in her own way Sra. Ruiz cares for Ninea, but I think it is because she represents the dead son, not for the child herself. If the children will be together as they should be, and happy, then it is meant that 1 should write.

Your servant Corrinne Fraser

Chapter 11

Justin read the letter aloud again as the sunlight streamed through the bay window across her desk and bright hair. When she looked up at last, her smile was touched with wonder. “That you found each other is incredible, Bethany. But the way it happened—” Her blue eyes studied Bethany seriously. “You two have a talent almost beyond believing.”

“Ninea has. It was Ninea who dreamed of me, who reached out to me—”

“But it was both of you. You told me, even before the first seance you had a premonition of what would happen, when you saw the mirror—”

“It might have been a premonition. Or it might have been— I might have been seeing through Ninea’s eyes even then. I guess we’ll never know.”

“It doesn’t matter, though. What matters is you, your talent and Ninea’s. And, that we’re a family now, you and Ninea and Zebulon and I.” She studied Bethany for a long time. “You have a grandfather,” she said at last, her eyes warm and very blue.

“What will he say, Justin? What will he think?” Bethany asked, remembering him suddenly as a young man on the beach, thinking of him gray-haired and more familiar, then seeing him looking at her sternly from the jacket of his book. Would it upset his life suddenly to have family thrust upon him? “Will he want us?”

“Want you? He’ll be beside himself. He’s always loved you, Bethany. To suddenly find you are his, his own family—and that you have a sister besides!— that there are two of you!” She grinned. “He’ll feel as if he’s inherited a fortune. And he has,” she said seriously. “Nothing in the world could please him more. Just to suddenly know you have grandchildren, at Father’s age, that must be wonderful. And to know it’s you, couldn’t be more wonderful. I might have married, there might be other grandchildren now, but there are not.” She folded the letter and put it in its envelope. “When a man is young, Bethany, he doesn’t look at death very realistically; he doesn’t really believe he’ll ever die, not as he will believe it when he has seen more of life. When at last he faces death truly, it must be very satisfying to have grandchildren around him, and to know he will leave behind him someone—something of himself, if you like.”

“But his books are of himself.”

“Yes. They are himself. But grandchildren, Bethany, someone to carry on that intangible thread of blood and spirit—and understanding.”

“Yes,” Bethany said. “Yes, I see.” And, seeing, she had rather a feeling of inadequacy.

But it was not until Zebulon arrived and she stood before him, and felt his look, that she knew what inadequacy was. And knew what elation was. She felt, in those first moments, as if she were standing on the brink of a chasm; ready to dive into deep cold water, and very much afraid. Afraid, then exhilerated. Zebulon’s eyes, as blue as Justin’s, smiled at her, and in that moment Bethany wanted to be everything to him, to do wonderful things for him. And she knew, in her secret self, that she could.

She stood before him with the jostle and push of people getting off the plane behind him and all around them, people meeting people, crushed all around by people. He pulled her out of the path and then stood tall above her, his clipped white hair catching the light, looking down at her. He was wearing a white turtleneck sweater and a denim jacket and looking, Bethany thought with pleasure, not at all like a famous historian was supposed to look. Looking, rather, the way she liked to remember him, strong and casual and ready to walk on the beach, ready for anything. Then his arms were around her and people jostled to no avail, it didn’t matter, and he smelled of tobacco and leather and the outdoors.

“Come on,” Justin said at last, leading them out, hugging Zebulon. “How does it feel to be an instant grandfather? And two granddaughters, can you believe two?” They stopped for dinner halfway up the coast at Michelloni’s, which hung over the cliffs above a foaming cove, and ate great plates of spaghetti and smiled at each other, and laughed. And Bethany told him all of the story of the Zagdesha and of finding Ninea, of discovering so slowly that this girl was no phantom, no spirit self. She told how, the day the letter had arrived, she had gone to the grass tower thinking, hoping, she could reach out to Ninea and perhaps tell her what the letter contained.

She had run across the dunes, her hair tangling in the wind and her mind spinning with Ninea’s name, with their two names, Bethany McAllister Ruiz, Ninea McAllister Ruiz, Bethany McAllister Ruiz. She had climbed, running—

On the peak she had stopped, cold with shock: a huge wooden cross had been driven into the center of her nest, a crude cross made of rough and crooked boards, and on it, nailed as Christ must have been nailed, was some poor dead animal, mutilated and bloody; it might have been a cat, she did not stay long enough to make it out; she smelled blood and death and turned away, groping in the tall grass, and was sick.

When at last she came back to where the cross stood, anger shook her. That horrible, twisted man! She looked once more, shuddering, then closed her eyes and took hold of the cross at the base, wrenched it free, then stood irresolute, not having the nerve to carry it down. Her eyes were turned away from it, then she saw Justin’s face swimming before her twisted with disbelief, heard Justin scream, and, terrified, she flung the cross away and was running headlong down the grass tower, the blood streaked across her hand.

And Justin, running across the dunes, caught her up and held her.

Finally, when Bethany was calmer, she drew back and saw how shaken Justin was. “What did you think? What did you see?” Bethany asked, for Justin’s mind was in turmoil.

“Blood. My God, I saw your face and something horrible! As if it were you.” Justin held her away and looked at her. Then she saw the blood on her hand. “What was it? What happened?”

“It was a dead animal. On a cross. Nailed on a cross and stuck on the grass tower as if—as if—”

“As a warning,” Justin said, turning angry. “Like that other thing, that sign. How could that old man? And why? That horrible drunken creature.”

“I can’t tell Reid, I mustn’t.”

Justin just looked at her, as if she wasn’t sure.

She wanted to tell Reid; she wanted him to comfort her. But when she saw him, saw the worry etched into his face, she knew she would say nothing. “He’s been drunk for almost two weeks,” Reid said. “The minute he got out of jail for tearing up the counter at Bear’s, he started in again. Sometimes I—” But he didn’t finish. She took his hand and tried to think of something comforting to say, but she couldn’t. When Reid was unhappy, she wanted to protect him, she couldn’t explain why exactly. Something—his very strength and maleness made him seem strangely vulnerable, perhaps as if he should not be hurt by things. And when he was, she remembered that he was tender and human like herself—it made her ache for him.

Grandfather poured the last of the wine into their glasses and ordered cannoli for dessert, and strong Italian coffee, and sat back regarding Bethany and Justin. “That old man, old Krupp, I’ll have a talk with him. We were friends once. You’re not to worry, Bethany; we won’t have him pulling any more stunts like that one. Some poor animal, tortured like that. Or maybe he found it dead. But he’s a sick man. You may have been right not to tell Reid, it’s hard to say.”

“If I don’t believe in God, why would I be so shocked? I thought it was horrible, to do that, like Christ—”

“Even if Christ were only a man as some think, it was still a horrible thing to do. I think, knowing you, Bethany, that you must have a deep consideration for those who do believe. How can any of us know for sure? We must find our belief about the meaning of life as honestly as we can, each of us. Mine is not like yours, perhaps, and I imagine Ninea’s is different still. The search for truth, the attempt to make sense of what we observe, should be a growing thing when you are young—or all your life, really. For one who has the perceptions you and Ninea have, I imagine that search would be even more urgent. You have evidence of things, spiritual things, that the rest of us do not.” He turned to the window and sat looking out at the night. “It’s almost incredible what you two have done.” He turned back and gave her a long, steady look. “Incredible, and frightening, the ability you and Ninea have. Can you use it for good? You have a lifetime ahead of you.”

A finger of cold fear touched Bethany. She didn’t know Ninea. She didn’t know anything, really. She didn’t know what they could do; she didn’t know, really, what they had done.

“I suppose in the beginning,” Grandfather mused, “the very force of Selma’s strong desire might have strengthened your powers, focused them in.”

“But the feeling of evil—”

“I don’t doubt for a minute that you tapped some dark negative force as well, the opposite to goodness. Oh, not a darkness of witches and spirits.” He smiled, and shook his head. “Bett persists in believing that your special perception is one with that kind of thing, with what she calls occult. In my view, ESP is simply a latent power that man doesn’t yet know much about. I think the ‘evidences’ of black magic and spiritualism are something else entirely, perhaps occurrences that develop from a combination of ESP and too-active imaginations. I like to think that in a thousand generations, your kind of talent will be quite common among people, but more than that, that it is part of something fundamental to what we call our spirits. I think of man’s body as a sort of dwelling place for a spirit that has come from somewhere, and will go on afterward to someplace else. And that in that world of other selves that comes after this one, more huge and more complicated than we can imagine, this kind of perception is a natural part of us, that we touch the essence of life more fully.

“But the evil is there, too,” he said slowly. “A minor kind of something creeping around among worlds like a black insidious swamp fog beneath the glory of a larger, sunswept universe.”

“The evil that we touched,” Bethany said reflectively, “I felt as if Ninea wanted it, as if she liked the darkness, as if she was reaching out to it.” She shuddered, and looked uncertainly at Grandfather.

“We can all touch it in some manner, if we will ourselves to,” Zebulon said. “But most of us shrink away from it in our desire for survival, for light and joy, for the very essence of life. If one longs for the darkness, perhaps it is because he is lost and dubious of his own real worth in the universe.” He put out his hand and touched her fingers lightly. “But if a person can touch evil, then he can touch goodness just as surely, he can grasp the strong essence of life and reality just as surely. Though it takes more courage to do so. You have no idea, none of us do, what you might accomplish, the two of you together.”

A surge of hope thrilled her. But still, the feeling of apprehension at what Ninea might want made her uneasy. “How could she— How could she want it? Like Selma does.”

Zebulon shook his head. “I don’t know. We must wait and see. With Selma, it’s something she has always yearned after, the occult, the bizarre. An almost passionate desire that the events of her childhood—” He broke off abruptly and made himself busy pouring coffee, then at last he looked across at her again. “Perhaps some great inadequacy in her own character, in her own understanding of the world, has made Selma need such things so badly. But as for Ninea, she is younger. And she has not had very much loving, I would guess. But she is eager, and strong-minded. With Selma it was a yearning after a talent she didn’t have, or had little of, a yearning after the dark things she associated with that talent. But with Ninea the ability is really there, she needs only to find herself in it, to find its true value.” He put his arm around Bethany. “Soon enough we’ll see her and have her with us. She’ll— We must trust that she’ll be all right, Bethany.” He grinned then, “We’ll have her with us if I can convince her grandmother.”

“Can you? She’s—she can’t care very much what Ninea wants.”

“She doesn’t seem to. Still, we’ll see,” Grandfather said quietly.

Perhaps it was the talk of what she and Ninea could do together that made Bethany suddenly need to come to grips with her future, to think about what she would do with her life; almost as if, if she knew, it could steady her after all the changes she had had.

But she didn’t know what work she wanted to do— except, she knew it must be something that would take all her strength, all her awareness, would satisfy her need to winnow at things until she had sorted them out—something, she hoped, that would use her special talent in a good way. Beyond that, she didn’t know; but it was comforting just to think about it, to worry at it and try to work out the possibilities and forget other things for a little while.

There was dinner at Aunt Bett’s before they left for Panama, a dinner that Bethany dreaded, visualizing Marylou and Selma and Jack, even Colin, talking about the things that, to Bethany, were still private, but which seemed somehow to have become family property. Well she couldn’t blame them, it was bizarre, as Grandfather said. Who wouldn’t want to ask questions? But the dinner was over soon enough, and Bethany, looking back, thought about how quiet Selma had been, sitting there almost as if she were alone in the room. The Church of the Zagdesha was gone, disbanded. The black drapes and the sign had been torn down, and the old mercantile stood empty and forlorn looking. It still sported self-consciously that bright red door as a sad reminder. Selma seemed drawn into herself and lost; Bethany could feel it all around Selma, a loneliness as if she had nothing left to cling to. Her church was a farce, a lie, a shoddy operation to bilk people; even Selma had had, at last, to recognize that. Dr. Claybelle was gone, and she had thought he loved her. She was, Bethany thought, like a soul drowning, and there was nothing there to grasp. Some people had a steadiness to hold onto, as if there were some deep reserve within them that held them steady and relatively unshaken. She felt sorry that Selma did not.

Walking home, Justin said, “This time tomorrow night you’ll be there.” The thought started a strange, uncomfortable feeling in Bethany’s stomach, and she did not answer. Instead she clutched wildly at herself in her mind—almost as if she thought her own self would slip away again when she reached Panama, and Ninea.

Justin took her hand. “You and Ninea may feel uncertain with each other for a while,” she said tentatively. “I don’t know quite how I would feel in such a situation.”

“Competitive,” Zebulon said, smiling a little. “Even without the things of the spirit, just on an everyday level, you are going to feel—oh, of course eager and curious, but edgy too, I would think. There may be a strange competitiveness between you that you won’t know how to handle. Simply to look at the physical image of yourself in another will be a very unsettling experience. You are both going to have to make allowances for it—I hope you can—to be extra loving and considerate.”

“Yes,” Bethany breathed. “Yes, I’ll try.” But what would Ninea be like, down inside where it counted?

She lay awake for a long time in the darkness of Justin’s room listening to the sea, and prickling with a terrible unease. Grandfather was right, she did feel competitive, though she hadn’t admitted it to herself before. Still, maybe knowing she did, she could cope with it better. Did Ninea feel the same? Grandfather’s phone call to Panama might have left Ninea in just as unsettled a state as she was in herself. Though Grandfather had talked to Ninea as well as Sra. Ruiz, Bethany had not wanted to talk. She could not say why; it was too strange, too removed from the relationship the two of them had—as if to talk on the phone would change everything, and they would have to start over. And what could they say that could not be said—directly? Though after that phone call, there had been no contact between them. As if Ninea, too, needed to prepare herself for a meeting that—that what? Well she wouldn’t think about it tonight, not any more. She curled down into a smooth dark world of her own. How had Grandfather known they would feel competitive? Maybe from raising two daughters, she thought, grinning. Maybe they had been competitive, too. And maybe because he was able to put himself in the place of another. She sighed, contented.

When she woke to darkness at four, she did not remember her uneasiness but was just terribly excited, hurrying to shower and dress, remembering to put her toothbrush in her packed bag, sitting sleepily in the car between Justin and Grandfather; then waiting at the airport with butterflies in her stomach, and finally kissing Justin good-by, then, twenty minutes out of San Francisco, tucking into a huge breakfast, the sun hitting her in the face as she attacked her sausage and waffles.

It was an all day flight. Bethany expected she would see the continent slipping away below her—Los Angeles, San Diego, Mexico—but that was not the case. They were far too high and the clouds too heavy below them; Mexico slipped past underneath with no more than a glimpse, and it was not until they came down over Guatemala, preparing for a landing, that she saw the lush green of the jungle they had been flying over for hours. “As wild and unbroken by cities and highways, or nearly so, as it was when the Spanish first saw it,” Grandfather said. “Only they never saw it like this, from the sky. They could only see the little bit they touched with their ships, and set foot on. Still, they conquered and raped it well enough, for all that.”

“For gold,” Bethany said, thinking of the eagle. “There must have been tons of gold, all in little idols and pendants and sacrificial cups and things down in the jungles.” She remembered the golden garden, and they talked about that.

“It was such an easy metal to work,” Grandfather said. “It took no sophisticated tools, and the people loved its color, like the sun. They thought that it was kin to the sun, and they made sun idols, great plaques like the sun to catch its rays.

“Your golden eagle is worth many thousands of dollars. I don’t know what effect the added inscriptions would have on its value, but I shouldn’t think too much. Teodoro must have been a very flamboyant young man, to think of making such a gift to his two babies. Though perhaps a very practical one, after all. I was a hard-headed fellow, Bethany, to hurt Kathleen—to hurt your mother as I did. I have regretted my handling of the situation all of my life since.”

“But they must have been happy, Grandfather, that short time.”

“Yes, but Kathleen would have been happier still if she had had my blessing and not had to marry secretly, and keep that part of her life hidden. And if she had come home to have her babies, perhaps—” He shook his head, as if to drive the thought away. “I have wondered what Marjory thought, putting the eagle in the box like that. Could she have meant to give it to you later on, and to tell you the whole story? And to tell me? It’s almost as if she left the whole matter to chance. That would be like Marjory: if you discovered it, she would tell you, and if you didn’t, she would wait until you were grown, perhaps. I must think that she didn’t tell me at once because she felt I was still too—that Kathleen’s death was still too mixed up with her defiance of me and with my disapproval of Teodoro, so that perhaps I wouldn’t want you. But not want my own grandchild?

“And then I suppose later she couldn’t bear to give you up. And even she didn’t know the whole story, knew nothing of Ninea.”

“And the eagle was there all the time. Why didn’t I find the secret compartment for myself, by accident? How could I not have? Ninea did.”

“I suppose because you just never pushed the right place. But what if you had? Would you ever have thought to ferret out your name among that tangle of lines if you hadn’t had some reason to be looking with more curious eyes? Still, you most likely would have found out what the eagle was and where it came from, and that would certainly have led, at some time, to a discussion of Kathleen visiting Panama.” Their eyes met. Would the truth have come out anyway, without Selma’s church to start it off?

“But it was Ninea,” Bethany said. “Even without the seances, she knew; she said she dreamed of me. She could—she is very strong, Grandfather.”

“There are different kinds of strength, though.” “And she knew about the eagle, she knew it had some special meaning or her grandmother—our grandmother—wouldn’t have hidden it otherwise.” “Are you nervous at meeting her, Bethany?” “Yes. Oh yes, Grandfather, I’m like Jello.” The landing at Guatemala had been brief, and now the sky cleared so they could see the great jungles of Honduras and Nicaragua lying below them, but Costa Rica was hidden under a heavy gray smear of smoke and ash from its sputtering volcano. They had a leisurely dinner, and were just finishing dessert when the plane began to drop into Panama. The tropical heat, even at seven at night, hit Bethany like a great weight when she walked off the plane. Cowed under the heat, she waited patiently in the customs line with Grandfather, saw her suitcase opened and intimately inspected, then turned from the customs gate—

She had thought that first meeting might be as shocking and terrifying as Ninea’s dark appearances in the Church of the Zagdesha. Might be like walking toward a full length mirror to suddenly find that the reflection approaching you had come alive and stepped out of the glass. She stood facing Ninea now and she didn’t know what she thought: like a mirror, yes. As if you could touch yourself. They were both frightened. And fascinated. They stood staring while Senora Ruiz made little cordial noises to Grandfather and welcomed Bethany. Grandfather took Senora Ruiz’s arm and engaged her—that was the only word Bethany could think of—freeing the two of them.

They stood staring, not knowing whether to bristle or throw their arms around each other. To see yourself in someone else—it was a strange and unsettling experience. Bethany walked around Ninea once, looking at her from the back where you can never see yourself, saw herself from the back, her legs, her profile; and Ninea walked around Bethany once. They could have been two dogs circling to fight. And then they stood staring again, and it was as if something in your own self, the part you don’t always like had suddenly come alive and stood facing you. There seemed nothing they could do but stand locked in an attitude almost like defiance. And then a big swarthy boy ran past, jostling Ninea roughly, and she turned and kicked at his shin so he tripped, furious, then hobbled on; Ninea whirled back to face Bethany, her eyes sparkling with deviltry, and all of a sudden they were laughing, shouting, swinging each other around in the airport with people staring at them. And it was all right. It was all right.

They took hands finally and followed Grandfather and Senora Ruiz through the huge echoing terminal, and Bethany recognized its ugly proportions because Ninea knew them; Bethany knew the places they passed in the car in more detail through Ninea’s thoughts than she could ever see in the darkness, knew what the shops were like inside, what they sold, knew how they smelled—incense and cedar and perfume—knew where narrow alleys crept behind the buildings. But when they stood at last in the Ruiz house, the tall living room seemed to Bethany very strange and quiet, for before when she had stood here it had been overflowing with people and with talk.

Senora Ruiz, so self possessed and correctly cordial —not quite cool, but then not terribly warm either, seemed to feel no shock or discomfort at Bethany’s presence, this duplicate of Ninea so suddenly thrust upon her. Yet she should feel it, Bethany thought. She should be uncomfortable with me; she should be making little unnecessary comments about how alike we are. But then, how could she? It was she who caused us not to know each other; it would be stupid for her to gush. Still, it’s going to be a very strange ten days, Bethany decided. And if there’s any trouble, if Ninea and I can’t get along, then Grandfather might not be able to persuade Senora Ruiz to let us take Ninea home.

Ninea, catching Bethany’s thought, turned abruptly, stared at her unhappily for a minute, then picked up Grandfather’s bag and started for the stairs.

Alarmed, Bethany grabbed her own bag and went after her, trying to know what Ninea was thinking; but Ninea’s mind was closed.

They were in Ninea’s room at last; the red spread was folded down and the sheets turned back on two sides so that Bethany knew she was to sleep here. What had bothered Ninea? “Don’t you want to go home with us, at least for a little while?” And the hurt in Bethany’s voice was enough to turn Ninea away from the mirror and make her reach out to Bethany.

“I don’t know if she’ll let me, I don’t know—” and there was more to it than that muffled in her mind.

“You don’t know if you want to.” Bethany said slowly. She held Ninea away and looked at her. “You don’t— You don’t know how you feel really. Grandfather said it would be like this. But won’t she let you if you want to? Grandfather should have just as much say about it.”

“He should have more say. It wasn’t his fault we were separated.”

It wasn’t his fault, they thought together, then grinned at each other.

Chapter 12

They fled at last, having unpacked Bethany’s few things, leaving their elders, flew out into the hot twilight street, running; Ninea led her down the crowded streets where people were gathered laughing, flirting, playing little radios, happy after the day’s work. They loitered in the streets until the night began to come down in earnest, then home, and for several mornings they were out early, almost as if, if they kept exploring, they would not have to come to grips with the vagrant unease that lay between them. Perhaps each one did not feel quite whole so close to the other, and each feared that silent, introspective mood that would magnify this.

They walked among the ramshackle houses, the boys staring in disbelief at their twinness, and through the open market stalls past bloody, fly-covered carcasses hanging. They shopped for clothes, and one day they sat in the sun in the plaza Bethany remembered, beside the fountain, where life seemed to have frozen into one everlasting instant; old men slept leaning against the raised side of the fountain, old women drowsed with baby carriages, dogs lay unmoving. Then a group of children burst from a side street, exploded into the plaza shouting, and a flock of black, ugly birds as large as eagles rose noisily from the rooftops. “Vultures,” Ninea said. “Come on.” She swept Bethany away through the alley beside Corrinne’s little room, not stopping, and out the other end onto a stone plaza overlooking a harbor where dozens of small boats were unloading papaya and mangoes and plantain, golden piles of plantain like huge bananas. The bay or the boats or perhaps the city around them smelled strong and, to Bethany, unpleasant, as if something was fermenting. There were dozens of vultures on the rusting tin rooftops, and some men in a boat were cooking their meal over a charcoal brazier. Laundry hung above the boat cabins, dangling between crates of chickens, old chairs, and small naked children. Small naked children were everywhere, children and mangy-looking dogs, and the older boys that frightened Bethany, but, “Keep your mouth shut, don’t let them hear you talk and they won’t pay any attention to you,” Ninea said, softly in English, adding something louder in Spanish for the benefit of the boys; and Bethany realized that while Ninea thought in English most of the time, she could just as well think in Spanish. “You can teach me! All you have to do is think the words and a meaning, and—”

They tried it, laughing. Maranon, Ninea thought.

“Maranon!” And the picture of the crowded slum was clear.

Cabeza, and Ninea thought of her head.

“Cabeza!” Then, “Pajaro!” Bethany cried, seeing the great birds, and little birds, fluttering. “Somos hermanas.” We are sisters. She took the accents and definitions so quickly from Ninea that they became breathless with it.

They went arm in arm through the ruins of a building that was being torn down, broken bricks and pieces of plumbing and snakelike bits of wire lying in muddy puddles jeweled with fallen leaves and blossoms from the red flowering trees that grew along the sidewalk. The few ragged, partially standing walls had sprouted with the seedlings of trees, and with weeds. Then they left the rubble for a quiet street of private houses with deep inner patios, and entered the little museum that stood among them, a museum sheltered by the largest trees of all. The small verandahed building stood deep in shade; its inner patios were cool and pleasant with potted flowers and strange stone statues of old gods that looked down at them enigmatically, square, deep-eyed figures. And in the flashing glass cases their own two reflections stared at them like some prophesy of twins long trapped in the cases. “I used to see two,” Ninea said. “I used to stand here like this and see two of us looking back.” The thought brought shivers to Bethany’s spine.

In the cases were clay animals in the shapes of bowls and pitchers, an anteater with a pouring spout for its mouth, frog bowls with frogs for handles. And in the center of the room stood the case of golden pendants. There were eagles similar to theirs, but not like them, and crocodiles and small stocky men all of gold. Around them an aura of magic seemed to cling, so that Bethany felt perhaps the people who had made them still hovered close by. Somewhere, in some other dimension, could these people still live and move here among their idols and amulets?

Somewhere, Ninea thought. Maybe. Or maybe they will rise if you say the right words, maybe they’ll come back like zombies do when voodoo brings the dead to life.

Bethany stared at her.

“The voodoo sorcerers make the dead rise, they bring them from the grave and make them live again.”

“You can’t believe that. You can’t believe in that kind of thing!”

“You can’t help but believe when you hear the stories, the voodoo stories.”

“They’re only stories!”

“No they’re not. There are painted gourds and bells and iron symbols they use in the rituals at night, and the Serpent—”

Bethany ripped away from her, out the door and into the glaring hot street; the sun hit her in the face and she was nearly blinded by it.

They kill chickens for sacrifice and they bring the dead from the grave! Ninea’s thoughts were fierce. Bethany felt sick.

Then she turned suddenly, to stare back toward the museum. Why should she run from Ninea? Why should she let Ninea frighten her! It was not because Ninea talked about such things, it was that she lusted after them, it was the feel of lust that sickened Bethany, a repulsion that made her shiver. She thought stubbornly of Ninea, and when she could feel her there, close, she thought deliberately of goodness, of strength and brightness, pushing down the ugliness of Ninea’s thoughts. She thought of love between people, of kindness, and she made her thoughts as fierce as Ninea’s own. She imagined a towering brightness forcing the darkness back: and slowly she began to drive back Ninea’s determination. She visualized a great golden light dwarfing and melting black-robed figures that genuflected before witch fires. She had no idea where she got the images, but she could feel her own strength building in an entirely new way. The light was like music now, flowing music moving all around them; she held it with all her strength, held Ninea, and she was touching something, drawing something to them. She tried to imagine the brilliance touching those dark moments in the seances, washing clean the darkness there, and for a moment she felt Ninea’s rage. Then at last she felt Ninea’s wonder—at her, at herself, Bethany. And wonder at the bright power she had drawn to them.

They stood on the street in the blinding sunlight staring at each other. And then they were running, laughing, released, through the city, clutching the brightness to them, heady with it, delirious; even the city seemed brighter. The clouded sky was dark and rich, and where the sun slanted through the clouds the colors were brilliant as wet paint; the whole city shone around them. At last their delirium calmed, and they poked into shops, ate ice cream, drank orange pop, watched sweating men raise scaffolding for a building; and the joy in them was a quiet, sustaining wholeness.

But still, in spite of the sudden brightness, Bethany could feel the darkness tucked down into some recess of Ninea’s mind as if she still would will it to her, as if she still would choose it in her terrible need.

They climbed aboard a rattling chiva bus painted with bright pictures of flowers and fighting roosters; they crowded in among hot sweaty people, some of them long unwashed, Bethany thought; then they walked on the old seawall and sat atop it while Ninea pictured for Bethany the dungeons that lay below them, barred cages in the wall that looked out upon the rising tides of the bay, where sharks swam, dungeons that for two centuries had held the convicted prisoners of the city. “Once all this part of the city was a walled fort,” Ninea said, “to protect it from pirates.” And they looked at each other for the hundredth time, and each thought she was seeing herself as no one can ever see herself; and each felt wonder.

“When you cut your hair,” Bethany asked, “did you plan it first?”

“I thought of it when I woke up. I wanted you to do it too.”

“But—” and the idea shocked Bethany. “Did you know we were twins when—after you dreamed of me?”

“No. I knew you looked like me. I didn’t understand it, though,” Ninea said half-defiantly. “Not at first. But I thought if I cut my hair, and could make you cut yours— I don’t know, but after that I thought you might be. I thought if we were twins it would explain the secrecy. I’ve always known there was something I wasn’t told, the way Grandmother was so careful about what she said, the way she was evasive about my—our—mother, and the way she would look at Corrinne sometimes and Corrinne would stop talking. When I thought about it, it seemed— Well, it was the most logical thing to think, to explain what—who you were.” Ninea gave her a long, steady look. “I wasn’t like you, you know. I never did get thoughts much from anyone, not like the things you’ve told me. If I had, I would have known what it was Grandmother was hiding. I got feelings, fears, I used to feel her terrible resentment sometimes for no reason; I couldn’t understand what I was feeling when I was little. I think maybe it was because our father married an American, then was shot the way he was. I don’t know for sure, but she says things sometimes.

“After I started to dream of you, and when I saw you in the museum glass, something started to change in me. Maybe it was there all the time. I began to see pictures, things began to come to me, faces I didn’t know, then the dark room and the candles. And then I heard voices for the first time, I heard a voice like my own voice saying the incantations— I thought I was going crazy.” She stared at Bethany, rapt. “I just— I wanted to be there. I tried, I just—I just made myself be,” she said with sudden passion. Bethany stared back at her, loving her for perhaps the first time. Caring. In a way, the Zagdesha story was true. At least for them; they had found each other. Would they have, without it? She thought they would. After all, Ninea had dreamed of her.

“Ninea? Do you ever think—did you ever think what we could do? I mean with our lives, the way we are? Something special.” She felt very close to her sister suddenly, as if, after all—

But Ninea had turned to stare at her with a really defiant look. “I don’t know. Why should we?”

“I—well because,” Bethany began lamely. “Because—” she tried to make Ninea see without words, but she could touch nothing but a wall in her mind. “Because if we can do some good—” She stared at Ninea, and felt Ninea’s sullen response, almost as if she felt Bethany were trying to spoil something for her. Bethany stiffened, and they stood locked in a defiant exchange; then all at once Ninea turned on her heel and began to walk fast down the top of the stone wall, high above the water. Bethany stared after her, perplexed, and she did not follow her; she turned away instead, hot and irritable suddenly. Tired suddenly. And there was a lingering sense of darkness, of the voodoo —as if Ninea would prefer to delve with her into some dark cult. Bethany longed suddenly, more than anything, to be home, on her own shore, and safe. She longed to be with Reid.

She sat on the wall and stared out at the bay and tried to think about Ninea—it was her responsibility, she felt. But what was? Not Ninea herself, surely. Or was she? Well at least it was her responsibility not to let Ninea lead her. Her sense of self, of keeping control of her own powers and her own way of life seemed more important than before. But there was more, and that was harder to think about. She could not just humor Ninea as she did Colin. Ninea’s power, her potential—at least when it was linked with Bethany’s own—was too great for that. Oh! She clenched her fists and scowled down at the water. She didn’t know what was right—not at this moment, in this place. Was it right to fight Ninea if she used her powers for—well, for voodoo or something? Or was it right only to keep herself in the path she wanted to tread, and let Ninea go her own way?

She sat there for a long time arguing with herself. And when she thought Ninea was not coming back, she grew angry. But at last Ninea returned, sheepish, and they started home in silence, Ninea kicking at a can on the sidewalk. And Bethany’s joy at the brightness they had felt together so short a time ago was quite gone.

Well they would be home soon, really home, on the dunes, and maybe things would be better there. It was only last night they heard the decision. “Ninea may go for the American school year,” Senora Ruiz had said in a cool tone. “Ninea’s school year is different, of course, even though it is an English-speaking school. A very special school,” she said pointedly, as if Ninea wouldn’t find anything to compare in the States. “You will miss your vacation entirely, Ninea—but then that can’t matter, can it, when you want so much to go.” She had said this with such sarcasm that a surge of anger had swept Bethany.

She glanced at Ninea now, feeling a little less cross with her. After all, what would she be like if she hadn’t gotten any more love than Ninea had? Ninea looked up sideways under her lashes, and she was not sullen any more; Bethany felt her own lightness return and grinned back at her. “You’re going home with us!” she said, feeling the excitement of it now, looking forward to it. “I wonder how Grandfather ever managed it.”

“He charmed it out of her; haven’t you been watching him? What do you think all this going out in the evening and opening doors for her and being so flattering has been about?”

“You don’t think— They aren’t getting romantic?”

“No! Oh, no!” Ninea doubled over with glee, breaking the tension completely. “Oh, they couldn’t, Grandmother’s too—too proper. That would be—” she was almost hysterical with laughter. “That would be incest!”

When they had recovered from this witicism, they felt better, definitely better, and climbed the tree to get into their bedroom, then sneaked down the back stairs to the kitchen and talked Corrinne out of hot empanadas and milk, which they took to Ninea’s room. “We don’t eat in our room,” Ninea mimicked Senora Ruiz. And they were altogether happy and uncomplicated and at ease in the world.

“These are the meat pies we had at the party,” Bethany said, curling down and getting crumbs on her chin. They stared at each other, suddenly remembering, with goosepimples, that wild flight into unfathomable space. Fear touched them again then, and each drew back imperceptively into her own being, into her own autonomy—fear at being less than whole. And stubbornness touched them too, each wanting to be more master of herself. And yet, because of this, they seemed easier with each other suddenly. Maybe you had to be your own master before you could be easy with another. And Bethany thought, with new awareness, what it was to not be master of yourself: When something other than your own will ruled your mind, you fell away into nothing. They shuddered equally, and drew farther from each other still; they needed more space; but it was an agreeable drawing away, and they regarded each other with increased friendliness, and with the bright joy rising again, unbidden.

After a while, “You don’t want to leave Corrinne,” Bethany said. “She—she’s more like your mother than Senora Ruiz.”

“Corrinne won’t come with us,” Nina said sadly. “How could she not, after Grandfather asked her like that.” But Corrinne would not. And it was true. Corrinne who stood silently, her hands in dishwater or flour, listening to the two of them spit at each other and make up, Corrinne who, when she scolded, made it direct and not hateful and soon over, Corrinne who hugged Bethany just as if she were her own, it would be Corrinne who, when they left, Ninea would grieve for. Whom Bethany would grieve for, too.

“But why won’t she?” Bethany reached for two more empanadas. “Why not?”

“All she says is that I’m old enough to be on my own and this is her country and she’ll never set foot outside it. Stubborn,” Ninea said. “She’ll never change her mind.” And Corrinne had said, “You two are like snakes at each other sometimes. You were made two to give, not to take.”

Then Justin’s letter came:

Mr. Hickby has started on the new wing; Reid is working full time with him at it and taking his meals with me. I thought at first you two would share a room, but I have changed that. It seems to me you might each prefer your own place. After all, twins or not, you are separate people who have grown up independent of one another. You can’t be expected to do and think everything alike. Just being twins may make you touchy with each other, and with your special talents, perhaps touchier still. It seems to me it may be very hard to get used to having a shadow of yourself around. At any rate, two rooms it is, and there will be a sitting room for all to share.

And she added at the last, Reid misses you, Bethany.

When Ninea had read the letter, she stood silent and staring at Bethany. She wanted to say, They’re right you know, the words stood clear in the air between them. She said nothing, though there were tears in her eyes. At last she said, to change the subject, “Grandfather is holding something back, something about us.”

“Yes. Can you tell what?”

Ninea shook her head. “I get a thought sometimes, of you standing in the wind on the grass tower, only your hair is long again and you’re older, almost a woman,” she said, puzzled. “Or is it me?” And they had heard Grandfather pause in conversation several times as if his thoughts were suddenly elsewhere. “Do you see it in his mind? He—”

“No,” Bethany said jealously, “I don’t get as much from him as you do.”

Even Corrinne said, “Your Grandfather has a sadness, you can see it in his eyes.” She looked at them sternly. “You two must try to bring joy to his life. You must not be a trial to him.” Corrinne made them a very special dinner on their last night in Panama, and Bethany felt a terrible lump in her middle at leaving the old lady. She kissed her good-by the next morning just as tearfully as Ninea did. The parting with Senora Ruiz was not nearly so painful.

They left the house before sunup to board their flight for San Francisco, and as the plane took off, the sky was streaked with a deep pink. They were wearing their new red plaid skirts and red sweaters so they were stared at for their twinness more than ever. The stewardess grinned at them, asked Grandfather how he told them apart, and gave them special breakfasts from the first class section. If there were tensions between them, if there were questions, these things were still momentarily. Even going through customs in Los Angeles, when they had to get off the plane and open their luggage then get back on, they were stared at and remarked over, and when at last they came down the ramp in San Francisco, and Justin saw them, Bethany could not contain her glee. You could see it in Justin’s face, as if, even knowing they would be alike, she had not been able to imagine they would be so alike as this. And when Reid, working on the new wing— golden lumber against the dark weathered gray of the old house—heard the car and came to open the doors for them, Bethany thought he would not know her. “Are you Reid?” she asked in her best imitation of Ninea’s accent. She put out her hand. “I am Ninea.”

He looked deeply at her, then turned to look at the real Ninea, then turned once again to Bethany and took her hand firmly. “How do you do?” he said very formally. “May I kiss you hello? Or should I only kiss Bethany?” And he let go her hand and put out his arms to Ninea so that Bethany, outdone, shrieked, “No!” Then she saw the laughter behind his eyes, and flushed.

The new rooms, already framed and roofed, made three sides around a little deck. The sitting room was at the back, on the inland side, and Bethany’s and Ninea’s rooms flanked the deck and thrust their bay windows toward the sea. The sitting room opened to the kitchen, and had its own fireplace and a skylight. The girls stood breathing the scent of new wood and staring upward at the rafters and the filtered light, and outward at the sea, and Bethany could feel the serenity in Ninea then, as if she had come home.

Chapter 13

They were standing in front of the empty mercantile, their red sweaters reflecting in the dusty windows, windows that seemed, to Bethany, still to hold a smeared image of candlelight in their depths. Show me the ritual, Ninea thought eagerly. Make the drapes pull back, make her say the words—

No. I don’t want to. She turned to face Ninea and said aloud, “I really don’t.” But in spite of herself the words seemed to hang on the air between them—

“Yes!” Ninea whispered, “—as the sea rises and the winds tear at the heavens. And then Selma made the signs over the candles, and you—”

“Oh, don’t,” Bethany pleaded. “Please don’t.”

Ninea drew back and dropped her head, looking up at Bethany through her lashes for an instant, then turned away. “Yes. All right.” But her thoughts went heavy; she wanted the darkness to come around them. Bethany stared.

“Ninea, don’t! You can’t want—” She put her hand on Ninea’s arm, and felt, in spite of her anger, a terrible tenderness for her sister. As if Ninea truly couldn’t help it, as if the very anger and hurt that had colored her childhood had made her somehow so susceptible to the darkness. But Ninea didn’t want sympathy. She spun away then turned to face Bethany with her dark eyes huge with quick fury, searching Bethany’s face belligerently. Changeable as quicksilver, she was. “You can’t!” Bethany said, almost screaming, “You can’t feel like that, want that!” She was furious.

“We could—” Ninea breathed, a devilish look on her face, “Together we could do anything.”

Bethany stared back at her stubbornly, and they stood glowering at each other. Then quite suddenly Ninea looked down and all her fierceness was gone, like the stuffing out of a doll. She moved to touch Bethany’s hand. “I’m sorry, I— Sometimes, I don’t know, it’s as if I do things to make people hate me, to make you angry. I’m sorry, Bethany.” Bethany put her arm around her, and they stood quietly.

This morning, yesterday, it had been so lovely, Ninea had been so eager with the newness of the village and the dunes; Bethany had seen her own world come alive all fresh through Ninea’s eyes, the dunes, the grass tower beckoning, alive with silver spider webs and dew-laden blades and with the scurryings of small animals. She had seen freshly, as Ninea saw, the great rolling breakers leaping and pounding along the endless shore, had seen the village for the first time, its gutters blown with sand and eucalyptus leaves, a village coming alive suddenly across the shadowed impressions in Ninea’s mind. She had watched Ninea run across the deserted early morning street turning cartwheels in the sand, and they had stood together on this street and watched, surprised, as the old man came out from the alley, hitched up his trousers, and spat, his baseball cap hanging crooked across his stringy hair. They had watched apprehensively his approach, felt his sudden fear of them. Then seen, in his spinning hazy thoughts a scene which lay, now, against some cool gate of Bethany’s mind.

A vision of the grass tower had come to them sharply from this old man, a vision with the wind blowing hard, lifting and tearing the grasses in great tides. And in the wind, running along the shore like a red bird blown before the gusts, came a woman: a young woman, her red hair ripping and tangling like a great cloak, a woman—the shock of her made them tremble: it was as if each were seeing herself as she would grow to be; she had climbed through the whipping grasses and stood on the peak looking out at the storming sea.

Through the eyes of the man watching from below, they knew wonder and desire. Then a terrible fear. And then hate.

“What made him?” Ninea said now, turning, “What made him—?”

“Hate her? I don’t know. But who— Who is she?

They stared at each other trying to see past what they knew into what lay hidden still in darkness, trying to see past this time to a time when, perhaps, it would be one of them standing, beautiful and free—and hated.

“It wasn’t the future, though,” Bethany said. “It was — Didn’t you feel the strength in him, like a young man? It was a time past.”

“Yes.”

The morning was beginning in earnest; shop doors were being unlocked along the street and the shopkeepers, in their aprons, were coming out to sweep and sweep the sand, to push the dunes back toward the shore. And, seeing the two of them so alike, though the word had already gone the length of the village, some stopped what they were doing and stared. “I have to take you around and introduce you,” Bethany said reluctantly.

“Well—well not now,” Ninea said too quickly, for there were boys in the street: Jack—and Colin. And Beverly and Ciel.

“Missing it?” Jack said, coming up and glancing into the empty mercantile, “Wanting another seance?” Then reflectively, “What could you do, the two of you, I wonder.” He approached Ninea with his eyes, with his charm, already seeing her differences, ignoring Bethany. “What could you do if you tried?” he said softly. Ninea glowed.

Ciel and Beverly moved irritably, looked daggers, made as if to move on, taking Colin with them. Jack ignored them. Bethany watched, curious, half-amused. Amazed, suddenly, to see Ninea outshine, outstrip, the other two. Partly it was her attitude, Bethany thought, the way she looked at Jack. But partly it was her. Then do I look like that? Bethany thought with wonder, not attending to what Jack said until she felt Ninea’s excitement soar.

“You could, you know,” Jack said. “She wants you to.”

“Want’s what?” Bethany breathed suspiciously.

“Wants,” he put his arm around Ninea and looked down at her cozily. “Wants— The lease is for a year. Mother is stuck with it. Wants—” and he didn’t have to finish, it was very plain: Ninea and Bethany, some kind of sign across the front of the shop, newspaper articles. Colin looked from Jack to Bethany expectantly, waiting for the explosion, scratched his ear and waited to see what Bethany would do.

“Telepaths!” Bethany spat out, “Trick performers— like a sideshow!” She felt alarm shake her at the thought of another public exposure, even though she knew quite well that Grandfather and Justin would never allow such a thing. She could feel Ninea’s interest in the idea, feel her eagerness for Jack’s approval. “No!” she said, appalled at her, “And get away from him, Ninea,” she added stupidly. “He’s your cousin.”

On the way home Ninea said, “We’re only second cousins. He asked me to go out. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

“I’ll ask Grandfather.”

“Ask him. I have to go to work.” She strode on ahead, furious. Why did Ninea make her so angry?

“Can’t I come?”

“No! You’re mean to horses. Leave me alone.” She walked fast through the deep sand, then stumbled. She felt Ninea trying to make her wait, trying to make her turn to face her. She felt Ninea’s thought with a clarity and strength that made her catch her breath, felt not only the thoughts but the temperament beneath, the very core of Ninea’s self: competitive and pushing as a young puppy. Pushing. Angry. And very needing—a lonely animal, demanding response. A young hurt animal. Bethany went back and put her arm around her.

In the evening, in the cage of raw, new wood that was Bethany’s room, the studs and rafters stained pink from the setting sun, Bethany stood quietly looking out at the sea. She felt almost as if this room should stay as it was, roofed over but open, like a resin-scented bower with the sea wind blowing through it and the grasses blowing into it. Her own space in the world, framed but not closed away, still a part of the sea and the dunes.

“You’d have flies and seagull droppings,” Reid said.

“I wouldn’t care,” she said, laughing up at him.

“But in the winter you might.” And when they went into Ninea’s room, which already had solid walls, the bay window, with its three sides of glass, was snug and bright, the room dim and cozy behind it.

“Did Ninea do stable work with you?” Reid said incredulously. “Or just mess around and get in the way?”

“Oh, she worked. She—she’s changeable.” She smiled to herself, thinking of Ninea watching Juniper bucking and playing in the corral, feeling Ninea’s sudden rise of wildness and a kind of desperate longing, then her self-consciousness as Bethany grinned at her.

She didn’t dare ask Reid about his black eye and bruised cheek, and the long red scrape on his arm. He looked tired, his eyes looked as if he’d had no sleep. “Had a run-in with Grandfather,” he said shortly, seeing her looking. They watched the sun pause above the horizon so its edge and the line of the sea seemed to pull apart and draw together in an optical illusion.

“Why is he like that?” Bethany raged. “Did he hit your mother too?”

“No, he never would. I’d—I’d want to kill him. He doesn’t want me to come here any more, or take you out. He told me to stop working on the house. He says, now that there are two of you, it’s a sure sign there’s something evil about this family.”

“You’re not going to stop?”

“No, what do you think I am?”

“But if you keep on working, won’t he do it again?”

“I’ll sleep at the stables. I have before.”

“But why— Why does he think my family is evil? What can he—” Then she remembered Mr. Krupp’s vision of the woman on the grass tower, her red hair like a cape. She told Reid how they had seen her while his grandfather stood there in the street staring drunkenly at them, hating them, hating the woman.

Reid laid his hand against Bethany’s hair for an instant almost as if he were remembering something. “I don’t know what’s on his mind, Bethany,” he said gruffly, and took up the broom with which he had been sweeping up wood chips and sawdust. He swept a few strokes idly, preoccupied, then put the broom down abruptly and went to sit on the windowsill, staring across at her. “Ma says, when she was a child, they used to pretend that a witch lived on the grass tower. They used to dance around its base chanting ‘Wind witch, wind witch, witch of the grasses.’ They thought she could change the future, could make evil things happen to them. A witch with long red hair.”

A chill touched Bethany. “Could he have imagined a witch so—so real as we saw? Maybe he— Maybe it was a mixture of things, maybe someone’s face, someone he knew? Was it our red hair, then, that made him afraid of us?”

“I think it could be. I think he really believes there was a witch.”

When she told Grandfather about Mr. Krupp’s vision, he stood staring out at the fog silently for so long that she wondered if he had heard her. He turned at last, paused to pull the curtains against the fog, then changed his mind, pushing them back. The foghorn cried, beautifully wild. He seemed so preoccupied that Justin, beside the blazing fire feeding it with small sticks, watched him curiously.

Reid was quiet, watching Zebulon too; and at last, when Zebulon did not speak, Reid said tentatively, “Grandfather has this idea the hill is evil. He never let me go on that part of the dunes when I was small, and sometimes he called it a witching hill. Then Ma would give him a tongue-lashing and say he was too old to believe in superstitions, and not to put them into my head.”

Justin said softly, “You never let us go there, either, Father.”

“I didn’t want you to grow up believing in witchcraft,” Zebulon said shortly. “I didn’t want you playing witch games with the village children.”

“But some people believe in witchcraft,” Ninea said. “In Panama they make things really happen with voodoo.” She glanced defiantly at Bethany. “They can even kill people with it.” And bring them back to life, she was thinking, but she didn’t say that. Bethany couldn’t be sure whether she was being nasty, now, or putting her on just to see what she would do.

Zebulon looked across at Ninea sternly. “If witchcraft has appeared to work sometimes, Ninea, that could very well be coincidence. And don’t forget, people can die from fear alone if they believe in something hard enough.” It was the only time Bethany could remember seeing him angry—not in a temper, but quietly strongly resistive to Ninea’s ideas. She could feel the strength within him, a steady sureness of focus. “But even beyond death through fear,” he continued, “if some voodoo spells did work, there could possibly be another explanation altogether, and not a magic one.”

“What else could there be?” Ninea said incredulously.

“Did you ever wonder about this power you three have? Did you ever wonder where it came from, ever think that perhaps it was part of something larger that we cannot really grasp?”

“I—I don’t know,” Ninea said reluctantly. “Yes, maybe. Do you mean that when it seems as if something is witchcraft, it’s really part of that, of the same thing we can do?”

“Yes, I think that it could be. Not magic at all, but part of a spiritual power that man has not yet learned to understand. A power that he touches quite by accident and really can’t control.”

Reid, silent and sprawled on the floor with a pillow under his head, sat up slowly and looked at Zebulon. “But if that’s so,” he said, “Then—well, witchcraft and voodoo are evil, but if they’re part of some spiritual thing—are you saying that our spirit selves can be evil?”

“I don’t think they are evil, but I think they can be turned to evil. I think that our free will permits us to turn to evil if we wish to.”

“That would be a fallen soul,” Ninea said quietly.

“Yes, I suppose that in the terms of formal religion, it would be.” He studied Ninea. Bethany could feel her resistance, her unwillingness to accept that the touching of darkness was a matter of choice, that you could refuse its pull if you would.

“But why—” Bethany began. “Why—”

“Don’t you see?” Reid said. “It’s chance! If the power couldn’t be turned to evil, then everything would be good all the time, and there wouldn’t be— Well, you wouldn’t have to make a choice, about anything.”

“Yes,” Zebulon said, “man would have no challenge. If he could not choose, then he would have no chance to grow, to become more than what he started with. I think there can be no life of any sort without this element of challenge. Man must know the chance to fail, to fall, the very essence of a vigorous life is the ever-present knowledge that we can fail. And of course, too, without evil we would not recognize goodness. But if we can touch the darkness, then we can tap the power that is positive just as surely, the very force behind the creation of life itself. I’m convinced of it.”

“It would be like a test, then,” Reid said. “Like evolution. Whether you could—could rise to the challenge, I guess.”

“Yes,” Zebulon said slowly. “A survival of the fittest, but in the terms of souls rather than just animal fitness.” He smiled and lifted his coffee cup. “But whatever the truth of our existence, we can only guess, only conjecture about it.”

“But if you go to church,” Bethany said slowly, “it seems as if they tell you how it is. As if there’s no question.”

Zebulon looked down at her, and nodded. “Some churches seem to. In centuries past, when man knew so little, formalized beliefs helped explain the world around him, the stars, the sun, the bitter elements that ruled his life. Why he got sick. But now, when we understand so much more, some feel we can best approach the mysteries through life itself, through science and through our more mature methods of observation.

“Yet many people still need the security of formal religion; they find it much safer to follow any kind of organized belief than to stand completely alone and face the mystery of one’s own origins.”

Justin rose from the hearth and stood with her back to the fire, looking down at Reid. “If we are meant to strive, if we are being tested, then those who, by chance, are able to touch the minds of others, their burden and responsibility is heavier.” Bethany could not tell whether Justin was speaking of her and Ninea, or of herself.

“I don’t see why,” Ninea said. “It’s not their fault they can.”

“But it’s an increased opportunity for good,” Justin said. “If you have been given more power for good or evil, then you have a greater burden.”

“But we didn’t ask for it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Bethany said. “That’s the whole point—chance. You don’t ask for it, but if it’s true we’re being tested, you have to do all you can with what you get. And maybe—if there are other lives, like Grandfather said once, could what we do now effect what we will become later?”

‘This could be so,” Zebulon said. “There is so much we can’t conceive of. And yet we know so much more than, say, sixteenth-century man. What will we be able to glimpse of all this in four more centuries? What will it be given to us to know if we are to live other lives? We might be able to look back on all this, on tonight, as the most primal and humble strivings of souls hardly out of diapers!”

“Grandfather,” Ninea said, suddenly very intent, as if she had caught some vision that touched his inner thoughts, “Who was the woman with red hair? Why did we see her?” She seemed excited; and Bethany reached out, trying to see too. The picture came clear, sharp, the woman’s red hair tangling in the wind as she climbed the grass tower, a picture so vivid that Justin, seeing it also caught her breath and sat frozen, staring up at Zebulon.

Justin’s look changed from amazement to disbelief, but Zebulon only looked at her innocently. Then at last a twitch of a grin started at the corner of his mouth.

“Oh, Father,” Justin said, and it was not clear whether her tone was one of censure or puzzlement or suppressed amusement.

“Have you guessed?” Zebulon said softly.

“I don’t need to guess. I saw her. I think it’s time you told us.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

”Go on,” Zebulon said.

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

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

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

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

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

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