Part 47 (2/2)

Sophie looked at them. What they had said made perfect sense, common sense, the way they said it. ”I don't know,” she said.

”Sophie,” Smoky said from where he stood by the door. He hadn't spoken since he'd come in and the meeting had started. ”Can I ask something?”

”Sure,” Sophie said.

”How,” Smoky said, ”do we get back?”

In her silence was his answer, the one he'd expected, the one thing everyone present had suspected about the place she spoke of. She bowed her head in the silence she had made, and no one broke it; they all heard her answer, and in it, hidden, the true question that was being put to them, which Sophie could not quite ask.

They were all family, anyway, Sophie thought; or if they came, they counted, and if they didn't, they didn't, that's all. She opened her mouth to ask: Will you come? but their faces abashed her, so various, so familiar, and she couldn't frame it. ”Well,” she said; they had grown indistinct in the sparkling tears that came to her eyes. ”That's all, I guess.”

Blossom jumped from her chair. ”I know,” she said. ”We all have to take hands, in a circle, for strength, and all say *We will!'” She looked around her. ”Okay?”

There was some laughter and some demurrers, and her mother drew her to her and said that maybe everyone didn't want to do that, but Blossom, taking her brother's hand, began to urge her cousins and aunts and uncles to come closer to take hands, avoiding only the Lady with the Alligator Purse; then she decided that perhaps the circle would be stronger if they all crossed arms and took hands with opposite hands, which necessitated an even smaller circle, and when she got this linked in one place it would break in another. ”n.o.body's listening,” she complained to Sophie, who only gazed ather unhearing, thinking of what might become of her, of the brave ones, and unable to imagine; and just then Momdy stood up tottering, who hadn't heard the plan Blossom had urged, and said, ”Well. There's coffee and tea, and other things, in the kitchen, and some sandwiches,” and that broke the circle further; there was a sc.r.a.ping of chairs, and a general movement; they went off kitchenwards, talking in low voices.

Only Pretending ”Coffee sounds good,” Hawksquill said to the ancient lady beside her.

”It does,” Marge Juniper said. ”Only I'm not sure whether it's worth the trouble of going for it. You know.”

”Will you allow me,” Hawksquill said, ”to bring you a cup?”

”That's very kind,” Marge said with relief. It had been quite a trouble to everyone getting her here, and she was glad to keep to the seat she'd been put in.

Good, Hawksquill said. She went after the others, but stopped at the table where Sophie, cheek in hand, stared down as in grief, or wonder, at the cards. ”Sophie,” she said.

”What if it's too far?” Sophie said. She looked up at Hawksquill, a sudden fear in her eyes. ”What if I'm wrong about it all?”

”I don't think you could be,” Hawksquill said, ”in a way. As far as I understood what you meant, anyway. It's very odd, I know; but that's no reason to think it's wrong.” She touched Sophie's shoulder. ”In fact,” she said, ”I'd only say that perhaps it's not yet odd enough.”

”Lilac,” Sophie said.

”That,” Hawksquill said, ”was odd. Yes.”

”Ariel,” Sophie said, ”won't you look at them? Maybe you could see something, some first stepa .”

”No,” Hawksquill said, drawing back. ”No, they're not for me to touch. No.” In the figure Sophie had laid out, broken now, the Fool did not show. ”They're too great a thing now.”

”Oh, I don't know,” Sophie said, spreading them idly around. ”I thinka”it seems to me I've about got to the end of them. Of what they have to tell. Maybe it's only me. But there doesn't seem to be any more in them.” She rose, and walked away from them. ”Lilac said they were the guidebook,” she said. ”But I don't know. I think she was only pretending.”

”Pretending?” Hawksquill said, following her.

”Just to keep our interest up,” Sophie said. ”Hope.”

Hawksquill glanced back at them. Like the circle Blossom had tried to make, they were linked strongly, even in disorder, by their opposite hands. The end of them a She looked quickly away, and signalled rea.s.suringly to the old woman she had sat by, who didn't seem to see.

In fact Marge Juniper didn't see her, but it wasn't fading eye-sight or failing attention that blinded her. She was only absorbed in thinking, as Sophie had abjured them, how she might walk to that place, and what she might take with her (a pressed flower, a shawl embroidered with the same kind of flowers, a locket containing a curl of black hair, an acrostic valentine on which the letters of her name headed sentiments faded now to sepia and insincerity) and how she might husband her strength until the day she should set out.

For she knew what place it was that Sophie spoke of. Lately Marge's memory had grown weak, which is to say that it no longer contained the past time on deposit there, it was not strong enough to keep shut up the moments, the mornings and evenings, of her long life; its seals broke, and her memories ran together mingling, indistinguishable from the present. Her memory had grown incontinent with age; and she knew very well what place it was she was to go to. It was the place where, eighty-some years ago or yesterday, August Drinkwater had run off to; and the place also where she had remained when he had gone. It was the place all young hopes go when they have become old and we no longer feel them; the place where beginnings go when endings have come, and then themselves pa.s.sed.

Midsummer Day, she thought, and made to count out the days and weeks remaining until them; but she forgot what season this was she counted from, and so gave it up.

Where Was She Headed? In the dining room Hawksquill came upon Smoky, loitering in the corner, seeming lost in his own house and at loose ends.

”How,” she said to him, ”do you understand all this, Mr. Barnable?”

”Hm?” He took a time to focus on her. ”Oh. I don't. I don't understand it.” He shrugged, not as though in apology but as though it were a position he found himself taking, one side of a question, the other side had lots to be said for it too. He looked away.

”And how,” she said then, seeing she ought not to pursue that further, ”is your orrery coming? Have you got it working?”

This too seemed to be the wrong question. He sighed. ”Not working,” he said. ”All ready to go. Only not working.”

”What's the difficulty?”

He thrust his hands in his pockets. ”The difficulty is,” he said, ”that it's circulara .”

”Well, so are the Spheres,” Hawksquill said. ”Or nearly.”

”I didn't mean that,” Smdky said. ”I mean that it depends on itself to go around. Depends on its going around to go around. You know. Perpetual Motion. It's a perpetual motion machine, believe it or not.”

”So are the Spheres,” Hawksquill said. ”Or nearly.”

”What I can't understand,” Smoky said, growing more agitated as he contemplated this, and jingling the small objects he had in his pockets, screws, washers, coins, ”is how someone like Henry Cloud, or Harvey either, could have come up with such a dumb idea. Perpetual motion. Everybody knows a” He looked at Hawksquill. ”How does yours work,” he said, ”by the way? What makes is go around?”

”Well,” Hawksquill said, setting down the two coffee cups she carried on a sideboard, ”not, I think the way yours does. Mine shows a different heavens, after all. Simpler, in many ways a”

”Well, but how?” Smoky said. ”Give me a hint.” He smiled, and Hawksquill thought, seeing him, that he had not often done so lately. She wondered how he had come among this family in the first place.

”I can tell you this,” she said. ”Whatever makes mine go around now, I have the definite impression that it was designed to go around by itself.”

”By itself,” Smoky said doubtfully.

”It couldn't, though,” Hawksquill said. ”Perhaps because it's the wrong heavens, because it models a heavens that never did go by themselves, but were always moved by will: by angels, by G.o.ds. Mine are the old heavens. But yours are the new, the Newtonian, self-propelling, once-wound-up-forever- ticking type of heavens. Perhaps it does move by itself.”

Smoky stared at her. ”There's a machine that looks like it's supposed to drive it,” he said. ”But it needs to be driven itself. It needs a push.”

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