Part 7 (1/2)

”What do you mean?” and she frowned her brows.

”You witched me to love you, but you don't love me. It was done for spite, not love.”

”Why-why-”

Nothing flurries a woman like being caught in the truth. She laid hold on a poolside rock next to her.

”That will smash my head or either my guitar,” I gave her warning. ”Smash my head, you're up here alone with a dead corpse. Smash my guitar, I'll go down the trail.”

”And I'll jump into the pool.”

”All right, jump. I won't stay where people throw rocks at me. Fair warning's as good as a promise.”

She let go the rock. She was ready to cry again. My foot at the edge, I looked down in the water.

The sky was getting purely dark, but low and away down was that soap bubble s.h.i.+ny light. I remembered an old tale they say came from the Indians that owned the mountains before white folks came. It was about people living above the sky and thinking their world was the only one, till somebody pulled up a big long root, and through the hole they could see another world below, where people lived.

Then Miss Annalinda began to talk.

She was talking for company, and she talked about herself. About her rich father and her rich mother, and her rich aunts and uncles, the money and automobiles and land and horses she owned, the big chance of men who wanted to marry her. One was the son of folks as rich as hers. One was the governor of a state, who'd put his wife away if Miss Annalinda said the word. One was a n.o.bleborn man from a foreign country. ”And you'd marry me too, John,” she said.

”I'm sorry,” I said. ”Sorry to death. But I wouldn't.”

”You're lying, John.”

”I never lie, Miss Annahnda.”

”Well, talk to me, anyway. This is no place for silence.”

I talked in my turn. How I'd been born next to Drowning Creek and baptized in its waters. How my folks had died in two days of each other, how an old teacher lady taught me to read and write, and I taught myself to play the guitar. How I'd roamed and rambled. How I'd fought in the war, and a thousand fell at my side and ten thousand at my right hand, but it hadn't come nigh me. I left out things like meeting up with the Ugly Bird or visiting the desrick on Yandro. I said that though I'd never had anything and never rightly expected to have anything, I'd always made out for bread to eat and sometimes b.u.t.ter on it.

”How about girls, John?” she asked me. ”You must have had regiments of them.”

”None to mention,” I said, for it wouldn't be proper to name them, or the like of that. ”Miss Annalinda, it's full dark.”

”And the moon's up,” she said.

”No, that's the soap bubble light from down in the pool.”

”'You make me s.h.i.+ver!” she scolded, and drew up her shoulders. ”What do you mean with that stuff about soap bubbles?”

”Only what I told Mr. Howsen. The science man said our whole life, what he called our universe, was swelling and stretching out, so that suns and moons and stars pull farther apart all the time. He said our world and all the other worlds are inside that stretching skin of suds that makes the bubble. We can't study out what's out side the bubble, or either inside, just the suds part. It sounds crazyish, but when he talked it sounded true.”

”It's not a new idea, John. James Jeans wrote a bookThe Expanding Universe . But where does the soap bubble come from?'

”I reckon Whoever made things must have blown it from a bubble pipe too big for us to figure about.

She snickered, so she must be feeling better. ”You believe in a G.o.d Who blew only one lone soap bubble.” Then she didn't snicker. ”How long must we wait here?”

”No time. We can go.”

”No, we have to stay.”

”Then we'll wait till One Other comes. He'll come. Mr. Howsen's a despicable man, but he knows about One Other.”

”Oh!” she cried out. ”I wish he'd come and get it over with.”

And her wish came true.

The firelight had risen high, and as she spoke something hiked up behind the rocks on the pool's edge. It hiked up like a wet black leech, but much bigger by a thousand times. It slid and oozed to the top of a rock and as it waited a second, wet and s.h.i.+ny in the firelight, it looked as if somebody had flung down a wet coat. Then it hunched and swelled, and its edges came apart.

It was a hand, as broad in the back as a shovel, with fingers as long as a hayfork's tines.

”Get up and start down trail,” I said to Miss Annalinda, as quiet and calm as I could make out to be.

”Don't argue, just start.”

”Why?” she snapped, without moving, and by then she saw, too, and any chance for escape was gone.

The hayfork fingers grabbed the rock, and a head and shoulder heaved up where we could see them.

The shoulder was a cypress root humping out of water, and the head was a dark pumpkin, round and smooth and bald, with no face, only two eyes. They were green, not bright green like cat eyes or dog eyes in the night. They were stale rotten green, like something spoiled.

Miss Annalinda's shriek was like a train at a crossing. She jumped up, but she didn't run. Maybe she couldn't. Then a big knee lifted into sight, and all of One Other came out of the water and rose straight up above us.

Miss Annalinda wilted down on her knees, almost in the fire. I dropped the guitar and jumped to pull her clear. She mumbled a holy name-not a prayer or either a curse, just the tag end of a habit most of us almost lose, the reminding of Someone that we're hurting for a little help. I stood, holding her sagging slim body against me, and looked high up at where One Other loomed.

One Other was twice as tall as a tall man, and it was sure enough true that he had only one arm and one leg. The arm would be his left arm, and the leg his left leg. Maybe that's why the mountain folks named him One Other. But his stale green eyes were two, and both of them looked down at us. He made a sure hop toward us on his big single foot, big and flat as a table top, and he put out his hand to touch or to grab.

I dragged Miss Annalinda clear around the fire. I reckon she'd fainted, or near to. Her feet didn't work under her, she only moaned, and she was double heavy, the way a limp weight can be. My strength was under tax to pull her toward where I'd dropped the guitar. I wanted to get my hands on that guitar. It might be a weapon-its music or its silver strings might be a distaste to an unchancey thing like One Other.

But One Other had circled the fire the opposite way, so that we came almost in touch again. He stood on his one big foot, between me and my guitar. It might be ill or well to him, but I couldn't reach it and find out.

Even then, I never thought of running across Mr. Howsen's mark and down the mountain in the night. I stood still, holding Miss Annalinda on her feet that were so limp her shoes were like to drop off, and looked up twice my height into what wasn't a face save for the two green eyes.

”What have you got in mind?” I asked One Other, as if he could understand my talk; and the words, almost in Miss Annalinda's ear, brought back her strength and wits. She stood alone, still shoving herself close against me. She looked up at One Other and said the holy name again.

One Other bent his big lumpy knee, and sank his bladdery dark body down and put out that big splay paw of his. The firelight showed his open palm, slate gray, with things dribbling out in a clinking, jangling little strew at our feet. He straightened up again.

”Oh!” And Miss Annalinda dropped down to grab. ”Look-he's giving us-”

Tugging my eyes from One Other's, I looked at what she held out. It shone and lighted up, like a hailstone by lantern light. It was the size of a hen egg, and it had a many little edges and flat faces, all full of fire, pale and blue outside and innerly many-colored like the soap bubble light in the Bottomless Pool.

She shoved it into my hand, and it felt sticky and slippery, like soap. I let it fall on the ground again.

”You fool, that's a diamond!” she squeaked at me. ”It's bigger than the Orloff! Bigger than the Koh-i-noor!”