Part 13 (1/2)
Her cousin pulled at her, but Rose stood firm.
”Don't be scared,” said Laura. ”He won't hurt you.”
”No. No. No,” Rose said, and wriggled to shake off Laura's grip. But she didn't make any move to go back up to the house.
Laura let go and faced Rose. ”You wanted to know. This is the only way you are ever going to come near to knowing.”
Rose said, ”I've seen it. I can believe my eyes.”
”You should meet him.”
Rose could feel the blood in her head-indignation, fear, and fury. She told her cousin, ”People don't meet monsters. No one offers introductions to monsters.”
”Aren't you even curious?”
Rose was quiet, thinking about that. Laura waited, looking so anxious for approval that Rose wanted to smack her. Rose began down the path again. Laura gave a little gasp of relief and darted on ahead, searching the trees. Rose felt she was out walking a silly young dog.
Laura's monster was hiding in the filmy gloom under a tall weeping willow. At first it was hard to see, utterly still, and of a dun shade similar to the tree trunk. But when Laura flung the willow fronds aside, it stirred, and the light scintillated on its sandy skin. Rose saw Laura take one of its hands, her fist closing around a big thumb. She drew the monster out.
Rose backed away as it approached. Laura was between them, her face glowing with love, but the monster was so huge, so competent in its movements, so uncanny, that Rose could not hold her ground.
”This is Rose,” Laura said to her monster, who continued to look down on the top of Laura's head, then into her face as she turned back and glowed up at it.
”She looks so proud of me you'd think she'd made me too,” Rose said. She heard how steady her voice was and felt a little braver.
Laura laughed. She said to her monster, ”Were the rivers and streams a problem on your way back?”
”It hasn't rained, and they are smaller,” the monster replied.
Rose thought that no one could ever mistake that voice for human. It was too dry. There was no moisture, no flesh, involved in it. The sound wasn't even animal-yet those were words. Rose s.h.i.+vered but continued to stand her ground.
”Let your cousin go back to the house,” the monster said. ”You must have things you need to tell me, Laura.”
Laura looked disappointed, as if she'd hoped they would all sit down together and have a conversation. She looked at Rose, then back up at her monster. ”But the things I have to tell you are about discoveries Rose has made. We think that the Regulatory Body has built a rail line into the Place. We thought that you and I should go look at it, and see where it goes.”
The monster did not move its eyes. It didn't glance up at Rose for confirmation, as any person would have. It hadn't looked at her at all, she was sure. The only indication she had that it knew she was there was that it had spoken to Laura about her. It wasn't as though the monster was being rude; Rose didn't feel snubbed, as she would have if a person had treated her this way. She just felt that she wasn't the monster's business-that she was so not its business that her existence was minimal to it. ”Laura,” she said, ”you talk. You make plans.”
”Am I to set out somewhere?” the monster said, to Laura.”Tonight will be safer than today. Where shall we meet?”
Laura clutched the monster's arm and pulled. It didn't lean into her. It was immovable. Her feet slid on the gritty ground till she was pressed against its side. ”Don't go right away,” she said. ”You just came.”
”I said tonight, not today.”
”You must be tired.”
”Now you are being silly, Laura.”
Laura laughed again. She sounded very happy.
Rose said to her cousin, ”I will leave you to give your-sandman-directions.” Then, ”He does follow orders, doesn't he?”
”Oh,” Laura said, and laughed some more. Then she collected herself and said, ”Well, obviously. He's here, isn't he?”
”Here,” thought Rose, ”and shouldn't be. Shouldn't exist.” But she said, ”I'll leave you to talk.” She backed away from the willow. She kept backing, kept the monster in sight for a time before turning and hurrying up the hill to the house.
IV.
The Depot.
1.
EN DAYS LATER, LAURA MADE HER RENDEZVOUS WITH NOWN A LITTLE EAST OF THE LAST REGULAR TRAIN STOP AT Mora.s.s River. They began their journey, weaving In and out across the border. Inside, they tramped through dry but untouched and upstanding meadows, Nown going before Laura and treading the stalks down. The going was easy. Every few minutes they would stop and listen for signs of other travelers. The trail was deserted.
As they went, Laura gazed Inland, across the gra.s.slands to a line of low hills, all in graduated shades of beige. Sometimes she turned her eyes toward what she could see beyond the border, an endless haze of meadow that faded away to a creamy sky. Laura knew that if she walked in that direction she would cross back into the green world. But, as she gazed, she began to imagine facing a second kind of Try, in which she would find that the reliable border had vanished, and she'd never be able to get out again. She saw this so clearly that she had to check, to walk toward the border- -where she found herself on a path that ran along a bluff above one of the many brilliant blue coves in Coal Bay's notched curve. The sun was hot and had raised all the perfume of the forest.
Nown stepped out beside her. Almost onto her, since she hadn't moved to make room for him. She teetered, and he caught and steadied her.
A light wind was hissing through the scrub and flax between the track and the coast. The sea was calm, the waves idle and sleepy. But it seemed noisy after the Place. Laura said, ”We won't hear anyone coming along this track. We'll be caught. And your eyesight is better in there, isn't it?” She said all this but didn't really want to go back In.
”It's only because there's less to see that people are highly visible there,” Nown said. ”Laura, we'll make better progress on this side of the border. And if I carry you, then you can listen while I walk.”
Of course Laura went to sleep in Nown's arms and didn't wake till his gait changed. He was stepping from boulder to boulder along a beach heaped with stones ranging from fist-sized to elephantine. ”I think I'll stay where I am for now,” Laura said, and tightened her arms around his neck. ”Don't drop me.” She knew he wouldn't, said it only to savor how safe she felt.
Nown said, ”I want to beat the tide. To get around that headland before the sea comes up.”
Laura wondered what it was like for him, stalking along the edge of a sea that was invisible to him except as a hole in the world, a void that gradually came up to engulf the path on which he made his way. She asked, ”Does the sea frighten you?”
”The tide is reliable. And none of these bluffs is too steep to climb.”
”But doesn't it unnerve you? Don't you feel threatened? Don't you think, 'What if a big wave comes?'”
”No,” Nown said. ”I don't know that I have an imagination.” He gripped Laura firmly and vaulted up a rocky spur in several strides, launching himself across gaps lined with kelp and thickly beaded with green-lipped mussels. A high swell pushed into a gap and, white with trapped air, lunged at Nown's legs. Laura squeezed her eyes closed and pressed her face against his gritty neck.
By late afternoon they had rounded the headland at the western end of the Awa Inlet. The tide was still high, and they faced a wide sweep of water. Far away across the Inlet was the lacework of a railway trestle across a river. Beyond that they could see the thick forest in the rain shadow at the back of the Inlet and, against the dark hills, the blond stone of the Doran summer house, s.h.i.+ning in the low sun.
”We should go as far as that long bridge over the river mouth, then turn back In,” Laura said. ”If I sleep soon, I can be up again before midnight. And I'm sure we can get from the bridge to the house between four and dawn, at your speed.”
Nown pointed at the water directly below them, at a channel, blue between two submerged sandbars. ”What is that?”
”I don't know what you mean,” Laura said, looking at it. Then she realized. ”Oh, d.a.m.n-there are two rivers. That's the Sva going out through the reedbeds way over there. The Rifleman must be hidden behind this headland. I've gone past here in the train dozens of times, but it all looks different.” She could see that the water in the channel was moving very fast. Even if they waited for the tide to go all the way out, the river would still be there, pus.h.i.+ng against the cliff on the far side of the headland.
”The channel is a colder nothingness,” Nown said, to explain how he'd picked out the river from the surrounding seawater. ”It is even more nothing.”