Oh, God; what was she doing here?
Ana had no difficulty waking early the next morning; she had not actually been asleep. Shortly after she had turned out the light and gotten into bed, Dulcie woke crying. Ana took her into bed with her, warmed her back into sleep, and then, when the child was limp and deep, she had moved herself over to the bed on the floor. It was amazing how hard six blankets on the boards could be, and how vivid pain became in the dark. Her hand pounded, her lip hurt, Dulcie snored and muttered, and dawn gradually crept near.
It was still dark when she went outside, but the stars were beginning to fade. The Change members with early morning jobs were on their way to barn or kitchen, or to the cars that would take them to employment in Sedona or Flagstaff. Ana exchanged a couple of greetings but she did not stop to talk, just made her way along the road out of the compound.
She passed the boxy guest quarters, where four or five visitors now slept, and walked by the rocks where she had first met Steven and watched the sun come up over the compound. She stayed on the road, which was growing more visible by the minute, and went through the gate until she reached the heap of spilled rock one-half mile from the Change entrance, the heap that included one boulder that had sheared off in the fall to reveal a white face. In cross-section the white would appear as a vein, but now it was a bright flag visible even from the small planes that from time to time overflew the area.
Ana went over to sit atop the rocks. She gathered her knees to her chin and waited while the land took form around her. A car drove out of the compound, its headlights on, and Ana raised a hand. The lights dipped in response, and when it was past, when she was as certain as she could be that no one was watching, she reached underneath the white-marked stone for the papers she had told Agent Steinberg in Phoenix she needed.
Her fingers encountered only stone, sand, and one small slip of paper. She pulled it out, opened it, and saw written on it: I will be in Sedona today.
It was Glen's writing, though looking at it carefully she decided it was a faxed reproduction rather than the real thing. So, he was flying in to talk with her.
What could be so urgent that he would get on a plane and drive up from Phoenix or Flagstaff to see her in person? And even more disconcerting, once she thought about it, were the implications of how he knew she would be in Sedona. It was one thing to have a friendly ear in the local school district offices who could pass on the news of an impending field trip to the museum; it was quite another to have a legally sanctioned wiretap on the community's phones, which was the only way she could think of that he would know of her dentist appointment. Glen was not the sort to arrange for rogue surveillance, not if he had any other options. Had something happened to boost the Bureau's level of anxiety about the Change movement? And if so, why wasn't she aware of it here?
She crumpled the paper and finished her morning walk, tossing the small, tight wad among some thorny cactuses along the way. When she got back to her room and opened the door, Dulcie immediately sat upright on the bed, so wide-eyed and alert that Ana knew she had been fast asleep until the instant her hand hit the doorknob.
"Come along, Dulcinea, you slugabed," she said cheerfully. "There's a bowl of cereal with your name on it in the dining hall."
There was no sign of Jason at breakfast. When she was preparing to leave for her appointment with the dentist and with Glen, the teenager had still failed to emerge from hiding and Dulcie was looking even more miserable. Ana sat down on the bed so she could look the child directly in the face. Feeling like a traitor, or a wicked stepmother, she took Dulcie's hand in hers.
"Sweetie, I think you'd be happier if you stayed here and waited for Jason. You can help Amelia in the kitchen—she'd love to have you—and you'd be right here if Jason gets finished with his work. If you come with me, you'll have a long, cold ride in and out of town, and a long, boring wait in the dentist's office. He'll probably make you sit in the waiting room, too, while I'm in with him."
Dulcie wavered, torn between the possibility of Jason's restoration and the sure security represented by Ana. In the end, the deciding factor was something else entirely.
She asked Ana, "Will we go in Rosy Nante?" When Ana admitted they would, that was all Dulcie needed to hear. Ana drove to Sedona with Dulcie in the seat beside her.
As Ana had predicted, the dentist suggested firmly that Dulcie occupy herself with the children's books in the waiting room while he and Ana went back to mull over the choice between repairing the bridge and starting from scratch. In the end they did both, making temporary repairs on the shattered plastic and taking impressions of it and her mouth.
"No apples," he ordered. "Don't bite anything. And don't get in the way of any more fighting boys."
Ana thanked him distractedly, her attention caught by the voice she could hear coming from the waiting room. Sure enough, as she approached the nurse's station she could tell that it was Glen in monologue. No—he was reading something aloud, a story about a pony.
She made an appointment for Monday, four days away, which seemed quick work on the part of the lab that would be making the bridge. She said something appreciative to the receptionist.
"Yes," said the woman. "You're lucky—the new delivery man for the lab happened to be through today, and he said he'd wait for your impressions. That saves you two or three days. In fact, that's him out there, reading a story to the little girl."
It was indeed Glen, dressed in the uniform of a medical delivery man, bent over that ubiquitous magazine of pediatricians and children's dentists, Highlights for Children, its pastel monochrome cover at once dull and soothing. Dulcie was sitting a polite distance from this friendly stranger, back straight but her neck craned to see the illustrations. Glen turned the page, read to the end of the story, and closed the magazine. He handed it to Dulcie.
"Thank you, young lady, I enjoyed that. I don't think I've read one of those magazines since I was your age. May even have been the same one. Is this your friend Ana?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer he stood up and introduced himself in a voice that twanged of the South. "Glen York. And you're Ana—?"
"Wakefield," she supplied.
"Ana Wakefield. Your young friend here is a most talented listener. Doesn't talk much, but boy, can she listen."
"Glen is going to take your teeth to be fixed," said Dulcie.
"That I am, if the nurse here is ready. That them? Anything to sign? Right, that'll do me, then. You don't mind if the young lady hangs on to the magazine do you? And I don't suppose you could recommend a good coffee shop around here? I don't think I actually had lunch today. In fact, maybe this young lady and her friend Ana would like a cup of coffee or something. How do you take your coffee, Dulcie? Strong and black, am I right?"
Ana was amused to see that considering he was a man without children, he had struck on a note likely to loosen up the most reticent child. Dulcie very nearly smiled at his quip.
"She'd probably rather have an ice cream," Ana suggested. "Do you like ice cream, Dulcie?"
The girl nodded hugely. Ice cream was not high on the list of supplies in the Change walk-in freezers. As they walked into the café, Glen had shipped Ana's diary into her bag.
They sat at a booth with a booster cushion to raise Dulcie's chin above the table. Glen ordered a ham sandwich and black coffee, Ana a bowl of vegetable soup, and Dulcie had a grilled cheese sandwich followed by a hot fudge sundae complete with cherry. As they waited for the food, Dulcie read the borrowed magazine under the edge of the table. Glen opened his mouth, and then shut it firmly at Ana's vigorous shake of the head and her pointed glance at the seemingly oblivious child. He was seething with impatience, both to tell and to hear, but he could see that it would not do to speak openly in front of a wide-eared and obviously bright child. It might have to wait until Ana came to town again to retrieve her new bridge.
She began telling him, an amiable stranger, interesting things about the Change community, including that Dulc
ie was with her today because the child's big brother was away for a couple of days. He could tell from the faces of both of his table companions that there was more to it than that, he did not give vent to his questions. Ana looked relieved. Dulcie went back to her pictures.
Glen studied Ana over his coffee cup. She looked as banged-about as he had expected, having had Rayne Steinberg's report of all that had happened at the Heard Museum. Her hand was ugly and obviously giving her pain, but he had seen her in worse shape. She would recover.
Only at the very end of the meal did he manage to have an unobserved minute with Ana, when Dulcie was in using the toilet.
"Are you bugging the phones?" Ana asked him as soon as Dulcie was safely on the other side of the door.
"We just started. The branch in Japan is acting strangely and there's an uproar brewing in England over their kids, with Social Services sticking their noses in and Change resenting it. I thought the combination justified a greater degree of concern, and I found a judge here who agreed with me, that the presence of children here made it urgent enough to justify a tap." One bleak consolation after the Waco affair, Glen reflected, was the way the name made judges want to reach for their pens. "What's this about alchemy?"
"It's too complicated to go into it now. Did you get me the books?"
"I planted them in the used-book store, just down the street. Pick them up when you leave. Look, are you all right?"
"I'm fine. A little sore, that's all."
"I meant… you're sure?" Truth to tell, Glen thought, she did look fine beneath the bruises, healthy and strong and considerably more alive than she usually did when she was immersed in one of these operations. Change obviously agreed with her. Which was, somehow, worrying. Still, there was no time to dig into it now, because the door to the ladies' room was opening. "And there's the young lady now. Dulcie, it was a real treat to meet you, and I hope I come across you again someday. Good-bye, and good-bye, friend Ana."
He waved and strode out whistling, Agent Glen McCarthy in his full Uncle Abner mode, the talkative, ever-genial Southerner. Ana suppressed a smile and looked down at Dulcie. "I've got another idea that might be an even bigger treat for you than ice cream," she said.
It turned out Dulcie liked bookstores just as much as she liked ice cream, and while Ana searched out the books on alchemy that Glen had arranged there for her, Dulcie studied the riches of the children's corner, where she chose the three books Ana had said she could have, and then a fourth one, asking tentatively, "For Jason?"
Ana laughed and said she could have four, and she put them with her own three choices (Glen had left six or seven, but these were closest to what she wanted) and paid for them with her virginal credit card. It was accepted without hesitation. As she was picking up the bag, a thought occurred to her.
"Do you by any chance have a copy of The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll?"
"Let me see," said the cheery young woman. She went to the shelves and returned with a copy of Alice. "This is all we have at the moment."
"Can you order me one?"
"Picture book or text?" she asked, already calling up the title on her computer.
"Picture would be nice, if there is one." Ana glanced at Dulcie, who was immersed in a book and not paying any attention to the conversation. "And hardback, if there's a choice."
"I can have it day after tomorrow."
"Great," said Ana, and told her she'd be in on Monday.
Back in Rocinante's passenger seat, Dulcie buried her nose in her picture books, spelling out words for Ana to translate, until the light failed and she had to put them away. She fell asleep, and did not even stir when Ana stopped the bus to retrieve a thick blanket from the back to wrap around her. Ana drove on with the window open, battering herself with fresh air to keep the weariness at bay. The child was still asleep when they bumped into the compound parking lot, but she woke and gathered up her books to carry them to Ana's room.
They were halfway to the central buildings, when Dulcie gave a loud cry, let her precious books fall to the ground, and flew into Jason's embrace. The boy wrapped his arms around his sister and buried his face in her hair, clinging to the child as if she were the last living thing on earth.
Chapter Nineteen
From the journal of Anne Waverly (aka Ana Wakefield)
Ana slept very well that night. At dawn she continued her habit and, putting one of the books she had bought the day before into her pocket, she climbed the red rocks and watched the sun come up over the compound.
Steven did not turn up.
She went down to breakfast and read the book while she carefully chewed her cut-rate cornflakes, banana, and yogurt. No one commented on it, although she was certain that at least two of the higher initiates saw it. Both of them glanced at her quickly and then moved away.
She conducted her classes, talked about the essays the students were writing about the museum, reviewed for a test she was giving the next week, and handed back the essays they had already done. During lunch and while she was in class she left the book on her desk, its title facing up for all to see, but Steven did not come to see her, and no one seemed to take notice of the topic.
Saturday morning came and went atop the red rocks, and Steven did not approach her, and the day passed as Saturdays did around Change, with hard physical work that included the schoolchildren and a night of relaxation, with basketball and communal music in the dining hall.
Sunday morning came, and Steven was there at the red rocks when she arrived, watching the light creep over the compound and, she knew, waiting for her. She smiled a very quiet smile, put the book down next to her knee, crossed her legs, and surrendered herself to the moment.
The sun rose and grew in warmth, and half an hour later, Steven was the first to stir. "Your hand is healing," he said, his eyes still closed, his face raised to the sun. It was not a question, but a statement from an all-knowing observer of human frailty.
"It's much better, thank you."
"You have some interesting reading material, Ana Wakefield." His eyes were still shut.
"This?" She stretched out her legs and picked up the battered volume, which looked as if Glen had rescued it from a Dumpster before selling it to the woman in Vortex Books for fifty cents. The inside was in better condition, and to her relief had barely been written in by the previous owner: Volume 12 of the collected works of Carl Jung, a group of related essays entitled Psychology and Alchemy.
"Have you read any of Jung's writings?" she asked him innocently, very sure that he had.
He stirred, and she felt him looking at her. "Some of them."
"Well, I was thinking about the things you were talking about the other day before meditation, about the need for pressure in striving for personal transformation. Somewhere Jung says something along the lines of enlightenment being found at the point of greatest stress. That got me thinking about Jungian psychology in general and the goal of transformation, and I remembered that he wrote a couple of things about the symbolism of alchemy as a paradigm for change. When I was in Sedona the day before yesterday I found this book of essays in the used-book store. I'll have to see if I can hunt down the other ones." She stopped leafing through the book and made herself meet his eyes, making absolutely certain that she gave him only the face of Ana Wakefield, earnest Seeker Ana with no challenge or knowledge or academic superiority in it. She was in luck, because the sun was rising behind her, and whatever it was he saw in her face, it was not Professor Anne Waverly.
"I have it. You may borrow it if you like," he said. "You might find volume fourteen of interest."
"That's the one with the Latin title, isn't it? Mysterium Coniunctionis? Am I right, then, in thinking that Change—the Change movement—incorporates some of the ideas and symbolic processes of the alchemical tradition?"
He said something under his breath.
"I'm sorry?" she said. He rose fluidly to his feet, although he had been twisted up on the hard, cold rock i
n full lotus position for at least an hour.
"It's time we were going," he said. She stood up, more slowly than he had, and when she looked around she saw his head disappearing down the hill. He descended the rough terrain with the ease of a cross-country runner, leaving her to pick her way among the rocks and bushes and wonder if she had heard him correctly, and if so, what he could have meant by "not just symbolic".
Rather to her surprise, he was waiting for her at the bottom of the hill, the very picture of a man in deep thought as he stood with head bent and hands clasped behind his back. She came to a halt, not before him as a suppliant would but next to him so he had to turn his shoulders as well as his head to shoot her his piercing glance.
"Ana," he pronounced, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
She couldn't resist. "Learning," she said, and for the first time she saw Steven Change disconcerted. He blinked.
"I'm sorry?" he demanded, impatient at her apparent non sequitur.
"A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again." That is," she added,"supposing you were referring to Alexander Pope. It's a common misquotation, and granted it's a subtle distinction, but as an English teacher, I feel obligated to be pedantic."
God, she thought, in a minute I'll be waving my cane and calling him a young whippersnapper. "I admit, though, that I've often wondered what a Pierian spring is." Actually, she knew quite well what the word referred to: an area in Macedonia where the muses were worshiped, it was used as a classical romanticization of learning. Steven did not seem to know this, however, and merely allowed his ruffled feathers to be soothed by her disarming admission.
"In either case, having an insufficient command of a path of learning can be hazardous," he said firmly, and began to walk again. She fell in at his side.
"A person has to begin somewhere," she protested.
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