Blue Window

by Adina Rishe Gewirtz

  It was in this gray hour before first light, the air cool and smelling of wet, that she found herself outside the sanctuary walls, searching.

  Panic had bloomed in her chest when Zirri brought news of Nell’s disgrace. The girl was gloating; Kate could see the hateful joy she took in her news. She’d rushed to get to them, coming before Mistress Meva could, before any of the others.

  “She broke the biggest rule,” Zirri had smirked. “She went to the center.”

  Immediately, Kate had looked to Susan. Susan, who had grown sick these last days, her face blank in a way that made Kate feel hollow and jittery. But still, Susan would know what to do. It was an emergency.

  And she did. She’d turned on the girl, her eyes suddenly focused, impatient. She had no time for Zirri. Even Zirri could see it.

  “Where did they take her?” she demanded.

  The girl pursed her lips and shrugged.

  “How should I know? The old man said she was an exile now and that we shouldn’t think of her anymore.”

  Susan frowned, and Kate’s spirits lifted. Susan would fix everything!

  “You know,” she had said, moving closer to the girl. “You know because you told on her, and you’ll tell me now or you’ll be sorry.” She said it so fiercely that Zirri backed up, knocking into Jean.

  “Outside the walls,” Zirri said. “That’s all. I saw them take her outside the walls. But she isn’t there anymore,” she added. “I know that, too.”

  The Shepherdess hurried in, and Zirri made a swift exit.

  Mistress Meva was tearful when she sat down, and Kate wanted to pull away when the woman took her hand. She acted as if someone had died. But she was talking about Nell!

  “I’m sorry, children,” she’d said. “Truly I am. But some are lost, you know. Some don’t know how to accept the gift we have here. Your friend understood what was expected, I thought. Didn’t she? I can’t make sense of it. Why did she go?”

  “Our sister,” Kate had whispered.

  But the woman didn’t seem to hear. She wasn’t really asking questions, after all. She was only trying to put Nell away, to finish with her. Kate saw it and looked to Susan.

  And Susan did demand to know where Nell had been taken. She asked over and over as Kate winced at the uncomfortable feel of the Shepherdess’s sweaty hand pressing hers. Mistress Meva had nothing to offer. Exile was the absolute punishment, she’d said. The end. Terrible. None had ever returned.

  By the time the woman had gone, Kate’s heart was smacking the inside of her chest so hard that her dress shivered with the force of it, and Susan, furious, set out to find Max. She told them to stay in the room, but Jean, sensibly, started bawling, and so Susan fumed and took them along, running up the stairs to the boys’ section.

  They’d just stepped into the thickly carpeted hall there, where the wall hangings were full of long-faced old men, when a group of young scholars came charging at them. The Master Watcher stormed behind them, his eyes bulging. Kate cringed and yanked Susan back a half step, sure he would raise his hand to strike her. But with a shudder, the man stopped himself and only told them acidly that Nell’s fate was a warning to them — the last.

  Jean had burst into fresh tears, and Kate had stood there, thinking that he’d confirmed something for her. People talked more with their faces than they did with their mouths; she’d always known it. Known also that the two said opposite things sometimes and that faces were by far the more reliable.

  From the start, she’d worried about the Master Watcher. His smooth face had been a nice shock, and it had almost made her want to trust him, but he wore a tight expression, and his eyes were nervous, suspicious. He watched Max too much, and Susan even more, and he was afraid. All the time, afraid. It had made Kate afraid herself. Even at home, she’d noticed that frightened eyes too often came with angry voices. Adults who were so afraid were dangerous, and to be avoided.

  And yet she had seen, too, how Max willingly followed him. It had confused her, worried her, as Max had gone away with the nervous-eyed man and Susan had disappeared into herself. Now she knew that Max had been mistaken. It made her more afraid than ever.

  “We want to see our brother,” Susan had said to the man. “You can’t keep him from us.”

  But he could.

  “Your brother!” He nearly spat the words. “You’ll see him when he’s ready to see you. Now you’ll leave. And don’t try to come back this way. We’ll be watching.”

  The boys had pushed them back then, and the man did nothing to stop them. They nearly tripped Susan, and she’d retreated at last, red faced, taking Kate’s hand with such force that Kate nearly yelped.

  “What will we do?” she asked Susan when they’d returned to the room. “Nell’s outside alone! Do you think she’s hurt?”

  She didn’t want to say the other thing, what Nell had told them about. She pressed her hands together to keep them from shaking and watched her older sister.

  Susan slumped on the bed. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what they did to her.” She put her hands to her eyes, then her forehead. “We’re not the same as the people here. We don’t change. And we walked through the mist. Maybe it’s okay. I don’t know.”

  I don’t know! Maybe! The words hit Kate like a slap.

  “But you hear the mist, don’t you?” Jean asked. “Nell said it’s hurting you!”

  Nell had been right. Kate could see it. Kate could see it. . . .

  Susan shook her head. “Just let me think. I have to think. If I could only let Max know — he understands how they do things in this place! Maybe I could send him a message, and then we’d go after her. . . .” Her voice trailed off and she began pacing. Kate started to ask another question, but Susan refused to talk further.

  “Let me think!” was all she’d say. “I just need a minute to think!”

  Kate watched Susan late into the night as she moved from window to door, restless, sleepless. Kate must have fallen asleep watching, because then the dream came. No matter how many times she had them, she could not get used to the nightmares. This one was terrible, and new. In it, Nell sat in a gray fog, calling their names, shivering and rocking as the cloud pressed in around her.

  Kate woke with a start.

  Susan had fallen asleep fully clothed. She lay on the end of Jean’s bed, head on her hands, curled up like a much littler girl. Kate went and stood beside her, looking into her face. Even in sleep, it was creased with worry; she had the look of someone tired, someone forced to run with no more strength left to do it.

  For as long as Kate could remember, Susan had been there, knowing everything, taking care, making it all better.

  But now Kate stood in the dark room and saw that her sister didn’t know. And Kate realized then that Susan would wait too long.

  She had crept from the room, from the building. Crept through the open gates and out, past the trees and up onto the hill. She didn’t see the mist, but she knew it would be there if she tried to turn back. So she didn’t. She climbed as the slim new moon set in a charcoal sky and the darkness seeped away, and the dawn came.

  And she stood, finally, at the edge of the woods, in the light.

  Kate saw no sign of her sister.

  It was then that the fear hit. The nightmare that had propelled her out of bed had long since faded, and the climb had been enough to keep her from thought, from worry. Now, as she looked into the vastness of trees — the forest she knew to go on much farther than the eye could see — she felt small, and alone. Nell could be anywhere, or nowhere. Kate might walk for days and miss her. She would be alone, just herself, in the endless woods. And then — Kate tried not to think it, but the thought came — Nell might not be Nell anymore. She might find — not Nell, but something else.

  Kate clutched at a nearby trunk and tried to think. Susan would be calm. Max would have a plan. What did she have?

  Nothing.

  “Nell?” she called, her voice faint benea
th the giant trees. “Nell?”

  She took a step forward, into the woods. “Nell! I came for you!”

  She couldn’t think of anything to do but call, so she did, over and over, until her voice failed her. At last she sat down, slumped on a mossy root, and let the tears blur the image of the trees and the silent, great, answerless forest.

  And she heard someone.

  Surely it was not Nell.

  A desperate, soft mewling came from the hillside. Kate stood, shaking, and walked toward it.

  Almost hidden by the growth, yards from where she had passed, climbing, her sister lay sprawled in the tall grass. Kate ran to her and turned her over.

  “Nell? Nell!” She shook her.

  Nell’s eyes were closed, her face tight and pasty. Mud stained her cheek, and Kate saw it in her nails, as if she’d been digging with her fingers, clawing at the earth. She whimpered — a strange, unfamiliar sound; Nell’s voice but not Nell’s voice, the familiar turned alien and awful, as if someone had lodged some pitiful animal in her throat.

  “Nell! It’s me; it’s Kate! I’ve come to get you. It’s okay, Nell! Wake up!”

  But Nell would not wake up. She shivered and twisted, eyes shut tight, the strange, broken animal noise shuddering from behind her closed lips, a ragged sound, dry as autumn leaves.

  Susan, Kate thought. Help me! I can’t! I need you! She could not do it alone. Could not. Could not.

  She took Nell by the shoulders, pulled at her, and Nell, limp, whimpered again. If she could only get her down the mountain, Kate thought, back to Susan, she would be all right. Susan would know how to fix her.

  But as she pulled at Nell, dragging her a few feet down the slope, she felt the air change. Around her the mist gathered, and the breeze began to whisper words just on the edge of hearing, brushing past her like so many moths, weightless, repulsive.

  Nell shrieked. Her body convulsed, jerking itself from Kate’s grasp, rolling into the grass, writhing. Kate ran to help her, but Nell flailed, the awful, half-mute wail sounding from her. Then she stopped and was still.

  “Nell!”

  Her sister was not breathing. Kate rolled her onto her back and saw the faint tinge of blue on her lips, her damp skin going waxy. Air! She needed air! From some long-dormant place, she recalled her father telling her about breathing, about pushing air into empty lungs and saving, saving —

  Kate jerked Nell’s chin down and covered her sister’s open mouth with her own, blowing with all her might. Air. Air. Breathe!

  Nell coughed and gasped, drawing breath, and around her, Kate saw again the mist, the hideous cloud come to attack. Nell could not be near the mist. It was hurting her, killing her!

  With all her might, Kate jerked her sister up the slope, scrambling to get away from the vapor, even as it pursued them. Up! Up! she screamed in her head, wishing she could send Nell flying backward, far, far from the awful thing, the haze, with its whispering, terrible sounds.

  “Susan!” she cried aloud. “Help me!”

  And then Nell did seem lighter. Kate pulled at her with renewed strength. She could see she was outrunning the cloud now, nearing the tree line above. Susan! Kate thought with sudden joy. She’s come! She’s here! She’s helping me! She pulled Nell over the ridge of the mountain, reached the shadow of the trees, and looked back to see the mist disappearing over the edge, drawn back like a receding wave.

  A tremor of relief shook her, and Kate looked around, trying to find Susan. Where was she?

  “Susan?” she called. No one answered. She turned toward the woods, searching. “Susan!”

  Nell whimpered and coughed on the ground.

  “Susan!”

  Someone answered then, but it was not Susan. It was a woman with coppery skin and straight dark hair pulled back in a braid, who emerged from behind a tree without a sound. She wore a patched and faded green dress with a large front pocket like the one Liyla had worn. The pocket bulged with rolls of papers, a spade, and a small rake. The woman looked from Kate to Nell, lying strangely there beside her on the moss.

  “Child!” she said. Her voice shook. “You need help.”

  It was not a question. But the woman waited, keeping her distance, until Kate nodded.

  Despite the shock in her voice, in her eyes, she had the look of someone used to waiting. She glanced at the spot where the mist had slipped backward into the valley, took a breath, and turned back to look searchingly at Kate a moment, before dropping her eyes to Nell.

  “Can you help her?” Kate asked. The quiet face leaned over her sister, and the woman rested the tips of her fingers on Nell’s cheek, brushed hair from Nell’s eyes. Nell no longer whimpered. She seemed asleep, but Kate feared she was more than that. Mutely, the woman nodded. She lifted Nell, stood, and turned to walk deeper into the wood as Kate ran to follow, hoping Susan was just out of sight behind them.

  Dreams had woken and emerged into the dawn. Children through the mist, children now! Devoured, hunted, exiled. Surely the sky should crumble and the mountain fall before this, but they didn’t. They never changed, despite horror, despite heartbreak.

  And yet the child lived, unchanged, and here was another, walking through the wood, the cloud of her hair catching the light. It was this she had seen in dreams. Laysia stumbled at the thought, nearly losing her grip on the other one, and the young girl took her arm.

  “You okay? I know she’s heavy. Susan helped me before.”

  Her words were unfamiliar, some of them, and the name Laysia did not know, but the sense of it came through. She found her voice.

  “No, I’m all right. Forgive me. We’re close now, and then I’ll lay her down.”

  She had not asked the child’s name. She could barely ask it now, lest the two evaporate with the audacity of the question. It was such a sweet dream, such a vivid one! If this was madness, how much better it was than she had imagined. And yet there was no help in pretending, now she’d thought of it.

  “Child,” she said, trying to keep the catch from her voice, “what do they call you?”

  “Kate,” she said in her pretty way. She walked along, solid as ever, a real flesh-and-blood child who had emerged from a dream. “And this is Nell.”

  They walked through the forest together, Kate trying to keep track of the way. She memorized the direction of the rising sun over her shoulder, the tangled path, the place, somewhere below and to her left, where the sanctuary lay.

  The woman cradled Nell like a baby. Kate could feel how careful she was, as if Nell were made of china and might break with a wrong step. She looked at Kate, too, strangely, and Kate worried that she had misunderstood something, done something wrong. She didn’t hear people right sometimes. She didn’t like to be with this stranger alone on the mountain, without Susan or Max or anyone to tell her what it all meant.

  But Nell needed help. And Susan must have turned back, once she’d gotten them up the hill, to get Max and Jean, maybe. So she hurried beside the woman as the trees thickened and they moved away from the valley. The sun unfurled yellow ribbons through the branches and gathered in the leaves like white pearls.

  After a time, the woman said quietly, “Who is she, to you, that you came for her?”

  She had a smooth, narrow face, and her expression was hidden in the shadows and sudden glare of the morning forest.

  “My sister,” Kate whispered.

  “Your sister.”

  She said it differently from the way the Master Watcher had. Not as if she disbelieved it, but as if it made her sad. Kate worried that maybe Nell wouldn’t get better.

  “What should I call you?” she asked the woman, trying to banish the thought.

  “Laysia” came the answer. Then the woman shook her head and laughed a little.

  “What?”

  Laysia moved right, striking deeper into the wood.

  “It’s been a long time since I said that name. It feels strange to say it.”

  Everything she said was hard to understan
d. Did she have another name, then? If Susan would only come, she’d explain it. As it was, Kate said, “Do they call you something else?”

  Again, that laugh that sounded too much like crying.

  “Oh, yes, but that’s not what I meant.”

  Kate sighed. Too often life felt this way, people full of puzzles. They talked too fast or in riddles, and by the time Kate had unwound all the knots of their speech, they’d gone on to something else and she’d missed the point. It was why she kept quiet in school most of the time. It was why she liked to stand next to Susan, or her mother, in crowds, because they would know to look at her and whisper what it meant.

  Neither of them was here. Kate cleared her throat. “I don’t think I understand.”

  The woman lifted her head and turned at that, and Kate saw that there was no meanness in her face. The laugh hadn’t been at her expense.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I’ve been a long time alone. I’m unused to conversation. I’ve lost the art of it.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s what happens in exile. But you gave this one a great gift, following her. You didn’t let her be alone.”

  Exile. Now, that was a word Kate knew.

  It was as if she had stumbled into the wood where the first had emerged from the pool of life, from the waters of beginning, and seen the full expanse of it, that wood of dreams and legends, that place from which all the stories had come. It would be strange, yes, but familiar, as this child was familiar, as they both were. And yet strange — so strange! Not in look or manner, but in the very essence of them. Laysia studied the child as they walked along together through the brightening wood. She clasped the older one, the mist-hounded girl, to her chest and tried to puzzle out the meaning of such a mix of difference and sameness. What was it?