Blue Window

by Adina Rishe Gewirtz

  “Susan!”

  Nell, who had been trying to make a rock disappear, with limited success, looked up. Her eyes widened. Jean, playing with her weathered Barbie, stared around, looking for Susan. Laysia smiled grimly.

  “She’s done it!”

  Kate wondered why it didn’t make her happier.

  Master, at what age does a man attain wisdom?

  So the young student asked.

  Some say when he comes to manhood, for then flows his strength.

  Some say with the taking of a wife, for he is then complete.

  Some say after ten years of study, for only then does he begin to understand.

  Some say more, and some say never.

  For wisdom is a ladder of a thousand rungs, and what man can climb them all?

  And the first rung of that climb? the young man asked.

  Play, said the sage. For without it, there is nothing.

  — “The Ladder of Wisdom,” Tur Rime, Second Golden Age, Ganbihar

  There was little time for play. Only the smallest of them sat in the clearing with her strange doll and dreamed as children should dream. The others bent to the task, and Laysia led them like the ox too early in harness.

  To make up for it, at night she told them stories. The tale of Tur Doli, first of the sage kings, who climbed the peak and conquered the mountain city with a riddle. The little one’s favorite was the tale of Tur Gafen, who crossed the ocean to Elsare and learned that with a playful mind, he could banish walls and move the sea as easily as a single drop of water.

  “See?” Jean told Nell, who had that day scolded her for her games in the clearing. “Even the old men play.”

  Laysia thought of Tur Nurayim, grown old but ever loving his riddles and games. His board of shells and boxes still sat on the shelf in the cottage, long abandoned, for it was meant for two. He was one who loved little tricks and cleverness, and lessons full of play. He had made the first rung of wisdom into a kind of song he would sing to her, teasingly, when she was too impatient with her lessons.

  “You want the flower without its seed,” he had said. “Can such a thing be?”

  For the seed was the child-sight, seeing the possible without building the wall of impossible to stop it.

  “To the greatest mind, the wave is but a water drop, and so is the sea. In dreams, there is no great and small, no time, no walls at all. This is the lesson of the orchard.”

  Such was his song.

  He had many of them. Songs of play and teaching, songs of power and of healing. He sang them so often to her that she found herself humming them, sometimes, in sleep.

  She had cause to think of his songs often in these last years, after she had become an exile. The old man, Kaysh, was ever certain of his impossibilities. And so, as a poor substitute for their time on the first rung, she sang the children Tur Nurayim’s song, a water drop to a wave, the first rung also the last.

  And the next day, on the cliff’s face, the littlest one, Jean, sprayed them with water drawn from the sea. In her play, she had called a wave.

  Laysia told them often that they were doing well, but there was an unhappiness in her voice, behind the praise, and Kate thought it must be that she was disappointed, maybe not in Susan and Nell, but in her and Jean, who were smaller than she had expected. How could the five include them? They were little, and not good enough.

  Jean was not interested in trying harder. Each day when Max failed to come, she grew more silent. And though she perked up a little when they sat by the ocean, at night when they walked back to the cottage, she shrank down into a flat line like a cake pulled too soon from the oven.

  Sometimes she’d invite Kate to go out back with her to read over Max’s letters, but though these pleased Jean, who in a brief flurry of hope would always find some new proof that Max was coming tomorrow, or even an hour from now, they made Kate feel smaller than ever. So when Jean had finished reading and gone in to eat or play, Kate would creep out to the line of trees past the garden and practice the day’s lesson again, hoping for a head start on the morning.

  But she was very tired, and so mostly what she did was sit and listen to the woods. One night, she sat as the dark gathered, trying not to hear the hissing of the mist, trying to shake the leaden press of it from her bones. Somewhere in the distance, a fox yipped, and instead of being afraid, she found that the noise comforted her. So many things lived out here that didn’t care about the mist, or the valley, or any of it. She liked thinking about that.

  She listened and found that the forest was full of comforting sounds, busy with its own concerns. A lonely night bird screeched, and the wind hushed it. Crickets ran files across the bars of their legs.

  Fireflies sparked and caught in the trees with a sound like small puckering kisses.

  Something jumpy thrilled a little nearby, then waited. What was it? A rabbit, she thought, getting a sudden sense of a quivering, glass-eyed presence, What was it listening for? she wondered. A second later, she knew. A sleepy, half-interested bear, not too far off. How had she known that? She couldn’t tell, but its presence tickled at her, something like a whisper, half caught. She sat very still. What else was here?

  A squirrel, busily dismantling a nut. Hungry, hungry, hungry. The rabbit, tensed. And then — something complicated and sad. She turned to see Laysia coming to find her. The woman stood at the edge of the garden, peering into the wood, looking for her in the gathering dark.

  “Kate?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Don’t you want to eat with the others?”

  “Not really.”

  Laysia sat down, scattering the fireflies. The squirrel, full of caution, stopped working at its nut. The rabbit took off.

  “I see you sit here often,” Laysia said. The question floated unsaid into Kate’s head.

  “I’m just listening,” Kate told her.

  “Ah. You hear it, too.”

  “Not only that.”

  Laysia’s face was unreadable in the dark, and Kate didn’t say anything. The woman’s presence had driven out the sounds of the wood, and again there was nothing much but the mist. But in time, as they sat quietly, Kate relaxed, and her ears opened up again.

  Together they sat watching the fireflies glitter in the crown of trees, and listening to the calm beneath the mist, the life of the wood going on.

  Clouds of birds rose from the wood and swept toward the sea as the sun drifted westward in late afternoon. Kate watched them swirl out over the water and curve back, chattering hordes of them that rose, and then settled in the trees at the edge of land. Again and again, they swept up and then down, cresting hills of air that rolled across the sky.

  “I like that sound,” Jean said, looking up from her spot in the grass. She had set her Barbie across from her and was playing a game of four stones with it. “It’s a lot better than the other.”

  Kate had not realized Jean could hear the mist. She’d never said anything about it before.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Much better.”

  It was also the signal to start back, and so they walked beneath the noisy trees, barely aware, at first, of the persistent hiss of the valley. But as they left the birds behind, they heard it. And then it changed, its pitch rising. Kate cringed.

  “Someone’s coming through,” Laysia said.

  Everyone’s head came up.

  “Let’s go!” Susan said. “It’ll be him — I know it!”

  They began running, leaping roots and dodging branches, toward the growing sound. Relief made Kate fast. Now everything would be all right again. Now Max would be back.

  She outstripped the others, running through the clearing where the cottage lay, running toward her brother. She had reached the edge of Laysia’s garden when she saw the figure lurching through the wood.

  Not Max.

  She froze. The slasher still wore clothing, a dress of light fabric that extended past its knees. A girl, then, but one who had grown horrible, twiste
d and furred, with wild eyes swirling in her head, her mouth open to show dangerous teeth. At the sound of Kate running toward it, the thing swiveled and howled.

  Kate’s head rang with the sound. Too much was in that howl. A strange wildness, terror, hunger. Kate heaved, her chest bursting, and gaped at it. Without warning, it swung forward, something bright flashing in Kate’s eye.

  Her legs would not move fast enough. Disappear! she thought furiously at herself. Evaporate! The thing lurched toward her, terror blaring from it, and Kate scrambled to grab the light, light like dust, like the cloud of birds, pieces and pieces. She saw it; she pushed it. The light wavered and bent. She felt the crackle in the air, and the hair on her arms rose. It seemed suddenly as if she looked through water. On the other side of that rippling wall, the slasher paused, blinking. Kate clutched the light, fragile as blown glass, balancing, balancing . . . and then that flash of reflection came again, and Kate saw it for what it was — a copper pendant.

  “Wista!” Nell screamed from behind.

  The wall of light dissolved, and the thing that had been Wista — pretty, cheerful Wista — turned and growled low in its throat and leaped.

  Gray. A gray wall fell between them so suddenly that the thing slammed into it, and Kate could hear it squeal in pain. She was too stunned to move. Frustration, rage, terror. On the other side of the barrier, the slasher howled. Blankly, Kate lifted her hand to touch the wall. This wasn’t light. This was —

  “Stone,” Laysia said behind her. “It was the best I could think of. I hope I haven’t hurt him.” She took Kate’s hand. “Come,” she said. “Quickly.”

  “Her,” Kate said blankly. “It’s a — her.”

  Nell came running. She pounded on the wall. Behind the stones, the thing that had been Wista screamed. In horror, Kate closed her ears. She wouldn’t hear — she wouldn’t! Her own terror shoved the other out, and she could hear Nell again, shouting.

  “Let her come. Let me talk to her!”

  Laysia put a hand on Nell’s shoulder, tried to pull her back. “She can’t hear you now,” she said. “Come away, child. There’s nothing for her.”

  But Nell wouldn’t come away.

  “No! No! You can’t just let her go with those others. I saw them! We saw them in that cave!”

  They stood there, all of them, staring at the stones, Nell shouting and insisting, until Laysia finally agreed to catch the thing and keep it, at least for now, from running farther into the woods.

  “Fetch me a basket from the cupboard by the door,” she said. “And put whatever food is left in there. Quickly.”

  Kate turned and ran before the others could and found the basket. It was lined with blue cloth. She filled it with bread and cheese and new tomatoes just as Susan and Jean, both looking sick, stumbled inside.

  “She says to wait here,” Susan said. “But Nell won’t go. Give me the basket. I’ll take it.”

  There was no use arguing with Nell; Kate knew that. But Susan looked like she might pitch over.

  “I’ll take it,” Kate said. “I’m not afraid.” She ran out without waiting for an answer.

  The gray wall loomed at the edge of the garden, prematurely darkening the day. Nell was shouting Wista’s name through the stones.

  Laysia took the basket, laid it in the grass, and pulled Nell from the wall. They stepped back, and Kate watched the stones crumble to dust. The slasher that had been Wista stood a moment, bewildered, her hands bloodied from slamming the wall. Then her head swiveled to the basket, and she pounced on it. As she did, the wall returned, growing to encircle her. It closed her in. For a moment, they heard only the sound of the basket being torn to bits. Then the thing screamed again, a piercing wail that made Kate want to run. Another moment, and a dull thud followed — the slasher throwing itself against the wall.

  “She’ll keep there,” Laysia said. “But she won’t like it. Let her go, Nell. She’ll only hurt herself against the stones.”

  “Then make it softer” was all Nell said.

  Nell would not leave the wall, and so Kate stayed with her, even after Laysia went to see Susan and Jean. For an hour or more, the slasher screamed behind the stones. Nell peered through the chinks, talking to her.

  “You’re not a beast, Wista. You’re a person. Your mother gave you that necklace, remember? You were going to learn to read. Remember? Wista? Wista!”

  The thing growled and wailed and at last fell to whimpering as the dark came on. All the time, Kate tried to hear the girl’s voice in it, nice Wista, happy Wista, who had come to their room asking for Nell. She couldn’t.

  Now even in the wood at twilight, there was no peace, nothing but fear everywhere, fear blaring from the raving thing behind the wall, fear unsettling all the small creatures Kate had learned to listen for in the underbrush. Even the bear stopped its placid lumbering and knocked jaggedly against the trees out of sight in the woods.

  Kate wanted to shut it out, all that noise of fear, but she didn’t know how. It invaded her head like a bad dream, clung to her like humid air, like fine rain.

  At dawn, Nell was back at the wall, but the sound of her voice only infuriated the thing behind it, and at last, after lowering a basket of food into the small fortress Laysia had made, she agreed to come away for a while, to the clearing.

  Laysia said they needed air, but Kate thought there would never be enough air anymore, ever. Susan had barely spoken since the slasher’s arrival. Jean, too, was silent. Now, as they walked together through the trees, Jean said, “Max wouldn’t change like that, would he? He couldn’t, right? Like you didn’t, Nell, right?”

  Kate saw a muscle jump in Nell’s jaw. “It’s all in your head,” she said. “It’s not even real.”

  “We’re different,” Susan said firmly. “She said so, didn’t she?”

  But they didn’t seem so different anymore. Not so different from Wista.

  Susan must have seen the look on her face then, because she at least took her hand as they went on, and the firm grip of it eased the walk a little.

  In the end, though, none of it was enough. Not that day, and not in the days that followed, as Nell stayed most of the time by the wall, talking to the wailing beast behind it, and Susan grew as distracted as she had been in the valley.

  There were moments, though.

  One day that week, Laysia told them that of all the tools of the warrior, one was not learned, but remembered.

  “We all dream of flying,” she said when they stood away from the trees, facing the ocean. The glass cliff blinked like a beacon over their shoulders. “We are born knowing that we should rise. Only Loam holds us to her with her iron grip. We need simply convince her to loosen it a little.”

  As she spoke, she grew suddenly taller, and Kate saw that her feet were not on the ground.

  “Try to remember,” she said. “You’ve flown in dreams.”

  Finally, Kate thought, something that makes sense. In dreams, she had floated out of her own house and swooped in great dips, like the blackbirds. But here she was awake. Could a person dream standing up?

  She didn’t know how, so she did what she always did, and listened hard. She understood now that there was more to listen to than just voices. Beneath Laysia’s talk, she found the wind hurrying the waves to shore, the ecstatic birds leaping up to meet the tide of air, the pop and crash as it tossed them toward the sun.

  The birds are dreaming, she thought. I can hear them doing it. She reached for their shrill voices, those delirious, wheeling sounds, and for a dizzying second, they filled her up until nothing existed but wind and sun and the distant, unimportant lines of land and sea. Then a giddy lightness took her, the kind of loosening that came with floating in water. She could feel the wind breathe through her. The faint pressure of the ground against her feet disappeared.

  Somebody called her name, but it was far away, and she barely heard. The sound of the wind was in her ears and the sky was all around and Kate was part of it, like the clouds
, like the sun. The ground had nothing to do with her; she had forgotten it. Weightless, she felt the soft breeze ripple through her skin, sharp, like the splash of cold water. And again there was that sensation of rising, floating upward like a tuft of dandelion seed, so much fluff, riding the current.

  She bobbed along and looked to the sea, and suddenly she was there — drawn to the pulsing, moving mass. She drifted down and settled on the sand. She had never seen such an untouched beach. It went on in both directions. She turned and looked. The cliff was far behind her, the people on it only specks. The sand she could feel was as soft, almost, as the sky.

  “Sky child,” Laysia said from behind her. She had followed and was standing a little way away on the sand. “Loam barely has a hold on you.”

  “It does feel like a dream,” Kate said. This close, the sea was loud as hands clapping; it foamed at the hard sand along the edge of land. “Why didn’t the others come?”

  Laysia laughed. “Perhaps you live more in dreams than the rest of them,” she said.

  Kate didn’t want to return to the cliff, to leave the bubbling welcome of the water, the sand that glittered in the summer afternoon, the cool salt breeze that washed the heat away into the mountain. But at last she let herself hear the birds again, and this time it was easier to fall into the dream and float up to follow Laysia back to the others. She settled to the ground in the clearing with the feeling of waking from a good sleep.

  “You weren’t afraid!” Jean said to her, astonished. The others told her they’d fallen down almost as quickly as they’d risen, but for Kate, for once, something had been easy. Susan and Nell looked at her with approval, and Kate felt for a moment as if she were still flying, as if she might keep rising forever, through the roof of the world, out into another universe, out toward home. Maybe, if the window didn’t open, that was the way.

  Smiling, Laysia said that Kate had begun to sense the parts of things; like the ancients, she could pick out the single voice in the group at song. Kate felt full of giddy possibility. Everything was there before her, and she could touch it, move it, remake it if she pleased. She could sense the bits that made up the steamy wood, and the garden, and the clearing overlooking the sea. She laughed then, forgetting everything as joy popped inside her chest like fizz. The others laughed with her.