He looked briefly at her and then found the wheat stalks mesmerizing.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Nell burst out. “How hard is it to just say you were wrong? W-R-O-N-G. Wrong! For once, the great brain made a mistake!”
Max looked up at that, color in his face. After a second, he seemed to come to some kind of decision. He laughed a little.
“Okay, fine. I was wrong. W-R-O-N-G. And you — you were right, Nell. You tried to tell me.”
Nell, who had been fully prepared to elaborate, looked stunned.
“I was right?”
“R-I-G-H-T. Yes, I admit it.”
Nell looked over at Susan.
“This is a magical place.”
Susan thought it would be even more magical if it had been Nell who’d admitted she was W-R-O-N-G, but she kept her mouth shut. The three of them stood looking at one another a minute more, and then Nell shrugged.
“Well, the old man did have a nice voice,” she said.
Max smiled a little painfully.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “He did.”
A warm breeze made the wheat stalks flap and brought the smell of smoke down the hill. The forest had burned for half a day, until the scholars who remained had been able to douse it. But with the odor of charred wood there was also the smell of late summer in the air, and wildflowers growing in the clearing above the valley. Finally, the quiet was the good kind. They went together down the hill to look for Kate and Jean.
Once before, Laysia had stood in the heart, on the day years ago when she had been made exile. There she had seen Tur Nurayim’s chair, turned to the wall. There she had seen her brother’s face gone hard. The thought of it brought the shadow of old pain, and yet here now was Lan, abashed, his face almost his own again, come to summon her back.
Few words had passed between them, but they had been enough. Lonely souls still, she thought, both of us. And yet he walked beside her and led her through the iron gate to the center garden, open and waiting.
“Who sits there now?” she asked him as they made their way along the path, thick with its summer beauty. Tur Kaysh had vanished from the battlefield along with many of the watchers when the last change took them. If any had expected them to join the red cloaks and those of the city who streamed down to the valley now, returned, they had been disappointed. And so amid the joy at victory, there was also shock and horror at the Guide’s betrayal. Like people reviving from too long a trance, the scholars shook their heads and exclaimed at what they saw now, though it had been before them all along. Children used as bait for the madman! So many years of waste and anger! Some spoke of punishment, but the old man was beyond retribution. He was dead, some said. Mad, said others, taken by the mist he himself had made.
Laysia did not know, and not knowing, she had feared to approach the inner garden, even as the bewildered scholars read the old visions anew and spoke to one another of exiles and children, even as the remaining watchers sought her out.
“Tur Sarom,” Lan said.
She paused at the gilded door and nodded. Tur Sarom had been the last of the council to abandon Tur Nurayim near the end. Laysia remembered seeing them walk together, even when the others had shunned him. She recalled the old man’s praise of him. Thoughtful. Wise beyond his years. Perhaps that thoughtfulness had saved him. Alone among the council, he had withstood that final, withering change.
“Come,” Lan said. “Don’t keep them waiting.”
She smiled. Again the teacher. Ever the elder brother.
Beneath the prism of sunlight, the council table was mostly empty. Tur Sarom sat on one side; four watchers had taken seats nearby. Like Lan, they had nearly regained their smooth faces. At the wall, Tur Nurayim’s chair still stood out of place.
Tur Sarom thanked her for coming. He had grown into his years now and was gray headed and vigorous. She nodded but said nothing. The weight of that room pressed on her, and she could feel the cold that still flowed out of its side chamber.
“As your brother explained, we are leaderless,” Tur Sarom said to her. “The returned flow in from the city, and we must teach them, guide them, even as many of our number are gone. They call for us, and we must respond. So we have convened a new council, small as it is, and turn to you to lead us.”
“Me?” She stared at him.
Lan had said nothing. All she knew was the commotion of the returned, so many of whom had come that they were camped now beneath the fruit trees in the valley.
The gray head nodded. “You withstood the mist. You nurtured four of the five. Who else would better serve?”
She glanced toward the side room. “I would not be accepted, I think, among the mass of watchers and scholars. Perhaps you, Tur Sarom, should rise to be Guide.”
The man shook his head. “A new time is upon us. We must step forward to meet it. None of the old will serve. You are the new, and you will guide us to embrace it, as your teacher counseled long ago.” He indicated the watchers seated near him and nodded in Lan’s direction. “These are the senior watchers that remain to us. We are all of the same mind. Once, we failed to listen. We are not so hardheaded that we will be deaf to the counsel of the wise again.”
She longed to catch Lan’s eye, but he stood behind her now. She looked around the room. This was what she had desired. Long ago, she had wanted the door open. Now it was.
“Finally,” Tur Sarom said, “at last, let us change for good.”
Laysia thought of Tur Nurayim, hopeful to the end.
“Very well,” she said.
She walked over to the old man’s chair and turned it from the wall.
And still they could not get home.
Susan had been half sure that just the end of the Genius would bring the window, as if some silent bell had been rung.
Time to go home! it would tell the universe. And then, like a machine with the right button pressed, Ganbihar would produce the window, snap, and they’d climb through.
But Ganbihar turned out not to work like that. So she made her way, with Laysia, to the center garden, where all the books of mystery were kept. The place had no lock now, and the five of them went through the gate, Nell hesitating only an instant, to see if in all that vast library, all those pages full of visions and predictions and secrets, there was one that explained about windows.
The days passed as they searched, and summer ended and the trees began to turn, brushing color across the mountains. The sanctuary in those weeks turned into a bustling, noisy place, with people streaming out for the cities, and others streaming in. One morning, she saw Mistress Dendra, a watcher now, lead a ragged, bewildered group down into the valley. Nell gave a shout. Wista was among them — Wista, found in the woods, filthy, scratched, hungry, but free of the mist now, and back to herself. On another day, Susan saw Omet standing by the tall corn, talking to Liyla, and she almost passed them by, they were so different. Liyla now was the same mild-faced girl she’d seen for an instant when they’d met — narrow jawed, light haired. She’d recovered from the battle sufficiently to be negotiating with Omet, who’d organized the sleepers’ children as guides between city and valley.
“I know shortcuts,” Liyla was saying. “Give me maybe two ven, and I’ll take twice as many as those others.”
Susan recognized Omet more by her voice than her face. She was still dark haired and dark eyed, but the rough hollows of her cheeks had filled and smoothed, and now she was a tall, serious girl with a square face and black brows that arched over bright, intelligent eyes.
She sighed. “I told you, they don’t use that currency here. And we’re not doing this for a fee. You’ll get food and lodging, like the rest. No more . . .”
Susan laughed to herself. Things changed, and things stayed the same. She wished she could figure out what made the one or the other. Maybe that was the key to opening the window.
She returned to the inner garden and found Laysia standing beside the strange little museum room. Something about it made S
usan feel at home there, as if her family were all gathered around her. Laysia said it was because they belonged here, in Ganbihar.
“You’re part of this place,” Laysla said to the children as they returned to the books in the inner library. “No matter where you began. Perhaps you were meant to stay here.”
Susan worried that she might be right. She did feel tied to this place. But she was tied to home, too, and she couldn’t believe they’d never go back. There were people waiting for them on the other side.
Jean and Kate sat playing four stones on the floor of the center hall, where the stained glass cast squares of color. The outer door opened, and the Master Watcher came in, Max at his side, bringing oil for the lamps.
Nell, who had been peering into a book, looked up.
“It’s all riddles.” She sighed. “And poetry. I like poems, but really, it would have been nice if one of these visions gave someone a straight answer once or twice.”
“No luck, then, I guess,” Susan said.
“Nothing about windows, doors, or even buildings at all,” Nell said.
The Master Watcher came in and set the oil on the table. Laysia began filling the lamps. Susan thought the two of them ought to have enough awkward silence between them to fill the Grand Canyon, but to her surprise, there didn’t seem to be much of that.
“The books of mystery are not a construction manual,” the man said astringently, and Nell made a face into her book. The Master Watcher still looked half outraged at the sight of them in the heart of the sanctuary, but Max had assured her that he was getting used to it.
“We need to figure out how the window opened the first time,” Max said. “I’ve been wondering that since the beginning.”
“Isn’t it enough to know that you were needed, and a way was made?” the Master Watcher asked him. “Do you always have to know how?”
“Yes,” Max said simply. “I do.”
Laysia stood back from the lamps and watched them flare up. The page Susan had opened brightened. For the hundredth time, she repeated the words aloud. Was there something she had not seen there?
“‘Out of the longest night, into the age of wolves . . .’”
Max’s head came up. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Say that again.”
She did.
He tugged at a piece of hair that had lately grown into his eyes. “I never thought of that before. The longest night. That wasn’t here. It was summer here. How did whoever wrote that know what it was like back home?”
It was true. The vision had described more than the window. Whoever had written it had seen the other side.
“Perhaps opening a window between two worlds requires more than a window,” Laysia said. “Perhaps you need to be able to see through the glass as well.”
“But we can do that!” Nell protested. “We know what home is like!”
“And yet you can’t open the window,” Laysia said. She pulled a thick old book from the shelf and set it softly on the table. “So what don’t we know?”
They all bent to the books then, all but Susan. She sat thinking about it awhile. Kate had abandoned the game in the hall and come to see what they had found. She wandered in beside Susan, looked curiously at the book she had open, and then, unconsciously, began to hum to herself.
Nell shot her an annoyed look. “We’re trying to read here!” she said, and Kate stopped abruptly.
It was so like home that Susan felt something flare inside her. They did need to see through the glass, as Laysia and Nell said. But what were they looking at, exactly?
She glanced over at Max, who sat pulling at his rumpled hair.
“When you think of home,” she said suddenly to him, “what is it?”
He looked up, startled, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Everything. A lot of things, I guess.”
“What about you?” she asked Nell.
“Riddles,” Nell said promptly.
“Riddles?” the Master Watcher cut in. “How are riddles anybody’s home?”
Nell grinned at him, which, Susan noted, must have been a first. Maybe that was a good sign.
“We like them. We tell riddles at dinner sometimes.”
“And jokes,” Max added. “Sometimes even funny ones.”
“Kate sings at night — loudly,” Nell said, grimacing at her little sister.
Susan felt as she sometimes did when she walked into the back door of a house after she’d only ever come in through the front — disoriented by the new angle. Things did look different that way.
The Master Watcher was looking at Laysia with an expression that told Susan he was not used to lots of people talking at once, especially if those people were under the age of thirty.
“What do riddles and songs have to do with opening windows?” he asked her.
Laysia patted his shoulder, and the familiar act seemed to startle him and then loosen him up a little. He smiled faintly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But perhaps a world full of walls is made of such things. Perhaps ours is, too.”
And Susan thought: Riddles and songs and jokes at the table — all of that had plenty to do with windows.
She laughed to herself. She had thought that another world was a thing like a chair, or a peach, or water, or fire. But she’d had it wrong. It wasn’t one thing at all, but a thousand of them. What did home look like, after all? A satiny dip in the couch, where she could read and catch a glimpse of the sky. Kate humming without knowing it. Jean giving her Barbie a bad haircut. Nell telling riddles at the table, and Max reciting letters to Jean.
Not all the books of mystery, not anything in the sanctuary, or any one of the scholars, could open the window. She knew that now. How could they? Maybe they could see a house on the other side, but they could never see home.
“What does that mean, a world full of walls?” Kate whispered to her. “Does that mean we can’t ever get back there?”
“I don’t think so,” Susan told her. “Even walls can be opened. You can make a door, after all. Or a window.”
Susan marveled that she could pull fire from the air and make water flow from nothing, but she had not been able to see this simple fact until now.
They gathered outside, in the garden, cool and smelling of fallen leaves. The sun had long set, and a pearl of a moon glossed the air. Laysia and her brother stood behind them, watching.
This time, Susan didn’t think of windows. She thought of her parents’ faces, her room, the book she had left open, even Mrs. Grady, waving, as she sometimes did, from her kitchen.
It occurred to her suddenly that if she could see that, then maybe, like the people who visited the dream orchard that Laysia had spoken of, she could step outside time, too — or into it. Maybe the moment they had left waited there for them, like a bubble caught in glass.
“Think about home as we left it,” she told the others. “Think about that winter night.”
The air crackled a little and buzzed. In the darkness, the moonlight seemed to smoke and wrinkle, then fracture. A stuttering, broken image shook a second in the glimmering space and resolved. The window. And on the other side, a familiar maroon couch, a book, a wall full of pictures.
Laysia had dreamed of the orchard, and walked there in a wood outside time, but that could not compare to this moment, when she stood at the heart of the world and watched the moonlight cleave the night to reveal a land beyond.
Tur Nurayim had spoken of a thousand worlds, tapestries in a great hall. It had been a half-meant tale, a flight the mind must take to understand what cannot be.
And yet it was.
Beside her, Lan gasped. She looked to him, and saw at last the joy that had been so long absent. Together, they peered at the place beyond the glass, that world of walls and hard edges. It was softer than she would have guessed — a room like others, with its cushions and its portraits and its mess of scholar’s papers. Like the children, she thought, its differences were not at first easily perceived.
&n
bsp; Susan reached out to the glass, and this, too, was unexpectedly soft.
“Come on!” the little one said, pulling at her sister’s hand. “Before it goes away!”
But the older one hesitated a moment.
“Will we see you again?”
How could she answer? They were children of dreams. They had come to her first outside of time. This gulf seemed greater still.
She would have liked to give the child the gift of ancient words, some bit of wisdom passed on. But she could not think of any just then. So she gave her the only truth she knew — her own.
“Always and often,” she said. “In dreams.”
Susan felt herself sink into the warmth of the window, its glass pliable as honey. She could still smell the fading greenery of the fall garden, the rich half-sweet aroma of turning leaves, when the honeyed glass dissolved and she found herself stepping down into her own house, her own well-remembered thinking spot.
The scent of paper, wood, and the worn maroon couch replaced the scent of the garden, and she sucked in the first breath of home.
“It’s the same!” Nell marveled. “All the same!”
Max touched the sofa, the notebook on the table. “It’s like we never left. Like we weren’t away a second!” He looked at Susan. “Do you think we can do any of it here? Is it all gone now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I feel different. Don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Me, too,” Kate said. “Better, because we’re home.”
Better, Susan thought. But not the same.
From the hall came the sound of familiar voices. Jean was first through the door. In an instant, the others followed, running.
But for a moment, as her siblings flew on ahead, Susan paused. It wouldn’t be quite the same, she thought. Theirs was a world of walls, but doors could be made. And windows.
She turned back and touched the window, wondering. It was hard again, and cold. On the other side, Mrs. Grady’s kitchen light filtered out, through her colored glass, into the deepening blue.
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