by Sara Seale
“Two and two?”
Yes. One is One and all alone and ever more shall be so.
... That used to frighten me, you know. It’s funny, but coming here in the train, I couldn’t get those couplets out of my mind.”
“Is this another of your rhymes?”
“Yes,” she said. “I can’t remember all of it. Shall I recite you what I know?”
“Yes, please,” he replied gravely, because he could see that she was quite exhausted.
They stood there in the flickering light while she repeated those strange couplets for him, making them sound like a spell.
Seven for the Seven who dwell in Heaven Six for the Six Proud Walkers.
Five for the Flamboys under the boat,
Four—
“I can’t remember four.”
“Never mind, we must go home. Bunny will be getting anxious, and you’ve got a smut on your nose.”
She rubbed her nose absently with the back of her hand, smudging the smut to a sooty smear.
“Need we go back by the house? I don’t want to see your old home blackened and charred. ”
“There’s a path outside the wall, running back to the road,” he said. “Didn’t you find it?”
“No.”
“We must have made it when I was a boy and the village children used to come up and play and weren’t allowed inside. Come, I’ll show you.”
“You too?” she said softly, and her heart lifted as she took the hand he held out to her. He was not so different, she thought, stepping through the broken door to meet the fury of the wind; beneath that protective armour he was solitary and vulnerable as herself ...
The broken door swung to behind them for the last time, and they walked in mutual silence down the rough dark path to the road.
THE END