“We buried them,” I said shortly. “The charred remains of them.”
“God have mercy!” he whispered.
“Where did the people come from?” asked Nils. “Where are their wagons?”
“There weren’t any,” said the man. “Archibold says they came in a flash of lightning and a thunderclap out of a clear sky—not a cloud anywhere. He waited and watched them three days before he came and told us. Wouldn’t you think they were witches?” He wiped his face again and glanced back down the road. “They might follow me. Don’t tell them. Don’t say I told.” He gathered up the reins, his face drawn and anxious, and spurred his horse into a gallop, cutting away from the road, across the flat. But before the hurried hoofbeats were muffled by distance, he whirled around and galloped back.
“But!” he gasped, back by our wagon side. “She must be a witch! She should be dead. You are compromising with evil—”
“Shall I drag her out so you can finish burning her here and now?” snapped Nils. “So you can watch her sizzle in her sin!”
“Don’t!” The man doubled across the saddle horn in an agony of indecision. “ ‘No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom.’ What if they’re right? What if the Devil is tempting me? Lead me not into temptation! Maybe it’s not too late! Maybe if I confess!” And he tore back down the road toward Grafton’s Vow faster than he had come.
“Well!” I drew a deep breath. “What Scripture would you quote for that?”
“I’m wondering,” said Nils. “This Archibold. I wonder if he was in his right mind—”
“ ‘They fluttered up like birds,’ ” I reminded him, “and Marnie was floating.”
“But floating rocks and making fire and coming in a flash of lightning out of a clear sky!” Nils protested.
“Maybe it was some kind of a balloon,” I suggested. “Maybe it exploded. Maybe Marnie doesn’t speak English. If the balloon sailed a long way—”
“It couldn’t sail too far,” said Nils. “The gas cools and it would come down. But how else could they come through the air?”
I felt a movement behind me and turned. Marnie was sitting up on the pallet. But what a different Marnie! It was as though her ears had been unstopped or a window had opened into her mind. There was an eager listening look on her tilted face. There was light in her eyes and the possibility of smiles around her mouth. She looked at me. “Through the air!” she said.
“Nils!” I cried. “Did you hear that! How did you come through the air, Marnie?”
She smiled apologetically and fingered the collar of the garment she wore and said, “Gown.”
“Yes, gown,” I said, settling for a word when I wanted a volume. Then I thought, Can I reach the bread box? Marnie’s bright eyes left my face and she rummaged among the boxes and bundles. With a pleased little sound, she came up with a piece of bread. “Bread,” she said, “bread!” And it floated through the air into my astonished hands.
“Well!” said Nils. “Communication has begun!” Then he sobered. “And we have a child, apparently. From what that man said, there is no one left to be responsible for her. She seems to be ours.”
When we stopped at noon for dinner, we were tired. More from endless speculation than from the journey. There had been no signs of pursuit and Marnie had subsided onto the pallet again, eyes closed.
We camped by a small creek and I had Nils get my trunk out before he cared for the animals. I opened the trunk with Marnie close beside me, watching my every move. I had packed an old skirt and shirtwaist on the top till so they would be ready for house cleaning and settling-in when we arrived at Margin. I held the skirt up to Marnie. It was too big and too long, but it would do with the help of a few strategic pins and by fastening the skirt up almost under her arms. Immediately, to my surprise and discomfort, Marnie skinned the nightgown off over her head in one motion and stood arrow-slim and straight, dressed only in that undergarment of hers. I glanced around quickly to see where Nils was and urged the skirt and blouse on Marnie. She glanced around too, puzzled, and slipped the clothing on, holding the skirt up on both sides. I showed her the buttons and hooks and eyes and, between the two of us and four pins, we got her put together.
When Nils came to the dinner tarp, he was confronted by Marnie, all dressed, even to my clomping slippers.
“Well!” he said, “a fine young lady we have! It’s too bad we had to cut her hair.”
“We can pretend she’s just recovering from typhoid,” I said, smiling. But the light had gone out of Marnie’s face as if she knew what we were saying. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped curls, her eyes on my heavy braids I let swing free, Indian-fashion, traveling as we were, alone and unobserved.
“Don’t you mind,” I said, hugging her in one arm. “It’ll grow again.”
She lifted one of my braids and looked at me. “Hair,” I said.
“Hair,” she said and stretched out a curl from her own head. “Curl.”
What a wonderful feeling it was to top out on the flat above Margin and to know we were almost home. Home! As I wound my braids around my head in a more seemly fashion, I looked back at the boxes and bundles in the wagon. With these and very little else we must make a home out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, with Nils, it would suffice.
The sound of our wheels down the grade into town brought out eager, curious people from the scattering of houses and scanty town buildings that made up Margin. Margin clung to the side of a hill—that is, it was in the rounded embrace of the hill on three sides. On the other side, hundreds and hundreds of miles of territory lost themselves finally in the remote blueness of distance. It was a place where you could breathe free and unhampered and yet still feel the protectiveness of the everlasting hills. We were escorted happily to our house at the other end of town by a growing crowd of people. Marnie had fallen silent and withdrawn again, her eyes wide and wondering, her hand clutching the edge of the seat with white-knuckled intensity as she tried to lose herself between Nils and me.
Well, the first few days in a new place are always uncomfortable and confused. All the settling-in and the worry about whether Marnie would go floating off like a balloon or send something floating through the air as she had the bread combined to wear me to a frazzle. Fortunately Marnie was very shy of anyone but us, so painfully so that as soon as the gown was washed and clean again and we borrowed a cot, I put Marnie into both of them, and she lay in a sort of doze all day long, gone to some far place I couldn’t even guess at.
Of course we had to explain her. There had been no mention of her when we arranged to come, and she had no clothes and I didn’t have enough to cover both of us decently. So I listened to myself spin the most outrageous stories to Mrs. Wardlow. Her husband was the schoolmaster—lay preacher and every other function of a learned man in a frontier settlement. She was the unofficial news spreader and guardian of public morals.
“Marnie is our niece,” I said. “She’s my younger sister’s girl. She is just recovering from typhoid and—and brain fever.”
“Oh, my!” said Mrs. Wardlow. “Both at once?”
“No,” I said, warming to my task. “She was weakened by the typhoid and went into a brain fever. She lost her hair from all the fever. We thought we were going to lose her, too.” It didn’t take play acting to shiver, as, unbidden into my mind, came the vision of the smoke pluming slowly up—
“My sister sent her with us, hoping that the climate out here will keep Marnie from developing a consumption. She hopes, too, that I can help the child learn to talk again.”
“I’ve heard of people having to learn to walk again after typhoid, but not to talk—”
“The technical name for the affliction is aphasia,” I said glibly. “Remember the brain fever. She had just begun to make some progress in talking, but the trip has set her back.”
“She—she isn’t—unbalanced, is she?” whispered Mrs. Wardlow piercingly.
“Of cou
rse not!” I said indignantly. “And, please! She can hear perfectly.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Wardlow, reddening, “of course. I didn’t mean to offend. When she is recovered enough, Mr. Wardlow would be pleased to set her lessons for her until she can come to school.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That would be very kind of him.” Then I changed the subject by introducing tea.
After she left, I sat down by Marnie, whose eyes brightened for my solitary presence.
“Marnie,” I said, “I don’t know how much you understand of what I say, but you are my niece. You must call me Aunt Gail and Nils, Uncle Nils. You have been sick. You are having to learn to speak all over again.” Her eyes had been watching me attentively, but not one flick of understanding answered me. I sighed heavily and turned away. Marnie’s hand caught my arm. She held me, as she lay, eyes dosed. Finally I made a movement as if to free myself, and she opened her eyes and smiled.
“Aunt Gail, I have been sick. My hair is gone. I want bread!” she recited carefully.
“Oh, Marnie!” I cried, hugging her to me in delight. “Bless you! You are learning to talk!” I hugged my face into the top of her curls, then I let her go. “As to bread, I mixed a batch this morning. It’ll be in the oven as soon as it rises again. There’s nothing like the smell of baking bread to make a place seem like home.”
As soon as Marnie was strong enough, I began teaching her the necessary household skills and found it most disconcerting to see her holding a broom gingerly, not knowing, literally, which end to use, or what to do with it. Anybody knows what a needle and thread are for! But Marnie looked upon them as if they were baffling wonders from another world. She watched the needle swing back and forth sliding down the thread until it fell to the floor because she didn’t know enough to put a knot in the end.
She learned to talk, but very slowly at first. She had to struggle and wait for words. I asked her about it one day. Her slow answer came. “I don’t know your language,” she said. “I have to change the words to my language to see what they say, then change them again to be in your language.” She sighed. “It’s so slow! But soon I will be able to take words from your mind and not have to change them.”
I blinked, not quite sure I wanted anything taken from my mind by anyone!
The people of Margin had sort of adopted Marnie and were very pleased with her progress. Even the young ones learned to wait for her slow responses. She found it more comfortable to play with the younger children because they didn’t require such a high performance in the matter of words, and because their play was with fundamental things of the house and the community, translated into the simplest forms and acted out in endless repetition.
I found out, to my discomfort, a little of how Marnie was able to get along so well with the small ones—the day Merwin Wardlow came roaring to me in seven-year-old indignation.
“Marnie and that old sister of mine won’t let me play!” he tattled wrathfully.
“Oh, I’m sure they will, if you play nicely,” I said, shifting my crochet hook as I hurried with the edging of Marnie’s new petticoat.
“They won’t neither!” And he prepared to bellow again. His bellow rivaled the six o’clock closing whistle at the mine, so I sighed, and laying my work down, took him out to the children’s play place under the aspens.
Marnie was playing with five-year-old Tessie Wardlow. They were engrossed in building a playhouse. They had already outlined the various rooms with rocks and were now furnishing them with sticks and stones, shingles, old cans and bottles, and remnants of broken dishes. Marnie was arranging flowers in a broken vase she had propped between two rocks. Tessie was busily bringing her flowers and sprays of leaves. And not one single word was being exchanged! Tessie watched Marnie, then trotted off to get another flower. Before she could pick the one she intended, she stopped, her hand actually on the flower, glanced at Marnie’s busy back, left that flower and, picking another, trotted happily back with it.
“Marnie,” I called, and blinked to feel a wisp of something say Yes? inside my mind. “Marnie!” I called again. Marnie jumped and turned her face to me. “Yes, Aunt Gail,” she said carefully.
“Merwin says you won’t let him play.”
“Oh, he’s telling stories!” cried Tessie indignantly. “He won’t do anything Marnie says and she’s the boss today.”
“She don’t tell me nothing to do!” yelled Merwin, betraying in his indignation his father’s careful grammar.
“She does so!” Tessie stamped her foot. “She tells you just as much as she tells me! And you don’t do it.”
I was saved from having to arbitrate between the warring two by Mrs. Wardlow’s calling them in to supper. Relieved, I sank down on the southwest corner of the parlor—a sizable moss-grown rock. Marnie sat down on the ground beside me.
“Marnie,” I said. “How did Tessie know what flowers to bring you?”
“I told her,” said Marnie, surprised. “They said I was boss today. Merwin just wouldn’t play.”
“Did you tell him things to do?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Marnie. “But he didn’t do nothing.”
“Did nothing,” I corrected.
“Did nothing,” she echoed.
“The last flower Tessie brought,” I went on. “Did you ask for that special one?”
“Yes,” said Marnie. “She started to pick the one with bad petals on one side.”
“Marnie,” I said patiently, “I was here and I didn’t hear a word. Did you talk to Tessie?”
“Oh, yes,” said Marnie.
“With words? Out loud?” I pursued.
“I think—” Marnie started, then she sighed and sagged against my knees, tracing a curve in the dirt with her forefinger. “I guess not. It is so much more easy—” (“Easier,” I corrected) “—easier to catch her thoughts before they are words. I can tell Tessie without words. But Merwin—I guess he needs words.”
“Marnie,” I said, taking reluctant steps into the wilderness of my ignorance of what to do with a child who found “no words more easy,” “you must always use words. It might seem easier to you—the other way, but you must speak. You see, most people don’t understand not using words. When people don’t understand, they get frightened. When they are frightened, they get angry. And when they get angry, they—they have to hurt.”
I sat quietly watching Marnie manipulate my words, frame a reply, and make it into words for her stricken, unhappy lips.
“Then it was because they didn’t understand, that they killed us,” she said. “They made the fire.”
“Yes,” I said, “exactly.
“Marnie,” I went on, feeling that I was prying, but needing to know. “You have never cried for the people who died in the fire. You were sad, but—weren’t they your own people?”
“Yes,” said Marnie, after an interval. “My father, my mother, and my brother—” She firmed her lips and swallowed. “And a neighbor of ours. One brother was Called in the skies when our ship broke and my little sister’s life-slip didn’t come with ours.”
And I saw them! Vividly, I saw them all as she named them. The father, I noticed before his living, smiling image faded from my mind, had thick dark curls like Marnie’s. The neighbor was a plump little woman.
“But,” I blinked, “don’t you grieve for them? Aren’t you sad because they are dead?”
“I am sad because they aren’t with me,” said Marnie slowly. “But I do not grieve that the Power Called them back to the Presence. Their bodies were so hurt and broken.” She swallowed again. “My days are not finished yet, but no matter how long until I am Called, my people will come to meet me. They will laugh and run to me when I arrive and I—” She leaned against my skirt, averting her face. After a moment she lifted her chin and said, “I am sad to be here without them, but my biggest sorrow is not knowing where my little sister is, or whether Timmy has been Called. We were two-ing, Timmy and I.” Her hand closed over the hem of my skir
t. “But, praise the Presence, I have you and Uncle Nils, who do not hurt just because you don’t understand.”
“But where on Earth—” I began.
“Is this called Earth?” Marnie looked about her. “Is Earth the place we came to?”
“The whole world is Earth,” I said. “Everything—as far as you can see—as far as you can go. You came to this Territory—”
“Earth—” Marnie was musing. “So this refuge in the sky is called Earth!” She scrambled to her feet. “I’m sorry I troubled you, Aunt Gail,” she said. “Here, this is to promise not to be un-Earth—” She snatched up the last flower she had put in the playhouse vase and pushed it into my hands. “I will set the table for supper,” she called back to me as she hurried to the house. “This time forks at each place—not in a row down the middle.”
I sighed and twirled the flower in my fingers. Then I laughed helplessly. The flower that had so prosaically grown on, and had been plucked from our hillside, was glowing with a deep radiance, its burning gold center flicking the shadows of the petals across my fingers, and all the petals tinkled softly from the dewdrop-clear bits of light that were finely pendant along the edges of them. Not un-Earth! But when I showed Nils the flower that evening as I retold our day, the flower was just a flower again, limp and withering.
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