“Did it have anything to do with the — -eyes?”
Tap-tap-tap…
He had returned to his thumping, burying bitter recollections and haunting thoughts under a rock pile of habit and mental detachment.
Leaving Kind Survivoress’ world now was out of the question — not with the Forever Man’s senile memory offering the hope of opening new passageways in Jared’s search for Light. Yet, he couldn’t tell Della why he had to extend their stay. So he simply pretended he was still physically unfit for immediate travel.
Apparently satisfied with this explanation for his postponement of their attempt to reach the Zivver World, Della grudgingly settled down to await his complete recovery.
That her original distrust of Leah had been an impulsive, passing thing was manifest in the subsequent lessening of tension between the two women. At one point, she even told Jared she might have been wrong in her first impression of Leah and Ethan. Why, it wasn’t at all as she had initially assumed, she confessed. And Ethan, despite his handicap, wasn’t the awkward, clumsy lout she had imagined him to be — not in the least.
Tactfully, Leah refrained from mind-to-mind contact with Jared and Ethan while they were in the girl’s presence. To the effect that Della either forgot the woman’s ability or gave it little thought.
Leah, too, had adjustments to make. Although she treated Della hospitably, Jared could always sense her misgiving over not being able to listen to the Zivver girl’s mind.
These developments Jared traced with interest while he waited for the Forever Man to abandon his solitude and seek company once more. Light! What he might learn from that ageless one!
During the fifth period after their arrival, Della was splashing in the river with Ethan while Jared was sharpening his spear points on a coarse rock when Leah’s thoughts came to him:
“Please forget about the Zivver World, Jared.”
“You know my mind’s made up.”
“Then you’ll have to change it. The passages are full of monsters.”
“How do you know? You told me you were afraid to listen to their minds.”
“But i’ve listened to other minds — in the two Levels.”
“And what did you hear?”
“Terror and panic and queer impressions I can’t understand. There are monsters all over. And the people are running and hiding and creeping back to their recesses, only to flee again later on.”
“Are there monsters near this world?”
“I don’t think so — not yet anyway.”
This posed another complication, Jared realized. Starting out for the Zivver World might not be a matter of leisure choice. It might well be that he should leave as quickly as possible.
“No, Jared. Don’t go — please!”
And he detected more than selfless concern for his welfare. Lying at the base of Leah’s thoughts were desperate pangs of loneliness, laced with the fear of having her simple, forlorn world cast back into the terrible solitude that had existed before he and Della arrived.
But he had made up his mind and he regretted only not having had the chance for a second talk with the Forever Man.
Just then, however, the latter’s tapping came to an abrupt halt.
Jared raced across the world this time.
And, as he passed the river, Della quit splashing to ask: “Where are you running?”
“To hear the Forever Man. Afterward we’ll be on our way.”
Perching on the ledge, Jared asked anxiously, “Can we talk now?”
“Go away,” the Forever Man groaned in protest. “You only make me remember. I don’t want to remember.”
“But compost! I’m hunting for Light!” You can help me!”
Only the rasps of the other’s labored breathing ifiled the world.
“Try to remember about Light!” Jared pleaded. “Did it have anything to do with — the eyes?”
“I — don’t know. It seems I can remember something about brightness and — I can’t imagine what else.”
“Brightness? What’s that?”
“Something like — a loud noise, a sharp taste, a hard punch maybe.”
Jared heard the uncertainty on the Forever Man’s face. Here was someone who might even tell him what he was searching for. But the man spoke only in riddles which were no clearer than the obscure legends themselves.
He tried to pace off his frustration in front of the nodding skeleton. Right before him might be the entire answer to how Light might benefit man, how it could touch all things at once and bring instant, inconceivably refined impressions of everything. If only the curtain of forgetfulness could be pierced!
He struck out in another direction: “What about Darkness? Do you know anything about that?”
And he heard the other shudder.
“Darkness?” the Forever Man repeated, hesitancy and sudden fear hanging on the word. “I — oh, God!”
“What’s the matter?”
The man was trembling violently now. His wry face was a grotesque mask of terror.
Jared had never heard such fright before. The other’s heartbeat had doubled and his pulse was like a wounded soubat’s thrashing. Each shallow, erratic breath seemed as though it would be his last. He tried to rise, but fell bank onto the ledge, burying his face in his hands.
“Oh, God! The Darkness! The awful Darkness! Now I remember. It’s all around us!”
Confounded, Jared backed off.
But the recluse grabbed his wrist and, with the strength of desperation, pulled him forward. Then his anguished cries shrilled through the world and spilled out into the passageway:
“Feel it pressing in? Horrible, black, evil Darkness! Oh, God, I didn’t want to remember! But you made me!”
Jared listened alertly, fearfully about him. Was the Forever Man sensing Darkness — now? Or was he just remembering it? But no, he had said it was “all around us,” hadn’t he?
Uneasily, Jared retreated and left his host fighting terror and sobbing, “Can’t you feel it? Don’t you see it? God, God, get me out of here!”
But Jared felt nothing except the cool touch of the air. Yet he was afraid. It was as though he had absorbed some of the Forever Man’s strange fear.
Was Darkness something you felt or perhaps seed — rather, saw? But if you could see it, that meant you could do the same thing to Darkness that the Guardian believed could be done to Light Almighty. But — what?
For a moment Jared was desperately afraid of an indefinite menace he could neither hear, nor feel, nor smell. It was an evil, uncanny sensation — a smothering, a silence that wasn’t soundlessness at all but something both alien and akin to it at the same time.
When he reached Della she was with Leah and Ethan. Nothing was said. It was as though a bit of the incomprehensible terror had spread to all of them.
Della had already packed some food in her carrying case and Leah, resigned to his decision, had gotten his spears for him.
The silence, uncomfortable and grave, persisted as they all walked to the exit. No good-bys were offered.
A few paces down the corridor Jared turned and promised, “I’ll be bank.” Casually letting his spears strike the wail, he sounded out the way and pushed on.
The somber world of Kind Survivoress and Little Listener and the unbelievable Forever Man slipped softly back into the immaterial depths of memory. And Jared felt a sense of poignant loss as he realized that recollections were fed by the same stuff of which dreams were made and that the only proof he would ever have of the existence of Leah’s world would be in the echoes of his reflections.