He had one moment of clear, conscious determination: to get out of this terrible place and stay out of it. And even as he felt this touch of reason, he heard the brook and was turning towards it.
Where brook and fence met, he lowered himself in the water and made his way to the foot of the pickets. Yes, the opening was still here.
He peered in through the fence, but the ancient holly was thicker than ever. There was nothing to be heard, either—aurally. But the call…
Like the one he had heard before, it was a hunger, an aloneness, a wanting. The difference was in what it wanted. It said without words that it was a little afraid, and burdened, and was solicitous of the burden. It said in effect who will take care of me now?
Perhaps the cold water helped. Lone’s mind suddenly became as clear as it ever could. He took a deep breath and submerged. Immediately on the other side he stopped and raised his head. He listened carefully, then lay on his stomach with only his nostrils above the water. With exquisite care, he inched forward on his elbows, until his head was inside the arch and he could see through.
There was a little girl on the bank, dressed in a torn plaid dress. She was about six. Her sharp-planed, unchildlike face was down-drawn and worried. And if he thought his caution was effective, he was quite wrong. She was looking directly at him.
‘Bonnie!’ she called sharply.
Nothing happened.
He stayed where he was. She continued to watch him, but she continued to worry. He realized two things: that it was this worriment of hers which was the essence of the call; and that although she was on her guard, she did not consider him important enough to divert her from her thoughts.
For the first time in his life he felt that edged and spicy mixture of anger and amusement called pique. This was followed by a great surge of relief, much like what one would feel on setting down a forty-pound pack after forty years. He had not known… he had not known the size of his burden!
And away went the restimulation. Back into the past went the whip and the bellowing, the magic and the loss—remembered still, but back where they belonged, with their raw-nerve tendrils severed so that never again could they reach into his present. The call was no maelstrom of blood and emotion, but the aimless chunterings of a hungry brat.
He sank and shot backward like a great lean crawfish, under the fence. He slogged up out of the brook, turned his back on the call and went back to his work.
When he got back to his shelter, streaming with perspiration, an eighteen-inch flagstone on his shoulder, he was weary enough to forget his usual caution. He crashed in through the underbrush to the tiny clearing before his door, and stopped dead.
There was a small naked infant about four years old squatting in front of his door.
She looked up at him and her eyes—her whole dark face—seemed to twinkle. ‘He-hee!’ she said happily.
He tipped the stone off his shoulder and let it fall. He loomed over her, shadowed her; sky-high and full of the threats of thunder.
She seemed completely unafraid. She turned her eyes away from him and busily began nibbling at a carrot, turning it squirrel-wise, around and around as she ate.
A high movement caught his eye. Another carrot was emerging from the ventilation chinks in the log wall. It fell to the ground and was followed by still another.
‘Ho-ho.’ He looked down, and there were two little girls.
The only advantage which Lone possessed under these circumstances was a valuable one: he had no impulse whatever to question his sanity and start a confusing debate with himself on the matter. He bent down and scooped one of the children up. But when he straightened she wasn’t there any more.
The other was. She grinned enchantingly and started on one of the new carrots.
Lone said, ‘What you doing?’ His voice was harsh and ill-toned, like that of a deaf-mute. It startled the child. She stopped eating and looked up at him open-mouthed. The open mouth was filled with carrot chips and gave her rather the appearance of a pot-bellied stove with the door open.
He sank down on his knees. Her eyes were fixed on his and his were eyes which had once commanded a man to kill himself and which, many times, violated the instincts of others who had not wanted to feed him. Without knowing why he was careful. There was no anger in him or fear; he simply wanted her to stay still.
When he was done, he reached for her. She exhaled noisily, blowing tiny wet chips of raw carrot into his eyes and nostrils, and vanished.
He was filled with astonishment—a strange thing in itself, for he had seldom been interested enough in anything to be astonished. Stranger still, it was a respectful astonishment.
He rose and put his back against the log wall, and looked for them. They stood side by side, hand in hand, looking up at him out of little wooden wondering faces, waiting for him to do something else.
Once, years ago, he had run to catch a deer. Once he had reached up from the ground to catch a bird in a treetop. Once he had plunged into a stream after a trout.
Once.
Lone was simply not constituted to chase something he knew empirically that he could not catch. He bent and picked up his flagstone, reached up and slid aside the outside bar which fastened his door and shouldered into the house.
He bedded his flagstone by the fire and swept the guttering embers over part of it. He threw on more wood and blew it up brightly, set up his green-stick crane and swung the iron pot on it. All the while there were two little white-eyed knobs silhouetted in the doorway, watching him. He ignored them.
The skinned rabbit swung on the high hook by the smoke hole. He got it down, tore off the quarters, broke the back and dropped it all into the pot. From a niche he took potatoes and a few grains of rock salt. The salt went into the pot and so did the potatoes after he had split them in two on his axe-blade. He reached for his carrots. Somebody had been at his carrots.
He wheeled and frowned at the doorway. The two heads whipped back out of sight. From outdoors came small soprano giggles.
Lone let the pot boil for an hour while he honed the axe and tied up a witch’s broom like Mrs Prodd’s. And slowly, a fraction of an inch at a time, his visitors edged into the room. Their eyes were fixed on the seething pot. They fairly drooled.
He went about his business without looking at them. When he came close they retreated and when he crossed the room they entered again—that little fraction more each time. Soon their retreats were smaller and their advances larger until at last Lone had a chance to slam the door shut—which he did.
In the sudden darkness, the simmer of the pot and the small hiss of the flames sounded very loud. There was no other sound. Lone stood with his back against the door and closed his eyes very tight to adjust them more quickly to the darkness. When he opened them, the bars of waning daylight at the vents and the fireglow were quite sufficient for him to see everything in the room.
The little girls were gone.
He put on the inner bar and slowly circled the room. Nothing.
He opened the door cautiously, then flung it wide. They were not outside either.
He shrugged. He pulled on his lower lip and wished he had more carrots. Then he set the pot aside to cool enough so that he could eat and finished honing the axe.