She wanted someone else to talk to. Someone less harsh, less forbidding than her brother. Someone to share things with.
A tiny shudder passed through her at the thought. Someone to share things with. She had been sharing things with Ben all her life. Had learned to see the world through his eyes. But suddenly it wasn't enough. Not that she was unhappy as things were. She enjoyed Ben's company and loved to see him working. It was just. . .
She smiled, realizing that she had come to the edge once more, both literally and metaphorically. Beneath her naked feet the ground fell away sharply, the water ten feet below where she balanced. Another step and she would have fallen.
The thought of it brought back to her the day he'd saved her life; the day he had dived into the cold, incoming tide and dragged her unconscious body from the waves, then had breathed the life back into her. Without him, she realized, she was nothing. Even so, she wanted something more than him. Something different.
She turned, walking back slowly to the cottage, enjoying the sun on her back, the faint, cooling breeze on her neck and arms. Back in the kitchen she cleared the table, scraping Ben's breakfast into the garbage, then busied herself tidying the place up. She was preparing the dinner, peeling the potatoes, singing softly to herself, when Ben finally appeared.
She didn't hear him. The first she knew was when he put his arms about her and turned her to face him.
"I'm sorry," he said, kissing her brow. "I wanted to try something out, that's all. A new idea ..."
She smiled, relieved that he was back with her; yet at the same time she knew he was withholding something from her.
"And the next scene? I thought we were going to start on it early."
"Ah. . ." He looked past her; out through the latticed window toward the bay. "I thought we might leave that for a while. This new thing . . ." He looked back at her, then kissed her nose. "Let's go out, huh? On the river, maybe. It's been some while since we took the boat out."
"I'd like that," she said, surprised how, as ever, he seemed to anticipate her mood; to read her better than she read herself.
"Good. Then leave that. I'll help you later. Let's pack a picnic. We can go to the old house."
She looked at him strangely. "Why there, Ben? It's an ugly place. There's nothing there now. Even the foundations . . ."
She stopped, realizing that he wasn't listening; that he was staring past her again, his mind elsewhere.
"Why there?" she asked again, softer this time.
"Because," he answered quietly, then laughed. "Just because."
BEN STOOD in the brilliant sunlight, his feet on the dark and glassy surface where the old house had once stood, looking about him. On every side of the broad, dark circle nature had proliferated, but here the green had gained no hold. He crouched, then brushed at the surface, wiping away the layer of dirt and dust. It was over eight years since he had lost his hand, here, on this spot. Beneath him the fused rock was mirror smooth. He stared into the polished darkness, trying to see his face, then turned, looking across at Meg.
Meg had laid the cloth down on the edge of the circle nearest the river, beneath the overhanging branches. She moved between sunlight and deep shade, the dark fall of her hair and the mottling of leaf shadow on her arms reminding Ben of childhood tales of wood nymphs and dryads. He stood there a while, watching her, then went across.
She looked up at him and smiled. "I was thinking of the last time we came here . . . before the accident."
"The library," he said, anticipating her. "And the secret room beyond."
"Yes." She looked about her, frowning, as if surprised not to find it all there, surrounding them.
"Where does it go, Ben? Where does it all go?"
He was about to say, "Up here," and tap his skull, but something in her manner stopped him. It was not a rhetorical question. She wanted to know.
"I don't know," he answered. Into the darkness, maybe.
She was still looking at him, her brown eyes wide with puzzlement. "Is it all just atoms, Ben? Atoms, endlessly combining and recombin-ing? Is that all there is, when it comes down to it?"
"Maybe." But even as he said it he realized that he didn't really believe it. There was something more. That same something he had felt only last night, in the flames and afterward in the darkness beside the water. Something just beyond his reach.
He shivered, then looked about him again, conscious of the old house, there, firm in his memory. He had only to close his eyes and he was back there, eight years ago in the spring—there in the room with the books; there in Augustus's secret room, reading his journal, and after, in the walled garden, standing beside Augustus's tomb.
His brother, dead these eighty-eight years. Part of old man Amos's experiment. Amos's seed, his son, like all of them.
"Oder jener stirbt und ists."
Meg looked up at him, curious. "What was that?"
"It's a line from Rilke. From the Eighth Elegy. It was carved on Augustus's gravestone. 'Or someone dies and is it.'" He nodded, finally understanding. Augustus saw it too. He too was in search of that same something—that terrible angel of beauty.
Ben sat, facing his sister, then reached across and took a bright green apple from the pile. As he bit into it, he thought back over what he had seen that morning, remembering the dark, wind-tanned faces of the raft-dwellers. Savage, barbarian faces, the teeth black or missing in their mouths, their long hair unkempt, their ragged furs and leathers greasy and patched. Some had worn ancient metallic badges with faded lettering, like the names of ancient tribes.
He had assessed the speed of the raft armada and estimated that it would be at least eleven hours before they reached the headland at Combe Point. That would bring them there roughly at sunset. Until then he could relax, enjoy the day.
He finished the apple, core and all, then reached across to take another.
"Ben. . ."
Meg's look of admonishment, so like his mother's, made him withdraw his hand. For a moment he was silent, watching her, then he laughed.
"IVe decided to change things," he said. "I've been thinking that maybe you were right. Maybe the Han should live."
Her face lit with delight. "Do you think so? Do you really think so?"
He nodded, then leaned closer, conspiratorially, including her again. "IVe been thinking through a whole new scenario. One in which Tong Ye is kept prisoner in the inn after the fight. He's badly injured, close to death, but the girl nurses him. And afterward. . ."
SHADOWS WERE lengthening in the valley as Ben sat down at his father's desk once more, the curtains drawn, the door locked tight behind him. It was dark in the room, but he had no need for light. Memory guided his fingers swiftly across the keyboard. At once twin screens lifted smoothly from the desktop to his left, glowing softly.
He called up the map of the Domain, homing in on the four grid squares at the mouth of the estuary. As he'd thought, the raft armada had anchored off the Dancing Beggars, just out of sight of the guard post at Blackstone Point.
He turned, facing the big screen as he brought it alive. It brightened, then settled to a dull reddish-brown, littered with small, ill-defined patches of darkness. The camera eye of the remote was looking directly into the portico of the meetinghouse, but in the late evening shadow it was hard to make out what, if anything, was happening.
He switched between the three remotes quickly, then returned to the first image, widening the aperture and enhancing the image until the dull orange haze to the right of center resolved itself into an ancient iron brazier filled with coals, the long, dark-barred shape behind it into the struts and spars of the meetinghouse. In the last of the daylight a dozen elders stood about the darkened doorway, talking animatedly. In the space before them, a large crowd had gathered, waiting cross-legged on the dark, smooth earth.