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"Not under their laws. And her new husband was an important man. Later I
married a girl there named-it translates to Melody-and I got a farm. But a few
months later she drowned."
Her hand on his arm, Mary stopped him, looking earnestly into his eyes.
"Those things were no fault of yours. Were they?"
"Not so far as I know. But that's just part of what I've got to tell. The
easy part. I'm afraid you'll think I'm crazy when I tell you the rest of it,
but it wouldn't be honest if I didn't."
When he said nothing more, she turned, and they began walking slowly again,
still holding hands. "I have a secret, too," she said. "Not like the one I
told you on Saturday, that I'd hidden from myself all those years. It's one
that goes on every day of my life, and I've only ever told one person."
He didn't ask, but let her continue in her own time. "You've seen pictures of
Jesus and Mary, with haloes around their heads."
"Yeah."
"I see haloes. Everyone has one, and not just around their heads. They're
brightest there, but when I take the trouble to, I can see them around their
whole body." She peered at him earnestly. "Does that sound crazy?"
This time it was Curtis who stopped. "You see them? I do too! Varia called
them auras." He paused, his features vague in the darkness, but to Mary's eyes
his aura had expanded: pastels of red, gold, violet-a kind of personal aurora.
"That makes it easier for me," he said. "Easier to tell you what I need to."
They walked again, one street after another, Macurdy talking at length. He
told her more about Varia, who'd married his Uncle Will when Curtis was four
years old. Varia had seemed about twenty. Twenty years later, when Will was
killed felling timber, she still looked twenty. Then she'd married Curtis.
The story grew stranger, Macurdy's voice becoming monotone as he told it, as
if he'd lost hope again that Mary could possibly believe. Varia had come from
another world, he said, then repeated it another world, named Yuulith, with
gates that from time to time opened into this one. In Yuulith she'd belonged
to a Sisterhood that was like a tribe. Its women used magic-nothing all that
amazing, but useful-and stayed physically young for nearly a century, then
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rapidly grew old, and died in just a few years. They had men in the tribe for
breeding and soldiering, but the head Sister was the boss, like a queen. What
she said was. law.
A month later, when the gate had opened again, he'd gone to find Varia, and
on the other side been made a slave by a tribe there, then a shaman's
apprentice, then a soldier. Had been in a war, and found Varia, only to
discover she'd remarried. Then he'd married and lost Melody, and returned home
again.
They'd stopped on a low bluff overlooking the sparsely lit town, the Pacific
stretching in the distance to a horizon seen only by inference, where the
stars ended, the blackness becoming sea instead of sky. "And now," he
finished, "you probably think I'm either crazy or the world's biggest liar."
She took both his hands. -Curtis," she said quietly, "I'm not even going to
think about it. I'm lad you told me, but the smartest thing for me to do is
juste me and let you be you, and see how things develop.
"I see haloes, or auras, and most people, if I told them, would think I was
crazy or lying. Of course, another world, with gates to this one, sounds quite
a lot stranger than that, and I might never quitebelieve in it. But I'll get
used to the idea, and that's more important."
"I can generally tell when people are lying, by their haloes, and you're not.
And you don't have bad intentions, either; I can tell that too."
"As for magical powers--what you did last night was magical enough for me,
and that happened! It was real!"
She moved closer to him. "I want you to take me home now. But first I want
you to kiss me, because I'm in love with you." The kiss was soft and
lingering, then they turned back down the hill, saying almost nothing at all
until they reached her block, when Macurdy could delay no longer. "There's
something I didn't tell you. Something more important."
"Yes?"
"Varia said I won't get old either, till I'm maybe ninety. And that's kind of
how it seems. If she was right, then in fifty years I'll still look about
twenty-five."
It was Mary's turn to introvert now. After a long moment she responded: "And
I'll look about sixty-eight."
They walked on till they reached her front steps, then stopped. "I have a lot [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]