* * *
“It’s all right,” Roger said, trying to sound authoritatively reassuring. “She’ll be all right now.”
In truth, he had no idea whether Claire Randall would ever be all right. She was alive, at least, and that was all he could vouch for.
They had found her, senseless in the grass near the edge of the circle, white as the rising moon above, with nothing but the slow, dark seep of blood from her abraded palms to testify that her heart still beat. Of the hellish journey down the path to the car, her dead weight slung across his shoulder, bumping awkwardly as stones rolled under his feet and twigs snatched at his clothing, he preferred to remember nothing.
The trip down the cursed hill had exhausted him; it was Brianna, the bones of her face stark with concentration, who had driven them back to the manse, hands clamped to the wheel like vises. Slumped in the seat beside her, Roger had seen in the rearview mirror the last faint glow of the hilltop behind them, where a small, luminous cloud floated like a puff of cannon smoke, mute evidence of battle past.
Brianna hovered now over the sofa where her mother lay, motionless as a tomb figure on a sarcophagus. With a shudder, Roger had avoided the hearth where the banked fire lay sleeping, and had instead pulled up the small electric fire with which the Reverend had warmed his feet on winter nights. Its bars glowed orange and hot, and it made a loud, friendly whirring noise that covered the silence in the study.
Roger sat on a low stool beside the sofa, feeling limp and starchless. With the last remnants of resolve, he reached toward the telephone table, his hand hovering a few inches above the instrument.
“Should we—” He had to stop to clear his throat. “Should we…call a doctor? The police?”
“No.” Brianna’s voice was intent, almost absentminded, as she bent over the still figure on the couch. “She’s coming around.”
The domed eyelids stirred, tightened briefly in the returning memory of pain, then relaxed and opened. Her eyes were clear and soft as honey. They drifted to and fro, skimmed over Brianna, standing tall and stiff at his side, and fixed on Roger’s face.
Claire’s lips were bloodless as the rest of her face; it took more than one try to get the words out, in a hoarse whisper.
“Did she…go back?”
Her fingers were twisted in the fabric of her skirt, and he saw the faint, dark smear of blood they left behind. His own hands clutched instinctively on his knees, palms tingling. She had held on, too, then, grappling among the grass and gravel for any small hold against the engulfment of the past. He closed his eyes against the memory of that pulling rupture, nodding.
“Yes,” he said. “She went.”
The clear eyes went at once to her daughter’s face, brows above them arched as though in question. But it was Brianna who asked.
“It was true, then?” she asked hesitantly. “Everything was true?”
Roger felt the small shudder that ran through the girl’s body, and without thinking about it, reached up to take her hand. He winced involuntarily as she squeezed it, and suddenly in memory heard one of the Reverend’s texts: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.” And those who must see, in order to believe? The effects of belief wrought by seeing trembled fearful at his side, terrified at what else must now be believed.
Even as the girl tightened, bracing herself to meet a truth she had already seen, the lines of Claire’s tensed body on the sofa relaxed. The pale lips curved in the shadow of a smile, and a look of profound peace smoothed the strained white face, and settled glowing in the golden eyes.
“It’s true,” she said. A tinge of color came back into the pallid cheeks. “Would your mother lie to you?” And she closed her eyes once more.