The Twelve

68


The day of departure arrived with a hard, bright dawn. The advance team gathered at the stadium: thirty men and women, six trucks, and two refuelers. Eustace and Nina had come to see them off, as well as Lore and Greer.

A small crowd had gathered, family and friends of those who would be departing. Sara and the others had already said goodbye to Michael the night before, at the hospital. Go on, he said, his face red, get out of here. How is a guy supposed to get his rest? But the card Kate had made for him proved his undoing. I Love Youe Unkle Michel, Get Whell. Aw, flyers, he said, get over here, and gripped the little girl tightly to his chest, tears rolling from his eyes.

The last supplies were loaded into the trucks; everybody climbed aboard. Peter would ride in the lead pickup, with Hollis; Kate and Sara were riding in one of the large transports at the rear. As Peter fired the ignition, Greer stepped to his window. In Peter’s absence, the major had agreed to serve in his stead as Eustace’s second-in-command and was now in charge of the evacuation.

“I don’t know where she is, Peter. I’m sorry.”

Had he been so obvious? Once again, Lish had left him standing at the altar. “I’m just worried about her. Something’s not right.”

“She went through a lot in that cell. I don’t think she’s told us even half of it. She’ll bounce back—she always does.”

There was nothing more to say on the subject. Nor on the other, which in the days since the uprising had hung over them with its unspoken weight of grief. The logical explanation was that Amy had been killed in the explosion, vaporized with the other virals, and yet part of him could not accept this. She felt like a ghost limb, an invisible part of him.

The two men shook hands. “Be careful okay?” Greer said. “You too, Hollis. It’s a different world out there, but you never know.”

Peter nodded. “All eyes, Major.”

Greer allowed himself a rare smile. “I confess I like the sound of that. Who knows? Maybe they’ll take me back, after all.”

The moment of parting was at hand. Peter ground the truck into gear; with a throb of heavy engines, the line of vehicles drew clear of the gate. In the rearview mirror, Peter watched as the buildings of the Homeland receded from view, fading into the winter whiteness.

“I’m sure she’s somewhere, Peter,” Hollis said.

Peter wondered whom he meant.


From her hiding place in the culvert, Alicia watched the convoy drive away. For many days she had lived this moment in advance, attempting to prepare herself. How would it feel? Even now she couldn’t say. Final, that was all. It felt final. The line of trucks cut a broad arc around the fences of the city and turned south. For a long time Alicia watched it, the image growing smaller, the sound of the engines dimming. She was still watching when it disappeared.

There was one thing left to do.

She’d taken the blood from the hospital, secreting the sloshing plastic pouch beneath her tunic when Sara’s back was turned. It had taken all her resolve not to clamp her jaws into it and bathe her face and mouth and tongue in its earthy richness. But when she’d thought of Peter, and Amy, and Michael, and all the others, she had found the strength to wait.

She had buried the pouch in the snow, marking the spot with a stone. Now she dug it free: a block of red ice, dense in her hand. Soldier was watching her from the edge of the culvert. Alicia would have told him to go, but of course he wouldn’t; they belonged to each other till the end. She built a fire of crackling scrub, melted snow in a pot, waited till the bubbles rose, and dipped the bag into the steaming water—as if, she thought, she were steeping tea. Gradually the contents softened to a slush. When the blood had thawed completely, Alicia removed the bag and lay in the snow, cradling its warmth against her chest. Within its plastic casing lay a destiny deferred. Since the day the viral had bitten her on the mountain, five years ago, the knowledge of her fate had lain inside her; now she would meet it. She would meet it, and die.

The morning sun was climbing into a cloudless winter sky. The sun. Alicia squinted her eyes against its brightness. The sun, she thought. My enemy, my friend, my last deliverance. It would sweep her away. It would scatter her ashes to the wind. Be quick now, Alicia said to the sun, but not too quick. I want to feel it coming out of me.

She raised the bag to her lips, pulled the tab, and drank.

* * *

By dusk the convoy had traveled sixty miles. The town was named Grinnell. They took shelter in an abandoned store at the edge of town that apparently had once sold shoes; boxes and boxes of them lined the racks. So, a place worth returning to, someday. They ate their rations, bedded down, and slept.

Or tried to. It wasn’t the cold—Peter was accustomed to that. He was simply too keyed up. The events in the stadium had been too enormous to process all at once; nearly a month later, he still found himself caught up in their emotions, his mind flashing restlessly with the images.

Peter pulled on his parka and boots and stepped outside. They’d posted a single guard, who was sitting in a metal folding chair they’d brought out from the store; Peter accepted the man’s rifle and sent him to bed. The moon was shining, the air like ice in his lungs. He stood in silence, drinking in the night’s stark clarity. For days after the uprising, Peter had tried to will himself into some emotion that would correspond to the magnitude of events—happiness or triumph or even just relief—but all he felt was lonely. He remembered Greer’s parting words: It’s a different world out there. It was, Peter knew that; yet it did not seem so. If anything, the world felt even more like itself. Here were the frozen fields, like a vast, becalmed sea; here was the immeasurable, starlit sky; here was the moon with its jaundiced, heavy-lidded gaze, like the answer to a question nobody had posed. Everything was just as it had been, and would go on being, long after all of them were gone, their names and memories and all they were ground like their bones into the dust of time and blown away.

A noise behind him: Sara stepped through the door, toting Kate on her hip. The girl’s eyes were open and looking about. Sara moved beside Peter, her boots crunching on the snow.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

She made a face of exasperation. “Believe me, I could. It’s my fault, I let her nap too long in the truck.”

“Hi, Peter,” the little girl said.

“Hi, sweetheart. Shouldn’t you be in bed? We’ve got another long day tomorrow, you know.”

She pressed her lips together. “Mm-mm.”

“See?” Sara said.

“Want me to take her for a while? I can, you know.”

“What, out here, you mean?”

Peter shrugged. “A little fresh air should fix her right up. And I could use the company.” When Sara didn’t answer, Peter said, “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye. What do you say, Kate?”

“You’re sure about this?” Sara pressed.

“Sure I’m sure. What else am I going to do? The minute she gets sleepy, I’ll bring her inside.” He propped his rifle against the building and held out his arms. “Come on now, hand her over. I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Sara acquiesced, shifting Kate from her waist to Peter’s. The little girl wrapped her legs around him, gripping the lapel of his parka to balance her weight.

Sara stood back a bit to regard the two of them. “I’ve got to say, this isn’t a version of you I’ve seen before.”

He felt himself smile. “Five years. A lot can change.”

“Well, it suits you.” A sudden yawn seized her. “Seriously, if she gets to be a bother …”

“She won’t. Now, will you go? Get some sleep.”

Sara left them alone. Peter lowered himself into the chair, shifted Kate to his lap, and turned her body toward the winter sky. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“I dunno.”

“Not tired at all?”

“Nope.”

“How about we count some stars?”

“That’s boring.” She shifted, making herself comfortable, then commanded: “Tell me a story.”

“A story. What kind?”

“A once-upon-a-time story.”

He wasn’t sure how, having never done this before. Yet as he considered the girl’s request, a rush of memories flowed through him: his days as a Little in the Sanctuary, sitting in circle with the other children, their legs folded under them; Teacher, her pale, moonlike face and the stories she told, of talking animals in waistcoats and skirts and kings in their castles and ships crossing the sea in search of treasure; the drowsy sensation of the words passing through him, carrying him away into distant worlds and times, as if he were leaving his own body. They were recollections of another life; they were so distant as to feel historical; yet sitting in the winter cold with Sara’s daughter on his lap, they did not seem apart from him. He felt a mantle pass and, with it, a twinge of regret: he’d never told Caleb a story.

“So.” He cleared his throat, stalling to assemble his thoughts. But the truth was, he had nothing; every story from his childhood had suddenly fled his mind. He’d simply have to wing it. “Let’s see—”

“It needs a girl in it,” Kate said, helpfully.

“So it does. I was just getting to that. So, once upon a time there was a little girl—”

“What did she look like?”

“Hmm. Well, she was very pretty. A lot like you, actually.”

“Was she a princess?”

“Are you going to let me tell this or not? But now that you mention it, she was. The most beautiful princess who ever lived. But the thing is, she didn’t know she was a princess. That’s the interesting part.”

Kate frowned bossily. “Why didn’t she know?”

Something clicked then; he felt the contours of a story emerging in his mind.

“That is a very excellent question. What happened was this. When she was very young, not much more than a baby, her parents, the king and queen, took her on a picnic in the royal forest. It was a sunny day, and the little girl, whose name was Princess …”

“Elizabeth.”

“Princess Elizabeth, saw a butterfly. An amazing butterfly. Her parents weren’t paying attention, and she followed the butterfly into the woods, trying to catch it. But the thing is, it wasn’t a butterfly. It was … a fairy queen.”

“Really?”

“It’s true. Now, the thing about fairies is, they don’t trust people. They pretty much keep to themselves, and that’s the way they like it. But the fairy queen was different. She’d always wanted a daughter. Fairies don’t have children of their own. It made her very sad not to have a little girl to take care of, and when she saw Princess Elizabeth, she was so moved by her beauty that she couldn’t help herself. She led the child away, deeper and deeper into the woods. Soon the little girl was lost and began to cry. The fairy queen landed on her nose, and brushed her tears away with her delicate wings, and said, ‘Don’t be sad. I’ll take care of you. You will be my little girl now.’ And she took her to the big hollow tree where she lived with all her fairy subjects, and gave her food to eat and a table to sit at and a little bed to sleep in, and before too long Princess Elizabeth had no memory of any other life, except her life among the fairies of the forest.”

Kate was nodding along. “What happened then?”

“Well, nothing. Not right away. For a while they were very happy together, the fairy queen especially. How wonderful it felt for her to have a little girl of her own. But as Elizabeth grew, she began to feel that something wasn’t right. Do you know what that was?”

“She wasn’t a fairy?”

“Exactly. Good for you, for figuring that out. She wasn’t a fairy, she was a little girl, and not so little anymore. Why am I so different? she wondered. And the taller she grew, the harder this was for the fairy queen to conceal. Why do my feet stick out from my bed, Elizabeth would ask her, and the fairy queen would say, Because beds are always small, that’s just how they are. Why is my table so tiny, Elizabeth asked, and the fairy queen said, I’m sorry, it’s not the table’s fault, you’ll just have to stop growing. Which, of course, she couldn’t do. She grew and grew, and soon she barely fit inside the tree anymore. All the other fairies complained. They were afraid she’d eat all their food and there’d be nothing left. They were afraid she’d accidentally squash them. Something had to be done, but the fairy queen refused. With me so far?”

Kate nodded, enthralled.

“Now, the king and queen, Elizabeth’s parents, had never stopped looking for her. They’d combed every inch of the forest, and all the lands of the kingdom besides. But the tree was very well hidden. Then one day they heard a rumor about a little girl living in the forest with the fairies. Could that be our daughter? they wondered. And they did the only thing they could think of. They ordered the royal woodsmen to cut down all the trees until they found the one with Elizabeth inside it.”

“All of them?”

Peter nodded. “Every last one. Which was not a good idea. The woods were home not only to the fairies but to all kinds of animals and birds. But Elizabeth’s parents were so desperate, they would have done anything to get their daughter back. So the woodsmen got to work, chopping down the forest, while the king and queen rode out on their horses, calling her name. ‘Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Where are you?’ And you know what happened?”

“She heard them?”

“Yes, she did. Only the name Elizabeth didn’t mean anything to her anymore. She had a fairy name now, and had forgotten everything about her life. But the fairy queen knew what she was hearing, and she felt pretty awful about it. How could I have done this terrible thing? she thought. How could I have taken Elizabeth away? But still she couldn’t make herself fly out of the tree to tell Elizabeth’s parents where she was. She loved the girl too much, you see, to let her go. ‘Be very still,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘Don’t make a sound.’ The woodsmen were coming closer and closer. Trees were falling everywhere. All the fairies were afraid. ‘Give her back,’ they said to the fairy queen, ‘please, give her back before they destroy the entire forest.’ ”

“Wow,” Kate gasped.

“I know. It’s a pretty scary story. Should I stop?”

“Uncle Peter, please.”

He laughed. “All right, all right. So, the woodsmen came to the tree with Elizabeth and the fairies inside. It was an especially magnificent tree, tall and wide, with a big canopy of leaves. A fairy tree. But as one woodsman reared back with his axe, the king had a change of heart. The tree, you see, was just too beautiful to cut down. I’m sure the creatures of the forest care about this tree as much as I care about my daughter, he said. It wouldn’t be right to take it away from them, all because I’ve lost something I love. Everybody, put your axes down and go home and let me and my wife mourn for our daughter, who we will never see again. It was very sad. Everybody was in tears. Elizabeth’s parents, the woodsmen, even the fairy queen, who had heard every word. Because she knew that Elizabeth could never be her real daughter, no matter how hard she wished it. So she took her by the hand and led her out of the tree and said, ‘Your Majesties, please forgive me. It was I who took your daughter. I wanted a little girl of my own so much that I couldn’t help myself. But I know now that she belongs with you. I’m so very, very sorry.’ And you know what the king and queen said?”

“Off with your head?”

Peter stifled a laugh. “Just the opposite. Despite everything that had happened, they were so happy to have their daughter back, and so moved by the fairy queen’s remorse, that they decided to reward her. They issued a royal proclamation that the fairies should be left to live in peace, and that all children of the realm should have one special fairy friend. Which is why, to this day, only children can see them.”

Kate was silent a moment. “So that’s the end?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” He felt faintly embarrassed. “I haven’t really done this before. How’d I do?”

The girl considered this, then said, with a crisp nod, “I liked it. It was a good story. Tell me another.”

“I’m not sure I’ve got another one in me. Aren’t you tired yet?”

“Please, Uncle Peter.”

The night was clear, the stars shining down. Everything was still, not a trace of movement or sound. Peter thought of Caleb, realizing with a power that startled him how much he missed the boy, how he longed to hold him in his arms. Alicia was right, and Tifty too. But most of all, Amy. He loves you, you know. The truth filled him like a breath of winter air. Peter would go home and learn to be a father.

“So, okay …”

He talked and talked. He told her every story he knew. By the time he was done, Kate was yawning; her body had gone slack in his arms. He unzipped his coat and swiveled her on his lap, pulling the flaps around her.

“Are you cold, sweetheart?”

Her voice was soft, half gone. “Nuh-uh.”

She nestled against him. Just another minute, Peter thought, and closed his eyes. Just another minute, and I’ll take her inside. He felt Kate’s warm breath on his neck; her chest moved gently against his own, rising and falling, like long waves on a beach. But a minute passed, and then another and another, and by that time Peter wasn’t going anywhere, because he was fast asleep.


In the lavatory of the apothecary shop, Lucius Greer was shaving.

The day, and most of the night besides, had disappeared under an avalanche of duties. A meeting of the Council of Lodges, during which Eustace had attempted first to reexplain and then once more justify the lottery procedure for evacuation; the tallying of census data, which had revealed numerous duplicate forms, some made in error, others with deliberate intent by individuals trying to increase their odds of being chosen; a brawl outside the detention center when a group of three cols, half-starved after weeks of hiding in an unused warehouse, had attempted to turn themselves in, only to be intercepted by the small crowd that kept vigil outside the building; nine weddings over which he’d been asked to officiate when one of the JPs had taken ill (all Lucius had to do was read four sentences off a card, yet it surprised him, how weighty it felt to say them aloud); the first official gathering of the evacuation support teams, and the partitioning of their responsibilities in preparation for the first departure; and on and on. A day of one thing and then another and another; Lucius couldn’t remember what or even if he’d eaten, he’d barely sat down all day, and yet here he was, past midnight, gazing at his grizzled, hirsute face in the mirror, holding a blade in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other.

He began with the scissors. Snip by snip the wild torrent of his hair and beard fell away, their white leavings gathering on the floor by his feet like drifts of feathered snow. When this was done he warmed a pot of water, soaked a rag and wrung it out, and lay it over his face to soften the bristles that remained. He smeared his cheeks with soap, harsh and chemical-smelling, then went to work with the blade: first his cheeks, then the long arc of his neck, and finally his head, working backward from brow to crown to the base of his skull in short, measured strokes. The first time he had shaved himself in this manner, the night before he’d taken the oath of the Expeditionary, he had cut himself in about twenty places. It was commonly said that you didn’t need to look at the uniform to know a fresh recruit; all you had to do was look at his head. But with time and practice, Greer, like all of his fellows, had gotten the knack, and it pleased him to discover that he hadn’t lost his touch. He could have done it blindfolded in the dark if he had to, yet there was satisfaction to be had in observing a ritual that after so many years still possessed the power of a baptism. Scrape by scrape his visage was laid bare, and when the task was complete, Greer stepped back to examine his face in the mirror, running his hand over the cool pinkness of his rediscovered flesh and nodding with approval at the image he beheld.

He wiped himself down, cleaned and dried his blade, and put his supplies away. Many days had passed since he had properly slept, and still he was not the least bit tired. He drew on his parka and boots, let himself out the back, and made his way down the alley. It was nearly one A.M., not a soul about, yet from all around Greer sensed a kind of molecular restlessness, a subaural hum of life. He moved past the ruined Dome, down the hill, through the flatland to the stadium. By the time he arrived, the moon was down. He chose not to enter the structure, rather to stand in the absolute quiet and take it in whole, this blot of darkness against the starry sky. He wondered: Would history remember this place? Would the people of the future, whoever they were, give it a name, one worthy of the events that had transpired here, to record it for posterity? A hopeful thought, a bit premature, but one worth having. And Lucius Greer took a silent vow. Should such a future come to pass, should the final battle for earth’s dominion be taken in victory, he would be the one to put pen to paper, to give the story words.

He did not know when this battle would be. Amy had not told him that. Only that it would come.

He understood, then, what force had led him here. He was looking for a sign. What form this sign would take, he could not say. It might come now, it might come later, it might not come at all. Such was the burden of his faith. He opened his mind and waited. An interval of time moved by. The night, the stars, the living world; all passed through him, like a blessing.

Then:

Lucius. My friend. Hello.


And on this night of miraculous things, Peter, sitting outside the shoe store, awoke to the feeling that he was, in fact, not awake at all—that one dream had simply opened into the next, like a door behind a door. A dream in which he was sitting with Sara’s daughter in his arms at the edge of the snowy fields, all else being the same—the inky sky, the winter cold, the lateness of the hour—except for the fact that they were not alone.

But it was not a dream.

She crouched before him, in the manner of her kind. Her transformation was complete; even her raven mane was gone. Yet as their eyes met and held, the image wavered in his mind; it was not a viral he saw. It was a girl, and then a woman, and then both of these at once. She was Amy, the Girl from Nowhere; she was Amy of Souls, Last of the Twelve; she was only herself. Extending a hand toward him, Amy held her palm upright; Peter replied in kind. A force of pure longing surged in his heart as their fingers touched. It was a kind of kiss.

How long they stayed that way, Peter didn’t know. Between them, in the warm cocoon of his coat, Kate slept soundly, oblivious. Time had released its moorings; Peter and Amy drifted together in the current. Soon the child would awaken, or Sara would come, or Hollis, and Amy would be gone. She would lift away in a streak of starry light. Peter would return the sleeping child to her bed, and lie down himself, even attempt to sleep; and in the morning, in the gray winter dawn, they would stretch their bones and load up their gear and continue on their long road south. The moment would pass, like all things, into memory.

But not just yet.





69


The driver this time was a woman. Amy put down her sign and got into the car.

“How do you do, Amy?” She offered her hand. “I’m Rachel Wood.”

They shook. For a moment Amy was rendered speechless, arrested by the woman’s beauty: a face of delicate, well-made bones, as if honed with the finest tools; skin that glowed with youthful health; a trim, strong body, her arms articulated with lean muscle. Her hair, pulled away from her face in a taut ponytail, was blond with golden streaks. She was wearing what Amy knew to be tennis clothes, although this knowledge seemed to come from elsewhere, the idea of tennis itself lacking any meaningful reference. Sunglasses with tiny jewels embedded in the arms were perched on top of her head.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to get you before,” Rachel continued. “Anthony thought you’d like a familiar face the first time.”

“I’m very glad to meet you,” Amy said.

“That’s sweet of you to say.” She smiled, showing her teeth, which were small and straight and very white. “Buckle up now.”

They glided away from the overpass. All was the same as the last time—the same houses and stores and parking lots, the same glowing summer light, the same busy world flowing past. In the deep leather of her seat, Amy felt as if she were floating in a bath. Rachel seemed thoroughly at home at the wheel of the immense vehicle, humming a shapeless tune under her breath as she guided them confidently through traffic. As a large pickup braked ahead of them, blocking the lane, Rachel flicked on her blinker and deftly swerved to pass.

“For goodness sake,” she sighed, “some people. Where do they learn to drive?” She looked at Amy hastily and returned her eyes to the road. “You know, you’re not quite what I imagined, I have to say.”

“No?”

“Oh, not in a bad way,” Rachel assured her. “That’s not what I meant at all. Honestly, you’re just pretty as a picture. I wish I had skin like that.”

“So how am I different?”

She hesitated, choosing her words. “I just thought you’d be, you know. Younger.”

They continued on. Amy’s abrupt arrival in this place had brought about a mild disorientation and, with it, a muting of emotion. But as the minutes passed, she felt her mind opening to her circumstances, the images and her responses to them growing more defined. How remarkable everything was, Amy thought. How very, very remarkable. They were inside the ship, the Chevron Mariner, yet she had no physical awareness of this; as before, with Wolgast, every detail of the scene possessed an absolutely firm appearance of reality. Perhaps it was real, in some alternate sense of the word. What, after all, was “real”?

“Right there is where I stopped with him, that first time.” Rachel gestured out the window to a block of stores. “Somehow I had it in my head he might like doughnuts. Doughnuts, can you imagine?” Before Amy could assemble a response, she went on: “But listen to me, giving you the grand tour. I’m sure you know all about it. And you must be tired, after such a long trip.”

“It’s all right,” Amy said. “I don’t mind.”

“Oh, he was such a sight.” Rachel shook her head sadly. “That poor man. My heart just went out. I said to myself, Rachel, you have to do something. For once in your little life, get your head out of the sand. But of course I was really thinking about myself, as usual. Which is the thing. I’ve got enough regrets on that score to last a hundred lifetimes. I didn’t deserve him, not one iota.”

“I don’t think he believes that.”

She slowed the car to turn onto a residential street. “It’s really marvelous, you know. What you’re doing. He’s been alone so long.”

Soon, they pulled up to the house. “Well, here we are,” Rachel announced in a chipper voice. She had put the vehicle in park though she’d left the engine running, just as Wolgast had done. “It was a pleasure to finally meet you, Amy. You’ll want to watch your step getting out.”

“Why don’t you come with me? I know he’d like to see you.”

“Oh, no,” said Rachel. “It’s nice of you to ask, but that’s not how this works, I’m afraid. That’s against the rules.”

“What rules?”

“Just … the rules.”

Amy waited for more, but there was none; there was nothing to do but climb out of the car. By the open door she turned to look at Rachel, who was waiting with her hands on the wheel. The air was thick and warm beneath the green canopy of the trees; insects were buzzing everywhere with their bright, chaotic music, like the notes of an orchestra tuning up.

“Tell him I’m thinking about him, won’t you? Tell him Rachel sends her love.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t come with me.”

Rachel directed her gaze over the dashboard, toward the house. It seemed to Amy she was searching for something, her eyes, which had clouded with a sudden grief, pausing at each of its many windows. Tears appeared at the corners of her eyes.

“I can’t, you see, because it wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Why wouldn’t it make sense?”

“Because, Amy,” she said, “I’m already there.”


She found him kneeling in the flowerbeds, working in the dirt. A wheelbarrow was positioned nearby; piles of dark mulch, exuding a heavy earthen smell, were dispersed among the beds. At her approach he rose to his feet, removing his broad-brimmed straw hat and drawing off his gloves.

“Miss Amy, you’re right on time now. I was just setting to work on the lawn, but I reckon that’ll keep.” He waved his hat toward the patio, where glasses of tea awaited. “Come and sit a spell.”

They took their places at the table. Amy tipped her face to the crowns of the trees, letting the sunlight warm her. The aromas of grass and flowers filled her senses.

“Thought you’d be more comfortable this way,” Carter said. “The two of us can have a time, talking and such. Make the days pass.”

“You knew he’d be there, didn’t you?”

Carter mopped his brow with a rag. “Didn’t send him, if that’s what you mean. Wolgast just had his way. No talking him out of it when he set his mind on it.”

“But how come the others didn’t know who he was? They couldn’t have. They would have killed him.”

Carter shook his head. “Their kind never could read me, one way or the other. You could say we been out of touch awhile. It’s a two-way street, and I ain’t sent nothing back their way since the beginning. Shut my mind to all of them.” Carter hitched up in his chair and returned the cloth to his back pocket. “You done right, Miss Amy. Wolgast, too. Was a hard and terrible thing, I know that.”

She was suddenly thirsty; the tea felt cool and sweet going down and left a bright, lemony taste on her tongue. Carter watched her, waving his hat in a gentle motion to push a breeze over his face.

“And Zero?”

“I expect there’s time yet. But he’ll be coming for us. This here’s personal now. He’s surely the worst of ’em. Put ’em all together and you still ain’t got one Zero. Bridge we cross when we come to it.”

“And until then, here we stay.”

Carter nodded in his patient way. “Yes’m. Here we stay.”

They sat together in silence, thinking of what would come.

“I’ve never tended a garden before,” Amy said. “Would you teach me?”

“Always lots to be done. Reckon I could use the help. Mower’s fussy, though.”

“I’m sure I could learn.”

“I’m supposing you could, now,” he said with a smile. “I reckon that’s the case.”

Amy remembered her promise. “Rachel told me to send her love.”

“Did she, now. I was just thinkin’ on her. How she look to you?”

“Beautiful, really. I’d never really had a chance to see her clearly before. But sad, too. She was looking at the house, like there was something she wanted.”

Carter seemed surprised. “Why, it’s her babies, Miss Amy. I thought you knew.”

Amy shook her head.

“Haley and the little one. Woman can’t see or touch ’em, where she is. It’s her babies she’s always dreamin’ on. It’s the most awful ache to her.”

Amy finally understood. Rachel had drowned herself, leaving her children behind. “Will she ever see them again?”

“I expect she will when she ready. It’s her own self she has to forgive, for leaving them like she did.”

His words seemed to hover in the air, not sounds alone but things of form and substance. The temperature was dropping; the leaves had begun to fall.

“She not the only one, Miss Amy. Some folks can’t find a way on they own. For some it’s a bad feeling in the mind. Others just can’t let go. Them’s the ones that love too hard.”

In the pool, the body of Rachel Wood had completed its slow ascent to float upon the surface. Amy looked down at the table; she knew what Carter was saying to her. Every day I cut the lawn, she thought. Every day she rise.

“You got to go to him,” said Carter. “Show him the way.”

“I just …” She felt his eyes on her face. “I don’t know how.”

He reached over the table and cupped her chin, lifting it upward. “I know you, Miss Amy. It’s like you been inside me all my life. You the one was made to set this whole world right. But Wolgast’s just a man. It’s his time now. You got to give him back.”

Tears trembled in her throat. “But what will I do without him?”

“Just like you always done,” said Anthony Carter, and smiled into her eyes. “Just like you do now. You Amy.”