And then Rose leads them both to a poorly-lit corner of the gallery, to a series of rusted wire cages, and inside each one is a single stone. Large pebbles or small cobbles, stream-worn slate and granite, and each stone has been crudely engraved with a single word.
The first one reads “follow.”
“Peter, I need to go now,” Hannah says, unable to look away from the yellow-brown stone, the word tattooed on it, and she doesn’t dare let her eyes wander ahead to the next one.
“Are you sick?”
“I need to go, that’s all. I need to go now.”
“If you’re not feeling well,” the woman named Rose says, trying too hard to be helpful, “there’s a restroom in the back.”
“No, I’m fine. Really. I just need some air.”
And Peter puts an arm protectively around her, reciting his hurried, polite goodbyes to Rose. But Hannah still can’t look away from the stone, sitting there behind the wire like a small and vicious animal at the zoo.
“Good luck with the book,” Rose says and smiles, and Hannah’s beginning to think she is going to be sick, that she will have to make a dash for the toilet, after all. there’s a taste like foil in her mouth, and her heart like a mallet on dead and frozen beef, adrenaline, the first eager tug of vertigo.
“It was good to meet you, Hannah,” the woman says. Hannah manages to smile, manages to nod her head.
And then Peter leads her quickly back through the crowded gallery, out onto the sidewalk and the warm night spread out along Mercer Street.
8
“Would you like to talk about that day at the well?” Dr. Valloton asks, and Hannah bites at her chapped lower lip.
“No. Not now,” she says. “Not again.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve already told you everything I can remember.”
“If they’d found her body,” the psychologist says, “perhaps you and your mother and father would have been able to move on. There could have at least been some sort of closure. There wouldn’t have been that lingering hope that maybe someone would find her, that maybe she was alive.”
Hannah sighs loudly, looking at the clock for release, but there’s still almost half an hour to go.
“Judith fell down the well and drowned,” she says.
“But they never found the body.”
“No, but they found enough, enough to be sure. She fell down the well. She drowned. It was very deep.”
“You said you heard her calling you.”
“I’m not sure,” Hannah says, interrupting the psychologist before she can say the things she was going to say next, before she can use Hannah’s own words against her. “I’ve never been absolutely sure. I told you that.”
“I’m sorry if it seems like I’m pushing,” Dr. Valloton says.
“I just don’t see any reason to talk about it again.”
“Then let’s talk about the dreams, Hannah. Let’s talk about the day you saw the fairies.”
9
The dreams, or the day from which the dreams would arise and, half-forgotten, seek always to return. The dreams or the day itself, the one or the other, it makes very little difference. The mind exists only in a moment, always, a single flickering moment, remembered or actual, dreaming or awake or something liminal between the two, the precious, treacherous illusion of Present floundering in the crack between Past and Future.
The dream of the day—or the day itself—and the sun is high and small and white, a dazzling July sun coming down in shafts through the tall trees in the woods behind Hannah’s house. She’s running to catch up with Judith, her sister two years older and her legs grown longer, always leaving Hannah behind. You can’t catch me, slowpoke. You can’t even keep up. Hannah almost trips in a tangle of creeper vines and has to stop long enough to free her left foot.
“Wait up!” she shouts, and Judith doesn’t answer. “I want to see. Wait for me!”
The vines try to pull one of Hannah’s tennis shoes off and leave bright beads of blood on her ankle. But she’s loose again in only a moment, running down the narrow path to catch up, running through the summer sun and the oak-leaf shadows.
“I found something,” Judith said to her that morning after breakfast. The two of them sitting on the back porch steps. “Down in the clearing by the old well,” she said.
“What? What did you find?”
“Oh, I don’t think I should tell you. No, I definitely shouldn’t tell you. You might go and tell Mom and Dad. You might spoil everything.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t tell them anything. I wouldn’t tell any one.”
“Yes, you would, big mouth.”
And, finally, she gave Judith half her allowance to tell, half to be shown whatever there was to see. Her sister dug deep down into the pockets of her jeans, and her hand came back up with a shiny black pebble.
“I just gave you a whole dollar to show me a rock?”
“No, stupid. Look at it,” and Judith held out her hand.
The letters scratched deep into the stone—JVDTH—five crooked letters that almost spelled her sister’s name, and Hannah didn’t have to pretend not to be impressed.
“Wait for me!” she shouts again, angry now, her voice echoing around the trunks of the old trees and dead leaves crunching beneath her shoes. Starting to guess that the whole thing is a trick after all, just one of Judith’s stunts, and her sister’s probably watching her from a hiding place right this very second, snickering quietly to herself. Hannah stops running and stands in the center of the path, listening to the murmuring forest sounds around her.
And something faint and lilting that might be music.
“That’s not all,” Judith said. “But you have to swear you won’t tell Mom and Dad.”
“I swear.”
“If you do tell, well, I promise I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.”
“I won’t tell anyone anything.”
“Give it back,” Judith said, and Hannah immediately handed the black stone back to her. “If you do tell—”
“I already said I won’t. How many times do I have to say I won’t tell?”
“Well then,” Judith said and led her around to the back of the little tool shed where their father kept his hedge clippers and bags of fertilizer and the old lawnmowers he liked to take apart and try to put back together again.
“This better be worth a dollar,” Hannah said.
She stands very, very still and listens to the music, growing louder. She thinks it’s coming from the clearing up ahead.
“I’m going back home, Judith!” she shouts, not a bluff because suddenly she doesn’t care whether or not the thing in the jar was real, and the sun doesn’t seem as warm as it did only a moment ago.
And the music keeps getting louder.
And louder.
And Judith took an empty mayonnaise jar out of the empty rabbit hutch behind the tool shed. She held it up to the sun, smiling at whatever was inside.
“Let me see,” Hannah said.
“Maybe I should make you give me another dollar first,” her sister replied, smirking, not looking away from the jar.
“No way,” Hannah said indignantly. “Not a snowball’s chance in Hell,” and she grabbed for the jar, then, but Judith was faster, and her hand closed around nothing at all.
In the woods, Hannah turns and looks back towards home, then turns back towards the clearing again, waiting for her just beyond the trees.