slopes and we'd hardly see the smoke. This side of Baldy is a rim fencing in an awful mess of canyons.' 'What'll we do?' Lizbeth quavered, hugging Susie to her. Another gust of wind and smoke set us all to coughing, and through my streaming tears I saw a long lapping tongue of fire reach around the canyon wall. Valancy and I looked at each other. I couldn't sort her mind, but mine was a panic, beating itself against the fire and then against the terrible tangle of manzanita all around us. Bruising against the possibility of lifting out of danger, then against the fact that none of the kids was capable of sustained progressive self-lifting for more than a minute or so, and how could we leave Valancy? I hid my face in my hands to shut out the acres and acres of tinder-dry manzanita that would blaze like a torch at the first touch of fire. If only it would rain! You can't set fire to wet manzanita, but after these long months of drought-! I heard the younger children scream and looked up to see Valancy staring at me with an intensity that frightened me even as I saw fire standing bright and terrible behind her at the mouth of the canyon. Jake, yelling hoarsely, broke from the group and lifted a yard or two over the manzanita before he tangled his feet and fell helpless into the ugly angled branches. 'Get under the tarp!' Valancy's voice was a whiplash. 'All of you get under the tarp!' 'It won't do any good,' Kiah bellowed. 'It'll burn like paper!' 'Get-under-the-tarp!' Valancy's spaced icy words drove us to unfolding the tarp and spreading it to creep under. Hoping even at this awful moment that Valancy wouldn't see me, I lifted over to Jake and yanked him back to his feet. I couldn't lift with him, so I pushed and prodded and half carried him back through the heavy surge of black smoke to the tarp and shoved him under. Valancy was standing, back to the fire, so changed and alien that I shut my eyes against her and started to crawl in with the other kids. And then she began to speak. The rolling terrible thunder of her voice shook my bones and I swallowed a scream. A surge of fear swept through our huddled group and shoved me back out from under the tarp. Till I die I'll never forget Valancy standing there tense and taller than life against the rolling convulsive clouds of smoke, both her hands outstretched, fingers wide apart as the measured terror of her voice went on and on in words that plagued me because I should have known them and didn't. As I watched I felt an icy cold gather, a paralyzing unearthly cold that froze the tears on my tensely upturned face. And then lightning leaped from finger to finger of her lifted hands. And lightning answered in the clouds above her. With a toss of her hands she threw the cold, the lightning, the sullen shifting smoke upward, and the roar of the racing fire was drowned in a hissing roar of down-drenching rain. I knelt there in the deluge, looking for an eternal second into her drained despairing hopeless eyes before I caught her just in time to keep her head from banging on the granite as she pitched forward, inert. Then as I sat there cradling her head in my lap, shaking with cold and fear, with the terrified wailing of the kids behind me, I heard Father shout and saw him and Jemmy and Darcy Clarinade in the old pickup, lifting over the steaming streaming manzanita, over the trackless mountainside through the rain to us. Father lowered the truck until one of the wheels brushed a branch and spun lazily; then the three of them lifted all of us up to the dear familiarity of that beat-up old jalopy. Jemmy received Valancy's limp body into his arms and crouched in back, huddling her in his arms, for the moment hostile to the whole world that had brought his love to such a pass. We kids clung to Father in an ecstasy of relief. He hugged us all tight to him; then he raised my face. 'Why did it rain?' he asked sternly, every inch an Old One while the cold downpour dripped off the ends of my hair and he stood dry inside his shield. 'I don't know,' I sobbed, blinking my streaming eyes against his sternness. 'Valancy did it-with lightning-it was cold-she talked-' Then I broke down completely, plumping down on the rough floor boards and, in spite of my age, howling right along with the other kids. It was a silent solemn group that gathered in the schoolhouse that evening. I sat at my desk with my hands folded stiffly in front of me, half scared of my own People. This was the first official meeting of the Old Ones I'd ever attended. They all sat in desks, too, except the Oldest who sat in Valancy's chair. Valancy sat stony-faced in the twins' desk, but her nervous fingers shredded one Kleenex after another as she waited. The Oldest rapped the side of the desk with his cane and turned his sightless eyes from one to another of us. 'We're all here,' he said, 'to inquire-'' 'Oh, stop it!' Valency jumped up from her seat. 'Can't you fire me without all this rigmarole? I'm used to it. Just say go and I'll go!' She stood trembling. 'Sit down, Miss Carmody,' said the Oldest. And Valancy sat down meekly. 'Where were you born?' the Oldest asked quietly. 'What does it matter?' Valancy flared. Then resignedly, 'It's in my application. Vista Mar, California.' 'And your parents?' 'I don't know.' There was a stir in the room. 'Why not?' 'Oh, this is so unnecessary!' Valency cried. 'But if you have to know, both my parents were foundlings. They were found wandering in the streets after a big explosion and fire in Vista Mar. An old couple who lost everything in the fire took them in. When they grew up, they married. I was born. They died. Can I go now?' A murmur swept the room. 'Why did you leave your other jobs?' Father asked. Before Valancy could answer the door was flung open and Jemmy stalked defiantly in. 'Go!' the Oldest said. 'Please,' Jemmy said, deflating suddenly. 'Let me stay. It concerns me, too.' The Oldest fingered his cane and then nodded. Jemmy half smiled with relief and sat down in a back seat. ''Go on,' the Oldest One said to Valancy. 'All right then,' Valancy said. ''I lost my first job because I-well-I guess you'd call it levitated to fix a broken blind in my room. It was stuck and I just-went up-in the air until I unstuck it. The principal saw me. He couldn't believe it and it scared him so he fired me.'' She paused expectantly. The Old Ones looked at one another, and my silly confused mind began to add up columns that only my lack of common sense had kept from giving totals to long ago. 'And the other one?' The Oldest leaned his cheek on his doubled up hand as he bent forward. Valancy was taken aback and she flushed in confusion. 'Well,' she said hesitantly, 'I called my books to me-I mean they were on my desk-' 'We know what you mean,' the Oldest said. 'You know!' Valency looked dazed. The Oldest stood up. 'Valancy Carmody, open your mind!' Valancy stared at him and then burst into tears. 'I can't, I can't,' she sobbed. 'It's been too long. I can't let anyone in. I'm different. I'm alone. Can't you understand? They all died. I'm alien!' 'You are alien no longer,' the Oldest said. 'You are home now, Valancy.' He motioned to me. 'Karen, go in to her.' So I did. At first the wall was still there; then with a soundless cry, half anguish and half joy, the wall went down and I was with Valancy. I saw all the secrets that had cankered in her since her parents died-the parents who were of the People. They had been reared by the old couple who were not only of the People but had been the Oldest of the whole Crossing. I tasted with her the hidden frightening things-the need for living as an Outsider, the terrible need for concealing all her differences and suppressing all the extra Gifts of the People, the ever-present fear of betraying herself and the awful lostness that came when she thought she was the last of the People. And then suddenly she came in to me and my mind was flooded with a far greater presence than I had ever
