The People

The People No Different Flesh The Second Book of the People
Zenna Henderson
NO DIFFERENT FLESH
Meris watched the darkness rip open and mend itself again in the same blinding flash that closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids the dark reversals flicked and faded. Thunder jarred the cabin window where she leaned and troubled her bones. The storm had been gathering all afternoon, billowing up in blue and white thunderheads over the hills, spreading darkly, somberly to snuff the sunset. The wind was not the straight-blowing, tree-lashing, branch-breaker of the usual summer storm. Instead, it blew simultaneously from several directions. It mourned like a snow wind around the eaves of the cabin. It ripped the length of the canyon through the treetops while the brush below hardly stirred a twig. Lightning was so continuous now that glimpses of the outdoors came through the windows like vast shouts and sudden blows.
Lights in the cabin gasped, recovered, and died. Meris heard Mark's sigh and the ruffle of his pushed-back papers.
'I'll get the lantern,' he said. 'It's out in the storeroom, isn't it?'
'Yes.' Lightning flushed the whole room, now that the light no longer defended it. 'But it needs filling. Why don't we wait to see if the lights come back on. We could watch the storm-'
'I'm sorry.' Mark's arm was gentle across her shoulders. 'I'd like to, but I can't spare the time. Every minute-'
Meris pressed her face to the glass, peering out into the chaotic darkness of the canyon wall. She still wasn't quite used to being interested in anything outside her own grief and misery-all those long months of painful numbness that at the same time had been a protesting hammering at the Golden Gates and a wild shrieking at God. What a blessed relief it was finally to be able to let go of the baby-to feel grief begin to drain away as though a boil had been lanced. Not that sorrow would be gone, but now there could be healing for the blow that had been too heavy to be mortal.
'Take good care of her,' she whispered to the bright slash of the lightning. 'Keep her safe and happy until I come.'
She winced away from the window, startled at the sudden audible splat of rain against the glass. The splat became a rattle and the rattle a gushing roar and the fade-and-flare of the outdoors dissolved into streaming rain.
Mark came back into the cabin, the fight in his hands flooding blue-white across the room. He hung the lantern on the beam above the table and joined Meris at the window.
'The storm is about over,' said Meris, turning in the curve of his arm. 'It's only rain now.'
'It'll be back,' he said. 'It's just taking a deep breath before smacking us amidships again.'
'Mark.' The tone of Meris's voice caught his attention.
'Mark, my baby-our baby-is dead.' She held out the statement to him as if offering a gift-her first controlled reference to what had happened.
'Yes,' said Mark, 'our baby is dead.' He accepted the gift.
'We waited for her so long,' said Meris softly, 'and had her for so short a time.'
'But long enough that you are a mother and I am a father,' said Mark. 'We still have that.'
'Now that I can finally talk about her,' said Meris, 'I won't have to talk about her any more. I can let her be gone now. Oh, Mark!' Meris held his hand to her cheek. 'Having you to anchor me is all that's kept me from-'
'I'm set in my ways,' smiled Mark. 'But of late you've been lifting such a weight off me that I don't think I could anchor a butterfly now!'
'Love you, Mark!'
'Love you, Meris!' Mark hugged her tightly a moment and then let her go. 'Back to work again. No flexibility left in the deadline any more. It has to be done on time this time or-'
Lightning splashed brightness against the wall. Meris moved back to the window again, the floorboards under her feet vibrating to the thunder. 'Here it comes again!' But Mark was busy, his scurrying fingers trying to catch up with the hours and days and months lost to Meris's grief and wild mourning. Meris cupped her hands around her temples and leaned her forehead to the windowpane. The storm was truly back again, whipping the brush and trees in a fury that ripped off leaves and small branches. A couple of raindrops cracked with the force of hail against the glass. Lightning and a huge explosion arrived at the same moment, jarring the whole cabin.
'Hit something close?' asked Mark with no pause in the staccato of his typing.
'Close,' said Meris. 'The big pine by the gate. I saw the bark fly.'
'Hope it didn't kill it,' said Mark. 'We lost those two in back like that last summer, you know.'
Meris tried to see the tree through the darkness, but the lightning had withdrawn for the moment.
'What was that?' she cried, puzzled.
'What?' asked Mark.
'I heard something fall,' she said. 'Through the trees.'
'Probably the top of our pine,' said Mark. 'I guess the lightning made more than bark fly. Well, there goes another of our trees,'
'That's the one the jays liked particularly, too,' said Meris.
Rain drenched again in a vertical obscurity down the glass and the flashes of lightning flushed heavily through the watery waver.
Later the lights came on and Meris, blinking against the brightness, went to bed, drawing the curtain across the bunk corner, leaving Mark at work at his desk. She lay awake briefly, hearing the drum of the rain and the mutter of the thunder, hardly noticing the clatter of the typewriter. She touched cautiously with her thoughts the aching emptiness where the intolerable burden of her unresolved grief had been. Almost, she felt without purpose- aimless-since that painful focusing of her whole life was going. She sighed into her pillow. New purpose and new aim would come-would have to come-to fill the emptinesses.
Somewhere in the timeless darkness of the night she was suddenly awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. She pulled the bedclothes up to her chin, shivering a little in the raw, damp air of the cabin. What had wakened her? The sound came again. She gasped and Mark stirred uneasily, then was immediately wide awake and sitting up beside her.
'Meris?' 'I heard something,' she said. 'Oh, Mark! Honestly, I heard something.'
'What was it?' Mark pulled the blanket up across her back.
'I heard a baby crying,' said Meris.
She felt Mark's resigned recoil and the patience in his long indrawn breath.
'Honest, Mark!' In the semi-obscurity her eyes pleaded with him. 'I really heard a baby crying. Not a tiny baby-like-like ours. A very young child, though. Out there in the cold and wet.'
'Meris ' he began, and she knew the sorrow that must be marking his face.
'There!' she cried. 'Hear it?'
The two were poised motionless for a moment, then Mark was out of bed and at the door. He flung it open to the night and they listened again, tensely.
They heard a night bird cry and, somewhere up-canyon, the brief barking of a dog, but nothing else.
Mark came back to bed, diving under the covers with a shiver.
'Come warm me, woman!' he cried, hugging Meris tightly to him.
'It did sound like a baby crying,' she said with a half question in her voice.
'It sure did,' said Mark. 'I thought for a minute-Must have been some beast or bird or denizen of the wild-' His voice trailed away sleepily, his arms relaxing. Meris lay awake listening-to Mark's breathing, to the night, to the cry that didn't come again. Refusing to listen for the cry that would never come again, she slept.
Next morning was so green and gold and sunny and wet and fresh that Meris felt a-tiptoe before she even got out of bed. She dragged Mark, protesting, from the warm nest of the bedclothes and presented him with a huge breakfast. They laughed at each other across the table, their hands clasped over the dirty dishes. Meris felt a surge of gratitude. The return of laughter is a priceless gift.
While she did the dishes and put the cabin to rights, Mark, shrugging into his Levi jacket against the chill,