8
The path led her down into another fold of forest. Here the strong red light of evening had faded to dimming orange and the first of the laughers woke somewhere ahead of her in the darker reaches of the woods, its horribly human voice climbing that glass mad-ladder and making her arms break out in gooseflesh.
Hurry, babyluv.
'Yes, all right.'
Now a second laugher joined the first, and although she felt more gooseflesh ripple up her bare back, she thought she was all right. Just up ahead the path curved around a vast gray rock she remembered very well. Beyond it lay a deep rockhollow—oh yes, deep and puffickly huh-yooge—and the pool. At the pool she would be safe. It was scary at the pool, but it was also safe. It—
Lisey became suddenly, queerly positive that something was stalking her, just waiting for the last of the light to drain away before making its move.
Its lunge.
Heart pounding so hard it hurt her mutilated breast, she dodged around the great gray bulk of that protruding stone. And the pool was there, lying below like a dream made real. As she looked down at that ghostly shining mirror, the last memories clicked into place, and remembering was like coming home.
9
She comes around the gray rock and forgets all about the dried smear of blood on the bell, which has so troubled her. She forgets the screaming, windy cold and brilliant northern lights she has left behind. For a moment she even forgets Scott, whom she's come here to find and bring back…always assuming he wants to come. She looks down at the ghostly shining mirror of the pool and forgets everything else. Because it's beautiful. And even though she's never been here before in her life, it's like coming home. Even when one of those things starts to laugh she isn't afraid, because this is safe ground. She doesn't need anyone to tell her that; she knows it in her bones, just as she knows Scott has been talking about this place in his lectures and writing about it in his books for years.
She also knows that this is a sad place.
It's the pool where we all go down to drink, to swim, to catch a little fish from the edge of the shore; it's also the pool where some hardy souls go out in their flimsy wooden boats after the big ones. It is the pool of life, the cup of imagination, and she has an idea that different people see different versions of it, but with two things ever in common: it's always about a mile deep in the Fairy Forest, and it's always sad. Because imagination isn't the only thing this place is about. It's also about
(giving in)
waiting. Just sitting…and looking out over those dreamy waters…and waiting. It's coming, you think. It's coming soon, I know it is. But you don't know exactly what and so the years pass.
How can you know that, Lisey?
The moon told her, she supposes; and the northern lights that burn your eyes with their cold brilliance; the sweet-dust smell of roses and frangipani on Sweetheart Hill; most of all Scott's eyes told her as he struggled just to hold on, hold on, hold on. To keep from taking the path that led to this place.
More cackling voices rise in the deeper reaches of the woods and then something roars, momentarily silencing them. Behind her, the bell tinkles, then falls still again.
I ought to hurry.
Yes, even though she senses hurry is antithetical to this place. They need to be getting back to their house on Sugar Top as soon as possible, and not because there's danger of wild beasts, of ogres and trolls and
(vurts and seemies)
other strange creatures deep in the Fairy Forest where it's always dark as a dungeon and the sun never shines, but because the longer Scott stays here, the less likely she'll ever be able to bring him back. Also…
Lisey thinks of how it would be to see the moon burning like a cold stone in the still surface of the pool below— and she thinks: I might get fascinated.
Yes.
Old wooden steps lead down this side of the slope. Beside each one is a stone post with a word carved into it. She can read these in Boo'ya Moon, but knows they would mean nothing to her back home; nor will she be able to remember anything but the
simplest: X means bread.
The stairs end in a downsloping ramp running to her left that finally empties at ground level. Here a beach of fine white sand glimmers in the rapidly failing light. Above the beach, carved on step-backs into a rock wall, are perhaps two hundred long, curved stone benches that look down on the pool. There might be space for a thousand or even two thousand people here if they were seated side by side, but they're not. She thinks there can be no more than fifty or sixty in all and most of them are hidden in gauzy wrappings that look like shrouds. But if they're dead, how can they be sitting? Does she even want to know?
On the beach, standing scattered, are maybe two dozen more. And a few people—six or eight—are actually in the water. They wade silently. As Lisey reaches the bottom of the steps and begins making her way toward the beach, her feet treading easily along the sunken rut of a path many other feet have walked before her, she sees a woman bend over and begin to lave her face. She does this with the slow gestures of someone in a dream, and Lisey recalls that day in Nashville, how everything fell into slow motion when she realized Blondie meant to shoot her husband. That was also like a dream, but wasn't.
Then she sees Scott. He's sitting on a stone bench nine or ten rows up from the pool. He's still got Good Ma's african, only here it's not bundled around him because it's too warm. It's just drawn across his knees, with the balance puddled over his feet. She doesn't know how the african can be both here and in the house on the View at the same time and thinks: Maybe because some things are special. The way Scott is special. And she? Is a version of Lisey Landon still back in the house on Sugar Top Hill? She thinks not. She thinks she is not that special, not her, not little Lisey. She thinks that, for better or worse, she is entirely here. Or entirely gone, depending on which world you're talking about.
She pulls in breath, meaning to call his name, then doesn't. A powerful intuition stops her.
Shhhh, she thinks. Shhhh, little Lisey, now
10
Now you must be still, she thought, as she had in January of 1996.
All was as it had been then, only now she saw it a little better because she had come a little earlier; the shadows in the stone valley that cupped the pool were only beginning to gather. The water had the shape, almost, of a woman's hips. At the beach end, where the hips would nip into the waist, was an arrowhead of fine white sand. Upon it, standing far apart from one another, were four people, two men and two women, staring raptly at the pool. In the water were half a dozen more. No one was swimming. Most were in no deeper than their calves; one man was in up to his waist. Lisey wished she could have read the expression on this man's face, but she was still too far away. Behind the waders and the people standing on the beach—those who hadn't yet found enough courage to get wet, Lisey was convinced—was the sloping headland that had been carved into dozens or maybe hundreds of stone benches. Upon them, widely scattered, sat as many as two hundred people. She seemed to remember only fifty or sixty, but this evening there were definitely more. Yet for every person she could see, there had to be at least four in those horrible
(cerements)
wrappings.
There's a graveyard, too. Do you remember?
