wide-eyed in the dark, to whatever task Meris set him, forgetting in the middle of it what be was doing.
Lala followed him at first, chattering un-English at her usual great rate, leaning against him when he sat, peering into his indifferent face. Then she stopped talking to him and followed him only with her eyes. Then the third day she came crying into Meris’s arms and wept heartbrokenly against her shoulder.
Then her tears stopped, glistened on her cheeks a moment, and were gone. She squirmed out of Meris’s embrace and trotted to the window. She pushed a chair up close to the wall, climbed up on it, pressed her forehead to the chilly glass and stared out into the late afternoon.
Tad came over on his bike, bubbling over with the new idea of old cars.
“Why, there’s parts of a whole bunch of these cars all over around here-” he cried, fluttering the tattered magazine at Mark. “And have you seen how much they’re asking for some of them! Why I could put myself through college on used parts out of our old dumps! And some of these vintage jobs are still running around here! Kiltie has a model A-you’ve seen it! He shines it like a new shoe every week! And there’s an old Overland touring car out in back of our barn, just sitting there, falling apart-“
Mark’s silence got through to him then, and he asked, troubled, “What’s wrong? Are you mad at me for something?”
Meris spoke into Mark’s silence. “No, Tad, it’s nothing you’ve done-” She took him outside, ostensibly to help bring in wood to fill the woodbox and frilled him in on the events. When they returned, loaded down with firewood, he dumped his armload into the box and looked at Mark.
“Gee, whiz, Mr. Edwards. Uh-uh-gee whiz!” He gathered up his magazine and his hat and, shuffling his feet for a moment said, “Well, ‘bye now,” and left, grimacing back at Meris, wordless.
Lala was still staring out the window. She hadn’t moved or made a sound while Tad was there. Meris was frightened.
“Mark!” She shook his arm gently. “Look at Lala. She’s been like that for almost an hour. She pays no attention to me at all. Mark!”
Mark’s attention came slowly back to the cabin and to Meris.
“Thank goodness!” she cried. “I was beginning to feel that I was the one that was missing!”
At that moment, Lala plopped down from the chair and trotted off to the bathroom, a round red spot marking her forehead where she had leaned so long.
“Well!” Meris was pleased. “It must be suppertime. Every one’s gathering around again.” And she began the bustle of supper-getting. Lala trotted around with her, getting in the way, hindering with her help.
“No, Lala!” said Meris, “I told you once already. Only three plates. Here, put the other one over there.” Lala took the plate, waited patiently until Meris turned to the stove, then, lifting both feet from the floor, put the plate back on the table. The soft click of the flatware as she patterned it around the plate, caught Meris’s attention. “Oh, Lala!” she cried, half-laughing, half-exasperated. “Well, all right. If you can’t count, okay. Four it will be.” She started convulsively and dropped a fork as a knock at the door roused even Mark. “Hungry guest coming,” she laughed nervously as she picked up the fork. “Well, stew stretches.”
She started for the door, fear, bred of senseless violence, crisping along her spine, but Lala was ahead of her, fluttering like a bird, with excited bird cries against the door panels, her hands fumbling at the knob and the night chain Meris had insisted on installing. Meris unfastened and unlocked and opened the door.
It was Johannan, anxious-eyed and worried, who slipped in and gathered up a shrieking Lala. When he had finally un-Englished her to a quiet, contented clinging, he turned to Meris. “Lala called me back,” he said. “I’ve found my Group. She told me Mark was sick-that bad things had happened.”
“Yes,” said Meris, stirring the stew and moving it to the back of the stove. “The boys came while we were gone and ruined Mark’s manuscript beyond salvage. And Mark-Mark is crushed. He lost all those months of labor through sense less, vindictive-” She turned away from Johannan’s questioning face and stirred the stew again, blindly.
“But,” protested Johannan, “if once it was written, he has it still. He can do it again.”
“Time is the factor:” Mark’s voice, rusty and harsh, broke in on Johannan. “And to rewrite from my notes-” He shook his head and sagged again.
“But-but-!” cried Johannan still puzzled, putting Lala to one side, where she hovered, sitting on air, crooning to Deeko, until she drifted slowly down to the floor. “It’s all there! It’s been written! It’s a whole thing! All you have to do is put it again on paper. Your word scriber-“
“I don’t have total recall,” said Mark. “Even if I did, just to put it on paper again-come see our ‘word scriber.’” He smiled a small bent smile as Johannan poked fingers into the mechanism of the typewriter and clucked unhappily, sounding so like Lala that Meris almost laughed. “Such slowness! Such complications!”
Johannan looked at Mark. “If you want, my People can help you get your manuscript back again.”
“It’s finished,” said Mark. “Why agonize over it any more?” He turned to the blank darkness of the window.
“Was it worth the effort of writing?” asked Johannan.
“I thought so,” said Mark. “And others did, too.”
“Would it have served a useful purpose?” asked Johannan.
“Of course it would have!” Mark swung angrily from the window. “It covered an area that needs to be covered. It was new-the first book in the field!” He turned again to the window.
“Then,” said Johannan simply, “we will make it again. Have you paper enough?”
Mark swung back, his eyes glittering. Meris stepped between his glare and Johannan. “This summer I have come back from the dead,” she reminded. “And you caught a baby for me, pulling her down from the sky by one ankle. Johannan went looking for his people through the treetops. And a three-year-old called him back by leaning against the window. If all these things could happen, why can’t Johannan bring your manuscript back?”
“But if he tries and can’t-” Mark began.
