tell you exactly what to do to be saved. You don’t have to think or worry or wonder-” He rubbed his coat sleeve across his face. “Now all my life I’ll see the shed burning. What about the others?”
“We buried them,” I said shortly. “The charred remains of them.”
“God have mercy!” he whispered.
“Where did the people come from?” asked Nils. “Where are their wagons?”
“There weren’t any,” said the man. “Archibold says they came in a flash of lightning and a thunderclap out of a clear sky-not a cloud anywhere. He waited, and watched them three days before he came and told us. Wouldn’t you think they were witches?” He wiped his face again and glanced hack down the road. “They might follow me. Don’t tell them. Don’t say I told.” He gathered up the reins, his face drawn and anxious, and spurred his horse into a gallop, cutting away from the road, across the flat. But before the hurried hoofbeats were muffled by distance, he whirled around and galloped back.
“But!” he gasped, back by our wagon side. “She must be a witch! She should be dead. You are compromising with evil-“
“Shall I drag her out so you can finish burning her here and now?” snapped Nils. “So you can watch her sizzle in her sin!”
“Don’t!” The man doubled across the saddle horn in an agony of indecision. ” ‘No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom.’ What they’re right? What if the Devil is tempting me? Lead me not into temptation! Maybe it’s not too late! Maybe if I confess!” And he tore back down the road toward Grafton’s Vow faster than he had come.
“Well!” I drew a deep breath. “What Scripture would you quote for that?”
“I’m wondering,” said Nils. “This Archibold. I wonder if he was in his right mind-“
“‘They fluttered up like birds,’” I reminded him, “and Marnie was floating.”
“But floating rocks and making fire and coming in a flash of lightning out of a clear sky!” Nils protested.
“Maybe it was some kind of a balloon,” I suggested.
“Maybe it exploded. Maybe Marnie doesn’t speak English. If the balloon sailed a long way-“
“It couldn’t sail too far,” said Nils. “The gas cools and it would come down. But how else could they come through the air?”
I felt a movement behind me and turned. Marnie was sitting up on the pallet. But what a different Marnie! It was as though her ears had been unstopped or a window had opened into her mind. There was an eager listening look on her tilted face. There was light in her eyes and the possibility of smiles around her mouth. She looked at me. “Through the air!” she said.
“Nils!” I cried. “Did you hear that! How did you come through the air, Marnie?”
She smiled apologetically and fingered the collar of the garment she wore and said, “Gown.”
“Yes, gown,” I said, settling for a word when I wanted a volume. Then I thought, Can I reach the bread box? Marnie’s bright eyes left my face and she rummaged among the boxes and bundles. With a pleased little sound, she came up with a piece of bread. “Bread,” she said, “bread!” And it floated through the air into my astonished hands.
“Well!” said Nils. “Communication has begun!” Then he sobered. “And we have a child, apparently. From what that man said, there is no one left to be responsible for her. She seems to be ours.”
When we stopped at noon for dinner, we were tired. More from endless speculation than from the journey. There had been no signs of pursuit and Marnie had subsided onto the pallet again, eyes closed.
We camped by a small creek and I had Nils get my trunk out before he cared for the animals. I opened the trunk with Marnie close beside me, watching my every move. I had packed an old skirt and shirtwaist on the top till so they would be ready for house cleaning and settling-in when we arrived at Margin. I held the skirt up to Marnie. It was too big and too long, but it would do with the help of a few strategic pins and by fastening the skirt up almost under her arms. Immediately, to my surprise and discomfort, Marnie skinned the nightgown off over her head in one motion and stood arrow-slim and straight, dressed only in that undergarment of hers. I glanced around quickly to see where Nils was and urged the skirt and blouse on Marnie. She glanced around too, puzzled, and slipped the clothing on, holding the skirt up on both sides. I showed her the buttons and hooks and eyes and, between the two of us and four pins, we got her put together.
When Nils came to the dinner tarp, he was confronted by Marnie, all dressed, even to my clumping slippers.
“Well!” he said, “a fine young lady we have! It’s too bad we had to cut her hair.”
“We can pretend she’s just recovering from typhoid,” I said, smiling. But the light had gone out of Marnie’s face as if she knew what we were saying. She ran her fingers through her short-cropped curls, her eyes on my heavy braids I let swing free, Indian-fashion, traveling as we were, alone and unobserved.
“Don’t you mind,” I said, hugging her in one arm. “It’ll grow again.”
She lifted one of my braids and looked at me. “Hair,” I said.
“Hair,” she said and stretched out a curl from her own head. “Curl.”
What a wonderful feeling it was to top out on the flat above Margin and to know we were almost home. Home! As I wound my braids around my head in a more seemly fashion, I looked back at the boxes and bundles in the wagon. With these and very little else we must make a home out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, with Nils, it would suffice.
The sound of our wheels down the grade into town brought out eager, curious people from the scattering of houses and scanty town buildings that made up Margin. Margin clung to the side of a hill-that is, it was in the rounded embrace of the hill on three sides. On the other side, hundreds and hundreds of miles of territory lost themselves finally in the remote blueness of distance. It was a place where you could breathe free and unhampered and yet still feel the protectiveness of the everlasting hills. We were escorted happily to our house at the other end of town by a growing crowd of people. Marnie had fallen silent and withdrawn again, her eyes wide and wondering, her hand clutching the edge of the seat with white-knuckled intensity as she tried to lose herself between Nils and
