“Which people?” asked Glory.
“The People!” I cried. “The People who live in the Canyon.”
“The Canyon? You mean Cougar Canyon? Been no people there for three-four years. Ever since the dam got finished and the lake started rising.”
“Where-where did they go?” I whimpered, my hands tightening on the edge of the cot.
“Dunno.” Glory snapped a match head with her thumbnail and lighted a makin’s cigarette.
“But if we don’t find them, Thann will die!”
“He will anyway less’n them folks is magic,” said Glory.
“They are!” I cried. “They’re magic!”
“Oh?” said Glory, squinting her eyes against the eddy of smoke. “Oh?”
Thann’s head moved and his eyes opened. I bent my head to catch any whisper from him, but his voice came loud and clear.
“All we have to do is fix the craft and we can go back Home.”
“Yes, Thann.” I hid my eyes against my crossed wrists on the cot. “We’ll leave right away. Child Within will wait ‘til we get Home.” I felt Child Within move to the sound of my words.
“He shouldn’t oughta talk,” said Glory. “He’s all smashed inside. He’ll be bleeding again in a minute.”
“Shut up!” I spun on my knees and flared at her. “You don’t know anything about it! You’re nothing but a stupid Outsider. He won’t die! He won’t!”
Glory dragged on her cigarette. “I hollered some, too, when my son Davy got caught in a cave-in. He was smashed. He died.” She flicked ashes onto the bare plank floor. “God calls them. They go-“
“I’m Called!” Thann caught the familiar word. “I’m Called! What will you do, Debbie-my-dear? What about Child-” A sudden bright froth touched the corner of his mouth and he clutched my wrist. “Home is so far away,” he sighed. “Why did we have to leave? Why did we leave?”
“Thann, Thann!” I buried my face against his quiet side. The pain in my chest got worse and worse and I wished someone would stop that awful babbling and screaming. How could I say good-by to my whole life with that ghastly noise going on? Then my fingers were pried open and I lost the touch of Thann. The black noisy chaos took me completely.
“He’s dead.” I slumped in the creaky rocker. Where was I? How long had I been here? My words came so easily, so accustomedly, they must be a repetition of a repetition. “He’s dead and I hate you. I hate Seth. I hate Earth. You’re all Outsiders. I hate Child Within. I hate myself.”
“There,” said Glory as she snipped a thread with her teeth and stuck the needle in the front of her plaid shin. My words had no impact on her, though they almost shocked me as I listened to them. Why didn’t she notice what I said? Too familiar? “There’s at least one nightgown for Child Within.” She grinned. “When I was your age, folks woulda died of shock to think of calling a baby unborn a name like that. I thought maybe these sugar sacks might come in handy sometime. Didn’t know it’d be for baby clothes.”
“I hate you,” I said, hurdling past any fingering shock. “No lady wears Levis and plaid shirts with buttons that don’t match. Nor cuts her hair like a man and lets her face go all wrinkledy. Oh, well, what does it matter? You’re only a stupid Outsider. You’re not of The People, that’s for sure. You’re not on our level.”
“For that, thanks be to the Lord.” Glory smoothed the clumsy little gown across her knee. “I was taught people are people, no matter their clothes or hair. I don’t know nothing about your folks or what level they’re on, but I’m glad my arthritis won’t let me stoop as low as-” She shrugged and laid the gown aside. She reached over to the battered dresser and retrieved something she held out to me. “Speaking of looks, take a squint at what Child Inside’s got to put up with.”
I slapped the mirror out of her hands-and the mad glimpse of rumpled hair, swollen eyes, raddled face, and a particularly horrible half sneer on lax lips-slapped it out of her hands, stopped its fight in mid-air, spun it up to the sagging plasterboard ceiling, swooped it out with a crash through one of the few remaining whole windowpanes, and let it smash against a pine tree outside the house.
“Do that!” I cried triumphantly. “Even child’s play like that, you can’t do. You’re stupid!”
“Could be.” Glory picked up a piece of the shattered window glass. “But today I fed my man and the stranger within my gates. I made a gown for a naked baby. What have you done that’s been so smart? You’ve busted, you’ve ruined, you’ve whined and hated. If that’s being smart, I’ll stay stupid.” She pitched the glass out of the broken window.
“And I’ll slap you silly, like I would any spoiled brat, if you break anything else.”
“Oh, Glory, oh Glory!” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I killed him! I killed him! I made him come. If we’d stayed Home. If I hadn’t insisted. If-“
“If,” said Glory heavily, lifting the baby gown. “If Davy hadn’ta died, this’d be for my grandkid, most likely. If-ing is the quickest way I know to get the blue mullygrubs.”
She folded the gown and put it away in the dresser drawer. “You haven’t told me yet when Child Within is s’posed to come Without.” She reached for the makin’s and started to build a cigarette.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring down at my tight hands. “I don’t care.” What was Child Within compared to the pain within?
“You’ll care plenty,” snapped Glory around the smooth curve of the cigarette paper, “if’n you have a hard time and no doctor. You can go ahead and die if you want to, but I’m thinking of Child Within.”
“It’d be better if he died, too,” I cried. “Better than having to grow up in this stupid, benighted world, among savages-“
“What’d you want to come hack so bad for then?” asked Glory. “You admit it was you wanted to come.”
