shove to carry them through into the mine.
“There,” he said, “curl up in your comfort. Don’t get your feet wet.”
“Oh, Jemmy, don’t leave me! Help me!” I was in a state of almost complete collapse, darkness roaring over me.
“While you’re curled up, all nice and safe,” Jemmy’s voice came back to me from the ‘copter, “you might try thinking a little on ‘Just who on Earth do you think you are!’ And if you think you have the answer to that, try, ‘I was hungry-’”
I didn’t hear him go. I sat hunched in my sodden misery, too far gone even to try to puzzle it all out. All my hopes had been built on when my People would find me. They’d set everything right. I would be freed from all my worry and hardships-and now-and nowA wave of discomfort that had been building up slowly for some time suddenly surged over me and my fingers whitened as I clutched the rock. How could I have mistaken that other pain for this? “Glory!” I whimpered. “It’s Child Within!” Now I could remember Glory and Seth. I was back in the miserable half-life of waiting for my People. I scrambled to my feet and closed my shield, setting it to warmth to counteract the chill that stuck to my bones. “I can’t face it alone! Anything, anything is better than being alone!”
I streaked back along the hogback that had almost disappeared under the creeping muddy tide. The cabin was in a lake. The back door was ajar. The whole thing tilted slightly off true as though it were thinking of taking off into the roar of the incredible river that swept the creek bed from bank to bank. I staggered against the door as another hard surge of pain lightened my hands and wrung an involuntary cry from me.
When it subsided, I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and pushed the door further open. I stepped into the magnified roaring of the rain on the roof. Blue light was flooding serenely from the baking powder can on the table in the empty kitchen. I snatched it up and ran to the bedroom.
Seth lay white and unmoving on his bed, his eyes sunken, his chest still. I pressed the back of my clenched hand hard against my mouth, feeling the bruise of my teeth. “Oh, no!” I whispered, and gasped with relief as a quick shallow breath lifted the one thin quilt Glory had left him from the bundle of bedding.
“You came back.”
My eyes flew to Glory. She sat on the other side of the bed, a shoe box in her lap, one hand clutching a corner of the battered old quilt.
“You didn’t come,” I whispered. “I waited.”
“No need to whisper.” Her voice was quite as usual except for a betraying catch on the last word. “He can’t hear you.”
“But you must come!” I cried. “The house will go in a minute. The creek’s already-“
“Why should I come,” she asked without emphasis. “He can’t come.”
We both watched another of the shaken breaths come and go.
“But you’ll be washed away-“
“So’ll you if you don’t git goin’.” She turned her face away from me.
“But Glory-” Her name came, but twisted-a muffled cry of pain. I clenched both hands on the doorjamb and clung until the pain subsided.
“Child Within,” said Glory-her eyes intent on me.
“Yes,” I gasped. “I guess so.”
Glory stood up and laid the shoe box on the corner of the sagging dresser. She leaned over and smoothed the covers under Seth’s chin. “I’ll be back,” she told him. She waded through the ruffle of water that covered the floor ankle-deep and rounded the bed.
“We better go,” she said. “You’ll have to point me the way. The trail’s gone-“
“You mean you’d leave him here alone!” I was stunned.
“Your own husband!”
She looked back at Seth and her lips tightened. “We all die alone, anyway,” she said, “He’d tell me to go, if’n he could.”
Then I was still as I caught the passionate outpouring of her grief and love-her last, unspoken farewell to Seth. With an effort she turned her eyes back to me. “Our duty’s to the living,” she said. “And Child Within won’t wait.”
“Oh, Glory!” Anguish of sorrow filled my chest till I could only gasp again. “Oh, Glory! We can’t, we can’t!” My throat ached and I blinked against tears of quite a different sort than those I’d been shedding since Thann died.
I snatched the glowing nickel out of the baking powder can and shoved it into my pocket. “Tuck him in good,” I said, nodding at Seth. “Bring whatever you need.”
Glory looked at me briefly, hope flaring in her eyes, then, with hasty shaken hands, she tucked the covers tight around Seth and, grabbing up her shoe box, she pushed it under the covers next to him. There was a grating grind and the whole shack swung a quarter circle around.
“Can we get the bed through the doors?” I asked shrilly.
“Not unless we take it apart,” said Glory, the quietness of her voice steadying me, “and there isn’t time.”
“Then-Then-“
“The mattress will bend,” she said. “If both of us-“
With all my faith and power I withdrew into the Quiet within me. Help me now, I prayed. I can do nothing of myself. Strengthen me, guide me, help me—
