“Oh, stop it!” Valency jumped up from her seat. “Can’t you fire me without all this rigmarole? I’m used to it. Just say go and I’ll go!” She stood trembling.
“Sit down, Miss Carmody,” said the Oldest. And Valancy sat down meekly.
“Where were you born?” the Oldest asked quietly.
“What does it matter?” Valancy flared. Then resignedly,
“It’s in my application. Vista Mar, California.”
“And your parents?”
“I don’t know.”
There was a stir in the room.
“Why not?”
“Oh, this is so unnecessary!” Valency cried. “But if you have to know, both my parents were foundlings. They were found wandering in the streets after a big explosion and fire in Vista Mar. An old couple who lost everything in the fire took them in. When they grew up, they married. I was born. They died. Can I go now?”
A murmur swept the room.
“Why did you leave your other jobs?” Father asked.
Before Valancy could answer the door was flung open and Jemmy stalked defiantly in.
“Go!” the Oldest said.
“Please,” Jemmy said, deflating suddenly. “Let me stay. It concerns me, too.”
The Oldest fingered his cane and then nodded. Jemmy half smiled with relief and sat down in a back seat.
“‘Go on,” the Oldest One said to Valancy.
“All right then,” Valancy said. “‘I lost my first job because I-well-I guess you’d call it levitated to fix a broken blind in my room. It was stuck and I just-went up-in the air until I unstuck it. The principal saw me. He couldn’t believe it and it scared him so he fired me.’” She paused expectantly.
The Old Ones looked at one another, and my silly confused mind began to add up columns that only my lack of common sense had kept from giving totals to long ago.
“And the other one?” The Oldest leaned his cheek on his doubled up hand as he bent forward.
Valancy was taken aback and she flushed in confusion.
“Well,” she said hesitantly, “I called my books to me-I mean they were on my desk-“
“We know what you mean,” the Oldest said.
“You know!” Valency looked dazed.
The Oldest stood up.
“Valancy Carmody, open your mind!”
Valancy stared at him and then burst into tears.
“I can’t, I can’t,” she sobbed. “It’s been too long. I can’t let anyone in. I’m different. I’m alone. Can’t you understand? They all died. I’m alien!”
“You are alien no longer,” the Oldest said. “You are home now, Valancy.” He motioned to me. “Karen, go in to her.”
So I did. At first the wall was still there; then with a soundless cry, half anguish and half joy, the wall went down and I was with Valancy. I saw all the secrets that had cankered in her since her parents died-the parents who were of the People.
They had been reared by the old couple who were not only of the People but had been the Oldest of the whole Crossing.
I tasted with her the hidden frightening things-the need for living as an Outsider, the terrible need for concealing all her differences and suppressing all the extra Gifts of the People, the ever-present fear of betraying herself and the awful lostness that came when she thought she was the last of the People.
And then suddenly she came in to me and my mind was flooded with a far greater presence than I had ever before experienced.
My eyes flew open and I saw all of the Old Ones staring at Valancy. Even the Oldest had his face turned to her, wonder written as widely on his scarred face as on the others.
He bowed his head and made the Sign. “The lost Persuasions and Designs,” he murmured. “She has them all.”
And then I knew that Valancy, Valancy who had wrapped herself so tightly against the world to which any thoughtless act might betray her that she had lived with us all this time without our knowing about her or her knowing about us, was one of us. Not only one of us but such a one as had not been since Grandmother died, and even beyond that. My incoherent thoughts cleared to one.
Now I would have someone to train me. Now I could become a Sorter, but only second to her.
I turned to share my wonder with Jemmy. He was looking at Valancy as the People must have looked at the Home in the last hour. Then he turned to the door.
Before I could draw a breath Valancy was gone from me and from the Old Ones and Jemmy was turning to her outstretched hands.
