with their dull scuffly steps they disappeared into the thicket of trees around the spring.
“Everything is dulled around here,” I thought. “Even the sunlight is blunted as it floods the hills and canyons. There is no mirth, no laughter. No high jinks or cutting up. No preadolescent silliness. No adolescent foolishness. Just quiet children, enduring.”
I don’t usually snoop but I began wondering if perhaps the kids were different when they were away from me- and from their parents. So when I got back at twelve thirty from an adequate but uninspired lunch at Diemuses’ house I kept on walking past the schoolhouse and quietly down into the grove, moving cautiously through the scanty undergrowth until I could lean over a lichened boulder and look down on the children.
Some were lying around on the short still grass, hands under their heads, blinking up at the brightness of the sky between the leaves. Esther and little Martha were hunting out fillaree seed pods and counting the tines of the pitchforks and rakes and harrows they resembled. I smiled, remembering how I used to do the same thing.
“I dreamed last night.” Dorcas thrust the statement defiantly into the drowsy silence. “I dreamed about the Home.”
My sudden astonished movement was covered by Martha’s horrified “Oh, Dorcas!”
“What’s wrong with the Home?” Dorcas cried, her cheeks scarlet. “There was a Home! There was! There was! Why shouldn’t we talk about it?”
I listened avidly. This couldn’t be just coincidence-a Group and now the Home. There must be some connection …. I pressed closer against the rough rock.
“But it’s bad!” Esther cried. “You’ll be punished! We can’t talk about the Home!”
“Why not?” Joel asked as though it had just occurred to him, as things do just occur to you when you’re thirteen. He sat up slowly. “Why can’t we?”
There was a short tense silence.
“I’ve dreamed, too,” Matt said. “I’ve dreamed of the Home-and it’s good, it’s good!”
“Who hasn’t dreamed?” Miriam asked. “We all have, haven’t we? Even our parents. I can tell by Mother’s eyes when she has.”
“Did you ever ask how come we aren’t supposed to talk about it?” Joel asked. “I mean and ever get any answer except that it’s bad.”
“I think it has something to do with a long time ago,” Matt said. “Something about when the Group first came-“
“I don’t think it’s just dreams,” Miriam declared, “because I don’t have to be asleep. I think it’s remembering.”
“Remembering?” asked Dorcas. “How can we remember something we never knew?”
“I don’t know,” Miriam admitted, “but I’ll bet it is.”
“I remember,” volunteered Talitha, who never volunteered anything.
“Hush!” whispered Abie, the second-grade next-to-youngest who always whispered.
“I remember,” Talitha went on stubbornly. “I remember a dress that was too little so the mother just stretched the skirt till it was long enough and it stayed stretched. ‘Nen she pulled the waist out big enough and the little girl put it on and flew away.”
“Hoh!” Timmy scoffed. “I remember better than that.” His face stilled and his eyes widened. “The ship was so tall it was like a mountain and the people went in the high high door and they didn’t have a ladder. ‘Nen there were stars, big burning ones-not squinchy little ones like ours.”
“It went too fast!” That was Abie! Talking eagerly! “When the air came it made the ship hot and the little baby died before all the little boats left the ship.” He scrunched down suddenly, leaning against Talitha and whimpering.
“You see!” Miriam lifted her chin triumphantly. “We’ve all dreamed-I mean remembered!”
“I guess so,” said Matt. “I remember. It’s lifting, Talitha, not flying. You go and go as high as you like, as far as you want to and don’t ever have to touch the ground-at all! At all!” He pounded his fist into the gravelly red soil beside him.
“And you can dance in the air, too,” Miriam sighed. “Freer than a bird, lighter than-“
Esther scrambled to her feet, white-faced and panic-stricken.
“Stop! Stop! It’s evil! It’s bad! I’l1 tell Father! We can’t dream-or lift-or dance! It’s bad, it’s bad! You’ll die for it! You’ll die for it!”
Joel jumped to his feet and grabbed Esther’s arm.
“Can we die any deader?” he cried, shaking her brutally.
“You call this being alive?” He hunched down apprehensively and shambled a few scuffling steps across the clearing.
I fled blindly back to school, trying to wink away my tears without admitting I was crying, crying for these poor kids who were groping so hopelessly for something they knew they should have. Why was it so rigorously denied them? Surely, if they were what I thought them … And they could be! They could be!
I grabbed the bell rope and pulled hard. Reluctantly the bell moved and tolled.
One o’clock, it clanged. One o’clock!
I watched the children returning with slow uneager shuffling steps.
That night I started a letter:
“Dear Karen, “Yep, ‘sme after all these years. And, oh, Karen! I’ve found some more! Some more of the People! Remember how much you wished you knew if any other Groups besides yours had survived the Crossing? How you
