His was a well-grooved story, too, worn into commonplace by repetition as mine had been-lonely aching repetition to himself. I wondered for a moment, in the face of his unhappiness, why I should feel a stirring of pleased comfort, but then I realized that it was because between us there was no need for murmurs of sympathy or trite little social sayings or even explanations. The surface words were the least of our communication.
“You aren’t surprised?” He sounded almost disappointed.
“That you are an out-worlder?” I asked. I smiled. “Well, I’ve never met one before and I find it interesting. I only wish I could have dreamed up a fantasy like that to explain me to me. It’s quite a switch on the old “I must be adopted because I’m so different.’ But-“
I stiffened as Low’s surge of rage caught me offguard.
“Fantasy! I am adopted. I remember! I thought you’d know. I thought since you surely must be one of us that you’d be-“
“I’m not one of you!” I flared. “Whatever ‘you’ are. I’m of Earth-so much so that it’s a wonder the dust doesn’t puff out of my mouth when I speak-but at least I don’t try to kid myself that I’m normal by any standard, Earth-type or otherwise.”
For a hostile minute we were braced stonily against each other. My teeth ached as the muscles on my jaws knotted. Then Low sighed and reaching out a finger he traced the line of my face from brow to chin to brow again.
“Think your way,” he said. “You’ve probably been through enough bad times to make anyone want to forget. Maybe someday you’ll remember that you are one of us and then-“
“Maybe, maybe, maybe!” I said through my weary shaken breath. “But I can’t any more. It’s too much for one day.” I slammed all the doors I could reach and shoved my everyday self up to the front. As we started off I reopened one door far enough to ask, “What’s this between you and Lucine? Are you a friend of the family or something that you’re working with her?”
“I know the family casually,” Low said. “They don’t know about Lucine and me. She caught my imagination once last year when I was passing the school. The kids were pestering her. I never felt such heartbroken bewilderment in all my life. Poor little Earth kid. She’s a three-year-old in a twelve-year-old body-“
“Four-year-old,” I murmured. “Or almost five. She’s learning a little.”
“Four or five,” Low said. “It must be awful to be trapped in a body-“
“Yes,” I sighed. “To be shut in the prison of yourself.”
Tangibly I felt again the warm running of his finger around my face, softly, comfortingly, though he made no move toward me. I turned away from him in the dusk to hide the sudden tears that came.
It was late when we got home. There were still lights in the bars and a house or two when we pulled into Kruper, but the hotel was dark, and in the pause after the car stopped I could hear the faint creaking of the sagging front gate as it swung in the wind. We got out of the car quietly, whispering under the spell of the silence, and tiptoed up to the gate. As usual the scraggly rosebush that drooped from the fence snagged my hair as I went through, and as Low helped free me we got started giggling. I suppose neither of us had felt young and foolish for so long, and we had both unburdened ourselves of bitter tensions, and found tacit approval of us as the world refused to accept us and as we most wanted to be; and, each having at least glimpsed a kindred soul, well, we suddenly bubbled over. We stood beneath the upstairs porch and tried to muffle our giggles.
“People will think we’re crazy if they hear us carrying on like this,” I choked.
“I’ve got news for you,” said Low, close to my ear. “We are crazy. And I dare you to prove it.”
“Hoh! As though it needed any proof!”
“I dare you.” His laughter tickled my cheek.
“How?” I breathed defiantly.
“Let’s not go up the stairs,” he hissed. “Let’s lift through the air. Why waste the energy when we can-?”
He held out his hand to me. Suddenly sober I took it and we stepped back to the gate and stood hand in hand, looking up.
“Ready?” he whispered, and I felt him tug me upward.
I lifted into the air after him, holding all my possible fear clenched in my other hand.
And the rosebush reached up and snagged my hair.
“Wait!” I whispered, laughter trembling again. “I’m caught.”
“‘Earth-bound!” he chuckled as he tugged at the clinging strands.
“Smile when you say that, podner,” I returned, feeling my heart melt with pleasure that I had arrived at a point where I could joke about such a bitterness-and trying to ignore the fact that my feet were treading nothing but air. My hair freed, he lifted me up to him. I think our lips only brushed, but we overshot the porch and had to come back down to land on it. Low steadied me as we stepped across the railing.
“We did it,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I breathed. “We did.”
Then we both froze. Someone was coming into the yard. Someone who stumbled and wavered and smashed glassily against the gatepost.
“‘Ay! Ay! Madre mia!” Severeid Swanson fell to his knees beside the smashed bottle, “Ay, virgen purisima!”
“Did he see us?” I whispered on an indrawn breath.
“I doubt it.” His words were warm along my cheek. “He hasn’t seen anything outside himself for years.”
