“But you have to be able to lift, Dita. You’re one of-“
“I am not!” I threw the flower I’d been twiddling with down violently into the spring and saw it sucked into the pipe. Someone downstream was going to be surprised at the sink or else one of the thousands of fountains between here and town was going to blossom.
“But all you have to do is-is-” Low groped for words.
“Yes?” I leaned forward eagerly. Maybe I could learn ….
“Well, just lift!”
“Twirtle!” I said, disappointed. “Anyway can you do this? Look.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out two bobby pins and three fingernails full of pocket fluff. “Have you got a dime?”
“Sure.” He fished it out and brought it to me. I handed it back. “Glow it,” I said.
“Glow it? You mean blow it?” He turned it over in his hand.
“No, glow it. Go on. It’s easy. All you have to do is glow it. Any metal will do but silver works better.”
“Never heard of it,” he said, frowning suspiciously.
“You must have,” I cried, “if you are part of me. If we’re linked back to the Bright Beginning you must remember!”
Low turned the dime slowly. “It’s a joke to you. Something to laugh at.”
“A joke!” I moved closer to him and looked up into his face. “Haven’t I been looking for an answer long enough?
Wouldn’t I belong if I could? Would my heart break and bleed every time I have to say no if I could mend it by saying yes? If I could only hold out my hands and say, ‘I belong …’ ” I turned away from him, blinking. “Here,” I sniffed.
“Give me the dime.”
I took it from his quiet fingers and, sitting down again, spun it quickly in the palm of my hand. It caught light immediately, glowing stronger until I slitted my eyes to look at it and finally had to close my fingers around its cool pulsing.
“Here.” I held my hand out to Low, my bones shining pinkly through. “It’s glowed.”
“Light,” he breathed, taking the dime wonderingly. “Cold light! How long can you hold it?”
“I don’t have to hold it. It’ll glow until I damp it.”
“How long?”
“How long does it take metal to turn to dust?” I shrugged.
“I don’t know. Do your People know how to glow?”
“No.” His eyes stilled on my face. “I have no memory of it.”
“So I don’t belong.” I tried to say it lightly above the wrenching of my heart. “It almost looks like we’re simultaneous, but we aren’t. You came one way. I came t’other.” “Not even to him!” I cried inside. “I can’t even belong to him!” I drew a deep breath and put emotion to one side.
“Look,” I said. “Neither of us fits a pattern. You deviate and I deviate and you’re satisfied with your explanation of why you are what you are. I haven’t found my explanation yet. Can’t we let it go at that?”
Low grabbed my shoulders, the dime arching down into the spring. He shook me with a tight controlled shaking that was hardly larger than a trembling of his tensed hands. “I tell you, Dita, I’m not making up stories! I belong and you belong and all your denying won’t change it. We are the same-“
We stared stubbornly at each other for a long moment, then the tenseness ran out of his fingers and he let them slide down my arms to my hands. We turned away from the spring and started silently, hand in hand, down the trail. I looked back and saw the glow of the dime and damped it.
“No,” I said to myself. “It isn’t so. I’d know it if it were true. We aren’t the same. But what am I then? What am I?” And I stumbled a little wearily on the narrow path.
During this time everything at school was placid, and Pete had finally decided that “two” could have a name and a picture, and learned his number words to ten in one day, And Lucine-symbol to Low and me of our own imprisonment-with our help was blossoming under the delight of reading her second pre-primer.
But I remember the last quiet day. I sat at my desk checking the tenth letter I’d received in answer to my inquiries concerning a possible Chinee Joe and sadly chalking up another “no.” So far I had been able to conceal from Low the amazing episode of Severeid Swanson. I wanted to give him back his Canyon myself, if it existed. I wanted it to be my gift to him-and to my own shaken self. Most of all I wanted to be able to know at least one thing for sure, even if that one thing proved me wrong or even parted Low and me. Just one solid surety in the whole business would be a comfort and a starting place for us truly to get together.
I wished frequently that I could take hold of Severeid bodily and shake more information out of him, but he had disappeared-walked off from his job without even drawing his last check. No one knew where he had gone. The last Kruper had seen of him was early the next morning after he had spoken with me. He had been standing, slack- kneed and wavering, a bottle in each hand, at the crossroads-not even bothering to thumb a ride, just waiting blankly for someone to stop for him-and apparently someone had.
I asked Esperanza about him, and she twisted her thick shining braid around her hand twice and tugged at it.
“He’s a wino,” she said dispassionately. “They ain’t smart. Maybe he got losted,” Her eyes brightened. “Last year he got losted and the cops picked him up in E1 Paso. He brang me some perfume when he came back. Maybe he went to E1 Paso again. It was pretty perfume.” She started down the stairs. “He’ll be back,” she called, “unless he’s dead in a ditch somewhere.”
I shook my head and smiled ruefully. And she’d fight like a wildcat if anyone else talked about Severeid like that ….
