Little, Big

The pale moon was rising above the green mountains
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea

Like a sun: but a small sun, which she had within her, warming her from the inside out. She was conscious of a feeling she had had before, a sense that she was looking at him, and at all of them, from some way off, or from a great height. There had been a time when she seemed to herself to be snug, and small, within the large house of Smoky, a safe inhabitant, room to run in yet never leave his encompassment. Now she oftener felt otherwise: over time it was he who seemed to have become a mouse within the house of her. Huge: that’s what she felt herself to be becoming. Her perimeters expanded, she felt that eventually she would be contiguous almost with the walls of Edgewood itself: as large, as old, as comfortably splayed on its feet and as capacious. And as she grew huge—this suddenly struck her—the ones she loved diminished in size as surely as if they walked away from her, and left her behind.

“Ain’t misbehavin’,” Smoky sang in a dreamy, effete falsetto, “savin’ all my love for you.”

Mysteries seemed to accumulate around her. She rose heavily, saying No, no, you stay, to Smoky who had come to her, and went laboriously up the stairs, as though she carried a great, fragile egg before her, which she did, almost hatched. She thought perhaps she had better get advice, before winter came and it was no longer possible.

But when she sat on the edge of her bed, still faintly hearing the high accents of the music below, which seemed to be endlessly repeating tin-cup, top-hat, she saw that she knew what advice she would get if she went to get it: it would only be made clear to her again what she already knew, what only grew dim or clouded now and again by daily life, by useless hopes and by despairs equally useless—that if this were indeed a Tale, and she in it, then no gesture she or any of them could make was not a part of it, no rising up to dance or sitting down to eat and drink, no blessing or curse, no joy, no longing, no error; if they fled the Tale or struggled against it, well, that too was part of the Tale. They had chosen Smoky for her and then she had chosen him for herself; or, she had chosen him and then they had chosen him for her; either way it was the Tale. And if in some subtle way he moved on or away and she lost him now, by inches, by small daily motions she only now and then even perceived for certain, then his loss to her, and the degree of that loss, and each one of the myriad motions, looks, lookings-away, absences, angers, placations and desires that made up Loss, sealing him from her as layers of lacquer seal the painted bird on a japanned tray or as layers of rain freeze deeper the fallen leaf within the winter pond, all of it was the Tale. And if there were to come some new turning, some debouchment of this shaded lane they seemed just now to be walking, if it opened up quite suddenly into broad, flower-starred fields, or even if it only brought them to crossroads where fingerboards stated cautiously the possibilities of such fields, then all that too would be the Tale; and those whom Daily Alice thought wise, whom she supposed to be endlessly relating this tale. Somehow at the same pace as Drinkwater and Barnable lives fell away day by day, hour by hour—those tellers couldn’t be blamed for anything told of in it, because in fact they neither spun nor told it really, but only knew how it would unfold in some way she never would; and that should satisfy her.

“No,” she said aloud. “I don’t believe it. They have powers. It’s just that sometimes we don’t understand how they’ll protect us. And if you know, you won’t say.”

“That’s right,” Grandfather Trout seemed gloomily to reply. “Contradict your elders, think you know better.”

She lay back on her bed, supporting her child with interlaced fingers, thinking she did not know better, hut that advice would anyway be lost on her. “I’ll hope,” she said. “I’ll be happy. There’s something I don’t know, some gift they have to give. At the right time it’ll be there. At the last moment. That’s how Tales are,” and she wouldn’t listen to the sardonic answer she knew the fish would give to this; and yet when Smoky opened the door and came in whistling, his odor a meld of the wine he had drunk and Sophie’s perfume he had absorbed, something which had been growing within her, a wave, crested, and she began to weep.

The tears of those who never cry, the calm, the levelheaded ones, are terrible to see. She seemed to be split or torn by the force of the tears, which she squeezed her eyes shut against, which she forced back with her fist against her lips. Smoky, afraid and awed, came immediately to her as he might to rescue his child from a fire, without thought and without knowing quite what he would do. When he tried to take her hand, speak softly to her, she only trembled more violently, the red cross branded on her face grew uglier; so he enveloped her, smother the flames. Disregarding her resistance, as well as he could he covered her, having a vague idea that he could by tenderness invade her and then rout her grief, whatever it was, by main strength. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t himself the cause of it, wasn’t sure if she would cling to him for comfort or break him in rage, but he had no choice anyway, savior or sacrifice, it didn’t matter so long as she could cease suffering.

She yielded, not at first willing to, and took handfuls of his shirt as though she meant to rend his garments, and “Tell me,” he said, “tell me,” as though that could make it right; but he could no more keep her from suffering this than he would be able to keep her from sweating and crying aloud when the child within her made its way out. And there was no way anyway for her to tell him that what made her weep was a picture in her mind of the black pool in the forest, starred with golden leaves falling continuously, each hovering momentarily above the surface of the water before it alighted, as though choosing carefully its drowning place, and the great damned fish within too cold to speak or think: that fish seized by the Tale, even as she was herself.

III.

Come, let me see thee sink into a dream
Of quiet thoughts, protracted till thine eye
Be calm as water when the winds are gone
And no one can tell whither.

—Wordsworth

It’s George Mouse,” Smoky said. Lily clinging to his pants-leg looked out the front way where her father pointed. Above the fist stuck in her face, her longlashed eyes made no judgment on George coming up through the mist, his boots spraying puddles. He wore his great black cloak, his Svengali’s hat limp with rain; he waved a hand at them as he came up. “Hey,” he said, squishily mounting the stairs. “Heeeeeey.” He embraced Smoky; beneath his hat-brim his teeth shone and his dark-rimmed eyes were coals. “This is what’s-her-name, Tacey?”

“Lily,” Smoky said. Lily retreated behind the curtain of her father’s pants. “Tacey’s a big girl now. Six years old.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yes.”

“Time flies.”

“Well, come in. What’s up? You should have written.”

“Didn’t decide till this morning.”

“Any reason?”

Time Flies