That got his attention. He frowned and shook his head.
“Kate, she is crazy, telling you that. You’re a little kid! Don’t be ridiculous. Can’t you see how dangerous she is?”
Kate understood suddenly that nothing she said would matter. He wouldn’t listen.
“Max,” she said, “what about getting home?”
“Later,” he assured her. “There’ll be time for all of that. After the Genius is gone, I’ll come back. And then we’ll go. I promise.”
He reached for her hand, but she drew back.
Max was different now. More different, even, than Susan.
Jean had had enough of the waiting. Max had said this wasn’t a dream, and at last Jean had come to believe him. There wasn’t so much waiting around in dreams. Not even in nightmares. Until now, she’d been patient, she thought. More than patient.
She liked to remind herself that she was small. She wasn’t like Kate — the suggestion didn’t make her mad. Who wanted to be big, anyway? She preferred to play, which was what small people did. She didn’t like all the fuss and effort and upset of big people. Nell in the sanctuary, for example. Jean hadn’t understood that. The people there were nice, and her teachers had been cheerful, and she liked the songs.
Most people were nice, in the end. Even Liyla, who Jean hadn’t liked at all, turned out not to be too bad. Like Jean, she had a mother and a father who cared about her. They were strange, true, but then lots of people’s parents were strange. Not like the Genius. Of all the people Jean had seen here he, he and that pinch-faced lady in the red dress, were unrecognizable. Jean was pretty sure neither of them had a mother or father.
Thinking of mothers and fathers made Jean feel bad, and she tried not to think of her own, waiting for her back home. Countless times over the past two months, she’d pushed such unhappy thoughts away, and she did it again now, reminding herself that Max would have to be here sometime, and at least the Genius and Ker were far away now, and put away, like a bad dream after you woke up. And since that bad time in the city she’d played wonderful games here, even Susan and Nell and Kate had played. She’d seen Susan flicker out like a candle, only her voice left. Kate had surprised her by swooping off the cliff without shrieking in terror. And Nell had sent a firecracker of flame shooting from her hand into the sky. That had been worth being here for. Here, she could bounce her Barbie on the air or sing a little come here song to the sea and feel the splash of the wave, even up high.
But that was all gone now. For days, there had been only the awful thing behind the wall, and the waiting. It was time to go.
Max had said he would get her home, and she believed him. But he was taking too much time coming. Small people shouldn’t have to wait so long, she thought. Wasn’t that the use of being small?
She sighed. This morning, even Kate would not wake. She slept beside Susan, her dirty feet poking from under the covers. There would be no games of stones, no Barbie school or party, nothing at all to help fill the long hours while Susan and Laysia talked or looked into the worn books on the shelves. As usual, Nell was crouched at the stone wall near the garden, her face pressed to the cracks, talking steadily at the wailing thing on the other side. Laysia worked nearby digging carrots, looking strained as the beast shrieked and pounded.
“Come away from it,” Jean said to Nell.
Thud, squeal, thud, squeal, went the beast behind the wall. Jean flinched. “Do something with me.”
“Not now,” Nell said.
She called the thing by name, and Jean ran away, hating to hear that. It was not a person behind the stones. No matter what Nell said, it was not.
A nightmare would be better, she thought. A nightmare would end with waking up, with Mom slipping into her room in the dark, with her head pressed against her mother’s chest, the steady thump thump of it slowing her own heart to match. Here there was only thud and squeal and the hateful hissing of the cloud that kept Max on its other side.
She wandered behind the cottage to the mossy place beneath the tall trees, wondering when Max would come. She pulled out the wad of his letters and selected one. She could tell which was which now, even without unfolding them. This particular letter had grown furry, she’d handled the paper so much.
Dear Jean,
I’m sorry I didn’t get to come over yesterday. Please don’t be sad about it. I’m just trying to get us home, and to do that, I have to learn as much as I can. Every day is filled up with so much stuff, I can barely sleep. Yesterday I asked Tur Kaysh why the air crackles when we change things. Remember how it does that? I don’t know if you felt it, and half the time I didn’t notice it in the beginning, but now that I do, I can feel that shiver in the air. He was surprised I felt that, and he called me a bright light. No one ever called me that at school back home, I can promise you that! He said that I need to see how the pattern of the world is at our fingertips, and if we understand the order of it, we can change things. That’s how rebellion ripped a hole in the world to begin with, he said. After that all the learning leaked out, and everything went dark. He pointed west when he said it, and I knew he meant the Domain. It’s only the sanctuary that’s still trying to fix the
