They were laughing. Coming to, Max heard them.
I must be dreaming, he thought. I fainted, and I’m still dreaming.
He breathed in the aroma of peaches. Definitely dreaming, he thought.
“Max! Max!”
It was Susan, somewhere to his right.
Nell laughed. “How’d you do it? Where’d you find them? Where’s the tree?”
Max opened his eyes. He was lying amid a pile of peaches.
Max sat among mounds of peaches, feeling as if a comet had dived into his open hands. He was certain nothing had ever tasted so good. The five of them ate until they couldn’t anymore, and then they sucked the stones just to keep something in their mouths. The girls ran their hands over the soft skins, exclaiming. But for a moment, Max held perfectly still, spellbound.
I did this!
The thought came with such fervor that he wondered if this time he really was dreaming.
He breathed peaches, and touched peaches, and weighed them in his palm. The wind in the tiled room had swept through in a moment, but the peaches stayed, and the comforting weight in his stomach, the heavy reality of them, made him want to burst.
He glanced at Jean, still licking her fingers, and grinned.
“Jean,” he said. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Peaches,” she said, and grinned back at him.
“Me, too,” said Kate. “Peaches. Definitely.”
Peaches. Definitely.
Of course, he couldn’t enjoy it forever. The peaches were a miracle, but they were also a question, and Max knew better than to try to ignore the facts.
So when they’d finally gathered the remaining fruit into Nell’s blanket, and he’d slung them over his shoulder, exulting in the weight against his back, he went to walk beside Susan.
“There weren’t any peach trees,” he said. “I didn’t go out and find one, if that’s what you were thinking.”
Susan looked at him with surprise and relief.
“Then how?”
He could only shrug, feeling a prickly warmth in his cheeks. “I don’t know.”
Good old Susan. She didn’t even say I told you so. In fact she didn’t say anything at all.
“It wasn’t the way you said, though,” he continued after a while. “There wasn’t any pushing or explosion or anything.”
For the first time in two days, she didn’t fidget or look away when he spoke to her.
“Tell me” was all she said.
The confused, awful feel of the morning washed over him.
“I was mad. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I was mad at you. Just going crazy that you wouldn’t do that thing again.”
He frowned, a little embarrassed. But when he glanced at her, he saw she accepted this with nothing but a small nod.
“So I was wandering around, and then everything started to go black. I was passing out, from the heat and from starving, probably. And I thought of that orchard we first came to. I wished I was there. I could smell the peaches. And that was it. I woke up, and I saw.”
The peaches, in their blanket sack, bounced against his spine. Even his shirt smelled like them now. He worried suddenly that it would call the dogs to them.
“You smelled them because they were there,” Nell said. “I smelled them, too. They’re wonderful.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “But they weren’t there when I sat down. It was just so . . . strong. I wanted it so badly. I needed it.”
“You needed it!” Susan nodded vigorously. “Just like I needed to get out. Maybe here, when you need something desperately, it just comes.”
Max wondered. Jean had a peach in her hand; she’d been eating it as they walked. He watched her use her sleeve to wipe the juice from her chin. She caught his eye and smiled at him, holding it aloft like a prize.
Could Susan be right? They’d all needed to eat. Had he needed it more than the others? He shook his head.
“We were all hungry. We all needed to get out of that room — but you did it. That first morning, we needed to get home — we were desperate for it. But we’re not home! It can’t be just needing it, or thinking about it. If that were it, we’d all be doing it all the time. It’s got to be more than that.”
Nell kicked at a stray rock in the barren ground. “Then what?” she asked. “Tell me, and I’ll do it, too. Because I’d like to have something better than just my blanket to lie on. And I’d like a drink of water. And a clean shirt.”
She sighed, as if she’d run out of steam. Maybe she had. As grateful as Max was for the peaches, his back still ached.
They were all tired, exhausted from the hunger and then the food. They lapsed into silence and kept walking, tensing at the occasional lull in the wind, when distant barking rolled up the hill.
Max tried to ignore it. He needed to put the pieces together. The Genius. The wind. The peaches. What did they have in common? He thought of the marketplace. There’d been all that cheering, and everyone was excited. He remembered the thrill that had washed over him when it started. But it wasn’t until the Genius began to speak that the buildings — even the people — had changed. Was it the excitement that had done that?
He thought about the tiled room. No thrill there. But there was fear. Lots of it. And with the peaches? He’d been angry. Angry at Susan.
He tried to take a mental step back, tried to see how it all fit. Could it be anger, then? Fear? Desperation? If it were, why hadn’t they all made the wind in the room? Why hadn’t they all made peaches?
Though the sound of the mourning bell did not reach the mountain, the exile felt its toll. Too often, it rang now, singing its song of anger and regret. Wordless, soundless, it flowed up to the small
