“So you’re saying this is a dream,” Max said.
“Yes,” Nell answered. “Maybe. I don’t know!”
Susan touched the rough trunk of the tree. The smell of grass and heat and wood hung in the air. In the distance, an owl hooted, low and long. No, she thought again, dreams couldn’t possibly feel like this. Kate pressed herself close, and Susan tried to think what to say. She was the oldest by a few minutes, but in emergencies, she never forgot it. Now she could only think to try to keep the younger ones calm while she and Max figured out what had happened.
“We need to go to sleep, and then we’ll wake up,” she told them, using her most sensible tone of voice. Sometimes, she knew, when all else failed, it was best to return to routine. Maybe if they acted as if things were normal, the world would take the hint.
She released Kate’s hand. “Nell, give us your blanket,” she said.
Nell hesitated, then unwrapped the coverlet from around her neck and handed it over.
Susan spread it beneath the tree.
“If we all lie down together, close our eyes, and forget all this, we’ll wake up in the morning and be back home.”
Max, still staring up at the star-drenched sky, didn’t answer. But the little girls lay down, and Susan tucked their dolls beside them. Even Nell, after folding her arms long enough to show she didn’t take orders, especially concerning bedtime, finally joined them, and Susan found a spot next to her. As the others’ breathing slowly deepened in sleep, Susan held still, wide awake and watching. In the tree, the whistling of the crickets dwindled. The moon rose, and at last Max crouched beside her.
“It’s only half,” he whispered. “And at home it was full. Do you think it’s a dream?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed the moon before. But maybe morning will tell.”
At last, with nothing left to do, Max stretched out on the other side of the blanket. Together they lay there, staring at the vast, strange sky, as overhead, the too-narrow moon climbed to its distant midnight perch.
Deprived of the comfort of human voices, the exile had learned to hear the sounds of the mountain. Not merely the mumbling danger of the valley, but the melody of birds and wind, buzzing insects and small animals. And the steadiness of these sounds as they rose and fell, chittered and hummed and sighed in their unconscious conversation, offered a comfort of its own, its steady backdrop a reminder that life went on.
And then, one night, the sounds stopped.
From within the cottage, the exile rose and sought the darkness outside. Beneath the stars, the world had gone silent. Even the valley, far below, seemed mute in the pause. And then something stirred. A strange breeze, a new wind. A moment more, and the world let out its breath — as if all the small animate members of the night’s chorus had sensed the new and made it welcome.
Susan opened her eyes to a haze of dew rising toward a pink sky. It would have been beautiful if she’d seen it through a car window or from inside her own house. But she was lying on a clammy blanket in a strange field on a summer morning, when it should have been winter and had been, just last night. Despite what she’d said, they’d slept, and woken, and if this were a dream, it was real enough to leave the blanket damp and smelling of grass. She closed her eyes again and wished herself fiercely into a different morning, but the sound of birds twittering in the tree told her this place was immune to wishes.
On the other side of Nell, Kate sat up and looked around. “We’re not home,” she said. “You said we’d be home!”
Pretending to be asleep struck Susan as her best option, but her heart betrayed her. It was pounding so hard, she could feel her shirt move.
On the other side of the blanket, Max groaned and sat up. “Kate,” he said. “Calm down.”
“But we’re supposed to be home!”
“I didn’t say that. Susan did.”
Criminations! It was the last little push Susan needed to force herself into the day. She sat up.
“I said maybe, is all. Maybe we’d wake up home. But we haven’t. So we’re going to need to figure something else out.”
“You did not say maybe,” Kate said. “You said we would.”
Her tight curls had gone frizzy in the humid morning, and they stood out in several directions. She pushed them out of her eyes and frowned deeply.
“That’s true,” Max said. “You did.”
Susan glared at him. “Fine, maybe I did. But we’re not home. Sue me.”
Kate looked around at the steaming grass, the dark border of woods that ringed the field, the hard knot of the rising sun swimming up into a candy-colored sky, and began to cry.
“Kate! Kate, it’s okay!” Susan leaned on Nell and grabbed Kate’s hand. “We’re going to figure this out! We will!”
Nell woke with a grunt and shoved Susan off her. Meanwhile, Kate nodded, trying to swallow the tears as her curls bounced crazily on her head. Jean sat up, looking groggy.
“We’re still here,” she said.
Max sighed loudly and rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve noticed. But don’t worry, we’re working on it.”
He nodded to Susan, who attempted a half-hearted nod back.
The little girls looked from one to the other of them expectantly, and even Nell tilted her head, waiting.
“Let’s think about this scientifically,” Max said.
There were days when Susan hated having a twin brother. Today wasn’t one of them. Just hearing Max talk in his usual Max-like way made Susan breathe better. Max’s scientific ideas were sometimes harebrained, but he never ran out of them.
“What would we do if we
