She had never come so close again, until today, when the call of the child drew her. There again was the smothering cloud, there again the writhing victim. It descended upon her, but where in time past the mist flowed unchecked, now it pounded at the child, a wave against the jetty, an invader rattling an iron gate. It could not enter. In the first, stunned moments on the ridge, she had not marked what she did now. Pursued, hurt, near broken, the child had not been taken.
Reluctantly, Laysia opened her mind to the mist. She could hear it, always, its ugly whispering, a noise beneath all the noise of the wood, of the day and the night. But it was like a pain grown dull, with the mind turned from it. Its sting had subsided to an ache that could be set aside. Now she did not ignore it. She did not push it away. She let the pain stab at her. She listened. And through the miserable spasm came a strange, unfamiliar note: outrage. Outrage, fury, and frustration.
When the sun had inched a fraction higher in the morning sky, they reached a clearing where a low stone wall kept a crowded garden from spreading into the forest. Like the hillside that ran into the valley, it was full of everything — plump yellow squash peeking beneath wide leaves, vines full of small tomatoes that tumbled over the wall, studded with red and green and orange fruit, a line of fringed corn, like a row of tall women standing along the back, even a few grapevines that leaned over the stones in the far corner. Behind it, half hidden by the corn, stood the house. It was a stout little cottage made of stone and wood with a chimney sprouting from one side of the roof. The rest of it was all topped with a fleecy curtain of moss that hung over the eaves. Even from the outside, Kate could tell it was a light-filled place, because every wall held an open window. Beneath each of these were flowers — delicate open-palms, like the ones Nell had filled their room with in the sanctuary, and others Mistress Elna had showed her in the first garden: the bell-like dangles in their many colors, the yellow-and-purple bee-sweet, the red-and-orange dawnbuds. As they neared the house, the morning air thickened with the smell of them — vanilla and mint and honey.
The woman used her hip to push open the front door of the house. Before Kate saw the inside of the cottage, she caught a whiff of books mixing with the scent of flowers, and so was disposed to like the place. Like Liyla’s house, it had a large main room with a fireplace and a smooth old table with sturdy chairs, but unlike Liyla’s, it was a sunny, airy space, brightened by a soft woven rug and crowded with books. Shelves of them stretched up into the rafters and had been hung above the windows made up of polished boards. Books sat in stacks beside several cushioned chairs and in a small basket near the woven rug; books rested on a side table beside covered dishes and stood on a cart beneath the plates and cutlery and an old varnished pitcher with a chipped handle. At the sanctuary, they’d said the books in the great library were only a fraction of the ones that had been before, in the old times. Kate guessed maybe the others were crammed into this small, sweet-smelling cottage.
There was not enough time for looking just then. The woman moved directly to the back wall, where three doors led to other rooms, and pushed at the right-most of them. Kate followed her into a small bedroom with a wide bed. She set Nell gently down upon it.
Nell sighed softly, and Kate felt her shoulders relax at the sound of it. In that small sound, she could hear again the sister she knew. Nell burrowed into the bedclothes, her face half in shadow. But Kate could see that the tension had gone from it. A crisscross of morning light, streaming through the window over the bed, fell across her still form.
She would have liked to sit down, even lie down near Nell, and wait for her to wake up, but the woman put a finger to her lips and motioned her out. When she’d closed the door behind them, she said, “She’s away from it now and can rest. They can’t reach her here.”
Now that they were face-to-face, Kate felt shy. The woman stood awkwardly before her, saying nothing else, and Kate wondered what to do next. She looked around the room, seeking inspiration. The woman confused her: silent, uncomfortable, staring. Maybe she ought to go get Susan now. She suggested as much, but Laysia looked at her with alarm.
“Back through the mist? What if it goes after you?”
“But I didn’t break any rules!”
The woman looked swiftly at the closed door of Nell’s room.
“What rule could she have broken? She’s only a child!”
Kate shrugged. She didn’t know. But the woman’s mention of the mist worried her. What about Susan and Max and Jean?
“I need to go back and wait for the others. They’re coming.”
Before either of them could say anything more, her stomach said it for her, loudly. And for the first time, the woman’s smile reached her eyes. Kate was surprised. Gone was all the timidity, all the holding back she had sensed on the ridgetop.
“And again, years alone have made me stupid,” Laysia said. “A
