And so I did, while something inside my mind made little gibbering noises and a muscle near my eye twitched as though someone were pulling at it with a thread. The temptation to look up never abated, but it was hard enough to find a way among the fallen fragments without frightening myself more. Turn and turn again. Stop. Look for the light. Turn so the light is coming from the left. Go a little way. Stop again. Look for the light again. No sound at all but my own panting breath escaping the halter of my throat. Turn and turn again, winding among them, winding around them, to come out of them at last quite unexpectedly!
Leelson stood a short distance away, beckoning with one hand, the other before his lips, urging quiet. Then I allowed myself to look up to see them nodding, nodding, nodding: no, no, no.
Still, they had let me pass. I trudged over to Leelson, bending double to catch my breath. I felt sick. I had half strangled myself.
“Lutha and Leely next,” he whispered in my ear. “Is she coming?”
I nodded, supposing that she would. Trompe would tell her she was next; she would take Leely into her arms and start walking in a kind of fatalistic calm. She would recognize the risk. She would tell herself she had never rejected or neglected him, that she had resolutely denied Leelson’s assessment of him. Nonetheless, she would risk him and herself. If she allowed herself to think about it at all, she would consider dying with Leely to be an acceptable solution to the problems of their lives, hers and his.
I could read her as though I, too, were a Fastigat. Her longings were mother longings. I knew about mother longings. Sometimes they did not bear thinking on, so I thought instead of her pathway, how she would walk, as I watched the slot from which I myself had emerged. There would be movement, I told myself. At any moment there would be movement.
There was none. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps she would not risk herself, or Leely. Leelson gave me a troubled look. I shrugged. I didn’t know. We planted our feet and watched, leaning slightly forward, as though to urge her out of hiding.
She did not come, but Leely did, quite alone, face glowing with an almost supernatural light, skipping into sight at the base of one of the pillars, waving his hands, caroling, “Dananana.” He was more beautiful than any child I have ever seen. He gave us an enigmatic look, that same look he had given me when he returned from his morning expedition, then he slipped between two pillars to lose himself once more, shining like a little sun.
Beside me, Leelson grunted in surprise. I looked upward as he was doing so and saw only quiet stone heads. Not a motion. Not a quiver. I stepped forward involuntarily to go after the child, but Leelson caught my robe, stopping me.
“No,” he whispered vehemently. “Wait!”
We both waited. Everything was silent, still, an interminable stillness. Not a sigh, not a tremble. The first sound we heard was the creak of wheels. Though we’d greased them again and again, they still creaked, a distinctive, irritating sound that might have been near or far, approaching or departing. The echoes and reverberations came at us from all sides, bounced around by the Nodders until they had no point of origin. I swayed with sudden dizziness and realized I’d been holding my breath again. Beside me, Leelson had been doing the same, for he exhaled in a sudden burst as Leely appeared once more.
This time Lutha was behind him, her hands twisted into the shoulders of the child’s garment so he could not break away. Her pallor was icy, almost blue, and even from where we stood I could see the rigidity of her arms and shoulders. She was holding the boy in a death grip of which he took no notice at all. His hands waved and his feet skipped and his voice rose in its constant contented comment on the world. I was transfixed once more by his ethereal, marvelous beauty. As one imagines angels or fairies looked in old stories.
Beside me Leelson said, under his breath, “Seraphic.” That was the word I’d been wanting. Either Leelson had thought of it, or he’d somehow picked it up from me. He wrenched his eyes away from the boy and held out his hands to Lutha. She ignored him, marching past us.
Trompe appeared next, tugging at the end of a rope. At first I could not imagine where he’d obtained a rope, then I saw he had knotted the reins together. A trivial thought at such a time, for when I looked up, the heads were shaking once more: no, no, no, no. Trompe wasn’t looking. He was concentrating on the gaufers. Either they disliked being led or they had picked up our tension, for they were behaving skittishly, throwing their feet sideways as they do when disturbed, bobbing their heads and growling in their throats. With shaking fingers, Trompe put the end of the line into Leelson’s hand, threw a glance in Lutha’s direction, where she’d stopped a few paces farther on, and then collapsed onto the ground.
“You made it,” said Leelson flatly, tugging the gaufers nearer us.
“Obviously,” Trompe returned, wiping his face with his sleeve.
Leelson turned to Lutha. “What happened with … him?” he asked, indicating Leely with a jerk of his head.
“He just … jumped out of my arms,” she murmured almost inaudibly. “I should have had his harness on him,
