Half the town went to Dorothy Springer’s funeral. Everyone was sorry she was gone, particularly the local folks who’d taken it upon themselves to feed her forty or fifty barn cats until they could find homes for them. School let out early in the afternoon, and the Remorseful Ruehouse was full of young people and their families. Bamber and Glory went with me, and we were just part of the crowd, which was a good thing because Ned and Walter were there, sitting in the back row, scanning the congregation.
We saw them on the way in. When we came out of the church, they were gone, but they were out at the cemetery when we arrived there. I had brought a bouquet, some wildflowers and some from my little garden. A lot of other people had done the same, and from under my lashes I watched the two men focusing on every person who laid flowers by the grave, trying to find something unusual. Glory started to cry, but by that time most of us were a little tearful.
“The Remorseful cemetery isn’t as pretty as the one near Cross-roads,” I said when the burial was over. “But it does have a nice view of the mountains. Here, take my handkerchief, Gloriana. I didn’t know you knew Dorothy.”
“I just knew her to say hello to. It’s just…just…”
“I know. The minister enjoyed himself, didn’t he. Made a real three-hanky affair out of it.”
“He did. Sort of.”
“If it’s any comfort to you, I have a friend in the sheriff ’s office, an old patient of your grandpa’s. She told me Dorothy was dozing in her chair, the way she did of an evening, when someone hit her on the head with something heavy. It was very sudden, and she probably didn’t even feel it. Also, she was well past ninety, and beginning to show signs of failing. She actually told me she wished she could just die quickly, in her sleep, and that’s almost what happened.”
“Was she a friend of yours?”
“Oh, for about forty years. She was one of Grandpa Doc’s patients, too. Well then, most everybody around here was! You don’t need to grieve over her, Glory.”
“It wasn’t grieving so much as thinking I could have caused her to die, Grandma! Even though it was Ms. McCollum who actually mentioned Ms. Springer to…you know who…it could just as easy have been me.”
“Death usually makes us feel guilty,” I told her. “As though those of us still living are part of a conspiracy. Let’s not brood on it, Glory. Til and Jeff are spending the night with friends, and your mother suggested that she and your dad would relish an evening to themselves, so I’m inviting you and Bamber to have supper at my house.”
I’d made a big pan of what farm folk called “all-in,” meat, cheese, beans, grain, and spicy sauce. Different kinds of peppers grew well in Rueful; almost everybody used them, red, green, or yellow, plus the tiny purple ones that set your mouth on fire.
Bamber ate three helpings of all-in and two of dessert. He was apologetic about it until I told him he was a growing boy, and if I remembered rightly, they ate all the time. Bamber flushed and looked pleased, as though he’d received a compliment, as perhaps he had. He’d been told he was normal boyish, and Bamber probably didn’t often get to think of himself that way. After dinner, Falija, Bamber and Glory did the dishes, and I sat on the porch, watching the battle-bats skydiving for bugs until the dishwashers joined me.
Glory asked Falija if her new brain had told her anything new and helpful.
Falija smiled a cat smile. “As a matter of fact…it’s still light enough for us all to see. Let’s take a walk in the woods. Maybe we’ll find something interesting.”
Since Bryan had died, I often went woods wandering in the dusk or moonlight. I knew Falija saw well even when it was quite dark, so we wouldn’t get lost. She led us up the hill, past a huge chunk of black rock that went up like a steeple, then up a steep slope—me scrambling, with Bamber boosting me from behind—that ended against two huge boulders separated by a narrow slit. Following Falija, we squeezed inside. The opening split in two, and Falija led us to the right. Directly ahead of us was a screen of some kind, a wavering light, as though someone had turned a breeze-riffled pond on its side. I would have stopped right there, but when Falija plunged right through it, the children went after her, so, naturally, I went after them.
We stood in a tunnel of wavering light. To our right was a line of squared-off boulders that made a low barrier between us and the drop beyond. Bamber went to the gap between two of the stones and peered downward while I tried to figure out how we had possibly climbed this high! We were on a ledge, out in the clear, high above the nearby hills, with a view that went all the way to the next Walled-Off, but nothing looked familiar: no town, no pottery chimneys, no notch where the river flowed. On our left, the cliffs went up into the sky where the last lavender clouds of evening floated in front of a full moon, just rising over the mountains. I stared at it, and it at me, and its expression was completely different from any moons I knew.
I whispered, “What do you call this place, Falija?”
“I guess I’d
