There was a brown, round little man in a clean cook’s apron passing below the window, herding half a dozen boys before him. He looked up just then and called, “Happy Festival to you, lassy.” And the boys stopped, looking up. Stocky boys. Jeruval and Flot boys. Ordinary boys. Meaning nothing to me at all. They paused and went on incuriously, while one of them remained behind, mouth open, staring up at me. He was small, smaller than I, one of those boys who get their growth late, with his shoulders just beginning to widen. His face was serious and quiet with ruddy hair in one thick wave across his forehead. His eyes dug deep at me, as though he would understand everything they saw by sheer determination. The last of the words of Lovers Come Calling was. still on my lips.
Only then I realized what I had done. I had called. He had come. There was something else necessary, some final thing. I struggled with it. The spell was not complete until something was given between the two. A token. Something given as a token. Without thinking, I leaned out the window to put the warm slice of nutpie in his hand. He took it, bit it, smiled a small, rather puzzled smile, and then was dragged away by the little brown man.
And I sat as one lost forever, betrayed by what I had done.
Margaret Foxmitten came in behind me, stood there. I could feel her eyes examining the Pattern on the sill. “Did I see someone leave?” she asked. “Just now?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know,” I croaked. “I don’t know, Margaret.”
“The more fool you,” she said. “Now you’re trapped and no way out of it. You’ve done Lovers’ Call and someone’s come in answer. Think of that.” She went out into the corridor, calling for Sarah to come hear what Jinian had done. I was too sunk in misery to listen. Misery and delight, of course. I was in love. Only thirteen, but in love. I wondered who he was.
I wondered if I would ever see him again. For if I did not, likely this love would haunt me until I died. No one could break the call unless we were both present and consenting.
“Now what’ve you done!” demanded Murzy, bustling into the room. “What’s this?”
“I was practicing,” I said lamely. “And I practiced Lovers Come Calling. And he came.”
She just stood there looking at me, a very curious expression on her face, almost as though she had known already what I had done, or perhaps what I was likely to do. “Well,” she said at last. “We’ll go out into the town. If you see him again, tell one of us right away. At least we can find out who he is.”
But, of course, I didn’t see him again. I don’t remember much about Festival. We had some good food, I do remember, and there were fireworks. Most of the time I spent thinking about the boy, reconsidering his appearance and his smile, wondering what his name was and where he might be found. The morning after, we were in the wagon headed home once more, and I said to Murzy—trying hard to sound plaintive, though I was really put out that so little had been made of the whole thing—“Murzy, why did I do such a silly thing?”
“Well, chile. You’ve made some difficulty for yourself, truly. Which is something we all do, so no sense fretting overmuch about it. Take it as a lesson and profit therefrom, as Grandma used to say.” She sounded so righteous and solid. It made me angry.
I fumed about that for a time, deciding at last that it wasn’t worth getting huffy about. As one of Gamesman caste, I ranked the lot of them and could have made their lives miserable when we returned home. I considered doing this, but I knew it would end making mine worse. So, in the end I only asked, “What do I do now?”
Murzy considered this seriously. “Well, for a few years, nothing much. Keep close to us, Jinian. You’ll go on with your schooling from us this next few years. By the time you’re grown, we’ll know more. We’ll find something out ...”
And that was the total I could get out of them on that subject, however much I tried.
Later, however, as I considered the matter, I realized that when one practices the wize-art, one should stop somewhere short of the last word or phrase. Or something should be mimed rather than done. Or one must use an inert ingredient rather than an active one. It was not the very worst way to learn such a lesson—death would have been that. But it was not a comfortable way, for now I was haunted by the boy, the small, serious boy with the narrow, searching face. When I lay down to sleep, I thought of him. When I woke, I reached for the cool space in the bed as though he should be sleeping there. In the night he touched me, making me flame and start awake. When I looked into the mirror, I saw his face behind my own. We might have been brother and sister, both fair and ruddy-haired, as unlike Mendost and dark-lovely Mother as could be. As time went by, I felt more and more akin to him, to this stranger, this unknown boy, this mysterious, lost boy. Oh, he was my true love, no question about that, but it would have been better not to have known it for some years yet—until I was old enough to do something about it.
3
Margaret and I got to talking on the way home. She wasn’t that much older than I, and she seemed more sympathetic than the others, so I had someone to talk to about him. We rode along, me talking,
