She did not mean to be ruled by her fears again. Not ever. No matter how severely Roger Covenant provoked her.
Here, however, she faced a conundrum which she did not know how to untangle. To flee for Jeremiah’s sake? Or to remain for her own, and for Joan’s, and for the Land’s? Trapped by indecision, she found herself sitting on her bed with her hands over her face and Thomas Covenant’s name on her lips, listening as if she were helpless for sounds of danger from downstairs.
There were none. Occasionally the distant murmur of Sandy’s voice reached her. At intervals a car drove down the street. Erratic gusts of wind tugging past the eaves of the house suggested a storm brewing. She heard nothing to justify her gathering apprehension.
Sighing, she told herself that in the morning she would make another attempt to enlist Lytton’s aid. Or perhaps Megan could sway him. For tonight she would watch over Jeremiah with all her vigilance, and let no harm near him.
By now, he had probably finished with Mount Thunder and begun to separate the pieces of Revelstone. Nothing in his manner had suggested that Gravin Threndor and Lord’s Keep held any significance for him. As far as she could tell, his life remained exactly as it had always been, despite the Land’s strange intrusion into his lost mind.
This was how he had spent his time for years: he put things together and took them apart. Indeed, he seemed incapable of any relationship except with physical objects which could be connected to each other. No human being impinged on his attention. He did not react to his name. If he was not involved in making one of his constructs, he simply knelt with his feet angled outward beneath him and rocked himself soothingly with his arms across his stomach. He walked only if he were raised to his feet and led by the hand. Even animals found no focus in his muddy gaze.
Presented with Tinker Toys, however, with Lego, Lincoln Logs, or an Erector set, or any other form of non-mechanical object designed to be attached to or inserted into other non-mechanical objects, he became a wizard. The castle in the entryway, and the models of Revelstone and Mount Thunder in the living room, were only today’s examples of his talent. By the hundreds, by the thousands, obsessively, he devised structures of such elegance and imagination that they often made Linden hold her breath in wonder-and of such size that they sometimes filled the available space. Perhaps they would have expanded indefinitely if he had not run out of materials. And yet they always appeared complete when he did run out, as if somehow he had calculated exactly what could be done with the Lego or Tinker Toys at hand.
Often Linden sat with him while he built his edifices. She had conceived a method of playing with him; of producing a personal reaction from his inattention toward her. She would take a piece-a block or connector-and place it somewhere in his construct. He would not look at her when she did so-but he would pause. If by his inarticulate standards she had placed the piece incorrectly, he would frown. Then he would rectify her mistake. But if by chance she had set the piece where it belonged, he would nod slightly before he continued.
Such indications assured her that he was aware of her.
Two years ago, guided by a flash of intuition, Linden had spoken to Sam Diadem about Jeremiah. Sam ran a small assembly-line business that produced wooden playthings for children, primarily rocking horses, marionettes, and various wooden puzzles in strange shapes which interlocked to form balls, pyramids, and the like. At her urging, Sam had discovered that if he left Jeremiah alone with a supply of ready parts, Jeremiah would quietly and steadily produce finished toys. He would not paint or package them, and never played with them. But they were always perfectly assembled.
Now Jeremiah “worked” in Sam’s shop two mornings a week. His “pay” Linden spent faithfully on K’nex, or 3-D jigsaw puzzles of palaces, or more Lego and Tinker Toys.
Some of the psychologists whom Linden had consulted called Jeremiah’s condition a “dissociative disorder.” Others spoke of “hysterical conversion reactions” and “somatoform disorders.” His symptoms resembled autism- specifically, he appeared to be an autistic savant-yet he could not be autistic. Autism was congenital, and beyond question Jeremiah’s condition had been induced by trauma. His natural mother had described him as “a normal boy” before the bonfire-whatever those words might mean in her deranged lexicon. Certainly none of the known therapies for autism had produced any change in him.
Memories of that trauma still woke Linden at night, sweating, with cries which she had failed to utter locked in her throat.
His natural mother was a woman named Marsha Jason. She had had three children, all adopted now by other parents-Hosea, Rebecca, and her youngest, Jeremiah, prophet of woe. She had chosen that name, apparently, because her husband had abandoned her during her last pregnancy.
For the first few years of Jeremiah’s life, Marsha Jason had subsisted at the mercy of various welfare agencies. In one form or another, she had kept herself and her children alive through the charity of strangers. And then, when her self-pity and ineffectiveness had reached unendurable proportions, she had discovered the Community of Retribution.
From that point onward, as she proclaimed afterward, she had had no control over anything that happened. She must have been brainwashed or drugged. She was a good mother: without brainwashing or drugs, she would never have sacrificed her dear children to the Community’s mad crusade against Thomas Covenant. Had she not been victimised of her own right hand at the same time? Surely she did not deserve to have her sons and daughter taken from her; placed in foster care?
Yet she had not been able to deny that in the last weeks before Covenant’s murder-soon after Joan Covenant’s departure-she and her children, along with perhaps thirty other members of the Community of Retribution, had left the commune and made their way toward Haven Farm, supporting themselves by beggary when they could not gain donations by preaching. Entranced, perhaps, by some form of mass hysteria, they had snatched Joan from her ex-husband; had slaughtered a cow so that they could splash his home with blood. Then they had taken her into the woods behind Haven Farm and built a bonfire. When Covenant had at last appeared to redeem Joan, Mrs. Jason and her children had been the first to hold their right hands in the blaze, Hosea after his mother, then Rebecca, and then five-year-old Jeremiah.
With years to study the question, Linden still could not explain how ordinary adults, much less their uncomprehending children, had been impelled to endure the pain long enough to burn the flesh from their bones. But the fact remained that Marsha Jason, Hosea, and Rebecca had done so. Jeremiah had been damaged almost as badly. And after them, more worshippers had followed.
And in the bonfire, Lord Foul had emerged to claim Covenant’s life.
Linden still too easily remembered the Despiser’s eyes as they had appeared in the bonfire, carious as fangs. She would never forget his figure forming in the deep heat of the blaze. Alive with fire and offered pain, he had stopped her life in her veins. And she had remained paralysed while the leader of his worshippers had set a knife to Joan’s throat, intending to sacrifice her if Covenant did not surrender himself.
Then Covenant had retrieved Joan from her doom; and Linden had at last broken free of her immobility. She had rushed toward the bonfire, striving frantically to block the knife from his chest. But the worshipper with the knife had struck her senseless; and as she lost consciousness she had seen the blade pound into Covenant’s heart.
A few hours or a lifetime later, in the dawn of a new day, Dr. Berenford found her where she lay beside Covenant’s corpse. Mrs. Jason had rousted him from his home, seeking treatment for herself and her children. He and Sheriff Lytton had discovered Joan asleep in her bed in Covenant’s house, all memory of the night’s events apparently gone. While Lytton had taken Joan to County Hospital, Julius had searched the woods behind Haven Farm until he located Linden and Covenant.
Thus he had spared her any accusation that she had played some role in Covenant’s death. Legally, of course, she had not. Morally, she knew better.
She had suffered acutely during the long months of that one night. Nevertheless she had gone into surgery as soon as Julius had driven her back into town. Together, they had spent interminable hours fighting to save as many flame-savaged hands as they could.
For Hosea and Rebecca, Linden had been able to do little except amputate. With Jeremiah, however, she had met somewhat more success. Through simple stubbornness as much as by skill, she had found a way to save half of his thumb and two of his fingers: the last two.
They remained shorter than they should have been. Yet they were strong now: he could use them. To that
