“Oh, lovely young girl,” he said gently. “Don’t die. The cavalry is on its way. You will be saved.”
There was such certainty in his voice that it made her glance up again, for she had been looking at her hands and her own soul in her hands.
“You know, don’t you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You truly know? You tell the truth?”
“Swear to God, swear by all that’s living.”
“Tell me more!”
“There’s little more to tell.”
“Tell me!”
“Everything will be all right with you. Some night soon, or some day, someone will call and they’ll really be there when you come to find. The game will be over.”
“Hide-and-seek, you mean? But it’s gone on too long!”
“It’s almost over, Marie.”
“You know my name!”
He stopped, confused. He had not meant to speak it.
“How did you know, who are you?” she demanded.
“When you get back to sleep tonight, you’ll know. If we say too much, you’ll disappear, or I’ll disappear. I’m not quite sure which of us is real or which is a ghost.”
“Not me! Oh, surely not me. I can feel myself. I’m here. Why, look!” And she showed him the remainder of her tears brushed from her eyelids and held on her palms.
“Oh, that’s real, all right. Well, then, dear young woman, I must be the visitor. I come to tell you it will all go right. Do you believe in special ghosts?”
“Are you special?”
“One of us is. Or maybe both. The ghost of young love or the ghost of the unborn.”
“Is that what I am, you are?”
“Paradoxes aren’t easy to explain.”
“Then, depending on how you look at it, you’re impossible, and so am I.”
“If it makes it easier, just think I’m not really here. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I think I do.”
“It comes to me to imagine, then, that there are special ghosts in the world. Not ghosts of dead people. But ghosts of want and need, or I guess you might say desire.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, have you ever lain in bed late afternoons, late nights and dreamed something so much, awake, you felt your soul jump out of your body as if something had yanked a long, pure white sheet straight out the window? You want something so much, your soul leaps out and follows, my God, fast?”
“Why . . . yes. Yes!”
“Boys do that, men do that. When I was twelve I read Burroughs’ Mars novels. John Carter used to stand under the stars, hold up his arms to Mars, and ask to be taken. And Mars grabbed his soul, yanked him like an aching tooth across space, and landed him in dead Martian seas. That’s boys, that’s men.”
“And girls, women?”
“They dream, yes. And their ghosts come out of their bodies. Living ghosts. Living wants. Living needs.”
“And go to stand on lawns in the middle of winter nights?”
“That’s about it.”
“Am I a ghost, then?”
“Yes, the ghost of wanting so much it kills but doesn’t kill you, shakes and almost breaks you.”
“And you?”
“I must be the answer-ghost.”
“The answer-ghost. What a funny name!”
“Yes. But you’ve asked and I know the answer.”
“Tell me!”
“All right, the answer is this, young girl, young woman. The time of waiting is almost over. Your time of despair will soon be through. Very soon, now, a voice will call and when you come out, both of you, your ghost of want and your body with it, there will be a man to go with the voice that calls.”
“Oh, please don’t tell me that if it isn’t true!” Her voice trembled. Tears flashed again in her eyes. She half raised her arms again in defense.
“I wouldn’t dream to hurt you. I only came to tell.”
The town clock struck again in the deep morning.
“It’s late,” she said.
“Very late. Get along, now.”
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“You don’t need to know any more.”
The last echoes of the great clock faded.
“How strange,” she murmured. “The ghost of a question, the ghost of an answer.”
“What better ghosts can there be?”
“None that I ever heard of. We’re twins.”
“Far nearer than you think.”
She took a step, looked down, and gasped with delight. “Look, oh, look. I can move!”
“Yes.”
“What was it you said, boys walk all night, miles and miles?”
“Yes.”
“I could go back in, but I can’t sleep now. I must walk, too.”
“Do that,” he said gently.
“But where shall I go?”
“Why,” he said, and he suddenly knew. He knew where to send her and was suddenly angry with himself for knowing, angry with her for asking. A burst of jealousy welled in him. He wanted to race down the street to a certain house where a certain young man lived in another year and break the window, burn the roof. And yet, oh, yet, if he did that!?
“Yes?” she said, for he had kept her waiting.
Now, he thought, you must tell her. There’s no escape.
For if you don’t tell her, angry fool, you yourself will never be born.
A wild laugh burst from his mouth, a laugh that accepted the entire night and time and all his crazed thinking.
“So you want to know where to go?” he said at last.
“Oh, yes!”
He nodded his head. “Up to that corner, four blocks to the right, one block to the left.”
She repeated it quickly. “And the final number?!”
“Eleven Green Park.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” She ran a few steps, then stopped, bewildered. Her hands were helpless at her throat. Her mouth trembled. “Silly. I hate to leave.”
“Why?”
“Why, because . . . I’m afraid I’ll never see you again!”
“You will. Three years from now.”
“Are you sure?”
“I won’t look quite the same. But it’ll be me. And you’ll know me forever.”
“Oh, I’m glad for that. Your face is familiar. I somehow know you well.”
She began to walk slowly, looking over at him as he stood near the porch of the house.
“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve saved my life.”
“And my own along with it.”
The shadows of a tree fell across her face, touched her cheeks, moved in her eyes.
“Oh, Lord! Girls lie in bed nights listing the names for their future children. Silly. Joe. John. Christopher. Samuel. Stephen. And right now, Will.” She touched the gentle rise of her stomach, then lifted her hand out halfway to point to him in the night. “Is your name Will?”
“Yes.”
Tears absolutely burst from her eyes.
He wept with her.
“Oh, that’s fine, fine,” she said at last. “I can go now. I won’t be out here on the lawn anymore. Thank God, thank you. Good night.”
She went away into the shadows across the lawn and along the sidewalk down the street. At the far corner he saw her turn and wave and walk away.
“Good night,” he said quietly.
I am not born yet, he thought, or she has been dead many years, which is it? which?
The moon sailed into clouds.
The motion touched him to step, walk, go up the porch stairs, wait, look out at the lawn, go inside, shut the door.
A wind shook the trees.
The moon came out again and looked upon a lawn where two sets of footprints, one going one way, one going another in the dew, slowly, slowly, as the night continued, vanished.
By the time the moon had gone down the sky there was only an empty lawn and no sign, and much dew.
The great town clock struck six in the morning. Fire showed in the east. A cock crowed.
FEBRUARY 1999: YLLA
THEY HAD A HOUSE OF CRYSTAL PILLARS on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.
Mr. and Mrs. K had lived by the dead sea for twenty years, and their ancestors had lived in the same house, which turned and followed the sun, flower-like, for ten centuries.
Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room.
They were not happy now.
This morning Mrs. K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.
Something was going to happen.
She waited.
She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle down upon the sand.
Nothing happened.
Tired of waiting, she walked through the misting pillars. A gentle rain sprang from the fluted pillar tops, cooling the scorched air, falling gently on her. On hot days it was like walking in a creek. The floors of the house glittered with cool streams. In the distance she heard her husband playing his book steadily, his fingers never tired of the old songs. Quietly she wished he might one day again spend as much time holding and touching her like a little harp as he did his incredible books.
But no. She shook her head, an imperceptible, forgiving shrug. Her eyelids closed softly down upon her golden eyes. Marriage made people old and familiar, while still young.
She lay back in a chair that moved to take her shape even as she moved. She closed her eyes tightly and nervously.
The dream occurred.
Her brown fingers trembled, came up, grasped at the air. A moment later she sat up, startled, gasping.
She glanced about swiftly, as if expecting someone there before her. She seemed disappointed; the space between the pillars was empty.
Her husband appeared in a triangular door. “Did you call?” he asked irritably.
“No!” she cried.
“I thought I heard you cry out.”
“Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!”
“In the daytime? You don’t often do that.”
She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. “How strange, how very strange,” she murmured. “The dream.”
“Oh?” He evidently wished to return to his book.
“I dreamed about a man.”
“A man?”
“A tall man, six feet one inch tall.”
“How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant.”
“Somehow”—she tried the words—“he looked all right. In spite of being tall. And he had—oh, I know you’ll think it silly—he had blue eyes!”
“Blue eyes! Gods!” cried Mr. K. “What’ll you dream next? I suppose he had black hair?”
“How did you guess?” She was excited.
“I picked the most unlikely color,” he replied coldly.
“Well, black it was!” she cried. “And he had a very white skin; oh, he was most unusual! He was dressed in a strange uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly to me.” She smiled.
“Out of the sky; what nonsense!”
“He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun,” she remembered. She closed her eyes to shape it again. “I dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien. And a door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall man stepped out.”
“If you worked harder you wouldn’t have these silly dreams.”
“I rather enjoyed it,” she replied, lying back. “I never suspected myself of such an imagination. Black hair, blue eyes, and white skin! What a strange man, and yet—quite handsome.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“You’re unkind. I didn’t think him up on purpose; he just came in my mind while I drowsed. It wasn’t like a dream. It was so unexpected and different. He looked at me and he said, ‘I’ve come from the third planet in my ship. My name is Nathaniel York—’”
“A stupid name; it’s no name at all,” objected the husband.
“Of course it’s stupid, because it’s a dream,” she explained softly. “And he said, ‘This is the first trip across space. There are only two of us in our ship, myself and my friend Bert.’”
“Another stupid name.”
“And he said, ‘We’re from a city on Earth; that’s the name of our planet,’” continued Mrs. K. “That’s what he said. ‘Earth’ was the name he spoke. And he used another language. Somehow I understood him. With my mind. Telepathy, I suppose.”
Mr. K turned away. She stopped him with a word. “Yll?” she called quietly. “Do you ever wonder if—well, if there are people living on the third planet?”
“The third planet is incapable of supporting life,” stated the husband patiently. “Our scientists have said there’s far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.”
“But wouldn’t it be fascinating if there were people? And they traveled through space in some sort of ship?”
“Really, Ylla, you know how I hate this emotional wailing. Let’s get on with our work.”
It was late in the day when she began singing the song as she moved among the whispering pillars of rain. She sang it over and over again.
“What’s that song?” snapped her husband at last, walking in to sit at the fire table.
“I don’t know.” She looked up, surprised at herself. She put her hand to her mouth, unbelieving. The sun was setting. The house was closing itself in, like a giant flower, with the passing of light. A wind blew among the pillars; the fire table bubbled its fierce pool of silver lava. The wind stirred her russet hair, crooning softly in her ears. She stood silently looking out into the great sallow distances of sea bottom, as if recalling something, her yellow eyes soft and moist. “‘Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine,’” she sang, softly, quietly, slowly. “‘Or leave a kiss within the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine.’” She hummed now, moving her hands in the wind ever so lightly, her eyes shut. She finished the song.
It was very beautiful.
“Never heard that song before. Did you compose it?” he inquired, his eyes sharp.
“No. Yes. No, I don’t know, really!” She hesitated wildly. “I don’t even know what the words are; they’re another language!”
“What language?”
She dropped portions of meat numbly into the simmering lava. “I don’t know.” She drew the meat forth a moment later, cooked, served on a plate for him. “It’s just a crazy thing I made up, I guess. I don’t know why.”
He said nothing. He watched her drown meats in the hissing fire pool. The sun was gone. Slowly, slowly the night came in to fill the room, swallowing the pillars and both of them, like a dark wine poured to the ceiling. Only the silver lava’s glow lit their faces.
She hummed the strange song again.
Instantly he lea
ped from his chair and stalked angrily from the room.
Later, in isolation, he finished supper.
When he arose he stretched, glanced at her, and suggested, yawning, “Let’s take the flame birds to town tonight to see an entertainment.”
“You don’t mean it?” she said. “Are you feeling well?”
“What’s so strange about that?”
“But we haven’t gone for an entertainment in six months!”
“I think it’s a good idea.”
“Suddenly you’re so solicitous,” she said.
“Don’t talk that way,” he replied peevishly. “Do you or do you not want to go?”
She looked out at the pale desert. The twin white moons were rising. Cool water ran softly about her toes. She began to tremble just the least bit. She wanted very much to sit quietly here, soundless, not moving until this thing occurred, this thing expected all day, this thing that could not occur but might. A drift of song brushed through her mind.
“I——”
“Do you good,” he urged. “Come along now.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “Some other night.”
“Here’s your scarf.” He handed her a vial. “We haven’t gone anywhere in months.”
“Except you, twice a week to Xi City.” She wouldn’t look at him.
“Business,” he said.
“Oh?” She whispered to herself.
From the vial a liquid poured, turned to blue mist, settled about her neck, quivering.
The flame birds waited, like a bed of coals, glowing on the cool smooth sands. The white canopy ballooned on the night wind, flapping softly, tied by a thousand green ribbons to the birds.
Ylla laid herself back in the canopy and, at a word from her husband, the birds leaped, burning, toward the dark sky. The ribbons tautened, the canopy lifted. The sand slid whining under; the blue hills drifted by, drifted by, leaving their home behind, the raining pillars, the caged flowers, the singing books, the whispering floor creeks. She did not look at her husband. She heard him crying out to the birds as they rose higher, like ten thousand hot sparkles, so many red-yellow fireworks in the heavens, tugging the canopy like a flower petal, burning through the wind.