The Other Side of the Sun

by Madeleine L'engle

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. “Yes, I suppose I do. But I don’t want to cause you pain, Honoria.”

  Honoria stalked over to the window where the face had been. I did not know what she was seeing as she stood there looking out into the night. “We name Jimmy after Mr. James, but he turn from the name and went out into the land of anger and greed and hate.”

  I turned away from the look in her eyes and looked down at my cup.

  “He tell Clive and me he can save Belle Zenumin if he bring her to Illyria as his wife. They be married, leastways according to the law of the scrub. But they marry in hate for Illyria. When he bring her here, love stick in they craws. They do not find what they be looking for.”

  “What were they looking for?”

  “Not love. Not peace. Things. Things which stay things. Treasure. The princess’s treasure. They turn on Illyria and go back to the scrub. Tron born.” She began to pace the length of the kitchen, her shadow bent and broken by the ceiling. “They bad things in the scrub—not everywhere, but in the Dark Clearings. Jimmy sicken with a wasting sickness. He not bad enough to make a Zenumin. He die.”

  “Ron told me how he—how he died.”

  “Jimmy dead long before his body be killed.” Honoria’s eyes were dry. It was I who felt the hot sting of tears. “Finish your posset, Miss Stella. Go to bed.” Underneath the sternness of her words there was understanding and compassion.

  I took my candle and went upstairs. I knew that because of me she would not sleep this night. I thought that she would spend the night in prayer.

  I did not know how to pray, and I would sleep.

  Up in my room the kitten was waiting for me, and when I relaxed into a smile of pleasure, I realized how tight and tense were the muscles of my body. I went to my balcony. There was a distant flash of thunder. Perhaps the far-away storm was responsible for some of the electricity in the air, and for the fact that peace did not come. A few drops of rain spattered on the beach, on the wooden rail of my balcony. The rain began to fall more heavily; the thunder was closer, but this was not a violent storm like the one my first night in Illyria. It was moving quickly, would soon be past.

  But other things would not blow by so easily. I wanted, quite irrationally, to know who Ron’s father was, and how he had come to Illyria. No more questions, Stella. But why not? My father brought me up to ask questions. No. Not this kind of question.

  I got into bed, taking one of Mado’s journals under the mosquito netting with me. An insect clung to the cloth, waving fierce horns at me. I shook the netting and he gave a wild flap of his wings and flew towards the lamp. Another insect whirred in from the window and took his place. I gave up any idea of reading—perhaps I had learned enough for one day—blew out my light, and plunged into sleep.

  I slept and I dreamed.

  I was wandering along a stony, shale-roughened cliff, bare, vegetationless. As I neared the sharp edge a wind came roaring down from the mountains, pushing, pushing me towards the final end of rock. I peered down, and the valley was so far beneath me that it was no more than a sea of darkness. The wind increased in force, pushing me towards the abyss. I could not press through the gale across the rock to safety. I was going to be blasted over the edge by the cold and angry elements.

  I tried to scream, and no scream would come.

  Then my wrist was grabbed; I was pulled back, through the fierceness of wind, back across the shale to a flowering field; and there I fell into the fragrance of grass and flowers, my legs weak with terror and relief.

  Ron was holding me, not Ron the angry, the austere; but Ron gentle, tender, loving.

  What had started as nightmare ended as joy. All fear fled. I slipped into a spring-filled, zephyr-caressed meadow of sleep …

  I woke up during the night and got out of bed to go down the passage to the bathroom. As I started to cross the threshold I stumbled over something and almost fell. I could see nothing, and for a terrible moment I felt a surge of panic like the beginning of the dream. Then I bent down and touched Finbarr’s fur as he rose, with rheumatic difficulty, to his feet, and nuzzled into my outstretched hand, giving me a warm gentle lick of his long tongue.

  “Finny!” I whispered. “What are you doing here?”

  He followed me down the hall, then back to the bedroom, and lay down once more across the threshold. I felt as if he were guarding me.

  FOUR

  1

  In the morning Aunt Olivia could not get out of bed. She wanted to see Ron, and Ron only, despite Aunt Irene’s loud disapproval, and Uncle Hoadley’s gentler suggestion that Clive drive him into Jefferson and return with the doctor.

  “No, Hoadley, I can’t stand your doctor. He’s a boa constrictor without the pleasant disposition. So you’ll just have to take the train into Jefferson.”

  “Dear Auntie, whether I take the train or the carriage to Jefferson has nothing to do with it. I want you to have proper medical attention.”

  “Ronnie’s proper medical attention. You know that as well as I do. You saw to it.”

  Aunt Des pulled me away from the argument, starting to talk quickly and rather loudly, as though she did not want me to hear. “The train makes two trips a day, Stella, it’s really very convenient. It goes into Jefferson in the morning, and comes back in the afternoon, in time for dinner. When the children were little—Terry and Ronnie, that is, because of course there was no train when we first came to Illyria—the big event of the day was to meet the afternoon train. They got so excited! One of their special treats was to be allowed to take two pins, ordinary sewing pins, lay them on the rail, and after the train had come by, the pins would be flattened into a cross, and they’d put them with their treasure. I still have one of the little pin crosses that Terry gave me—I keep it in my sewing box.”

  Uncle Hoadley came out of Aunt Olivia’s room.

  “Well?” Aunt Des asked.

  “Your sister can be exceedingly stubborn. I’m taking the train into Jefferson—not that that has anything to do with it. Stella, she asks you to come in, please.”

  Aunt Olivia was like a small bird, huddled in pain and fever in the great four-poster bed. She insisted that I be the one to stay with her while Ron examined her and gave her a needle against the pain. “If you want me to be good, then I will be,” she said to Ron and me, “but you have to want me to be brave, or it isn’t worth it. Nobody can be good and brave in a vacuum. We have to be good for somebody. And don’t tell me I have to be good for God, or for Jesus, or any of that stuff. I believe in Darwin this morning.”

  Ron looked at me across the bed and smiled. It was a good smile, merry, and full of love for the old lady. His voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it before. “When I was a little boy I used to try to be good for you, Miss Olivia, because you asked me to. But all I ask you now is that you try to let me help you, even if I have to hurt you.” Ron the doctor, calm, absolutely sure, was totally different from Ron the acerb and uncertain young man I walked with on the beach.

  “The baby—” I said. “Did the little boy find you last night?” He nodded. “Was everything all right?”

  “The baby’s fine.”

  “The mother—”

  “She’d lost too much blood by the time I got there. The Zenumin midwife bungled.”

  “Like the twins’ mother—”

  “Miss Olivia,” Ron said briskly, “you’ll do what I say, won’t you? That’s the kind of good I want you to be, just to do what I tell you. This will hurt, now. Hold Mrs. Renier’s hand tight. Yell if you want to. Go on. There. Almost over. Sorry to have to hurt you this way. Easy, easy. Done now, and I’ll give you something to cut the pain. Relax, now, Miss Olivia, stop fighting the pain, it just makes it worse.” His dark hands against the fragile body were tender, loving. Healing hands.

  “If I don’t fight the pain I’ll weep,” Aunt Olivia said.

  “Go right ahead, Miss Olivia, if it will help.”

  “When you were little—” her
words were a series of small, painful gasps—“and you and Terry played together, and we were all happy and loving, you called me Aunt Livia. You and Terry. Both of you. That’s how I like it.”

  “Not any more, Miss Olivia.”

  “Why not?”

  He smiled. “Honoria and Clive wouldn’t approve.” Then, “I’ll stay with you for a piece, Miss Olivia, till you get sleepy. And, thank you for your help, Mrs. Renier.”

  I was dismissed.

  In the late afternoon we all had tea in Aunt Olivia’s room. Aunt Irene complained about the tea and the heat, and asked Honoria to fix her a bath before bedtime.

  “Irene,” Aunt Mary Desborough reproved, “you oughtn’t to make Honoria lug those heavy hot-water cans upstairs when you can just as easily go for a swim.”

  “I want a hot bath, Auntie. I don’t ask for one very often.”

  “You were just going on about how hot you are,” Aunt Olivia said.

  “Auntie, sometimes a hot bath is more important than the weather.”

  “Are you that dirty?”

  “Auntie!”

  “She probably is,” Aunt Olivia said to Aunt Des and me. “Who knows where she was off to all day? For which, as now in fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

  “Really, Auntie,” Aunt Irene protested, “that’s hardly apt.”

  “Apt enough.” The old lady pushed against her pillows and grinned. “Stella, Des, identify it.”

  Aunt Des tapped her foot. “One of your ghoulish, obscure modern poets, I suppose.”

  “It is not! It’s Robert Southwell: late sixteenth century.”

  “Ghoulish and obscure, anyhow.”

  “Point for me.”

  “Oh, all right. But I don’t think it’s fair.”

  “Certainly it’s fair. It’s not my fault if you’re losing your memory.”

  “I can hardly be expected to remember everything written by every obscure hack.”

  “In any case, life’s not fair. You ought to realize that by now.”

  “Aunties, that’s enough. Stella, do you happen to have a handkerchief? I seem to have mislaid mine—” Aunt Irene fumbled in her sleeves, in the pocket of her skirt—“and I don’t want to ask Honoria or Clive to go upstairs.”

  Aunt Mary Desborough reached into her work basket and pulled out a handkerchief. “You just asked Honoria to go upstairs and fix you a bath.”

  Ignoring this, Aunt Irene looked at me. “Stella?”

  I handed my handkerchief to her, just as Clive came in with a plate of tea cakes. Still with the plate, he turned and went out.

  “Clive!” Aunt Irene called. Waited. Called again, “Clive! Now where is he and what is he doing? Clive!”

  “Yes, Miss Irene?”

  “Where are those cakes?”

  “Right here, Miss Irene.”

  “And more bread and butter, too, please.”

  Honoria came stalking in and held out a freshly washed and ironed handkerchief. “Miss Irene.”

  “Oh, thank you, Honoria, but I already have one.”

  “Here is one of yours, Miss Irene. I will take Miss Stella’s.”

  “I’ve used it.”

  “Yes, Miss Irene. I will wash it.”

  “Oh, don’t bother, Honoria. You can do it later.”

  Honoria held out her hand. “Now, Miss Irene.”

  Aunt Irene tightened her lips, but put a handkerchief into Honoria’s hand.

  “What’s this about?” Aunt Mary Desborough asked.

  “Finish your tea, Miss Des,” Honoria said.

  The next morning after breakfast Aunt Irene cornered me. “Stella, honey, maybe you’d drive into San Feliz with me while I pick up some grits and rice for Honoria, and maybe some white bacon if there’s any worth getting? We’ll do a proper marketing in Jefferson tomorrow, but there’s no use toting staples on the train. I do hope you’re planning to come with me?”

  “Yes, Aunt Irene. I’d like to.”

  “The ride on our funny little train may amuse you, and of course I’d like to show you some of Jefferson. Hoadley will have a carriage meet us at the station. This morning I’m just going to take Hoadley’s little landau to San Feliz, and I do hate going alone.”

  It seemed ungracious to refuse.

  We trotted along the beach. Aunt Irene, fully corseted even in the heat, impeccably dressed in a dark-green skirt and pale-green ruffled shirt, made me feel like a country cousin in my loose blue lawn dress: I cared more about keeping cool than about being fashionable in the heat. Anyhow, Aunt Irene was the colonist, and an Utteley to boot. I had already absorbed some of the great-aunts’ prejudices. But I had to admit that she handled the little horse easily and well.

  In San Feliz she threw the reins to one of a group of little colored boys who evidently hung around to perform this service for a few pennies, and I followed her about the dusty, musty shed near the station which served as supply store for the beach. Aunt Irene peered into barrels of various grades of hominy, rice, sugar, flour. Shafts of sunlight, heavy with flour dust, struck through the dimness. She made her purchases, chattering about the weather, Jefferson society, the Yacht Club, my arrival from England, Lord and Lady Dowler, the weather again. I bowed, smiled, and swept out of the store by Aunt Irene, followed by another of the ubiquitous little boys staggering under the weight of sacks of hominy, rice, sugar.

  We had hardly pulled away, Aunt Irene clucking at the little horse and slapping the reins, when she said, “I know what let’s do! Let’s go pay a little visit to Granddam Zenumin!”

  I answered quickly, too quickly. “No. I’d rather not.”

  “But why, honey? It will be interesting for you. You really should see what it’s like back in the scrub.”

  “I want to write Terry.”

  “Of course you do, but you can do that later.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Irene, but it’s so hot—”

  “Not on the creek, honey. It’s shady and cool. And Granddam Zenumin’s going to be mad if you don’t come back—yes, I’ve talked with Belle. I know what happened. The Granddam won’t understand if you don’t come, and it’s not good to have her angry with you, Stella honey. Believe me, she has powers.”

  I asked, “Stronger powers than Honoria?”

  “Honoria won’t use her powers, and if the Granddam has a mind to, she can cause you pain and hurt.”

  My laugh sounded false in my ears. “I suppose she’ll make a doll to represent me and stick pins in it and put a curse on me?”

  “Yes, honey, she will.”

  I suddenly had an image of Aunt Irene sitting at my dressing table, taking a long brown hair from my comb, and of Honoria retrieving it from her. “Was that why you wanted my hair? Or why you tried to get my handkerchief yesterday? To give to the Granddam?”

  “Not to hurt you. So she could see what was going to happen.”

  “Why did Honoria stop you if that was all?”

  “I told you, honey. Honoria won’t use her powers, and she’s jealous of anybody else who has them.”

  “Why do you want to know my future, Aunt Irene?”

  “It’s not just your future, honey. It affects me, too. We don’t live separately, more’s the pity. You’ll find that out when you’ve been a Renier longer. You can’t ever say, ‘It’s my own business.’ And don’t you want to know where Terry is? I should think you’d care.”

  “Of course I care! But I don’t want Granddam Zenumin making guesses and getting me upset. Belle said if I went back I wouldn’t have to have my fortune told.”

  I had made a mistake.

  “Of course not, honey! Nobody’s asking you to do anything except be polite and kind to the Granddam. If you’re not, she could hurt you, or someone you love. Believe me, honey. I don’t want to frighten you, but believe me.”

  I was not frightened for myself. I was frightened for Terry. And I was frightened for our baby. If the old woman was right and I was ind
eed carrying my husband’s child—and I thought that I was—if the old woman could know this much, could she hurt the little, unborn creature? “All right, Aunt Irene, I’ll go, just to be polite. But I don’t want to stay long.”

  My ring felt hot on my finger. The sun struck against it. The gold glinted, absorbed the intense heat.

  I looked inland and realized that we had already passed Illyria. We drove in silence, looking out to sea; Aunt Irene had stopped her social chatter, and was urging the little horse along at a swift clip. We turned from the ocean towards the dunes and stopped by an old post, perhaps left from a long-gone ramp or sea wall, to which Aunt Irene tethered the horse.

  “Leave your parasol, honey, it’ll just get in the way. There’s only a few minutes’ walk, not long. Most of the way is on the creek.”

  We climbed a dune, the same dune I had climbed with Belle, and followed the tiny path to the dark waters.

  In the shade of a large water oak, which leaned over the creek so that some of the leaves dipped into the water, was the canoe. The old woman was not in it this time; Belle was. The sunlight sifting through the trees turned her dark skin to a deep bronze lit with rose; she looked very beautiful waiting there, her eyes closed, the morning heat bringing small drops of moisture to her forehead and upper lip. I was drenched with sweat, hot and disheveled, my hair untidy from the entangling vines. Aunt Irene’s face was shiny as butter, though her clothes were not in the least disarrayed. But the heat seemed only to intensify Belle’s beauty.

  “Belle, we’re here.” Aunt Irene’s voice was high and excited.

  Belle slowly opened her eyes. It was as though she were returning to us from far away. She greeted us courteously and helped us into the canoe. In the daylight I could see that it was a primitive one, hollowed out of a tree trunk. She took a paddle and pushed at one of the snake-like cypress roots and the canoe moved from the bank into the dark water. A white heron, startled, flew flapping across the creek. A kingfisher flashed blue.

  “Know you’re hot, Miss Stella, ma’am.” Belle plied the oar deftly and the canoe shot ahead. White butterflies fluttered about the banks on either side, shimmering against the darkness of water and undergrowth. “But keep your hands in the canoe. Water moccasins about this morning. See that old log over yonder? What looks to be an old log?” I looked at an ordinary log, half submerged in the water. “Ain’t a log.”