Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  Lights in the cabin gasped, recovered, and died. Meris heard Mark’s sigh and the ruffle of his pushed-back papers.

  “I’ll get the lantern,” he said. “It’s out in the storeroom, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Lightning flushed the whole room, now that the light no longer defended it. “But it needs filling. Why don’t we wait to see if the lights come back on. We could watch the storm—”

  “I’m sorry.” Mark’s arm was gentle across her shoulders. “I’d like to, but I can’t spare the time. Every minute—”

  Meris pressed her face to the glass, peering out into the chaotic darkness of the canyon wall. She still wasn’t quite used to being interested in anything outside her own grief and misery—all those long months of painful numbness that at the same time had been a protesting hammering at the Golden Gates and a wild shrieking at God. What a blessed relief it was finally to be able to let go of the baby—to feel grief begin to drain away as though a boil had been lanced. Not that sorrow would be gone, but now there could be healing for the blow that had been too heavy to be mortal.

  “Take good care of her,” she whispered to the bright slash of the lightning. “Keep her safe and happy until I come.”

  She winced away from the window, startled at the sudden audible splat of rain against the glass. The splat became a rattle and the rattle a gushing roar and the fade-and-flare of the outdoors dissolved into streaming rain.

  Mark came back into the cabin, the light in his hands flooding blue-white across the room. He hung the lantern on the beam above the table and joined Meris at the window.

  “The storm is about over,” said Meris, turning in the curve of his arm. “It’s only rain now.”

  “It’ll be back,” he said. “It’s just taking a deep breath before smacking us amidships again.”

  “Mark.” The tone of Meris’s voice caught his attention. “Mark, my baby—our baby—is dead.” She held out the statement to him as if offering a gift—her first controlled reference to what had happened.

  “Yes,” said Mark, “our baby is dead.” He accepted the gift.

  “We waited for her so long,” said Meris softly, “and had her for so short a time.”

  “But long enough that you are a mother and I am a father,” said Mark. “We still have that.”

  “Now that I can finally talk about her,” said Meris, “I won’t have to talk about her any more. I can let her be gone now. Oh, Mark!” Meris held his hand to her cheek. “Having you to anchor me is all that’s kept me from—”

  “I’m set in my ways,” smiled Mark. “But of late you’ve been lifting such a weight off me that I don’t think I could anchor a butterfly now!”

  “Love you, Mark!”

  “Love you, Meris!” Mark hugged her tightly a moment and then let her go. “Back to work again. No flexibility left in the deadline any more. It has to be done on time this time or—”

  Lightning splashed brightness against the wall. Meris moved back to the window again, the floorboards under her feet vibrating to the thunder. “Here it comes again!” But Mark was busy, his scurrying fingers trying to catch up with the hours and days and months lost to Meris’s grief and wild mourning.

  Meris cupped her hands around her temples and leaned her forehead to the windowpane. The storm was truly back again, whipping the brush and trees in a fury that ripped off leaves and small branches. A couple of raindrops cracked with the force of hail against the glass. Lightning and a huge explosion arrived at the same moment, jarring the whole cabin.

  “Hit something close?” asked Mark with no pause in the staccato of his typing.

  “Close,” said Meris. “The big pine by the gate. I saw the bark fly.”

  “Hope it didn’t kill it,” said Mark. “We lost those two in back like that last summer, you know.”

  Meris tried to see the tree through the darkness, but the lightning had withdrawn for the moment.

  “What was that?” she cried, puzzled.

  “What?” asked Mark.

  “I heard something fall,” she said. “Through the trees.”

  “Probably the top of our pine,” said Mark. “I guess the lightning made more than bark fly. Well, there goes another of our trees.”

  “That’s the one the jays liked particularly, too,” said Meris.

  Rain drenched again in a vertical obscurity down the glass and the flashes of lightning flushed heavily through the watery waver.

  Later the lights came on and Meris, blinking against the brightness, went to bed, drawing the curtain across the bunk corner, leaving Mark at work at his desk. She lay awake briefly, hearing the drum of the rain and the mutter of the thunder, hardly noticing the clatter of the typewriter. She touched cautiously with her thoughts the aching emptiness where the intolerable burden of her unresolved grief had been. Almost, she felt without purpose—aimless—since that painful focusing of her whole life was going. She sighed into her pillow. New purpose and new aim would come—would have to come—to fill the emptinesses.

  Somewhere in the timeless darkness of the night she was suddenly awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. She pulled the bedclothes up to her chin, shivering a little in the raw, damp air of the cabin. What had wakened her? The sound came again. She gasped and Mark stirred uneasily, then was immediately wide awake and sitting up beside her.

  “Meris?”

  “I heard something,” she said. “Oh, Mark! Honestly, I heard something.”

  “What was it?” Mark pulled the blanket up across her back.

  “I heard a baby crying,” said Meris.

  She felt Mark’s resigned recoil and the patience in his long indrawn breath.

  “Honest, Mark!” In the semi-obscurity her eyes pleaded with him. “I really heard a baby crying. Not a tiny baby—like—like ours. A very young child, though. Out there in the cold and wet.”

  “Meris—” he began, and she knew the sorrow that must be marking his face.

  “There!” she cried. “Hear it?”

  The two were poised motionless for a moment, then Mark was out of bed and at the door. He flung it open to the night and they listened again, tensely.

  They heard a night bird cry and, somewhere up-canyon, the brief barking of a dog, but nothing else.

  Mark came back to bed, diving under the covers with a shiver.

  “Come warm me, woman!” he cried, hugging Meris tightly to him.

  “It did sound like a baby crying,” she said with a half question in her voice.

  “It sure did,” said Mark. “I thought for a minute—Must have been some beast or bird or denizen of the wild—” His voice trailed away sleepily, his arms relaxing. Meris lay awake listening—to Mark’s breathing, to the night, to the cry that didn’t come again. Refusing to listen for the cry that would never come again, she slept.

  Next morning was so green and gold and sunny and wet and fresh that Meris felt a-tiptoe before she even got out of bed. She dragged Mark, protesting, from the warm nest of the bedclothes and presented him with a huge breakfast. They laughed at each other across the table, their hands clasped over the dirty dishes. Meris felt a surge of gratitude. The return of laughter is a priceless gift.

  While she did the dishes and put the cabin to rights, Mark, shrugging into his Levi jacket against the chill, went out to check the storm damage.

  Meris heard a shout and the dozen echoes that returned diminishingly from the heavily wooded mountainsides. She pushed the window curtain aside and peered out as she finished drying a plate.

  Mark was chasing a fluttering something, out across the creek. The boisterous waters were slapping against the bottom of the plank bridge and Mark was splashing more than ankle-deep on the flat beyond as he plunged about trying to catch whatever it was that evaded him.

  “A bird,” guessed Meris. “A huge bird waterlogged by the storm. Or knocked down by the wind—maybe hurt—” She hurried to put the plate away and dropped the dish towel on the table. She peered out again. Mark was half h
idden behind the clumps of small willows along the bend of the creek. She heard his cry of triumph and then of astonishment. The fluttering thing shot up, out of reach above Mark, and seemed to be trying to disappear into the ceaseless shiver of the tender green and white aspens. Whatever it was, a whitish blob against the green foliage, dropped down again and Mark grabbed it firmly.

  Meris ran to the door and flung it open, stepping out with a shiver into the cold air. Mark saw her as he rounded the curve in the path.

  “Look what I found!” he cried. “Look what I caught for you!”

  Meris put a hand on the wet, muddy bundle Mark was carrying and thought quickly, “Where are the feathers?”

  “I caught a baby for you!” cried Mark. Then his smile died and he thrust the bundle at her. “Good Lord, Meris!” he choked, “I’m not fooling! It is a baby!”

  Meris turned back a sodden fold and gasped. A face! A child face, mud-smudged, with huge dark eyes and tangled dark curls. A quiet, watchful face—not crying. Maybe too frightened to cry?

  “Mark!” Meris clutched the bundle to her and hurried into the cabin. “Build up the fire in the stove,” she said, laying her burden on the table. She peeled the outer layer off quickly and let it fall soggily to the floor. Another damp layer and then another. “Oh, poor messy child!” she crooned. “Poor wet, messy, little girl!”

  “Where did she come from?” Mark wondered. “There must be some clue—” He changed quickly from his soaked sneakers into his hiking boots. “I’ll go check. There must be something out there.” His hands paused on the knotting of the last bootlace. “Or someone.” He stood up, settling himself into his jeans and boots. “Take it easy, Meris.” He kissed her cheek as she bent over the child and left.

  Meris’s fingers recalled more and more of their deftness as she washed the small girl-body, improvised a diaper of a dish towel, converted a tee shirt into a gown, all the time being watched silently by the big dark eyes that now seemed more wary than frightened, watched as though the child were trying to read her lips that were moving so readily in the old remembered endearments and croonings. Finally, swathing the small form in her chenille robe in lieu of a blanket, she sat on the edge of the bed, rocking and crooning to the child. She held a cup of warm milk to the small mouth. There was a firming of lips against it at first and then the small mouth opened and two small hands grasped the cup and the milk was gulped down greedily. Meris wiped the milky crescent from the child’s upper lip and felt the tenseness going out of the small body as the warmth of the milk penetrated it. The huge dark eyes in the small face closed, jerked open, closed slowly, and stayed closed.

  Meris sat cradling the heavy warmth of the sleeping child. She felt healing flow through her own body and closed her eyes in silent thanksgiving before she put her down, well back from the edge of the bed. The she gathered up the armful of wet muddy clothes and reached for the box of detergent.

  When Mark returned some time later, Meris gestured quickly. “She’s sleeping,” she said. “Oh, Mark! Just think! A baby!” Tears came to her eyes and she bent her head.

  “Meris,” Mark’s gentle voice lifted her face. “Meris, just don’t forget that the baby is not ours to keep.”

  “I know—!” She began to protest and then she smoothed the hair back from her forehead, knowing what Mark wanted to save her from. “The baby is not ours—to keep,” she relinquished. “Not ours to keep. Did you find anything, or anyone,” she hesitated.

  “Nothing,” said Mark. “Except the top of our pine is still there, if you’ve bothered to check it. And,” his face tightened and his voice was grim, “those vandals have been at it again. Since I was at the picnic area at Beaver Bend, they’ve been there and sawed every table in two and smashed them all to the ground in the middle!”

  “Oh, Mark!” Meris was distressed. “Are you sure it’s the same bunch?”

  “Who else around here would do anything so senseless?” asked Mark. “It’s those kids. If I ever catch them—”

  “You did once,” said Meris with a half smile, “and they didn’t like what you and the ranger said to them.”

  “Understatement of the week,” said Mark. “They’ll like even less what’s going to happen to them the next time they get caught.”

  “They’re mad enough at you already,” suggested Meris.

  “Well,” said Mark, “I’m proud to count that type among my enemies!”

  “The Winstel boy doesn’t seem the type,” said Meris.

  “He was a good kid,” acknowledged Mark, “until he started running with those three from the Valley. They’ve got him hypnotized with that car and all their wild stories and crazy pranks. I guess he thinks their big-town fooling around has a glamor that can’t be duplicated here in the mountains. Thank heaven it can’t, but I wish he’d wise up to what’s happening to him.”

  “The child!” Meris started toward the bed, her heart throbbing suddenly to the realization that there was a baby to be considered again. They looked down at the flushed, sleeping face and then turned back to the table. “She must be about three or four,” said Meris over the coffee cups. “And healthy and well cared for. Her clothes—” she glanced out at the clothes line where the laundry billowed and swung “—they’re well-made, but—”

  “But what?” Mark stirred his coffee absently, then gulped a huge swallow.

  “Well, look,” said Meris, reaching to the chair. “This outer thing she had on. It’s like a trundle bundle—arms but no legs—just a sleeping-bag thing. That’s not too surprising, but look. I was going to rinse off the mud before I washed it, but just one slosh in the water and it came out clean—and dry! I didn’t even have to hang it out. And Mark, it isn’t material. I mean fabric. At least it isn’t like any that I’ve ever seen.”

  Mark lifted the garment, flexing a fold in his fingers. “Odd,” he said.

  “And look at the fasteners,” said Meris.

  “There aren’t any,” he said, surprised.

  “And yet it fastens,” said Meris, smoothing the two sections of the front together, edge to edge. She tugged mightily at it. It stayed shut. “You can’t rip it apart. But look here.” And she laid the two sides back gently with no effort at all. “It seems to be which direction you pull. There’s a rip here in the back,” she went on. “Or I’ll bet she’d never have got wet at all—at least not from the outside,” she smiled. “Look, the rip was from here to here.” Her fingers traced six inches across the garment. “But look—” She carefully lapped the edges of the remaining rip and drew her thumb nail along it. The material seemed to melt into itself and the rip was gone.

  “How did you find out all this so soon?” asked Mark. “Your own research lab?”

  “Maybe so,” smiled Meris. “I was just looking at it—women look at fabrics and clothing with their fingers, you know. I could never choose a piece of material for a dress without touching it. And I was wondering how much the seam would show if I mended it.” She shook the garment. “But how she ever managed to run in it.”

  “She didn’t,” said Mark. “She sort of fluttered around like a chicken. I thought she was a feathered thing at first. Every time I thought I had her, she got away, flopping and fluttering, above my head half the time. I don’t see how she ever—Oh! I found a place that might be where she spent the night. Looks like she crawled back among the roots of the deadfall at the bend of the creek. There’s a pressed down, grassy hollow, soggy wet, of course, just inches above the water.”

  “I don’t understand this fluttering bit,” said Meris. “You mean she jumped so high you—”

  “Not exactly jumped—” began Mark.

  A sudden movement caught them both. The child had wakened, starting up with a terrified cry, “Muhlala! Muhlala!”

  Before Meris could reach her, she was fluttering up from the bed, trailing the chenille robe beneath her. She hovered against the upper windowpane, like a moth, pushing her small hands against it, sobbing, “Muhlala! Muhlala!”
/>
  Meris gaped up at her. “Mark! Mark!”

  “Not exactly—jump!” grunted Mark, reaching up for the child. He caught one of the flailing bare feet and pulled the child down into his arms, hushing her against him.

  “There, there, muhlala, muhlala,” he comforted awkwardly.

  “Muhlala?” asked Meris, taking the struggling child from him.

  “Well, she said it first,” he said. “Maybe the familiarity will help.”

  “Well, maybe,” said Meris. “There, there, muhlala, muhlala.”

  The child quieted and looked up at Meris.

  “Muhlala?” she asked hopefully.

  “Muhlala,” said Meris as positively as she could.

  The big wet eyes looked at her accusingly and the little head said no, unmistakably, but she leaned against Meris, her weight suddenly doubling as she relaxed.

  “Well now,” said Mark. “Back to work.”

  “Work? Oh, Mark!” Meris was contrite. “I’ve broken into your workday again!”

  “Well, it’s not every day I catch a child flying in the forest. I’ll make it up—somehow.”

  Meris helped Mark get settled to his work and, dressing the child—“What’s your name, honey? What’s your name?”—in her own freshly dried clothes, she took her outside to leave Mark in peace.

  “Muhlala,” said Meris, smiling down at the upturned wondering face. The child smiled and swung their linked hands.

  “Muhlala!” she laughed.

  “Okay,” said Meris, “we’ll call you Lala.” She skoonched down to child height. “Lala,” she said, prodding the small chest with her finger. “Lala!”