Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  I lay back with a sigh that was mostly a weary groan, blinked my hot, staring eyes—and opened them, hot and staring, to full daylight and a cold dawn breeze stiffening my cramped, hanging knees.

  The pool was still in shadow when I got there. The red bluff in back of it shouldered out the early morning sun. I felt the chill of the waters bite up to my thighs as I waded in, almost to the bluff I leaned and groped in the water. I felt the slacked flow of a current against my hands. I don’t know what happened then, but I felt the despair in me die, cooled perhaps in the flow of the water, the clean blueness of the early sky, and the first shaft of sun past the shoulder of the bluff.

  I waded back to shore with a last look in case there was a floating body—or two. This, after all, was the creek that gave us our drinking water—if it didn’t forget to flow again after one of the more-frequent stoppages we had had recently. I climbed back up the hill and went to the Curtis place and methodically did the morning chores. Livestock has to be taken care of. I carried the two brimming buckets of milk back to the settlement with me. I put them on the steps of the meeting house and went into the chill shadow inside. I looked around me. There was no hiding place—quite literally. I spanned the one bare, barn-like room and went back out. I left the milk where it was, hoping someone would find it, and started through the settlement.

  I knocked at every door—and not one opened to me. I searched every place I could, and saw not a soul, living or dead. I doubled back past the meeting house on my way to the Curtis place. The two milk buckets lay on their sides, the milky mud around them hardening in the sun. A scrap of ragged kitten fur crouched at the corner of one splotch and bumped a hopeful, searching nose against the stiffening dust.

  Night came. From my vantage point on Curtis’ front porch I had seen movement in the settlement. The flip of a skirt in a chicken yard—the slow movement of cows to their milking places, but no sound came to me except from behind the house where I sat.

  I had made my decision. If I didn’t find Gail by morning, I was going to Everly and get help. Then we’d come back and turn this God-forsaken settlement inside out until we found her. Oh, God! Help me find her! I scratched my head painfully. Then I looked at my hand. Scratching again? I was suddenly conscious that I had been trying to reach an itch for some time. But I wasn’t getting to it. My hand went up involuntarily again—but my skull was between me and the itch.

  I snorted a half laugh at myself as I tried to go back to my prayer. Talk about minds wandering! In the midst of the worst worry I’d had since I joined the Conclave, I got an itch I couldn’t scratch! And it kept me from prayer—well, prayer’s a lot of things besides words. I got up and started back toward the pond. I’d try again. Maybe someone would be going to take her bread—or water—

  I pulled up abruptly. If I was looking for Gail, what was I doing hiking over the hill in the half darkness to the pond? I hesitated, my hand reaching up again to that odd itch, stubbing my fingers on skull again. I plunged down the darkening hillside.

  “Mr. Lambert—”

  I swear I learned in one split second what they mean by jumping out of your skin!

  “Jareb—!” I gritted toward his vague shadow, gulping my jagged breath. “If you ever again—!”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” said Jareb. “I just wanted to tell you to tell Mamma that Tally drank a whole cup of milk this morning, and—”

  “Where is she?” I snapped. “Even overnight isn’t long enough for you to get anywhere and back. There’s nothing and no one for fifteen miles—”

  “We didn’t go all the way.” His voice was apologetic. “That boy was going to take us to his home so he lifted us—”

  “Did what?” I rasped.

  “He—he was going to take us to his home, and it would be faster with no feet—”

  “Jareb! Jareb!” He caught the exasperated anger in my voice.

  “It’s true,” he cried. “That boy can—”

  “That boy can take a running jump—”

  “He called you!” shrilled Jareb. “He called you with no words and you came!”

  “He called—” My hand tried to reach that feeling again—

  “Over here, Mr. Lambert.” That boy’s voice was just a boy voice, but being convulsed by shock twice in one evening was almost the end of me. I was glad for the rough support of the jack pine behind my shaken back. That boy was just a boy to look at, too, and he dug the same sort of hole in the sand with the twisting toe of his shoe that any embarrassed boy does. Then he went out! Like a snuffed candle! And I realized that somehow he had quite literally been lighted up so I could see him. I felt numb.

  “So if you’ll tell Mamma—”

  “She’s gone,” I said flatly.

  “Where to?” asked Jareb, startled. “Did she go to look for me?”

  “She didn’t go,” I said. “They took her. They’ve got her locked up somewhere. They want to trade her for Tally.”

  “But you can’t,” cried Jareb. “Tally’s gotta stay—”

  “You tell them,” I suggested. “They don’t hear me.”

  “Well then, when Tally’s better, we can trade,” said Jareb.

  “They aren’t going to feed your mother,” I said. “I think maybe they’ll give her water, though.”

  “Not going to feed—!” Jareb’s eyes flashed white at me in the heavy dusk. “They can’t—”

  “You tell them,” I repeated.

  “All right, then,” said Jareb. “If they’re going to be mean, I’ll take Mamma back with me—to Tally.”

  “First catch your mother!” I smiled mirthlessly over the old receipt. We were in a bad enough stew, heaven knows.

  “That boy can,” said Jareb. “That boy can sure do a lot of things. His name’s Theo. Hey! You know where they live? You know where it is? I mean it’s the other end of the water, but do you know where it really is? And Theo says the pump works backwards so’s they can—”

  “Your mother,” I broke in on his senseless babble, weariness dissolving my knees and elbows.

  “Let’s go get her,” said that boy—I mean Theo.

  “You go,” I said. “I’ll follow.”

  And he did go. And I did follow—a crazy path that wound around every structure in the settlement, same as I had already. But this path was always semivisible for one more step ahead of me—and one more step and one more—And at each structure, Theo would pause a moment, then shuffle his feet and say “Nope” and we’d go on. Finally we finished the last—the meeting house, and Theo said the final “Nope.”

  Wordlessly we went back up to Jareb’s house. We didn’t go in. We didn’t even go up on the porch. We huddled in the dark in the tangled grass under the salt cedar trees. Even the path light was gone. I heard Jareb gulp and sniff. Then Theo squatted down.

  “Tell me your mamma again,” he said. “Tell me her worried and sorry.”

  “But I can’t tell worried and sorry,” protested Jareb, squatting down too.

  “No words,” said Theo. “Just think worried and sorry for your mamma.”

  I presume that’s what Jareb did for the next few minutes. Anyway, in the silence that’s what I did—thought worried. Then Theo grunted.

  “Now,” he said, “think you the scaredest you’ve ever been in all your life. Think scared to death!” It only took half a minute of silence to send Jareb tight up against my shins, shaking and whimpering, and to hear Theo whisper in awe, “Adonday veeah!” or some such sound.

  “All right!” said Theo, a little shaken in his breath. “Now I think I’m patterned—”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “What are you—”

  “I’m not very good at it.” Theo’s voice was apologetic. “I guess I haven’t paid attention when I should’ve. He told me his mamma so I’ll know her when I find her—she’ll be sorry and worried—and I got him so I can make her find us because she’ll think harder if she thinks he’s scared—”

  “But that d
oesn’t—” I began.

  “Words!” Theo’s voice was shrill as he shot to his feet. “Why do all of you have to have words all the time! No wonder Tally’s almost untimely Called! No wonder his mamma’s lost—” His voice cut off sharply. Then he said quietly, “I’m sorry. I have no right to add hurting to your hurting. Let’s start. Give me your hands.”

  I groped my hand towards him and clutched Jareb’s with the other. We made a tight little triangle in the darkness, and I heard his voice, serene and soft, “We are gathered together in Thy Name—”

  “Amen,” I whispered.

  “Amen,” whispered Jareb. “Why?”

  Then Theo squatted down again and for a long time we listened to the stirring of the needles above us and the blades about us. Then Theo’s breath caught and he said, “There! There! Jareb, chink to her hard! Where is she?”

  “Mamma!” Jareb clutched my arm, his voice hoarse and terrified. “Mamma! Where are you! Mamma!” And he began to sob the hard, ugly sobs of someone unused to crying.

  “Where is she?” I asked tensely.

  “Under—under the ground!” said Theo.

  My whole soul collapsed and the blackness around me began to waver.

  “Under the ground!” wailed Jareb. “She’s dead! She’s dead!”

  “Don’t be a silly toolah!” snapped Theo. “How could she think under the ground if she was dead? Be still!” There was another tense silence and then he murmured, “Shut in like a beast. Dirt falls down. Too hard to dig. It fell. It all fell. He’ll come. When morning comes, he’ll come. My—my boy, my boy, my—” He turned to me. “Where is she?” he asked, his face a pale oval. “Every time she thinks of where she is, she thinks of you, only not your name. But it’s you—and warm—and strong—”

  “Thinks of me!” I felt my face flush in the dark. Then I put aside my personal astonishment and set my mind to our problem. “Where is she? Under the ground—under the ground—in the ground—” That picture was different. My voice quickened. “Jareb, it could be in the ground! In a root cellar or—or—”

  “We went to them all,” reminded Jareb tearfully. “Even the one Dab—I mean Brother Jonadab—started by the meeting house.”

  “Yeah.” I slumped again. “Theo, can’t you give me anything else to go on? Anything?”

  “It’s kinda hard,” said Theo hesitatingly. “I don’t know what will help. I have to take your thinking and get words from Jareb and make talking for you before—”

  “Dirt falls down,” I recounted. “Too hard to dig—and me—something to do with me—anything else, Theo! Anything?”

  “Well—uh—” Theo fumbled. “Oh, now she’s—she’s—no, it’s not singing—‘look in at the open door. They love to see the something, something and hear the bellows roar—’ ”

  “Look in at the open door—” I stood slowly. “Come on,” I said. “Come on!” I shouted. “Get going!” I skidded down the slope of the hill, half on my heels, half sitting. A bush whacked me across the eyes stingingly, making the dim outlines around us swim in protective tears. Behind me clattered the boys.

  “Where—where—?” I heard Theo gasp.

  “Dunno,” jerked Jareb. “Dunno!”

  “Mist-er Larn-bert,” gasped Theo. “They will hear. They will come!”

  I stopped. The two boys slid into the backs of my outstretched arms. We listened until the last of the pebbles rattled to rest below us. Until the last tentative echo dissolved against the far hillside. Then we moved on silently, silently. The path light was with us again, barely bright enough to be visible. Sometimes it flicked around erratically; then Theo would mutter and it would steady again. I lowered myself down the face of the drop-off at the bottom of the hill and lifted my arms to help the boys. Jareb grunted and lurched against me down to the level. And Theo came down at the same time, disturbing no rock, because he touched not one—nor me. “It could be fun,” I thought. “Just to lift up and go along—”

  “Where we going?” whispered Jareb. “Where we going, Mr. Lambert?”

  “To the smithy,” I said. “Don’t you remember the poem your mother made you learn last winter out of your reader—‘Under the spreading—’ ”

  “Yeah—yeah—I guess so—” Jareb wasn’t much of a poetry lover.

  I stumbled into my smithy and peered around. “But I slept here last night!” I remembered deflatingly.

  “In the ground, Mr. Lambert,” reminded Jareb.

  I yanked my cot away from the hillside. “It was too hard to dig—” I found myself echoing Theo’s words. “But where? Theo, can you find her again?” I asked.

  “Wait.” I slumped on the edge of my cot as I felt Theo wiggle and slump down to his squat again. “Jareb, call your mamma. No—no! Not words! Call to her hard inside your head.” I heard the rustle of Jareb squatting down, too. After an endless silence, I heard Jareb’s sniff and unhappy gulp, and felt him collapse sideways into a huddle against my legs. Then, without warning, I felt myself snatched up into a shining stream of something that pulled me out of me and shot me away from me like a spark struck from an anvil, and I knew—there was no sight or hearing or feeling, only knowing—I knew Gail was sobbing Jareb’s name and mine. She was huddled over her dried-mud-caked shoes and dabbled skirts, sobbing and clutching the bent little lard pail that hadn’t been refilled since she had been shoved roughly into—into—

  “Thank you, God,” I gulped aloud. “Thank you, God.”

  “Amen,” said Jareb. “What for?”

  And Theo echoed, “Amen.”

  “The water hole,” I said. “They’ve shut her up in the cave above the water hole.”

  “But there’s no way to shut it up,” protested Jareb.

  “She’s shut up there anyway,” I said.

  We had to go the long way around. My smithy was actually built on the edge of the creek, but you’d never know it. The bank and the rise behind my cot dropped off sheerly down to the creek, which was in a wash nearly a hundred feet below my shop. When we first arrived in the settlement, we had pastured all our livestock together and had used the pool below my shop as a watering place. The swirling action of the sometimes heavy flood waters down the creek had scoured out a big pothole that made a natural water hole. A cave had been worn out of the hillside, too, but it was never under water except, I suppose, in the highest of the floods. We had stabled our livestock there for a while behind a quick fence of cottonwood and salt cedar branches.

  But why, I wondered as we rounded the hill and started our rattling, scrambling slide down the creek path, the eerie light showing us our way, why was Gail staying there? Why didn’t she get out or holler or something? Unless they had tied her—in a blind flare of helpless rage, I jumped the last drop-off and staggered back against the bank, my feet squishing in mud.

  I looked around me. I checked the creek. And the trees. And the hills beyond. I was in the right place, but where was the pond? The cave? Gail!

  “It’s not there!” cried Jareb. “The cave’s gone! Mr. Lambert, where’s—Mamma! Mamma!” He threw himself against me and I staggered back, holding him and me up by the clutch of my hand across his shoulders.

  “So that’s why,” I thought dully. “Be quiet, Jareb,” I said. “Bawling won’t help any. The hill’s caved in and covered up the cave.” The tinkling fall of a pebble and a small funneling of a thin line of silt underlined the silence.

  “Mamma!” cried Jareb. “She’s dead!”

  “She’s not either!” cried Theo. “I couldn’t have found her if she was dead! We can’t find the Called Ones. They’re in the Presence! She isn’t either dead!”

  Dead or not dead—what did a day or so matter? My thoughts slumped. She had no water now and even the three of us couldn’t hope to move a hillside in time—Move a hillside! Lift a mountain!

  “Theo!” I clutched his shoulder, and with his startled gasp the light went out. Darkness flooded in around us and suddenly the stars were very bright and very dose. “The
o, Jareb said you could lift mountains. Can you? Can you really do that?”

  “No.” Theo’s voice was very small. “Someday I’ll be able to, but I’m too young now. Mountains—no, no, I can’t. Not yet!”

  “Your father—” I pursued desperately. “Could he—”

  “Sure,” said Theo, unhappily. “Only he doesn’t even know where—”

  “Theo!” I thought it was a voice, but a voice doesn’t start inside you and shake its way out past your bones. “Theo!”

  “Father!” Theo’s startled eyes were white glints in the starshine—and his arms went up. “Oh, Father! You can—”

  Words stopped and Theo leaped into the air and he didn’t come down! Jareb and I clutched each other and stared up into the night. Theo hurled himself into a clustered shadow above us, and for a long, unbroken moment, all the world waited and listened with us—to silence.

  Then the clustered shadow dissolved and became Theo and a man and a woman and another man. They slanted down to us out of the night sky, but they didn’t muddy their feet in the muck at the base of the slide. They didn’t have to. They didn’t touch the ground. Not quite.

  “Your love is behind the slide?” the man asked me quickly.

  I recoiled at the bluntness of his words. “No!” I protested. “Yes!” I gasped, giving up my evasions. “Behind the slide!”

  “Your pardon,” said the man, and Jareb and I were whisked out of the way like children. I don’t know how we got to the other side of the creek and up on the shelf halfway up the other side, but we crouched there and watched the loose scree on the slope begin to funnel up like a slow tornado, pebbles grating softly against pebbles as they rose. Light came on the slope, and we could see a hole starting and deepening into the slide. And no dirt caved from above it and no rocks rattled down into it—only the lengthening dark streak rose up from the hillside and up. Then there was a thunk and a satisfied murmur from the clustered people over there. The funnel of displaced dirt relaxed itself out of existence against the creek bank farther downstream. I watched the mouth of the hole with my life crushed in my unbreathing chest. Lazarus! my thoughts babbled. Come forth!