He walked carefully, partly to keep from waking anyone, and partly because his balance was off, and partly because he was sure that a sudden movement might bring on a vision, and to have one now would be ruinous. All day he had husbanded his strength, and made his mother think he’d grown sicker, though in fact he felt better than he had all week. The kitchen door was the closest to his room. He nearly upset a candlestick with the edge of his bag. It teetered but didn’t fall.
Outside he considered for the first time the distance to the woods, and the distance beyond that to a cave where Thomas had taken him once. It used to be a morning’s walk, but now it seemed as far away as another country, far enough to make it a trip beneficial to all the others, if Dr. Herz was to be believed, and far enough to hide him from Mr. Hollin and his charitable intentions. Peter had heard them all talking in the kitchen two days before. They hushed their voices but he heard them plainly, as if the fever had sharpened his hearing, or some household wind was blowing their words directly to his ear. Dr. Herz spoke of a fulminating contagion, and argued passionately that the best thing for the other children in town would be a separation from the “index case.”
“Then by all means take them away,” his mother had said. Dr. Herz said politely that that wasn’t what he meant.
“I know precisely what you mean, sir!” his mother had shouted then, and they were all very quiet. Peter knew they were listening for him to stir. When they continued they whispered even more quietly, but Peter was sure he could have heard them from a mile away. They argued, tense and polite, for another half hour, Dr. Herz describing in detail the homey comforts of his hospital in Cleveland, and Mr. Hollin assuring them again and again that every expense would be covered. Finally his mother threw them out — she told them goodnight over and over again, in response to every question they asked, until they just left. Peter opened his eyes enough to see them walking off down the path, hats in hand, each of them taking turns shaking his head. He heard the door open from the kitchen and was conscious for a long while of his mother staring at his back.
“Here I go,” he said, after he had closed the door quietly behind him. It all went marvelously well for the first few hundred yards. He felt stronger with each step, as if walking were something that he only had to practice a little to master again, and he thought he would have enough strength left when he got there to sweep the floor of the cave to make himself a neat place to lie down in. But he wasn’t halfway to the line of woods before he caught a hint of smoke in the air. Someone else is up late, he told himself, and has made a fire for tea. And believing that bore him up for a dozen more yards, until he couldn’t ignore the alien quality of the smell. It wasn’t just wood burning, and he noticed that his feet were feeling heavier and heavier.
Another few steps and he could not move his feet — though his legs were sturdy he felt stuck to the ground. His arms dropped down to his side and an apple he’d picked up off the kitchen table on his way out fell from his hand. Now the smoke obscured his vision, drifting across the smithy and obscuring the line of the woods. He felt a glow along his spine — something was forcing him to stand taller and straighter than he’d ever stood before in his life — and his eyes were lifted up. As if he were flying upward, the limits of his sight expanded: the school and Sara’s window and the store and the church and even the curve of the night sky and Hamilton, where they left their lights on all night long. He cried out just before he felt the little sting in his leg, and then a moment later another at his cheek.
“It’s just a kernel,” Tercin said, stepping out from behind a tree, his slingshot dangling in his hand. “If I’d really wanted it to hurt I’d have used a stone.” He drew on his brother again, standing just before him and aiming right at his face. Peter laughed because Tercin seemed so small. He was looking down at him from a thousand feet high, yet he could see perfectly the confusion and disappointment on his face, and hear him clearly even over the noise of wind and flames. The other tower was burning next to him. “Even with a kernel, I could put out your eye,” Tercin said.
“Get away,” Peter said. “The other angel is coming.”
“Angels got no truck with me. I don’t fear ’em. You’re up late.”
“Go away — it will strike you, too!” Peter said, though he wasn’t sure why it would bother with something as small and crude as his brother. With his high sight he could see it coming, still very far but flying with such speed that he knew it was only moments away.
“Going for a trip!” Tercin shouted, finally understanding Peter’s obvious purpose and slapping his pack. “Well, bon voyage and good riddance. Maybe we can talk about something else now at dinner, and somebody’ll laugh again in that house. Even when we’re not talking about you, we’re talking about you!”
“It’s coming,” Peter said.
“There’s other people in the world besides you, you know. Other troubles besides yours. But you’d never know it. In that house nobody’d know it. Well, go on, then. You want me to carry you?”
“Please,” Peter said, feeling very small despite his height, and vulnerable despite his bulk, and sure that the violent touch of the angel would finally kill him, and surprised as much to find himself begging mercy from his brother as at how easily he threw off the weary despair of the long sickness to discover how very much he wanted to live. “Brother. . please. . do not let it strike me!” He thought Tercin must have heard it, because he turned and looked around him just before it arrived, and when he couldn’t see it he turned back to his brother and looked in his face. Something he saw there must have overcome his natural animosity. He dropped his slingshot and turned and put his hands up and cried, “Get away!”
He was no impediment. The angel flew high above him and through him — gleaming, roaring, and big as a church, it struck Peter right in his heart and started a fire there. As it burned he made the biggest noise of his life, bigger than anything he thought was left in him after being ill so long, and though he couldn’t walk, and Tercin had discovered his purpose, it was only then — imagining lights go on in his house and all through the town — that he felt he’d lost his chance of escape.
Very far below, Tercin was looking up at him, wonder and fear plain on his tiny little face. Peter wept at the pain of the fire. It loosened him. He shrugged, and pieces of his shoulders fell to the earth. Look out, he tried to say to Tercin, but he couldn’t speak anything but sobs. People were falling from him, too. Leaping from out of his hair, dropping from his nose, squeezing like tears from the corners of his eyes — small as his brother they fell. He turned his head, shaking more from his hair, and saw that it was Sara standing next to him, just as tall and strong and ruined, but she had been struck first, and had been burning longer. Her bones were so hot he could see them shining through her skin. She spoke his name and then fell apart, her head riding a collapsing column of ashes and smoke to fall between her feet and shatter on the grass. The seizures took him then, and he didn’t have to watch anymore.
The vision ceased for Tercin, too. While Peter twitched and moaned, Tercin lay prone with his hands over his head, and he didn’t dare look up until Peter grew quiet. He looked around at the woods and the quiet night: there wasn’t a burning youth or a falling body or a screaming angel in sight. He stood up and wiped his eyes and nose. “Look what you did now,” he said to his brother, peacefully asleep now on the ground. “Now you gave it to me!” He kicked him hard in the ribs, and thought he could feel one break even through his boot. Still he kicked him again. “You nasty leper, now you gave it to me!” He turned and ran away into the woods, then came back a moment later for his slingshot. He kicked his brother once more and was gone again.