They watched her go.
"I like her," Kate told him.
"I'm glad. She's a remarkable woman."
"And as for her daughter…"
He laughed. "She's something, isn't she? Poor Trujillo, he's terrified of her."
"Have you seen Vaun?"
"A number of times. I brought Jani and Jules here to meet her, on Monday, in fact. We drove up."
"Ah, yes, Monday being one of the days cars are allowed. I take it Tyler's prohibitions are back in force."
"Slightly modified. They've strung a telephone line through the trees, to Angie's place and the Riddles'."
"Sacrilege. How is she? Vaun?"
"Recovering. Fragile. Determined. She sent you the pass."
"1 thought so." She watched the mob, unseeing, until the question leaped out of her. "Did he win?" Was it all in vain? Were lives shattered, was Lee crippled, were three children dead, four, so that Andrew Lewis could win his creative revenge? Did we catch him and kill him and still lose the one faint spark that might have justified it? Did he have the last word in the whole disastrous, ugly, horrifying mess? Did he win?
"No." His answer was sure. "No, he did not. She's painting again. Vaun Adams is an even greater human being than she is an artist, if that's possible. She is not going to allow him to win."
"Thank God," she said, and heard the tremble in her voice. "Lee—Lee will be glad," she added, inadequately, but his eyes said he understood.
"You'll want to see her," he said, and stood up.
"Have you any idea where she is? I saw Mark Detweiler at the entrance and he said she was here, though I'd have thought she'd be hiding out."
"She is, like the purloined letter."
In a few minutes Kate saw the sense of this cryptic statement, as Hawkin pointed her to a seated figure, clapped her on the back, said he'd call her Sunday night, and went off to find his Jani. Eva Vaughn had disguised herself as a painter— of faces. She was dressed in characteristically understated fashion—as a nun—but her face was transformed by greasepaint into the visage of a cat. Not that she had fur, ears, and black whiskers drawn on, but the arched eyebrows, self-contained mouth and neat chin were decidedly feline.
She was finishing the delicate webbing that outlined huge butterfly wings covering a young woman's face, the eyes two matching dots high up on the upper wings, the nose blackened as the body. It was a most disconcerting image, like a double exposure in a piece of surrealistic cinema, for the wings trembled with the movements of the face. The woman paid and went happily off with an astounded boyfriend, and a child settled in anticipation on the stool in front of her. Vaun spoke to him for a moment, smiled a feline smile, and turned to rummage through the tubes at her side. Kate stood and watched, but suddenly Vaun glanced up. The catty smile became tentative, and she got up and went to stand before Kate. She reached out a hand to touch Kate's arm, and drew it back.
"You came, then. I so wanted to see you, but I didn't think you'd come, until I thought, maybe, this would bring you."
"I would have come."
"Would you?"
"Maybe not at first," she admitted, "but I'm here now."
"Look, just let me finish this one and then I'll shut down for the day."
The child's requested face, that of an alien monster, grew up from the chin, with eyes that bulged when he puffed out his cheeks. He tried this out in the mirror, delighted; his parents paid, and Vaun firmly shut her box and stuck it under the drapery of the nearby weaver's stall (not Angie's, Kate saw). Again she made the tentative gesture toward Kate's sleeve, and again she drew back and with her other hand waved up the hill.
"There's a tent up there for us, the residents. Let me go and take this stuff off my face."
The house-sized canvas tent, a green one this time, was set off by a low fence and signs that informed the public that this was For Residents Only. It was high up in the meadow, brushed by the low branches of the first redwoods, and the opening was on the uphill side. Kate followed Vaun into the cool, spacious interior, which was scattered with chairs, tables, mirrors, portable clothes racks, sleeping children, and perhaps a dozen adults. A young man in shepherd's dress stood up at their entrance, took up his crook, and stalked toward them with an aggressive set to his shoulders. Vaun held up a pacifying hand, appropriately nunlike.
"It's okay, Larry, she's a friend."
He stopped, his petulance fading into embarrassment.
"Oh. Right. Sorry, it's just that we've had about ten people in here already snooping around, and Tyler said…"
"That they'd be looking for me? What did you tell them?"
"Like Tyler said, you're in New York. One of them didn't believe me, but she was pretty stoned."
"I'm sorry to give everyone the problem, but it'd be the same even if I were in New York. If you see Tyler or Anna, would you tell them I've gone up the hill and that I don't know if I'll be here for the dinner or not, but not to save me a plate. Thanks."
With a shrug and a swirl the habit came off. Vaun hung it and the veil on one of a series of chrome racks that held an odd assortment of garments, from dull homespun jerkins to a brilliant brocade cape, and dozens of empty wire hangers. The ex-nun, dressed now in shorts, sandals, and a damp T-shirt, went to a table and mirror and began rubbing cream from a large tub into her face. The feline cast to her eyes and the catty mouth disappeared beneath a scrap of cloth, and then Vaun was there, in the mirror, as Kate had seen her (was it only four months before?)—black curls, ice-blue eyes, a waiting expression.
But different. Somehow very different.
And then Vaun turned from the mirror and met her gaze evenly, and Kate knew what it was: the eyes.
Before, Vaun's eyes had been so withdrawn as to appear dead and gave away no hint of the person behind them. They were no longer uninhabited; no longer did they appear to mirror the world without influence of the person. These eyes were clear, immediate, and revealing windows leading directly into a vivid person. Whatever else Andrew Lewis had done, he had stripped from Vaun her apartness, her defense. There was no hiding now, for this woman. She stood naked.
All this in an instant, and Kate turned away, shaken. Vaun put the top on the removal cream and stood up. This time her hand made contact with Kate's arm and stayed there for a moment.
"Do you have time to come up with me, to the house?"
"I have all day."
"Let's go then."
The two women left the tent and plunged into the trees like a pair of truant schoolgirls, lifting strands of barbed wire for each other, crunching softly through the dry duff beneath the heavy branches, speaking little in the thick stillness that gradually overcame the distant fair and was then broken only by the harsh calls of jays and the occasional chained dog. It was not a long walk, those four miles, but an immensely satisfying one to Kate; and slowly, in the heat and the silence and the easy companionship, and in the awareness of her decision, she felt the last of the grinding unhappiness lift from her and felt herself not far from wholeness.