«I call you what you could be an hour from now.»
«An hour from now…» she whispered, to herself.
«How long since you been walked through this wood?»
«Some other war, or some peace,» she said. «I can't see. The water's muddy.»
«Young lady,» he said, «it's a fine summer day. There's a tapestry of golden bees, now this design, now that, in the green church aisle of trees here. There's honey in a hollow oak flowing like a river of fire. Kick off your shoes, you can crush wild mint, wading deep. Wildflowers like clouds of yellow butterflies lie in the valley. The air under these trees is like deep well water cool and clear you drink with your nose. A summer day, young as young ever was.»
«But I'm old, old as ever was.»
«Not if you listen! Here's my out-and-out bargain, deal, sale — transaction betwixt you, me and the August weather.»
«What kind of deal, what do I get for my investment?»
«Twenty-four long sweet summer hours, starting now. When we've run through these woods and picked the berries and eaten the honey, we'll go on to town and buy you the finest spider-web-thin white summer dress and lift you on the train.»
«The train!»
«The train to the city, an hour away, where well have dinner and dance all night. I'll buy you four shoes, you'll need them, wearing out one pair.»
«My bones — I can't move.»
«You'll run rather than walk, dance rather than run. We'll watch the stars wheel over the sky and bring the sun up, flaming. We'll string footprints along the lake shore at dawn. We'll eat the biggest breakfast in mankind's history and lie on the sand like two chicken pies warming at noon. Then, late in the day, a five-pound box of bonbons on our laps, we'll laugh back on the train, covered with the conductor's ticket-punch confettiyblue, green, orange, like we were married, and walk through town seeing nobody, no one, and wander back through the sweet dusk-smelling wood into your house…»
Silence.
«It's already over,» murmured her voice. «And it hasn't begun.»
Then: «Why are you doing this? What's in it for you?!»
The young man smiled tenderly. «Why, girl, I want to sleep with you.»
She gasped. «I never slept with no one in my life!»
«You're a… maiden lady?»
«And proud оf it!»
The young man sighed, shaking his head. «So it's true — you are, you really are, a maiden.»
He heard nothing from the house, so listened.
Softly, as if a secret faucet had been turned somewhere with difficulty, and drop by drop an ancient system were being used for the first time in half a century, the old woman began to cry.
«Old Mam, why do you cry?»
«I don't know,» she wailed.
Her weeping faded at last and he heard her rock in her chair, making a cradle rhythm to soothe herself.
«Old Mam,» he whispered.
«Don't call me that!»
«All right,» he said. «Clarinda.»
«How did you know my name? No one knows!»
«Clarinda, why did you hide in that house, long ago?»
«I don't remember. Yes, I do. I was afraid.»
«Afraid?»
«Strange. Half my years afraid of life. The other half, afraid of death. Always some kind of afraid. You! Tell the truth, now! When my twenty-four hours are up, after we walk by the lake and take the train back and come through the woods to my house, you want to…»
He made her say it.
«… sleep with me?» she whispered.
«For ten thousand million years,» he said.
«Oh.» Her voice was muted. «That's a long time.»
He nodded.
«A long time,» she repeated. «What kind of bargain is that, young man? You give me twenty-four hours of being eighteen again and I give you ten thousand million years of my precious time.»
«Don't forget, my time, too,» he said. «I'll never go away.»
«You'll lie with me?»
«I will.»
«Oh, young man, young man. Your voice. So familiar.»
«Look.»
He saw the keyhole unplugged and her eye peer out at him. He smiled at the sunflowers in the field and the sunflower in the sky.
«I'm blind, half blind,» she cried. «But can that be Willy Winchester 'way out there?»
He said nothing.
«But, Willy, you're just twenty-one by the look of you, not a day different than you were seventy years back!»
He set the bottle by the front door and walked back out to stand in the weeds.
«Can ―» She faltered. «Can you make me look like yourself?»
He nodded.
«Oh, Willy, Willy, is that really you?»
She waited, staring across the summer air to where he stood relaxed and happy and young, the sun flashing off his hair and cheeks.
A minute passed.
«Well?» he said.
«Wait!» she cried. «Let me think!»
And there in the house he could feel her letting her memories pour through her mind as sand pours through an hourglass, heaping itself at last into nothing but dust and ashes. He could hear the emptiness of those memories burning the sides of her mind as they fell down and down and made a higher and yet higher mound of sand.
All that desert, he thought, and not one oasis.
She trembled at his thought.
«Well,» he said again.
And at last she answered.
«Strange,» she murmured. «Now, all of a sudden, twenty-four hours, one day, traded for ten million billion years, sounds fair and good and right.»
«It is, Clarinda,» he said. «Oh, yes, it is.»
The bolts slid back, the locks rattled, the door cracked. Her hand jerked out, seized the bottle and flicked back in.
A minute passed.
Then, as if a gun had been fired off, footsteps pelted through the halls. The back door slammed open. Upstairs, windows flew wide, as shutters fell crumbling to the grass. Downstairs, a moment later, the same. Shutters exploded to kindling as she thrust them out. The windows exhaled dust.
Then at last, from the front door, flung wide, the empty bottle sailed and smashed against a rock.
She was on the porch, quick as a bird. The sunlight struck full upon her. She stood as someone on a stage, in a single revealing motion, come from the dark. Then, down the steps, she threw her hand to catch his.
A small boy passing on the road below stopped, stared and, walking backward, moved out of sight, his eyes still wide.
«Why did he stare at me?» she said. «Am I beautiful?»
«Very beautiful.»
«I need a mirror!»
«No, no, you don't.»
«Will everyone in town see me beautiful? It's not just me thinking so, is it, or you pretending?»
«Beauty is what you are.»
«Then I'm beautiful, for that's how I feel. Will everyone dance me tonight, will men fight for turns?»
«They will, one and all.»
Down the path, in the sound of bees and stirring leaves, she stopped suddenly and looked into his face so like the summer sun.
«Oh, Willy, Willy, when it's all over and we come back here, will you be kind to me?»
He gazed deep into her eyes and touched her cheek with his fingers.
«Yes,» he said gently. «I will be kind.»
«I believe you,» she said. «Oh, Willy, I believe.»
And they ran down the path out of sight, leaving dust on the air and leaving the front door of the house wide and the shutters open and the windows up so the light of the sun could Hash in with the birds come to build nests, raise families, and so petals of lovely summer flowers could blow like bridal showers through the long halls in a carpet and into the rooms and over the empty-but-waiting bed. And summer, with the breeze, changed the air in all the great spaces of the house so it smelled like the Beginning or the first hour after the Beginning, when the world was new and nothing would ever change and no one would ever grow old.