One of the traders came and lowered himself gracefully to sit next to Once a Day. He was a brown, wrinkled man like a nut, his wrists and hands gnarled and rooty, but his smile was broad and his eyes alert and smiling too as he looked down at Once a Day, who looked away from him, overcome. When he looked away, she looked up at him; when he looked down at her, she looked away. Then she undid from her wrist the bracelet of blue stones she had found in an old chest and claimed as her own.
She held it up to him, and he took it lightly in his yellow-nailed fingers. "This is nice," he said. He turned it, and held it to the light; he smiled. "What do you want to trade for it? What do you want?"
"Nothing," she said.
He lifted his eyebrows at her, passing the bracelet from hand to hand; then he smiled, and clasped the bracelet around his own wrist, and without a word, giving it a brief shake to settle it among the others he wore, attended to the trading again. Once a Day, with a secret smile, took up in her hand a corner of his black robe that lay near her, and held it.
Through the afternoon the men and women of the List opened their cases, laid out their goods, and the Bread was measured out. They had brought Four Pots, each set of four in its own case; it was the black one of these, which contained a rose-colored stuff, that had made me dream with Painted Red, and the others are for other uses; the List calls them "medicine's daughters," and they alone know the secret of them. They had implements and odd pieces of angel silver, which they called "stainless steel." They had boxes and jars filled with sweet herbs and dried spices, sugar made from beets, and flea powder for cats; for Buckle cord, old things to fix, edged tools, angel-made nuts with their own bolts attached; for Palm cord, ancient found things, keys, whistles, and a ball of glass inside which a tiny house was snowed on.
For these we traded glass bowls and other glass, spectacles bound in plastic, papers for smoking, rose, yellow, and blue, honeycomb, turtle-shell polished to look like plastic, and yards and yards of translucent plastic ribbon on which were hundreds of square pictures, good for belts. And of course Bread, in sacks, as valuable to them as the medicines they brought were to us. In two or three rooms the trading went on filled with sweet smoke, a murmur of talk, and the deepening color from the yellow walls; so many wanted to trade, or just to see the visitors and hear them, that I had to give up my place, but Once a Day kept hers near the brown man who wore her bracelet.
The visitors slept that night with Whisper cord, in twos and threes in rooms far from Path and near the outside-these were ancient precautions, just forms now, but still observed - and late at night, if you passed the rooms where they were, you saw them deep in talk, or laughing together. And I did pass by, not daring to enter their circles though no one had said I was forbidden, and loitered outside, trying to overhear what passed between them.
In the first dawn I awoke alone, crying out because I saw a sudden face looking down at me, but there was no one there. As though summoned, and too much still asleep to ignore the summons, I followed Path quickly toward Buckle cord's door, running from dim pool to dim pool of blue light which poured from skylights above; no one was awake. But when I came near Buckle cord's door there were other shapes coming onto Path, and I hid and watched.
Dr. Boots's List was leaving, guided out by a woman of Whisper cord, their big packs on their shoulders altering their shapes in the dimness. The door was shown them, a square of blue dawn growing brighter, and the woman withdrew without farewell. They waited a moment till they had all collected, and started toward the door; and someone small darted out from Path to overtake them.
I stepped out from where I hid and took Once a Day's arm, somehow not surprised now though I hadn't for a moment suspected it. "Wait," I said.
"Let me go," she said.
"Tell me why."
"No."
"Will you come back?"
"Don't ask me."
"Tell me you'll come back. Promise. Or I'll follow you. I'll tell Seven Hands, and In a Corner, and your Mbaba, and we'll follow you and bring you back." I spoke in a frantic, rapid whisper, only half-aware of what I said. I hadn't released her, and now she took hold of my arm that held her, and so we stood joined, staring at each other's half-seen faces.
"I gave you Money," she said, quiet but intent. The Money was in my sleeve; I was never without it "I gave you Money and you must do what I say." She took my hand from her. "Don't follow me. Don't tell anyone where I've gone, not today, not tomorrow, not till I’m far away. Don't think about me any more. By the Money I gave you."
I was stilled, hopeless and afraid; and she turned away. The last of Dr. Boots's List, the brown, rooty man, glanced back at her as she hurried to catch him.
"In the spring," I said. "You'll come back."
"This is spring," she said, not looking back; and she was gone. I went to the door and watched them, cloaked and hatted in the misty dawn, go single-file away to the south; and Once a Day in a blue dress, her black hair flying, running to catch them; and I thought, before the mist, or tears, made them invisible, I saw one take her hand.
I hid that day, for there was no one I could go to who wouldn't question me, no one I could talk to that my speech wouldn't betray me to. Almost, almost, in an agony of doubt, I went to Seven Hands; but I didn't. She wouldn't be missed unless I raised the alarm, for she could be anywhere, and safe anywhere, in the tangle of Belaire; but I didn't know if it was best. I knew nothing, and so I left the decision to her. I thought: it's been arranged; Whisper cord arranged it; grownups decided on it. I didn't know if this was true, but I tried to believe it; and I hid.
Seeking places where I would be alone, I dug deeper into the old warren, and came, late, to the room Once a Day had led me to the spring before, the room that on its walls of angelstone bore the little house where the two children and the old woman went in and out their little doors according to the weather, and the false leg stood in a corner.
How could it be that I hadn't known? We had been like two fingers of the same hand; we were truthful speakers; yet I hadn't known, any more than I understood now. Perhaps, I thought, it hadn't been till that very moment, that dawn, that she had decided; but I couldn't believe that. She had known, and planned it, and thought about it, thought - it must be - about nothing else for days; and yet I hadn't known.
I thought about what she had said: cousins; and how she, who was Whisper, was of the League even as Dr. Boots's List was, however distantly. I thought that whatever secrets Olive had brought from the League that Whisper cord knew, Dr. Boots's List must know more, just as they knew medicine and traveled, as the old League had; I thought about what Painted Red had said, that for Whisper cord a secret isn't something you won't tell, but something which can't be told.
I thought about all that, but none of it combined to make a sense I understood. I studied the little plastic house on the wall. On its ledge there now stood the old woman, alone; the two children hid.