When they had been some time crashing around in the woods into which the saint had gone, they came back to me panting.
"He's in a tree," said Blooming.
"We'll never find him now," said Budding, licking his finger and wiping a long scratch on his thigh.
"Why didn't you just leave him alone?" I asked. "He would have waked up, we could have waited."
"Blooming laughed," said Budding, "and he woke up..
"Budding made me laugh," said Blooming, "and he ran off."
"He saw you, is why," said Budding. "He's not scared of us."
I wished I could have approached him alone; now I could never get into his good graces. The twins didn't really care about saints; they chased a grasshopper now with the same enthusiasm they had chased the little old man. They sat for a while poking each other and whispering together, and then came to the log I was sitting on.
"We're sorry about the saint running off," said Blooming. "But you saw him anyway, and now you know what one looks like. Let's go home."
He spoke kindly, because he could see I was disappointed; but he said too that even if we left now it would be long after dark when we got back, day was going.
"I'm going to stay," I said.
They looked at me blankly.
"Maybe he'll come down from his tree in the morning," I said, "and I can talk to him, and apologize for waking him and all. I'll do that."
"Well," said one of them, "I suppose, if you want to. But we brought you here. Do you know how to get back?"
With a sudden decision that startled me as much as I hoped it would startle them, I said: "I'm not coming back." I'm not coming back, twins, so go chase your grasshoppers. "I guess I'll just stay here, and wait for him, and stay and live with him, and I guess be a saint."
The twins thought about that for a while, sitting down again and looking from me into the woods and at each other. Then Budding came and gravely kissed my cheek; and Blooming took the cue and kissed the other cheek. They brought my pack to me from where I had left it at the pasture's edge and put it by me. And without another word they turned back to the brook and disappeared in the aspens at its edge.
One thing about Leaf cord, they're very down to earth, but if an occasion comes up, they'll rise to it.
Evening gathered as I sat, and a stack of new midges danced in the still air of the little pasture. The more I thought about my decision the more sensible it seemed to me; but the more I thought how sensible it was, the less I felt like getting up and going into the woods that breathed at the edge of the pasture to look for the saint.
I practiced what I would say in apology to him - no more than "Hello there" or the like, but I practiced till I felt it had enough weight to be convincing. (You practice just by meaning it harder.) But in the end, what got me into the woods were the twins' kisses burning on my cheeks, and the thought of how I would feel if I went back - if, that is, I could find my way back at all. Of course they're Leaf cord, it wouldn't matter to them, they'd just be glad to see me - and somehow that made it worse.
So I got up in the growing gloom and went into the woods, quietly so as not to disturb him should he be around. It was almost dark already in the woods, and grew darker as I went deeper in, and a breeze whispered and creaked in it warningly, and soon it was impossible to take steps without tripping. I had come on an enormous old oak as wide as a wall, which it seemed the woods must have started with, and sat down amid its sheltering roots.
Too dark now to string my hammock, but there was a star caught in the web of leaves, and the air was still; I could spend this night here. It was no good thinking of the water house, or of Belaire, if I wanted to be a saint as much as I said, but it was hard not to think of them as I sat with knees drawn up. I rolled some smoke, carefully picking up the crumbs I dropped. I had enough for several days, and there were always roots and berries that Seven Hands had taught me about, though there would be no berries ripe yet; and if I really got hungry I could kill some little animal and toast it over a fire and eat the meat, as they did in ancient times. And, I thought, if he's a real saint, he won't let me starve to death, right in his own woods.
And if I did starve: perhaps something like that was what was in store for me. It would be sad, but maybe in future times people would learn from it; perhaps I would become a part of this saint's story, and so never die - was that what Painted Red had meant? I thought of Once a Day, and how she might someday come to hear the story; she would know, then - know something. I sat and looked at the blue glimpses of heaven revealed by the moving leaves and thought about being dead.
"If you're going to sit there all night," said a small voice over my head, "you might go and get me some water." I jumped back from the dead and looked upward into the darkness. I could just make out the whiteness of his beard in the dark leaves of the oak I had been leaning on. I couldn't remember what it was I had planned to say. The beard disappeared, and a dark object was thrown at me, and I ducked as it clattered near me. It was a plastic bucket. I stood holding it and staring up at the tree.
"Well?" said the small voice.
I picked my way out of the woods and down the hill, and filled the bucket from the black water of the brook, and came back with it, stumbling through the woods. When I stood again at the foot of the oak, a rope fell from its branches with a hook on the end. I attached the bucket and watched it hauled up into the darkness.
"You've gone and spilled most of it."
"It's dark."
"Well. You'll have to go again."
The bucket came down again and I went to refill it, trying to be careful. The face didn't reappear. I stood looking up into the oak till my neck hurt; I heard some splashing and knocking but the saint didn't speak again.
In the first light of morning, when I woke stiff and chilled, and looked upward, it was all clear: what had been a massy darkness in the tree was a little house built in the broad arms of the oak with great care, of woven branches and pieces of angel-made this and that, with small windows and a smokestack that leaned out away from the branches. A rope ran from a window to a convenient branch, and from it hung two long shirts.
It hadn't once occurred to me, you know, that perhaps the twins were mistaken, and their little old man wasn't a saint at all; I had just assumed that somehow they knew. And looking up now at his tree house, I had no need for doubt. It was just such houses that the saints lived in so many lives ago, when we wandered; St. Gary's great beech and the oak of St. Maureen, and the tree whose stump is still marked in Little Belaire's woods, where St. Andy went to live after St. Bea died. "Saints in the trees!" I said aloud, as old people do when something astonishes them.
Should I call out to him? I didn't know his name; and now in the daylight, despite the errand I had run for him, it was clear to me that he didn't want me there, squatting at the foot of his tree. No doubt he was sitting in his little house waiting for me to go away. In my excitement at having so soon in my journey come upon a real saint from whom I could learn, I hadn't considered his feelings in the matter at all - and I Palm cord, too! I felt a hot flush of shame, and went quietly away from his oak, though not so far that I couldn't observe him. I sat on a patch of moss there, and smoked some, and waited.