The cigar in my hand had gone out. Brom lay asleep, but not in the bed where he usually lay. Through the door in the floor I could see the fire burning low and shadowy. Outside the sound of the evening was heavy, and I realized what it was - rain. The crack in the skull widened with a little noise, and I jumped up with a cry, which woke the doctor but not Brom.
What doctor?
"That's not right, though," I said. "It wasn't really three misses."
"Yes," the doctor said. She wasn't old, though her hair was white and the hands which held my black and silver cloth around her were lined. She moved, and the bed crackled beneath her. She looked at me with wide still eyes.
"Because," I said, "I do know how truthful speaking's done."
"Yes," the doctor said.
"It's done the same as dark and light."
"Yes," the doctor said.
"Yes," I said, "because when you speak truthfully, what you're doing is telling whoever can hear you about the dark and light, just then. The better you tell an old story, the more you are talking about right now."
"Yes," the doctor said.
"So I have always been dark and light. I never had to learn it, because I didn't know it."
"Yes," she said.
"And never stopped saying what I really meant or really meaning what I said, because how could I do otherwise?"
"Yes."
"Then there's no difference. They're the same."
"Yes."
"And is that what it means, then, that there's no such thing as way-wall?"
"Yes."
"So. All right. Two misses, then."
"Yes."
"The game goes on."
"Yes."
"So. All right. But," I said, sitting down, "if they're the same, then what's the difference?"
"Yes," the doctor said.
A loud crack overhead made me duck. I looked up. The split in my head was widening horribly. Rain seeped in, staining the white gray. Brom looked upward, and then at me. I went to my pack, tossed in the Four Pots, and found my specs. I put them on. "I think," I said, "that it's time to be going."
The doctor watched me as I came close to where she lay in the bed. "This will cover us, it's big enough," I said, and drew off the black and silver which covered her.
In the gloom I thought there was a cat with her in the bed; but of course she was the cat. She turned herself with careful grace and went on fours out of the bed and across the floor. Her tabby legs and thighs were like those of Fa'afa of the List; her hands helped her across the floor to look out the window. There she sat with knees up and her hands on the window ledge. Her tail swept around to cover her clawed feet. Above us the skull crunched and split; a fine white powder fell.
"Anyway," I said, my voice catching, "we have to go."
She looked from me to the rain, and then to the door in the floor. Soundlessly she padded to it and disappeared through it. Brom followed her. I shouldered my pack, and gathered up the black and silver, put on my hat. I glanced up: the skull was crazed.
They were waiting at the outside door, with the thoughtful reluctance of cats before rain. Brom would have to decide for himself; I moved hesitantly to the doctor and knelt before her. The wet wind from the door made her shiver, but when she saw I wore the silver glove - I don't know how I came to have it on - she grew calm and raised her arms slowly to slip them around my neck. With a soft cry that I don't remember, was it Yes or No, I put one arm beneath her and lifted her to carry. And we stepped out into the night and the rain.
The leaves oozed under my feet as I stumbled down the incline away from the head. Gusts of rainy wind blew across the way, and I nearly stumbled with my burden. Behind me, I thought I heard the head I had abandoned crumble to pieces; I tried to look back, but it was all darkness and woods, and the doctor's hands held me. I could feel her breath on me, gentle and warm, as though she were asleep and though my grip on her tightened at every stumble and lurch, she was easy; she even seemed to nestle against me under the robe which covered us.
When I came to broad naked Road I stopped. I looked both ways, but it was all wind and rain and stone and dim black-boned trees. "I think," I said, already panting, "I think I know a place where we might go."
"Yes," the doctor said, muffled by the black. She sighed; I sighed; and we started north.
That was a long walk. It had taken after all, some months to come this far south from home: the walk to Blink's woods, and south to Service City, and a summer after that, always going south; and this burden was heavy. "And what with the rain," I sobbed, my lungs aching, "what with spring not coming…" When at last drizzly dawn came, and I stood on a bare hill pied with snow and looked down into the wide valley of That River from whose hidden length white steam rose like winter breath, my arms and hands had been locked so long that I knew the hardest part would be letting go.
"Somewhere," I said to her, "down in those hills across That River is a wood; and in that wood, if you know it, is a path. The path gets clearer as you walk it, until it widens under the trees, and you see a door. The door will grow clearer as you come closer to it, until you are standing before it; and then you can step in, and look: a girl with blue eyes as opaque as sky is playing Rings, and looks up when you enter. But I can't go any further."
I sagged to my knees and let down my weight. Slowly, trembling, I uncurled my hands as my muscles snapped back on themselves with vengeance. I drew back the cloth and looked at what I had brought, and wondered if it had been worth it to carry this stuff so far.
There was a nice plastic jug and a funnel, which I had caught rain water in - scarce, they are. There was a spade blade, not too rusted, and a length of white close-line. There was some Book, mostly moldered, which I had thought to give to Blink if I ever saw him again. Angel silver bits and pieces - one of them Teeplee had called a dog collar; I thought that might be useful. And - heaviest of all - a machine, rusted where it wasn't plastic-coated, that looked something like a mechanical version of Blink's crostic-words: it had rows of little tabs with letters on them, and other inexplicable parts. Teeplee called it a spelling machine, with some contempt. I had kept it to see if I might learn to spell from it.
"It's all just too heavy to carry, though," I said. "Just too heavy."
"So your avenging days are over?" Teeplee said. "I thought the speakers never threw away anything."
My heart slowed. The hilltop and the valley patched with fog seemed to thin, as though I could press upon it only a little harder with my senses and see through it. I did press: what I saw was the road leading into Teeplee's ruin, and the old Avvenger himself in his stars and stripes. I had walked through the night and reached, not home, carrying the doctor, but this place, carrying a load of junk. Probably, behind me, my head was still whole. It didn't matter: I wasn't going back.
"No, not over," I said. My voice sounded thin and uncertain in this reality. "But they have a lot of stuff there already."
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"Home," I said, "now that spring's coming." And it was: the rain had foretold it and I hadn't known: but now where I knelt before that quiet pile it was quite clear: in the wet bushes around me each drop of water on each twig had within it an eye of green, and the wind that combed the dull grass showed tender new shoots starting. Of course Boots would never have told such a secret, would never whisper that spring was for sure until I had forgotten it was possible at all. That's dark and light, I thought; this is spring; it's nice now. I let go then of the doctor: and letting go felt like falling, falling gently backward into a waiting pair of hands I would never see but could not doubt were there.