“Marnie?” Her shadowy figure turned to me. “What’s troubling you?” I stood close beside her and looked out at the moonlight-flooded emptiness of hills around the house.
“Something is out there,” she said. “Something scared and bad-frightened and evil-” She took the more adult words from my mind. I was pleased that being conscious of her doing this didn’t frighten me any more the way it did the first few times. “It goes around the house and around the house and is afraid to come.”
“Perhaps an animal,” I suggested.
“Perhaps,” she conceded, turning away from the window.
“I don’t know your world. An animal who walks upright and sobs, ‘God have mercy!’”
Which incident was startling in itself, but doubly so when Nils said casually next day as he helped himself to mashed potatoes at the dinner table, “Guess who I saw today. They say he’s been around a week or so.” He flooded his plate with brown meat gravy. “Our friend of the double mind.”
“Double mind?” I blinked uncomprehendingly.
“Yes.” Nils reached for a slice of bread. “To burn or not to burn, that is the question-“
“Oh!” I felt a quiver up my arms. “You mean the man at Grafton’s Vow. What was his name anyway?”
“He never said, did he?” Nils’s fork paused in mid-air as the thought caught him.
“Derwent,” said Marnie shortly, her lips pressing to a narrow line. “Caleb Derwent, God have mercy.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Did he tell you?”
“No,” she said, “I took it from him to remember him with gratitude.” She pushed away from the table, her eyes widening. “That’s it-that’s the frightened evil that walks around the house at night! And passes by during the day! But he saved me from the fire! Why does he come now?”
“She’s been feeling that something evil is lurking outside,” I explained to Nils’s questioning look.
“Hmm,” he said, “the two minds. Marnie, if ever he-“
“May I go?” Marnie stood up. “I’m sorry. I can’t eat when I think of someone repenting of good.” And she was gone, the kitchen door clicking behind her.
“And she’s right,” said Nils, resuming his dinner. “He slithered around a stack of nail kegs at the store and muttered to me about still compromising with evil, harboring a known witch. I sort of pinned him in the corner until he told me he had finally-after all this time-confessed his sin of omission to his superiors at Grafton’s Vow and they’ve excommunicated him until he redeems himself-” Nils stared at me, listening to his own words. “Gail! You don’t suppose he has any mad idea about taking her back to Grafton’s Vow, do you!”
“Or killing her!” I cried, clattering my chair back from the table. “Marnie!” Then I subsided with an attempt at a smile.
“But she’s witch enough to sense his being around,” I said.
“He won’t be able to take her by surprise.”
“Sensing or not,” Nils said, eating hastily, “next time I get within reach of this Derwent person, I’m going to persuade him that he’ll be healthier elsewhere.”
In the days that followed, we got used to seeing half of Derwent’s face peering around a building, or a pale slice of his face appearing through bushes or branches, but he seemed to take out his hostility in watching Marnie from a safe distance, and we decided to let things ride-watchfully.
Then one evening Marnie shot through the back door and, shutting it, leaned against it, panting.
“Marnie,” I chided. “I didn’t hear your steps on the porch. You must remember-“
“I-I’m sorry, Aunt Gail,” she said, “but I had to hurry. Aunt Gail, I have a trouble!” She was actually shaking.
“What have you done now to upset Kenny and Loolie?” I asked, smiling.
“Not-not that,” she said. “Oh, Aunt Gail! He’s down in the shaft and I can’t get him up. I know the inanimate lift, but he’s not inanimate-“
“Marnie, sit down,” I said, sobering. “Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”
She sat, if that tense tentative conforming to a chair could be called sitting.
“I was out at East Shaft,” she said. “My people are Identifiers, some of them are, anyway-my family is especially-I mean-” She gulped and let loose all over. I could almost see the tension drain out of her, but it came flooding back as soon as she started talking again. “Identifiers can locate metals and minerals. I felt a pretty piece of chrysocolla down in the shaft and I wanted to get it for you for your collection. I climbed through the fence-oh, I know I shouldn’t have, but I did-and I was checking to see how far down in the shaft the mineral was when-when I looked up and he was there!” She clasped her hands. “He said, ‘Evil must die. I can’t go back because you’re not dead. I let you out of a little fire in this life, so I’ll burn forever. “He who endures to the end-”’ Then he pushed me into the shaft-“
“Into the-” I gasped.
“Of course, I didn’t fall,” she hastened. “I just lifted to the other side of the shaft out of reach, but-but he had pushed me so hard that he-he fell!”
“He fell!” I started up in horror. “He fell? Child, that’s hundreds of feet down onto rocks and water-“
“I-I caught him before he fell all the way,” said Marnie, apologetically. “But I had to do it our way. I stopped his falling-only-only he’s just staying there! In the air! In the shaft! I know the inanimate lift, but he’s alive. And I-don’t-know-how-to-get-him-up!” She burst into tears.
“And if I let him go, he will fall to death. And if I leave him there, he’ll bob up and down and up and-I can’t leave him there!” She flung herself against me, wailing. It was the first time she’d ever let go like that.
Nils had come in at the tail end of her explanation and I filled him in between my muttered comforting of the top of Marnie’s head. He went to the shed and came back with a coil of rope.
“With a reasonable amount of luck, no one will see us,” he said. “It’s a good thing that we’re out here by ourselves.”
Evening was all around us as we climbed the slope behind the house. The sky was high and a clear, transparent blue, shading to apricot, with a metallic orange backing the surrounding hills. One star was out, high above the evening-hazy immensity of distance beyond Margin. We panted up the hill to East Shaft. It was the one dangerous abandoned shaft among all the shallow prospect holes that dotted the hills around us. It had been fenced with barbwire and was forbidden territory to the children of Margin-including Marnie. Nils held down one strand of the barbwire with his foot and lifted the other above it. Marnie slithered through and I scrambled through, snatching the ruffle of my petticoat free from where it had caught on the lower barbs.
We lay down on the rocky ground and edged up to the brink of the shaft. It was darker than the inside of a hat.
“Derwent!” Nils’s voice echoed eerily down past the tangle of vegetation clinging to the upper reaches of the shaft.
“Here I am, Lord.” The voice rolled up flatly, drained of emotion. “Death caught me in the midst of my sin. Cast me into the fire-the everlasting fire I traded a piddlin’ little shed fire for. Kids-dime a dozen! I sold my soul for a seared face. Here I am, Lord. Cast me into the fire.”
Nils made a sound. If what I was feeling was any indication, a deep sickness was tightening his throat. “Derwent!” he called again, “I’m letting down a rope. Put the loop around your waist so we can pull you up!” He laid the rope out across a timber that slanted over the shaft. Down it went into the darkness-and hung swaying slightly.
“Derwent!” Nils shouted. “Caleb Derwent! Get hold of that rope!”
“Here I am, Lord,” came the flat voice again, much closer this time. “Death caught me in the midst of my sin-“