She stood there as motionless as the sleeper. Then she turned suddenly and went quick and light, noiseless in tennis shoes, to the crossing and across in the familiar pattern of rock to rock above the merry water, up the far bank, and off on the south road; going a traveler’s pace, not a run or trot but a fast, even, lightfoot walk that put the distances behind her. As she went she gazed straight ahead and for a long way, a long time there was no clear thought in her mind, only the backwash of terror and anger and, that gone, the dry emptiness she knew too well, whatever one called it, maybe it was grief.
There was nowhere, nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Even here no peace or place.
But the way she went itself said you are going home. Her skin touched the air of the ain country, her eyes looked into the dusk forests. The rhythm of walking, of the up-slopes, the downslopes, the rivers, the long rhythms of the land quieted grief, filled emptiness at last. The farther she went into the twilight the more wholly she belonged to it, till all thought of the daylight world was gone and even the memory of the intruder at the beginning place was dulled, her mind tuned to what was about her as she walked and to the goal of her walking. The forests darkened, the way grew steep. It was a long time since she had come to Mountain Town.
And a long way. She always forgot how long, how hard. When she had first found the way she used to break the journey with a sleep at Third River, at the foot of the mountain. Since she was sixteen she had been able to get to Tembreabrezi all in one pull, but a tough one, up the steep, dark slopes and up and on, always farther than she remembered. She was footsore, legweary, and very hungry when she came at last to the clear road and the long turning. But that was the joy of it, to come there worn out, craving food and warmth and rest, glad to the heart to see the lighted windows in the cold sweep of mountainside and sky, and smell the woodsmoke of the fires, the smell that from the ancient beginnings whispers, You are coming out of the wilderness, coming home. And to hear the voices speak her name.
“Irena!” cried little Aduvan, in the street in front of the inn yard, startled at first, then breaking into a smile and a shout to her playmates, “Irena tialohadji!”—Irena has come back!
Irene hugged and swung the child till she squealed, and the troop of four little ones all shrieked in their sweet, thin voices to be hugged and swung, dancing about her till Palizot looked out of the courtyard to see what the commotion was, and came forward wiping her hands on her apron, calm, saying, “Come in, come in, Irena. You’ve come a long way, you’ll be tired.” So she had welcomed Irene the first time she ever came to Mountain Town, fourteen years old, hungry, dirty, tired, frightened. She had not known the language then but she had understood what Palizot said to her: Come in, child, come home.
The fire was burning in the big hearth of the inn. An excellent perfume of onion, cabbage, and spices pervaded the rooms. Everything was as it had been, as it ought to be, with a couple of improvements to be admired: the floors were covered with a reddish straw matting, instead of sand scattered on the bare wood. “That’s nice, it’s warmer,” Irene said, and Palizot, pleased but judicious, “I don’t know yet how it will wear. Let’s have some light in here beside the fire. Sofir! Irena has come! Will you stay a while with us, levadja?”
Child, the word meant, dear child; they added the ‘adja’ onto names too, making them endearments. It pleased her deeply when Palizot called her that. She nodded, having already resolved to spend twelve days here, overnight on the other side of the gate. She was trying to arrange the words for a question, and they did not come at once, for it had been months since she spoke the language. “Palizot. Tell me. Since I was here—has anyone come, on the south road?”
“No one has come on any road,” Palizot said, a strange answer, her voice calm and grave. Then Sofir came up from the cellars with cobwebs in his thick black hair, a baritone man the same size from chest to hip so you could have made round sections of him like a treetrunk; he hugged Irene, shook both her hands, rumbling joyfully, “A long while, Irenadja, a long while, but you’ve come!”
They gave her her favorite room, and she helped Sofir carry up wood for the hearthfire there. He laid and lit the fire at once to warm and air the room, which felt as if it had not been used for a long time. There were no other guests staying at the inn. In itself that was nothing unusual, but she began to notice other indications that few travelers and little trade had been coming to the inn. The big pewter beer cans hung in a row along the wall had not been taken down and used lately, from the look of them, for a boisterous tradesmen’s evening or to welcome a party of cloth buyers up from the plains. She went to see what beasts were in the inn stable, but there were none, the stalls and mangers empty. Despite Sofir’s excellent cooking the food at supper was coarse, and there was none of his fine wheat bread with it, only the stiff dark porridge made of the grains they grew here on the mountain. About Sofir and Palizot there was some air of trouble or constraint, but they said nothing directly about the lack of business, and Irene found she could not ask them. With them she was “the child” still, welcomed and cherished because she had no part in their adversities and cares. So it had always been heart’s holiday for her with them; and she did not know how to change that if she wanted to. As always, then, they talked of nothing important, the important thing being their love.
After supper a few townsfolk came in to spend the evening. Sofir tended bar in the big front room for the men. The women joined Palizot by the fire in the snug room off the kitchen. They drank the local beer and chatted; old Kadit knocked back a quarter pint or so of apple brandy. Irene had a very small mug of the beer, which was powerful stuff, and helped Palizot sew patchwork. She detested sewing, but this work with Palizot was an old pleasure, one of the things she thought of with yearning from the other side of the gate: the scraps of soft colored wool, the firelight and lamplight, Palizot’s long, grave, mild face, the women’s quiet voices and Kadit’s huffing laugh, the buzz and grumble of the men talking in the other room, her own sleepiness, the stillness of the great old house overhead and the quietness of the streets of the town, of the forests beyond the streets.
When the lamps were lighted and the curtains and shutters closed it always seemed that it was night outside. She did not open the shutters of her bedroom window till she got up after the night’s sleep, when the unchanging twilight looked like the dusk of a winter morning. So the townspeople spoke of it, saying morning, midday, night. Learning their language Irene had learned those words, but they did not always come unquestioned to her tongue. What meaning could they have, here? But she could not ask Palizot or Sofir, or Aduvan’s mother Trijiat, or the other women she was fond of; her questions did not come clear; they laughed and said, “Morning comes before midday and evening after it, child!”—always entertained by her difficulties with the language, and ready to help her, but not to question their own certainties. There was no one in Mountain Town who might be able to speak of such matters but the Master. So she used to plan to ask him why there was no day and night here, why the sun never rose and yet you never saw the stars, how this could be. But she had never asked him a word of it. What were the words in his language for sun, for star? And if she said, “Why is it never day or night here?” it would sound stupid, since day meant waking and night meant sleeping, and they waked and worked and slept like anybody on the other side. She could begin to explain, “Where I came from there is a round fire in the sky,” but it would sound like a Hollywood caveman in the first place, and in the second and larger place she never talked about where she came from. From the start, from the first time she went through the gate, the first time she crossed First River, the first time she came to Mountain Town, she had known that you did not talk of one place in the other place. You did not tell them where you came from, unless they asked. No one, in either country, ever asked.