“You’re pretty quiet this morning,” Reid said at last as he picked up the chestnut’s hind leg. “Are you sorry we talked last night?” His gray eyes, in the dim stable light, took on the color of the rusty chestnut gelding. A lock of hair was down over his forehead, and the tail of his shirt was half out.
“Oh no. No I’m not; it helped me. I felt nice afterward. But then Aunt Bett was waiting; she knew all about it. She was pretty grim. What she said made me think, though. Reid, I had such strange dreams last night. Then this morning Colin was all excited about the—Zagdesha. He—oh, I don’t know, he’s so eager about it. But the dream I had— I don’t think it was a dream, it was like I was really there.” She was beginning to feel shaken again, to be out of control. Her voice shook, but she steadied it. “Then Aunt Selma drove up this morning when I was coming to work and wanted— She wanted me to do another seance. Just like that!” Tears sprung maddeningly. “Why can’t she leave me alone!” She turned, wiped her face with her soapy hand, and fled into the tack room.
Chapter 5
Bethany, I’ve asked you three times, pass the strawberry jam.” Aunt Bett frowned and bit her lip. Bethany stared at the tablecloth and passed the jam with hardly a glance upward. Keep everything out, draw in tight and keep everything out! She felt twisted and cramped with it. For the dream had continued to haunt her, coming again and again for four nights in a row, so that she had been sleepy and cross in school, all her attention turned inward toward the dreams. She had not heard the teachers, she had missed assignments, and she had been impossible at home, too, she supposed. And the most frightening part of the dreams was that each time, when she left the red bedroom, she had searched in a different place. She was moving about in a world that was— That was what? That was not real? That was on another plane, the plane of the Zagdesha? And each time, she had felt the strong presence of emotions that could not be her own.
“Bethany, the salt,” Uncle Jimmie said gently. “Could I have the salt?” His eyes searched hers. She looked down and felt his gaze on her, wanting to understand, wanting to help.
“Daydreaming,” Marylou said. “It’s that boy at the stables, that Reid Young.” Bethany scowled at her, and Marylou grinned maliciously. “Don’t be so touchy. Maybe it’s not a boy at all, maybe the Zagdesha’s got your tongue.” Bethany’s face grew hot. She wished she were away from the table. She wished Marylou would be sick.
“Stop it, Marylou. Your mother’s had enough of this Zagdesha business,” Uncle Jimmie said crossly. “Maybe,” he said to Aunt Bett, “maybe when Justin comes she can talk some sense into Selma. Or maybe Zebulon can.”
“Justin won’t be bothered,” Aunt Bett said shortly. “She—and Zebulon wouldn’t.” She gave Uncle Jimmie a look.
Once when Bethany was small, and Justin and Zebulon had come to stay with them, Bethany and Papa had slept on couches before the fire, and Zebulon had had her room; she had heard him snoring through the wall. “Aunt Justin and Great-Uncle Zebulon,” Aunt Bett had said emphatically. “He’s a famous man, and you are to respect him.” But famous men could go barefoot on the shore just as well as anyone else, Bethany had found. Leathery brown and lean, Zebulon McAllister swam with her at daybreak and returned to the cottage salty and sandy and ravenous with Bethany balanced on his shoulders. She could remember him kneeling before an infinitesimal crab in the sand, picking it up and showing her how delicate and finely made it was.
There was something about Uncle Zebulon, a quality —a kind of rightness, a kind of—well, the way she felt on the dunes, that was the way she thought of him. Justin had it too, but in a different way; Justin who was so like Mama in the way she moved, light and easy and small boned. Bethany had a fellow feeling for Justin. They would ride together when Justin came, they always did. That would be nice; she needed someone to talk to. Someone— Reid was almost too matter-of-fact sometimes. But I can’t tell Justin! I can’t tell her anything! I don’t want Justin and Zebulon to know. What exactly did Aunt Bett mean, that Justin and Zebulon wouldn’t be bothered with talk about the Zagdesha, with talking to Aunt Selma?
“They haven’t bought the Tabor place! That’s a tourist cabin!” Marylou cried indignantly.
Aunt Bett sighed. You could tell she thought it a strange thing to do. “They’re coming here to settle, to finish the last volume of Zebulon’s history. They’ve had enough of Europe, I suppose. Maybe the Tabor place is only temporary until they can find something— I wish Selma had never started this Zagdesha business!”
“There’s a lot of talk in the village,” Uncle Jimmie said, carefully not looking at Bethany. “Some people are saying the priest and Reverends Thomas and Blake ought to close the place down and run Claybelle out of town. They don’t say Selma too, but you can tell what they mean.”
“Old Mr. Krupp was shouting and ranting in the store today,” Marylou said. “About the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, and the sins of this family are finally visited—what did he mean by all that!”
“Drunken raving,” Aunt Bett said quickly. “That’s what drink does to you. That old man will only make matters worse; someone ought to run him out of town. He’s always been a troublemaker. Bethany, I don’t want you talking about this Zagdesha business with that Reid Young; he’s the old man’s grandson and he—”
“Reid wouldn’t!” Bethany cried, furious.
“Of course Reid wouldn’t,” Uncle Jimmie said. “That boy can’t help what the old man does. He knows better than to give old Krupp anything to talk about.”
Marylou looked around the table. “She’s never married, has she? Justin’s never married.” Then, smiling smugly, she began to clear the table.
As if marrying, Bethany thought, was the ultimate goal.
“She’s helped Uncle Zebulon,” Colin said unexpectedly. “But you wouldn’t know about anything as brainy as doing research.”
“And maybe she stayed with him because her sister died so young,” Aunt Bett said quietly. “It must have been a terrible shock for the old man, after losing his wife, too. I imagine Justin has resigned herself to being an old maid, though I suppose— Well she’s only thirty-some.”
Bethany puzzled for some days over Aunt Bett’s quick, nervous response to Marylou’s comments about Mr. Krupp, but she could make no sense of it. With the impending arrival of Justin, to fix up the tourist cottage while Zebulon remained in New York to finish some work, the whole routine of the family was changed. Aunt Bett decided to give the entire house a needless scrubbing, and all three children were pressed into helping—though Bethany, with her job, got less of it than Colin and Marylou. There was a good deal of baking, too, which no one objected to, and so much bustle that her own preoccupation went nearly unnoticed. Fog came and stayed for days, hanging low over the dunes so that Bethany rode Danny—when she had time to ride—in a deliciously mysterious white world; Danny snorting as the dunes loomed out of the white ahead of them, and Bethany turning in the saddle to watch them melt into the fog again behind. After she bedded Danny one evening she went out along the shore wondering if she could get lost with the world so shrouded, wondering if she would miss the grass tower, when it loomed out of the fog suddenly, quite close. As she climbed, the grass brushing against her was muffled and wet, and when she reached the peak her