He proceeded to exchange their clothing and to wrap the baby from the crib in the blanket which had covered the other. Then he placed the last Lord of Rondoval within the crib and stared at him. His finger moved forward to touch the dragonmark....
Abruptly, he turned away, retrieved his staff and lifted young Daniel Chain from the floor.
As he passed along the hallway he called into the living room, "I am going now. Fix the door as it was after me--and forget."
Outside, he heard the chain fall into place as he walked away. Stars shone down through jagged openings among the clouds and a cold wind came out of the east at his back. A vehicle turned the corner, raking him with its lights, but it passed without slowing.
Tiny gleams began to play within the sidewalk, and the buildings at either hand lost something of their substantiality, became two-dimensional, began to flicker.
The sparkling of his path increased and it soon ceased to be a sidewalk, becoming a great bright way stretching illimitably before and behind him, with numerous sideways visible. The prospect to his right and left became a mosaic of tiny still-shots of innumerable times and places, flashing, brightening and shrinking, coming at last to resemble the shimmering scales of some exotic fish in passage by him. Overhead, a band of dark sky remained, but cloudless and pouring starlight in negative celestial image of the road below. Occasionally, Mor glimpsed other figures upon the sideways--not all of them of human form--bent on tasks as inscrutable as his own.
His staff came to blaze as he picked his way homeward, lightning-dew dripping from his heels, his toes.
III
In lands mythical to one another, the days passed.
When the boy was six years old, it was noted that he not only attempted to repair anything that was broken about the place, but that he quite often succeeded. Mel showed her husband the kitchen tongs he had mended.
"As good as Vince could have done at the smithy," she said. "That boy's going to be a tinker."
Marakas examined the tool.
"Did you see how he did it?" he asked.
"No. I heard his hammering, but I didn't pay him much heed. You know how he's always fooling with bits of metal and such."
Marakas nodded and set the tongs aside.
"Where is he now?"
"Down by the irrigation ditch, I think," she answered. "He splashes about there."
"I'll walk down and see him, tell him he was a good boy for mending that," he said, crossing the room and lifting the latch.
Outside, he turned the corner and took the sloping path past the huge tree in the direction of the fields. Insects buzzed in the grasses. A bird warbled somewhere above him. A dry breeze stirred his hair. As he walked, he thought somewhat proudly of the child they had taken. He was certainly healthy and strong--and very clever....
"Mark?" he called when he had reached the ditch.
"Over here, Dad," came a faint reply from around the bend to his right.
He moved in that direction.
"Where?" he asked, after a time.
"Down here."
Approaching the edge, he looked over, seeing Mark and the thing with which he was playing. It appeared that the boy had placed a smooth, straight stick just above the water's surface, resting each of its ends loosely in grooves among rock heaps he had built up on either side; and at the middle of the stick was affixed a series of squarish--wings?--which the flowing water pushed against, turning it round and round. A peculiar tingle of trepidation passed over him at the sight of it--why, he was not certain--but this vanished moments later as he followed the rotating vanes with his eyes, becoming a sense of pleasure at his son's achievement.
"What have you got there, Mark?" he asked, seating himself on the bank.
"Just a sort of--wheel," the boy said, looking up and smiling. "The water turns it."
"What does it do?"
"Nothing. Just turns."
"It's real pretty."
"Yeah, isn't it?"
"That was nice the way you fixed those tongs," Marakas said, plucking a piece of grass and chewing it. "Your mother liked that."
"It was easy."
"You enjoy fixing things and making things, making things work---don't you?"
"Yes."
"Think that's what you'd like to do for a living some day?"
"I think so."
"Old Vince is going to be looking for an apprentice down at the forge one of these days. If you think you'd like to learn smithing, working with metals and such--I could speak with him."
Mark smiled again.
"Do that," he said.
"Of course, you'd be working with real, practical things." Marakas gestured toward the water-spun wheel. "Not toys," he finished.
"It isn't a toy," Mark said, turning to look back at his creation.
"You just said that it doesn't do anything."
"But I think it could. I just have to figure what--and how."
Marakas laughed, stood and stretched. He tossed his blade of grass into the water and watched the wheel mangle it.
"When you find out, be sure to tell me."
He turned away and started back toward the path.
"I will ..." Mark said softly, still watching it turn.
When the boy was six years old, he went into his father's office to see once again the funny machine Dad used. Maybe this time--
"Dan! Get out of here!" bellowed Michael Chain, a huge figure, without even turning away from the drawing board.
The little stick figure on the screen before him had collapsed into a line that waved up and down. Michael's hand played across the console, attempting adjustments.
"Gloria! Come and get him! It's happening again!"
"Dad," Dan began, "I didn't mean--"
The man swiveled and glared at him.
"I've told you to stay out of here when I'm working," he said.
"I know. But I thought that maybe this time--"
"You thought! You thought! It's time you started doing what you're told!"
"I'm sor--"
Michael Chain began to rise from his stool and the boy backed away. Then Dan heard his mother's footsteps at his back. He turned and hugged her.
"I'm sorry," he finished.
"Again?" Gloria said, looking over him at her husband.
"Again," Michael answered. "The kid's a jinx."
The pencil-can began rattling atop the small table beside the drawing board. Michael turned and stared at it, fascinated. It tipped, fell to its side, rolled toward the table's edge.
He lunged, but it passed over the edge and fell to the floor before he could reach it. Cursing, he straightened then and banged his head on the nearest corner.
"Get him out of here!" he roared. "The kid's got a pet poltergeist!"
"Come on," Gloria said, leading him away, "We know it's not something you want to do...."
The window blew open. Papers swirled. There came a sharp rapping from within the wall. A book fell from its shelf.
"... It's just something that sometimes happens," she finished, as they departed.
Michael sighed, picked things up, rose, closed the window. When he returned to his machine, it was functioning normally. He glared at it. He did not like things that he could not understand. Was it a wave phenomenon that the kid propagated--intensified somehow when he became upset? He had tried several times to detect something of that sort, using various instruments. Alway unsuccessfully. The instruments themselves usually--
"Now you've done it. He's crying and the place is a shambles," Gloria said, entering the room again. "If you'd be a little more gentle with him when it starts, things probably wouldn't get so bad. I can usually head them off, just by being nice to him."