Death had visited this hearth so frequently that I was almost ashamed to tell her. “Yes.”
She drew out her fingernail and looked down at the table. “I hope you don’t think that’s silly.”
I could not follow her word by word, but I understood the sense of what she was saying. “When my parents died, they left me a farm to tend. If your mother told you to come to Mandragora, I think it right and good that you followed her directive.”
“It wasn’t a directive, exactly. More an idea she put in my head. But thank you.”
I nodded. “And how did you come?”
“I flew to Scotland, and from the mainland I took a boat. There wasn’t a harbor anywhere we could see, there’s no beach, but he moored to a flat rock and let me off. He must have thought I was crazy.”
Adelaïda, sprawled on the bed, repeated, “You flew.”
“And then I went on the boat.”
My hairs bristled like a barn cat’s. “How did you fly?” I asked.
“In an airplane.”
Perhaps she was like my grandmother, then—there had always been stories that this one and that one saw her wafting about the parish, her long hair fluttering behind her on the breeze. My mind crackled like sap in the fire. “Tell me, how does it plane the air?”
“Have you really never even seen one?”
I shrugged. Who knew what she meant?
“Yves, even if you didn’t know what it was, I know you’ve seen one. A thing like a bird, silvery gray, crossing the sky. They fly more smoothly than birds do, and they’re louder.” Her eyes continued to expand until I feared they would devour her face. “They rumble in the air overhead, they roar like thunder, only it’s a steady sound. It grows quieter as the airplane gets farther away. You must have heard one.”
I had seen such a creature, and heard the sound a thousand times; my mind’s ear heard it then. Wido Jungfrau had long since postulated that they were ravenous beasts scanning the countryside for unloved children to eat up, but Wido was fuller of foolish notions than a sated pig was full of slops. When once I asked my brother what kind of bird it might be, he shooed me away, saying, “Call it a bad angel out cruising.”
“I have heard that sound.” The admission felt grave. “And always wondered about the thing that made it.”
Ruth shook her head. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t all of this. You don’t even have heat.”
“Yes, we do,” Adelaïda said, waving a sleepy hand toward the fire.
“No electricity, no zippers—tell me, do you lack modern technology, or do you know about it and resist it, like the Amish?”
Adelaïda said, “What are the Amish?”
Rather, I thought, more to the point, I asked, “What is it, exactly, you intend to study?”
“The most basic things about your daily life, your social structure, your agricultural methods. I simply want it all to be documented, preserved.”
I was certain I still did not fully comprehend. “We have our priest, Ruth, but he is only a workaday priest—no great scholar of the ways of God. I am this village’s inventor, my brother its thinker, and the rest of us are ordinary men, working the soil at the price of our lives.”
She shook her head slightly. “I don’t understand.”
“I mean to say that I, and my brother, and even our middling priest, have all the village’s respect for our studies. Surely to have another scholar among us—no matter that her field of study is hardly worth a moment’s pondering—will be a great honor. And however odd your ways, we will try to respect them.”
She gave a slight, graceful bow with her head. “As I will try to respect yours.”
“And if you’re interested in matters theological, there’s a great deal you can learn from my brother, and I’m sure the priest will want to share his books and his learning with you, once he assures himself you aren’t the Devil’s minion.”
I was beginning to like her sideways smile. “Is he going to try to convert me?”
“Are you a Christian?”
“Ruth Blum? Of course not. I’m a Jew.”
Though I had heard tell of them, certainly, in my readings from the Bible, I had never before seen one, and wondered if they were all so tall. It certainly explained her accent. “Then it’s quite likely that Stanislaus will try to save your soul.”
“You have to excuse me if I’m rude,” she said. “Please understand how different everything is where I come from. Until this evening, I could hardly imagine such a life, so pared down. You make do without so much of what my people consider basic amenities.”
I looked around at my home, replete with food, tools, good blankets, and a fire. “What amenities am I without?” Then, “Thanks to me and my brother, we harness our horses, and our carts now have two wheels instead of one, and are far more stable, far more efficient. We plow with much larger plows than our ancestors ever dreamed of.”
“Two wheels,” she said, and whistled through her beautiful teeth. “Next thing you know, it’ll be four, and then what.”
“Four wheels?”
“Excuse me, I—”
“How do you mean, a cart with four wheels?”
“Excuse me, Yves, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“But you did, and now you must tell me how such a thing works.”
She cast down her eyes, and answered, in a near whisper, “Two axles. Front and rear.”
Immediately my mind began to chase after the new cart’s design.
“I’m sorry,” she said, still not looking at me. “I shouldn’t interfere.”
“No, it’s an excellent idea.”
Her face, which had started out a pale and impenetrable mask, was growing prettier as it softened. “But if I’m going to study you, I have to leave things how I found them, not tell you how to fix your carts.”
“I appreciate the suggestion—and if you have others, I want to hear them. I am our village’s one true inventor by default, but I do not seek to cling to the title like the ivy to the alder.”
“We’ll see, won’t we, how we work with one another?”
“Oh, aye,” Adelaïda said, “there’s more work than you can dream of. We’d be so grateful for help.”
“Excuse if I’m being stupid, but, Yves, none of this”—she waved her arms to indicate the hearth, our village, the liquid black sky—“none of this is for my benefit?”
“My brother would tell you the whole of God’s creation is to bring you, and you only, to bliss.”
She shook her head. “It’s so hard to believe that this is here. I’ve been imagining it for so long, and then to sit by your fire, talking to you.”
“I cannot imagine imagining my life,” I told her, seeking to stretch my mind around the new idea. “It is all I know.” Never had anyone looked so out of place at my table as she looked, tall and slender, and hunching