He frowned with impatience. “Don’t mock, Pearl. Tell me if you must.”
“Everything,” I began in a lofty tone, “is past straining. There is new life under every surface. You feel it in the garden, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he sighed.
I took his hand and led him to the beech tree. “You know this beech tree?”
“I don’t know it. You spoke of standing by it.”
“This is a grand tree. If you look up in the early morning—that is, right now—there’s a green light that sears the eyes. It’s like a burn, it’s so bright. The new leaves are wide open and laced, like this—” I wove his fingers and mine together.
I reached up and plucked a leaf for him. “Its leaves are coarse but soft, like the touch of fingers.” I rubbed his face with the leaf, but he didn’t smile.
“Don’t look so grave, Simon. It’s a good thing.”
He rubbed the smooth bark. “How does this surface look whole? I’ve forgotten.”
“Have you groomed a horse? Your old cow will do. This trunk is like the bone and muscles of their legs, firm and curved and strong. Like the great haunch of a beast of burden, only wider and tall as two houses. There are hundreds and thousands of trees here of all sorts, many much taller than this. But her branches are like outstretched arms. Her bark, the outside, isn’t green like the leaf but gray . . . do you see it yet?’
He laughed. “What is gray?”
“That will do,” I said, tugging him further into the woods, “for now.”
It was slow moving with Simon, who tested his footing and came so carefully. “Don’t you trust me?” I asked once. “Do you think I’ll leave you?”
He considered, and I watched his jaw tighten. “You might.”
“And you would well remember it.” I let go his arm and moved away stealthily.
“Pearl?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t, Pearl.”
“Why did you say it?” I begged.
“The world spins.” He spread his arms wide like a preacher, but they soon settled safely at his sides. “I hear a roar of birds and leaves in wind. I know what those things are because I know how they sound, but they have no shape now, except here.” Simon tapped a finger to his temple. “When first you stood at my fence, you said you were like the rain. Do you know why I pray for rain?”
“No,” I allowed him. “Why?”
He stepped toward me, and I stepped back. “Because it gives a shape to things. It falls on the roof and slides down the walls. It pounds on the old stump outside where father cuts wood. It brings the earth its edges. Without it the world’s like a big, soft pudding.”
I determined to listen no more, fixing fast on my question. “Why did you say it?”
He sniffed thoughtfully at the air. “I don’t know.”
“Because he told you about Mother?”
“He did. My brother has always told me. I have no eyes, Pearl. I depend on him.”
“But are you blind inside?” I asked cruelly, and skipped a few yards in a mad little dance, slapping at the brush with relish.
He started at the sound of me, considering a moment. “Perhaps.”
Simon seemed small and alone there in the clearing, and I admit I enjoyed it. His graveyard voice echoed again and again in my mind as I danced round him. Go home. I let my silence wash over him. To your fallen mother. I let him seek for the edges of the world and find them not, hands hanging idly at his sides. I let him wonder at green leaves laced like fingers, at hundreds and thousands of trees like the still legs of beasts. He was afraid to bring those watchful hands of his to bear on these savage woods, I saw, but I knew also that it wasn’t really me or my negligence he was afraid of. Go home.
“You bade me go home, Simon, to my fallen mother. I can’t go home,” I said softly, and he lifted his head. “Any more than you can.”
He stood half bewildered in that clearing as I settled silent as a cat on a mossy rock. I told him it would not be long but that he must be patient. I waited, without a word more, for forgiveness to come.
After a time, he relaxed. He settled on a crisp bed of last year’s curled chestnut leaves, pulled his knees up, and rested his chin on them. He let the sounds of the woods wash over him with my silence, and we were alone in all the human world. Gradually, his hands took in his surroundings. He lifted pods and shells laced with winter rot, held them between thumb and forefinger to feel the tiny teeth marks, and dropped them. A squirrel whirred and clicked and complained in a branch above, and as the sun climbed the coo and twitter of birds stilled. I came closer until we sat together without touching.
“Do you feel me here?”
He nodded, no longer contrite or fearful. The teasing light returned to his face. “I should slap you.”
“You may then if you like.” I lifted his hand, placing it palm down on my smaller palm. He gave it a halfhearted slap and laughed nervously. We sat a long while in the woods, and once I fled to a nearby meadow. He didn’t look frightened exactly, when I returned, but rather grateful to hear my light step. I wove still-dewy wildflowers into his shaggy hair and made myself a chain, or half of one, before I lost interest and began to flick away the petals. My singing voice was shrill and off key, even to my own ears. Mother cautioned me all the time to restrain it, and my laugh with it, on the road to Sunday meeting.
Simon sat very still, and sometimes let his hands ride lightly on my wrists or forearms as I worked, following each movement to its end. We worked thus, and I told him of the streaming light and gave him a strip of white birch peel to hold, explaining that it was the skin of one kind of tree. I prattled on about the bluebird’s bright dress, the pigeons perched like foolish sentinels in every branch, the crystal gleam of the spider’s web. I bade him listen for the brook that traveled from his home to west of my own, and once we sat as still as rabbits in our concealed clearing when a man went by whistling on the path. Simon heard him before I did and clutched my wrist as the man approached, leaves crunching under his boots. Traders, town leaders, and men of the church took that path often to the Indian settlement.
When the walker was some distance away, I led Simon back the way we had come. I felt how surely now he belonged to me, and when he stumbled in the brush, I spoke gently, with more patience than I felt. I planted him back among the needy turnips, and went away smiling to endure my travails with Goodwife Ashley. Simon did not look after me, of course—why should he? But I felt him listening, and now he knew where in the great pudding of the world my footfalls carried me.
Some days later I returned to the grave of Mistress Weary of this World. Carved below the grinning skull on the marker were the words:
Reader beware as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so you will be
Prepare for death and follow me.
Here Lies ye Body of Mrs. Caleb Milton whos sol took its flight from Boston to ye Heavenly mansions on May 26, 1649.
It was no thanks to Dame Ashley that I could read this epitaph. Mother, who had been raised by wealthy parents from Nottinghamshire and Holland, took pains that I understood the language well, and I knew my letters long before she bartered for my education with Goodwife Ashley, who let me under her roof with the others in exchange for fine embroidered cloth or a new pair of gloves when it suited her (and it often did; she was as vain as a cockerel). Though I could scarce write my own name, I could read well enough, and the portent on the grave, so like others in the churchyard and like