An Acceptable Time Page 9

  "Full of what?"

  "I study with my grandparents in the mornings. I hike. I swim. We've had friends over for dinner. It may not seem exciting, but it's just what I need." It didn't sound exciting as she told it, but although Zachary had surprised her by knowing about the Ogam stones and, even more surprising, had seen Karralys, she was not ready to tell him about Anaral or Tav.

  Then he reached into his leather pouch. "I brought you a present."

  "An unbirthday present!" Polly exclaimed. "Terrific."

  He handed her something flat and rectangular wrapped in wrinkled pink tissue paper. She removed the paper and there was a picture, backed by a thin piece of wood, of an angel, immensely tall, with great wings, bending protectively over a small child.

  "A guardian-angel icon! It's beautiful! Thank you!"

  "I found it in a funny junk shop in Turkey, not long after I left you at Athens airport last summer. When I looked back to wave at you, you looked so sort of lost that I thought then that you needed a guardian angel. So, when I saw this, it made me think of you, and I got it, and thought I'd give it to you if ever we met again, and here we are."

  "Thanks, Zachary. Really. Thanks a lot."

  "It's not an original or anything. I don't suppose it has any real value."

  "I love it." She put it carefully into the largest of the anorak pockets. "It was really nice of you to think of it."

  "Why do you sound so surprised? Is it because it's a picture of an angel?"

  "Well--sort of."

  "I suppose I made it quite clear that I don't believe in anything."

  She nodded.

  "Take what you can get. Right now. Because that's all there is. That's still my policy. But I had a grandmother who really believed in angels, and that they care for us." He stopped, drained the dregs of ice from the bottom of his glass. "She loved me. Me, Zachary, not some projection."

  "Grandmothers are marvelous. Mine is. And Granddad, too."

  "I didn't know my grandfather that well. Pa's parents died young. The ones I knew were Ma's parents, and they lived near us. My grandfather was a champion polo player, but he was thrown from his horse and his spine was crushed. And Grandma went right on believing in angels--and in me--while he cursed from his wheelchair till the day he died. Another lemonade?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Shall we just drive around and see what we can see?"

  "Sure. That would be nice."

  For the first few miles he was silent, and Polly thought that Zachary had just revealed to her, in talking of his grandparents, more than he had been willing to show when they were together in Athens. She glanced at his face, and it seemed very thin.

  "Have you lost weight?" The question slipped out before she realized that it was a personal one and shouldn't be asked.

  "Some. Look, that maple's completely bare." He whistled a few notes, then said, "If autumn comes, can winter be far behind?"

  "Where's the whistle you had the other day?" she asked.

  "Oh, I gave it to one of the office boys. I found it used too much wind." He apologized quickly. "Sorry, Polly, sweet, sorry. I spend my days in an office, ruining my eyes and getting no exercise. At this point I don't know why I'm doing it, but I still seem to want to learn all about insurance and all the legal ramifications." He turned off onto a side road that wound through a pine forest.

  "What about college?" she asked.

  "I hope I can go back next semester. I'm not sure I think a college degree is really necessary, but law schools do. It's a rough world out there, and I've always been determined to equip myself for it, and college is part of the deal."

  A plane droned by, far above them. She looked up but could not see it. It must have passed overhead before its sound followed it. Their road turned sharply uphill.

  "What about you, Polly?"

  "What about what?"

  "You are planning to go to college?"

  "Sure."

  "Planning to be a scientist?"

  "I don't know. I'm interested in a lot of things. One problem is--well, Max said I have too many options."

  "Are you over it?"

  "Over what?"

  "Your friend's death."

  "Zachary, you don't get over someone's death. Ever. You just learn to go on living the best way you possibly can."

  "I got over Ma's death." He sighed.

  Did he? Really? she wondered. And what about the grandmother who had believed in him? "I don't want to get over Max's death. She'll always be part of me and I'll be--more--because she was my friend."

  "Oh, Polly." He took his hand off the steering wheel and reached out to touch her shoulder gently. "You teach me so much, and I love you for it, Polly. Polly, if I'm going to see as much of you as I want to these next few months, there's something I ought to tell you." Then he fell silent. The road came out of the woods, went past a farm, and then offered them a wide view across a valley to ranges of mountains beyond, a far more spectacular view than her grandparents' gentle one. He pulled the car over, stopped it, and sat there, staring out.

  She waited. Decided he was not going to tell her whatever it was, when he said softly, "Polly, if I died, would you get over me?"

  She turned to look at him.

  "I've always been my own worst enemy, and now it's coming back at me." She saw his eyes fill with sudden tears.

  "Zachary. What is it?"

  "My heart. It's never been very good. And now--"

  She looked at his white face, at the slight blueness about his lips, at his eyes trying to blink back tears. She reached out to touch him.

  "Don't touch me. Please. I don't want to cry. But I don't want to die. I'm not ready. But I've only got--oh, nobody will be specific, but it's not likely I'll make it to law school."

  "Oh, Zachary." She sat, not touching him, honoring his wish. "What about open-heart surgery?"

  "It wouldn't help that much."

  "If you take care of yourself, don't work too hard..."

  He shook his head, reached up, and fiercely rubbed away his tears with the heel of his hand.

  "Oh, Zach--"

  "See, I'm hurting you just by being. I don't mean to use emotional blackmail. Polly, sweet, what I'm doing is living as though I'm going to go on living. Working in Hartford this semester. Planning on going back to college. To law school. My doctors say that's the best thing. Take it moderately easy, but live while I can. So what I'd really like is to see you sort of on a regular basis. Would that be possible?"

  "Well, of course, Zach." Words seemed totally inadequate.

  He started the car again and took off, far too fast. He'd said that he didn't want to die, that he wasn't ready. He'd said that he didn't want to hurt her. "Slow down a bit, hey?" she suggested.

  He took his foot off the accelerator and drove at a more moderate speed. In silence. She did not break it because there was nothing to say. When they got to her grandparents' land, he turned onto the dirt road the house faced and stopped his car by the wing with the pool.

  "I've been horrible," he said. "I'm sorry."

  "You haven't been horrible."

  He groped toward her to kiss her and she let his lips touch hers, then gently turned away. She felt deep sympathy for him, but kissing out of sympathy could only lead to trouble.

  Instead of trying to kiss her again, as she expected, he stared out the windshield. "Hey, who's that girl?"

  She stared, but saw nobody. "Who?"

  "She just went around the corner of your pool." He pointed.

  "Who?" Polly asked again.

  "A girl with a long black braid. She turned and ran."

  Polly stared. There was the white wing of the addition, with lilacs planted beneath the windows, their leaves turned grey with autumn and slowly dropping to the ground. There was nobody there.

  Zachary explained, "She was just walking toward your pool. A good-looking girl. But when she saw me and I smiled at her, she took off. Like a deer."

  Anaral. It had to b
e Anaral Zachary had seen. There was nobody else it could be. First Karralys and now Anaral--why?

  "Is it someone you know?" he asked.

  "Well, yes, but--"

  "Listen, I didn't mean to upset you by telling you about myself. I'm sorry."

  Of course she was upset. Upset in all directions.

  "Polly, you know the last thing I want in the world is to hurt you. But I thought you ought to know about me. I know I've often been self-destructive, but I didn't expect--" Again his dark eyes were bright with tears. Fiercely he blinked them back. "I'm sorry. This isn't fair of me. I'd better take off, and I'll see you again soon--maybe this weekend?"

  She nodded slowly. Now Zachary had seen Anaral. What would her grandparents think? Bishop Colubra? She unfastened her seat belt. She was badly shaken, both by what Zachary had told her about his heart and by his having seen Anaral. Her ears were cocked for the Colubras. Perhaps if they drove up, Zachary would talk with the bishop. "Listen, are you busy this evening? Could you stay for dinner?"

  "Tonight?"

  "If that's okay. Dr. Louise and Bishop Colubra are coming, and Bishop Colubra knows Anaral really well--the girl you saw." Dr. Louise, she thought, might be able to check on Zachary's doctors, see if there might be some better hope for him.

  "No, sorry. I wish I could, I really do. But I promised my boss I'd have dinner with him and let him go on about Ogam. Fortunately, he doesn't try to order dinner in Ogam. He'd drop a gourd if he knew I'd seen an Ogam stone."

  --If he knew Zachary had seen a girl from Ogam days...

  "I'm free on Saturday," he continued. "Shall I come on over?"

  "Yes, please do."

  "Maybe we'll just go for a walk around your grandparents' place. It'll be good just to be with you. But now I really need to get back to Hartford."

  Zachary got out of the car and came around to her. "Don't worry overmuch, pretty Pol. I'm not going to drop dead on you. That wouldn't be fair. I do have some time left." He hugged her briefly, and he felt painfully thin. The Colubras had not come, and probably weren't even expected for another hour.

  It was All Hallows' Eve. Samhain. That made a difference. At least she was sure that the bishop would think that it did. Samhain must be why Zachary was able to see Anaral. And yet he had seen Karralys, too. Was it that, as the time of Samhain approached, the doors started opening?

  She walked slowly round the house, scuffing fallen leaves, walked around the wing with the pool. The house faced south. The wing was on the east end, with windows on all three sides and skylights north and south. She crossed to the field by the northeast corner, although she was not going to cross the field. She would not go near the stone wall.

  Coming across the field toward her was the young man with the intensely blue eyes. He did not have the dog with him this time, but a grey wolf. When he saw Polly, he spoke to the wolf, who turned and ran back across the field and disappeared into the woods.

  Mesmerized, Polly stood still and waited. He walked toward her unhurriedly, smiling slightly. There was no telling how old he was. Certainly older than she, but there was a serene agelessness to his face.

  "Karralys--"

  He nodded. "You will be Poll-ee." Like Anaral, he spoke slowly and carefully, with an indeterminate trace of accent. Probably Bishop Colubra had taught him English, too. "It is time we talked. I am sorry Anaral didn't summon me when you came to us."

  She stared at him. "Who are you?"

  "As you said. Karralys."

  "A druid?"

  He nodded gravely.

  "You came from England--from Britain?"

  Again the slight nod. The blue of his eyes was serene.

  "Why did you come?"

  "I was banished."

  She looked at him in astonishment.

  "For heresy," he said quietly. "You have heard of punishment for heresy?"

  "Yes." She thought of Giordano Bruno being burned at the stake for his understanding of time, and also because he did not believe that planet earth was the center of all things. She wondered what Karralys's heresy could have been, that he had been expelled from Britain and sent so far from home. What did druids believe?

  He said, "I have been here, on this land, for what you would call three years. It is good land. Benign. The great underground river flows from the place of our standing stones"--he waved toward the wing--"to the lake, with its beneficence. I believe this land, these mountains, the lake, to be the place where the Presence has called me to be. When I was banished, I held on to the hope that there was a reason for my leaving home and that I would find a new home waiting for me, and so I did. The Presence calmed the storm that blew me here, and the promise of the rainbow came, and I knew that I was where I was meant to be." He smiled at her. "And you? You, too, were banished?"

  She laughed. "No, not banished. I needed more education than I could get at the local high school, so my parents sent me here. But it wasn't banishing. It's wonderful here."

  "I, too, find it wonderful." Above Karralys, high in the sky, flew an eagle. "Here you have"--he pointed to the addition with the pool--"water that is held in on all four sides, and it is in the same space as our great standing stones, our most holy place, even more holy than the rock and the altar by the lake. But for you the lake is gone, and the great stones, and there is no snow on the hills. I see you, and I wonder."

  "I wonder, too."

  "Bishop Heron--"

  "Bishop Colubra." She laughed with delight that Karralys, too, thought of the bishop as a heron.

  "Yes. He is, I believe, a kind of druid."

  The eagle soared up, up, until it was lost in blue. Polly watched it disappear, then asked, "Bishop Colubra's spent lots of time with you?"

  "When he can. The threshold does not always open for him, and he cannot leave his own circle. He is wise in the ways of patience and love. He has turned his loss to compassion for others."

  --What loss? Polly wondered fleetingly.

  But Karralys continued, "He has much knowledge of the heart, but he does not understand why it is that you were able to see me by the oak tree, or why the young man saw me. He does not understand how it is that you walked into our time."

  "I don't understand, either."

  "At Samhain, more is possible than at other times. There has to be a reason. Anaral says you are not a druid."

  "Heavens, no."

  "There has to be a reason for you to have come. Perhaps the Heron opened the time gate especially for you."

  "But I'm not the only one. Oh, Karralys--" She took in a deep gulp of fresh air. "Karralys, Zachary was here with me just a few minutes ago, and he saw Anaral."

  Karralys looked shocked, frozen into immobility. "Who saw Anaral?"

  In her urgency, Polly sounded impatient. "The one you saw by the oak tree. His name is Zachary Gray. He's a young man I met last summer in Greece."

  "In--"

  "Greece. It's far away, in the south of Europe, near Asia. Never mind. The point is, he's someone I met last summer, but I don't know him very well. He told me, this afternoon, that his heart is giving out, that he's going to die. And then he saw Anaral."

  Karralys nodded several times, soberly. "Sometimes when death is near, the threshold is open."

  Suddenly Zachary's words rang frighteningly true. She had not completely understood or believed him before. Now she did. "But he hasn't crossed the threshold."

  "No," Karralys said. "No. He has glimpsed us when we have crossed the threshold and come into your circle. But you--you have come into our circle, and that is a very different thing."

  "But--" She was not sure what she wanted to ask.

  "When we are in your circle, we are not invisible," Karralys said. "People do not expect to see us, so we are translated, as it were, to people of your own time."

  "You mean, people don't know what--who--they've seen? I mean, I didn't, when I saw you by the oak tree."

  "Exactly," Karralys said.

  "And when I first saw Anaral
, at the pool, I thought she was just some girl--"

  "Yes."

  "But then, when I was walking to the star-watching rock, and everything changed, and I was in your time..." Again her voice trailed off.

  "There is a pattern," Karralys said. "There are lines drawn between the stars, and lines drawn between places, and lines drawn between people, and lines linking all three. It may be that Zachary is indeed as you are."

  Polly frowned. "It does seem weird that his boss should be so interested in Ogam stones. But, Karralys, what about Dr. Louise? She saw Anaral."

  "That was by chance, by emergency. Anaral does not fit into her worldview, so she does not believe. But you, Polly. You must be part of the pattern. There is a strong line drawing you from your circle to ours. I am afraid for you."

  "Afraid? Why?"

  "You have spoken with my countryman? Tav?"

  "Yes." She smiled. Both Zachary and Tav thought her red hair was beautiful. Tav tried to teach her Ogam and it was a game and they had laughed and been happy.

  "You must not speak with him."

  "Why not? I've been studying Bishop Colubra's notebook of Ogam, and Tav taught me some more."

  "The hand that feeds the chicken ends up wringing its neck."

  "What?"

  "If Tav likes you, and you like him, it will be even harder."

  "What will be?"

  "Do not cross the threshold again. There is danger for you."

  "I don't understand."

  "Anaral has come to you too often. She is very young, and she must learn not to waste her power. Speak with the Heron. Tell him. Tell him about this--his name again, please?"

  "Zachary. Zachary Gray."

  "He alters the pattern. Tell Bishop Heron. You will?"

  "Yes." Suddenly she remembered the bishop saying that Zachary did not look well. Dr. Louise had said that he was too pale.

  "I must go." Karralys bowed to her, turned, and walked away across the field. She watched after him until she heard a car drive up, too fast, skidding on the macadam as it came to a stop. Bishop Colubra.

  The bishop and Dr. Louise had brought their bathing suits, but they all sat around the table and listened as Polly told them about Zachary. About Karralys.

  "I didn't totally believe Zachary--about his heart being that bad, until Karralys..." Her voice faltered.

  "Now, wait," Dr. Louise said. "I'd like to speak to his doctor. Someone in the last stages of heart failure doesn't work in a law office or drive around in sports cars. He'd be pretty well bedridden. He looks pasty, as though he doesn't get outdoors enough, but he doesn't look as if he's on his deathbed."