Cally was torn between following Foster or running to the back of the house and down to Ian, Nell and Sofie. Her brain was not communicating with her legs in either case; she still felt the heavy sense of stillness around her, but it lifted slowly until she felt it only as if it were a person standing behind her. When she turned, though, she saw only a deeper darkness in the rainy night, lifting up off the rock and drifting over the pond toward the meadow. She only understood it to be real when the little dog dropped something it had been carrying in its mouth and sat up to watch it go.
“Great, Lassie, have you come to save the day or something?” She looked down at the object that lay between the dog’s paws, gleaming wetly in the moonlight, and recognized the carved wooden triangle from the butler’s desk, the one she had suspected might be George’s zemi. She picked it up; now it had a couple of extra carvings in it, made by dog teeth. “Shame on you,” she said to the dog. It replied with several happy yaps. “Couldn’t you have brought a gun or at least a sharp letter opener or something?” Then it occurred to her that if this really was George’s zemi, he might be nearby, something that would at the very least be incredibly comforting at the moment. She called his name, but there was no reply.
Clutching the carving in one hand, she started up the hill. She would go into the house through the front door, she decided, and find Foster and, she didn’t know what, then. Maybe jump him from behind and keep him busy until Ignacio arrived. Or maybe use the desk phone to call 911. She wasn’t sure which she should do first, but she’d worry about that when she got there. She knew it was all hopeless anyway because Foster had probably already returned to Ian’s study and lit the kerosene soaked papers on the bed, but she wasn’t going to give up yet. Who knew – maybe Rum really could find her an extra minute or two, as he had promised. She had already seen stranger things happen in the past week, in just the past hour. An extra minute or two was all she really needed...
“You stay!” she said to the little dog as she reached the walkway. The dog ran ahead of her and up the porch steps, barking joyfully through the screen door into the Hall to announce her arrival. “Damn!” Cally spat, and ran after it. A dark figure rose suddenly before her. She tried to stop, but skidded on the wet flagstones. She stumbled right into the figure, and then through it as she realized who it was. “Oh, god, I’m sorry!” She tumbled and rolled in the lawn, jumping back to her feet and turning around. “George, I’m so sorry!”
He didn’t appear to have noticed. His face was turned toward the meadow, and he was saying “You were supposed to stay down.”
“I can’t, George. I have to do something. Foster is going to set the house on fire!”
He turned his face to her and his cheeks were luminous with rain or tears – she couldn’t be sure which. “Vale House is already burning,” he said. “You are going to have to go over the fence, now.”
“What? No! I’m not going to just run away!” She turned toward the house. “I have to do something!” She thought she could smell smoke. Was that really smoke, or had George merely put the idea into her head? Her feet reached the porch steps, but like in her nightmares, each step seemed to take forever.
“Please, Cally,” George was calling from behind her. “You have to go over the fence. It’s the only way, now.”
Something shoved her from behind and she fell on the steps, rolling over instinctively and striking out at her attacker with the only weapon she had: the carved wooden triangle in her hand. Then she stopped in confusion. It was the white horse, standing over her; it was shaking its head up and down like a hammer, and its front hooves stood on the bottom step. “We don’t have time for this shit,” it said in a distinctly feminine voice.
Cally shrank backwards on the step. She thought she must have hit her head, when she fell, and was hallucinating. But George knelt beside her and said quietly “You aren’t going to be able to hurt anyone with a zemi.” His gentle smile brought her back to herself. If she was hallucinating, she reasoned, she had already been doing it for several days now.
The horse was still there. It was snorting and stamping its feet. “Look, are you coming or not?” It turned sideways to Cally, clearly indicating that she was meant to get on its back.
“I don’t know how...” she began to protest. The horse released a long string of profanity in its musical voice, while George explained patiently to Cally once again that the only thing that would help would be for her to go over the fence and find help there. “Ian isn’t able to help right now, you see...” he said as lightning arched overhead and thunder censored the horse’s comments. “... so you have to do it. Nobody else can. This is Mima. You’ve met her before. She’s on our side.”
“But...” Cally stood up and looked back toward the house. She could definitely smell smoke now, and a red glow could be seen reflecting from the leaves and branches that were visible above the peak of the roof. No fire engine would be able to make it in time, now, Cally knew. “I hope you know what you’re talking about, George,” she said. “Maybe there’s somebody out there who knows how to make it rain harder.” She reached out to hand his zemi to him. He smiled until she remembered, and she bent to set it gently on the bottom step. “Don’t chew it!” she told the dog, then turned toward the horse, which seemed impossibly tall to her, even though she stood on the third step above it.
“I don’t want to hear it,” the horse said. “You wouldn’t be in this situation if you had stayed down like you were told to.”
Cally grasped two fistfuls of the horse’s silvery mane. “I have never been very good at staying down when I’m told to,” she said, pulling herself over onto its broad back, which was warm and dry despite the rain.
“Well, I hope you’re better at staying on,” said the horse. It left her no time to say goodbye to George, but swung away down the walk, heading straight for the fence. Cally crouched down over its neck and poured all her concentration into keeping her grip on its mane and her body centered above it as it gathered itself under her and sailed into the air.
She watched the fence pass beneath them, and almost slipped from the horse’s back when it landed hard on the other side, but staying on was easier after that. The horse’s gait opened out into a level run through the grass. The rain had stopped all together as soon as they had cleared the fence, and the only sound to be heard was the horse’s breathing and the sound of grass parting around its running hooves. Cally dared a glance over her shoulder but could no longer see George, or Vale House, or anything but meadow, stretching for miles around them in every direction, and a little dog, running joyfully in their wake with a zemi in its mouth.
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With a jolt that almost made Cally lose her grip, the horse lunged into the air again and cleared a broad, dark stream. A hill rose before them and the horse slowed to a lope as it climbed this. Cally could see light beyond the crest, and a drift of music blew past on the breeze. The horse paused at the crest of the hill and Cally peered over to see a massive tree standing at the top of the next hill. Just like the one in the Captain’s story, its branches and leaves glowed with golden light, but Cally thought the light danced in a way that reminded her not so much of fire as of masses of writhing, burning snakes. People were moving in the circle of light cast by the tree, and Cally wondered if they were glowing, also, or if their golden clothing was merely reflecting the light of the tree.
“It’s best if we do not attract their attention,” the horse advised, speaking in a soft voice for a change. It turned its head to gaze southward, and Cally thought she could see a star glowing on its forehead, just above its eyes, which were blue and huge.
“Mima,” Cally said. “I do remember you...”
She decided the people beneath the tree were indeed glowing with a light of their own – it resembled moonlight under their red and gold clothing. They walked as if dancing, or sat on log seats around the tree, passing golden cups to one another. Only one of them did not shine with this sliver light, and because of this he stood out from among them like a beacon. Cally watched as one of the luminous beings, a woman of grace and poise so profound it made Cally feel clumsy and inferior even at this distance, offered him a golden cup. He took the cup from her hand, but did not drink from it. Instead he passed the cup to the figure nearest him as all the luminous people began to dance slowly at the base of the tree.
“You probably recognize that one, don’t you?” said the horse.
Cally could only nod, trying to swallow past a lump in her throat.
“We are going that way.” The horse turned away and began to canter in a counter-clockwise circle around the base of the hill on which the flaming tree stood, leaving the golden dancers behind. The little dog ran ahead of them as if it knew where they were going, letting out an occasional excited, if muffled, yap around the object in its mouth. Cally lost sight of the luminous people, while the tree seemed to grow ever larger and brighter.
It seemed to her they must have gone all the way around the hill, but she did not see the dancers come into view again. Mima stopped and faced the tree. “Okay,” she said. “Here is what you have to do.” She stamped a forefoot to punctuate each instruction she gave. “Shut up. Stay on. And Shut Up. Do you think you can do that?”
“I don’t see how this is helping,” Cally said. “I want to go back. People I love are in danger. They’re probably already...”
The horse uttered a particularly unpleasant word and ran straight at the glimmering golden tree, barely giving Cally time to squeeze her eyes shut and brace for the impact. The impact did not come. The horse kept running, and the sound of its hoofbeats changed; they were no longer the dull thump of hooves running over grass, but had become a loud, hollow clatter as they galloped over a harder surface. Cally dared to open one eye and looked down to see the glowing trunk of the tree beneath them, flashing past in glimpses of gold between the horse’s white legs. They were running steeply upward along a wide road of golden bark, dodging the occasional protruding branch. Cally opened her mouth and the horse said “Shut up.”
Mima’s neck dipped as they crested a rise in the golden trunk road and emerged into a level place between the enormous branches. Here a green field stretched out before them amid the massive crown of the tree. As the horse slowed to a walk, the horizon fell back until Cally could not see branches at all anymore, but only a wide, dark meadow ringing with the calls of night hawks under the moonlight. The hair on Cally’s arms stood up as she recognized where she was. They were fast approaching a bump in the horizon that resolved, as they neared it, into oak and willow trees, and houses beyond a long fence with a single gate in it. The front porch light of Vale House glowed before them, just beyond the fence.
As they neared the fence, they passed under the thick cover of storm clouds and rain fell on them again in heavy, cold sheets. Cally shuddered. She felt the lightning sizzling in the air around them before she saw it, arching directly over their heads to reach Vale House before they did. It struck the porch roof with a deafening explosion. The lights of the house went out, and wet bits of splintered wood blew back to strike Cally’s face and arms. She cried out and begged the horse to stop and let her get down.
“The lightning is only metaphorical, you know,” Mima said, but stopped just before the metal gate at the end of Main Street. Cally threw her leg over the horse’s back and hung from its mane until her feet nearly touched the ground, then let go and ran to the gate. The little dog ran ahead of her, jumping through the bars of the gate. The lights of all the houses on the street were out, and every dog in the neighborhood was barking.
“What are we doing back here?” Cally muttered, more to the world in general than to the horse or anyone else. “We haven’t done anything except waste time.” She ducked to squeeze her way between the rails.
“You aren’t going to be able to get past...” the horse began, but thunder drowned out the rest as Cally straightened up and ran into the darkened street. She was brought to a sharp halt by the presence of a tall, hooded figure standing between her and Vale House. It loomed larger – or did she shrink before it? – as it turned to her and raised what appeared to be a dark, shuttered lantern in its hand.
The little dog Twilight ran to its feet and put the zemi down on the wet ground before it, yapping excitedly and adding to the cacophony of the other neighborhood dogs in the night. Cally moved to step around the figure and run to the porch, but her legs absolutely would not move. She became furious at her body for not obeying her, and for trembling so hard, but she was even more furious at the figure in front of her. “Let me by!” she shouted at it.
“You have to offer a gift,” said the horse behind her.
Cally knew she didn’t have anything in her pockets, and Rum had already made it clear body parts were a bad idea. She was frankly fed up with the entire concept. She raised her fists and let out a cry of sheer frustration; she would have struck the figure it if she could have moved, even if it would be the last thing she ever did.
The figure bent its hooded head over the zemi lying on the ground where Twilight had dropped it, and Cally shouted “No! That isn’t mine to give.” To her horror, the figure bent to pick it up anyway. “I said no!” It didn’t appear to have heard her, and Cally watched the zemi disappear into its dark robes as it turned away, heading slowly down Main Street. The wind stopped, and the rain grew softer, soft enough that the figure was able to open the lamp it held. Two soft circles of light bobbed along the wet sidewalk beside it as it headed toward town.
“Look,” Cally called after it, and found her legs had regained their mobility. She ran after the figure. “My car is right there, in the parking lot. See? The red one. You can have anything in it. Hell, you can have the whole car. Only don’t take George’s zemi. It belongs to him!”
The figure continued to walk down the street, and Cally followed. With the rain fading away, and in the light of the lamp it carried, it didn’t look so intimidating anymore. Its robes were a soft bluish gray, and it might even have seemed beautiful if Cally had not been so upset. It paused beside the little white gate at the end of the Vale House grounds. Holding the lamp over its head, it took a key from its belt and unlocked the gate, which puzzled Cally because she had never noticed that the gate even had a lock. As the gate swung open, the figure vanished.