THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART SIXTY:

"Back there?"

"I could ask Ryan to take me. That might be better. I don't want to stir up unpleasant memories for you, darling."

"Unpleasant is hardly the word," Eden sighed.

"That's what I mean." He cocked his head, listening. "I hear Ryan in the kitchen." He started to rise from the piano bench.

"No," she said. "If you need to go back there, I want to be with you."

She'd come into the parlor after having been talking for some time upstairs with Connie, finding him sitting at the piano, his fingertips exploring lightly over the keys, not pressing hard enough to make sound. The day before had been thoroughly pleasant, finding her dress, enjoying a long lunch at the mill, pressing close to him during the drive back to the inn. But now he had a deeply lost-in-thought expression on his face and when she'd sat beside him on the bench and asked him about it, he almost reluctantly explained that he'd been thinking again about the pines the night of the sleigh accident.

"The skies are grey again," Eden commented, looking out the window, "but no new snow. The days are really short right now, aren't they?"

A slight smile curved his lips. "Winter," he said softly. "For me the days grow colder, but not shorter."

She touched his arm. "There is so much I need to learn to understand about what it's like for you."

His hand found her hair. "I wish there were some way I could understand, in return, what it's like for you. That's one reason I want to go back to the pines. I keep trying to come to grips with what happened that night but I don't seem to be getting anywhere with it."

About 15 minutes later, bundled in their coats, Wadsworth in harness, they got out of Eden's car where Ryan had described to them the accident had happened. Eden had no memory of the surroundings. Her entire focus that night had been on his half-open eyes, the absence of a throbbing pulse in his neck. Then nothing. She didn't like being there again. But Marshall had such an intent expression on his face as he tipped his head into the wind that she figured if she just concentrated on him now, she'd manage to get through the next few moments. She saw the rock just beside the road, the one the sleigh runner had hit, and a shudder went through her as she recalled the sensation of the fall, of Marshall's arm going around her, holding on, keeping her safe.

"Do you remember falling?" she asked, her voice catching.

"Up till when my back hit the road. That's it. After that, I just seemed to be somewhere else. Here, yet not here. Where are the pines?"

"About 10 steps straight in front of you. There are some young, shorter ones then a clump of larger ones right behind them. The biggest one sort of leans toward the road, hangs over the smaller ones."

He dropped the harness and walked forward, his hands extended. He was holding his breath, though he didn't realize it.  His fingers found the outer branches of the small trees and he paused there,  running his hands over the tips of the pine needles. It was a very familiar sensation, especially after his time in the forest so recently. He'd come in contact with countless pine trees on his long trek. Moving his right hand to his face, he inhaled the scent from the trees on his palm. This was how he knew pine trees. Touch. Scent. Lifting his chin again, he listened.

A chill December wind played through the tall pines, the sound it made creating for him the

sense of the trees over his head, bringing into being their presence. If there had been no wind, only the small pines would exist for him. Without the wind, the reality of his world was bounded by whatever could be touched by his body. But the sounds resulting from the wind's passage placed him within a larger space.

The wind slowed, dying down for a moment, and the tall pines disappeared, passing out of existence. They were not really there. Not for him. Then the wind picked up again and the pines returned.  In the acoustic world of the blind, it was like that. Things passed in and out of existence, often very rapidly. A bird, sitting on a branch, chirped, existing for him. Its silence wiped out its presence. Everything in his acoustic world was intermittent, not stable and continuous like in that of the sighted who could see the bird on the branch even when it was making no sound. The still world, the world where things simply...are...did not exist. Distant mountains, purple in the evening light, a kite sailing in a blue afternoon sky, none of that was really there. If he could not touch it, then something had to happen, to move, before it was there. It had always been like that.

Except Christmas night.

Then he had known the pines were there. The tall ones. The ones he couldn't reach.

How?

How did Eden know they were there? She was still standing beside the car yet she had told him about the tall pines behind the younger trees. She knew. She knew without touching them or smelling them. She knew without the wind. She simply...knew. Because she could see them.
And what did that mean? Seeing them.

He stepped forward more so that he was surrounded by young pine branches. That, too, was familiar. But that night his sense of touch, of smell, did not seem to be available to him.  He stood, unmoving, trying to remember, trying to grasp how he'd known that something was there
with him. It was entirely elusive, though, like holding partially-set gelatin in his hands, and the sense of it kept leaking through his mental fingers so that in some frustration he clutched the clumps of needles closest to him. He needed to hold onto...something.

"How?" he muttered. "How?"

Being here wasn't helping. He was simply feeling more removed from the experience of that night. It had been very fleeting, the whole thing, and during it he'd had no idea of what was happening. Damn it! He stepped quickly back out of the small pines, his heel catching on a root, and sat down hard on the narrow shoulder of the road. Both Eden and Wadsworth came hurrying up.

"I'm fine," he growled, but made no move to get up.

Now even the small pines were gone.  Nothing had an abiding presence.

Eden, disturbed by the look on his face, squatted beside him, her hand on his shoulder. "What

is it, darling?"

He tried to smile for her but couldn't quite manage it. "I'm afraid it jangled me. That night. It took my comfortable, familiar world and it knocked it sideways a bit."  He put both hands on

his temples. "It made understanding what it is that you do so easily, it made understanding that more important. I just...can't...I...."

She sat beside him on the cold ground, putting her arms around him. "I want so much to help you, sweetheart. I just don't know what to do."

An especially strong gust of wind blew over them and he leaned forward into it, breathing it in. "You do not know where it goes or where it comes from," he quoted. "That's from the book of John, remember?"  He smiled then, a slight, wry smile. "Obviously written by a sighted person."

"Why?" she asked, chilled, pressing closer to him.

"Only sighted people are used to seeing where things go, where they come from. But for me things just rush past and I'm accustomed to not knowing where they've come from or where they're going. Origins. Destinations. The blind don't expect such things"  He was silent a moment, then asked, "Eden, how do you know if it's a windy day?"

"Me? Well, I look around and see the clouds scudding along or maybe a scrap of paper blowing down the street. The trees toss their branches around and people hold onto their hats. That sort of thing I guess."

"You see what the wind does, right?"

"You have to, don't you? I mean, the wind is invisible, isn't it?"

"I think that passage from John is saying something like that. That the wind is mysterious because it's invisible."  He turned his face more toward hers. "Do you know why the wind is not mysterious to the blind?"

She shook her head, then realized he couldn't see that. "Why?"

"Because for the blind there is no such thing as invisibility."

She made a small sound, never having thought of such a thing.

He rubbed his fingertips hard across his forehead. "I need to let go of this, Eden. I need for it to stop haunting me."  A small laugh escaped his lips. "Jeffrey would have my hide for letting this throw me for a loop."

She wanted to say something important, something that mattered, but couldn't think of a thing.

"I'll be all right, really I will," he assured her. He took his hand, making a small sweep through the air around him. "This is what I know."  His hand continued on, coming to rest on his chest. "This is me, my body, sitting here on this icy road, tense from trying to figure this out, cold from being too still on a freezing day. I listen and hear the sound of my breathing, feel the rise and fall of my chest, the beating of my heart." His hand went out again. "What's out there, I don't know. I know what's in here."  He touched his chest again. "If something's going on out there just a few inches from me and I'm not touching it or hearing it, I don't know about it. What I know, what's accurate for me, is what's going on in here. It's my world, Eden, it's how the world works for me. But I...I...."

"What?"

"I sometimes wonder how I have the gall to try and write a book about a seeing world.  Why am I doing that? I must have it all entirely wrong." He shook his head. "I should write what I know."  He shook his head again. "What do I think I'm doing?" He said it to himself, then turned to her once more. "It's nothing but hearsay, you know, when I describe what it's like for Morgan. Nothing but hearsay."  He squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

She'd never seen him quite like this. "I...," she began, but he jerked suddenly.

"Let's go back now," he said, starting to rise, extending a hand to help her.

"You're sure?"

"I'm done here. No point in keeping you out in the cold."

She didn't like the set of his jaw, but she kept quiet as he curved his hand around Wadsworth's harness and they headed together to the car. He was silent on the short ride back to the inn, silent as they came through the main entrance. At the bottom of the staircase he finally spoke. "I'm going up to the room for a while."  He didn't suggest she come with him and so she stood, eyes stinging somewhat, watching him and Wadsworth mount the steps. He was hurting and he'd pulled it all into himself.

"Oh, Marshall," she whispered as he turned the corner at the top and disappeared.

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