THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART EIGHTY-THREE:

Marshall led Eden back down to the second floor where his boyhood bedroom was located. He paused, his hand on the doorknob. If the house itself were the center of his universe, this room had always been for him the heart of the house. "It's a bit of a mish mash," he explained, smiling, before opening the door. "I liked to keep the things I was familiar with when I was smaller and just add new things as time passed. Has a bit of everything, I think."

He opened the door and they entered together. The room was large, located directly above the living room, with double diamond-paned windows that overlooked the front yard. Eden had been eager for some time to see this inner sanctum of his. A double bed with a carved oak headboard occupied a corner away from the windows. Directly in front of the windows sat a desk with an amazingly large worktop. An array of stereo equipment was arranged just to the left of the desk and Eden noted that the room had been wired for surround sound. The system could play CDs, tapes, or records and nearby shelves were stacked with those, each sporting a label in Braille. Two tall bookcases were filled with Braille books. These were the things belonging to the more adult Marshall, but what caught Eden's eye the most were the things left over from his boyhood. From the ceiling hung the solar system, each planet on its own wire.

Marshall took a few steps forward and without hesitation reached up and curved a palm under the Earth. "Jeff rigged this when I was about 9 so I could understand the relationships between the sizes of the planets." He tapped it with a finger, sending it into a bit of a spin.

Eden wandered over to a long table against the right-hand wall where several big models were set up. There was a beige castle, comprised of large chunky pieces that could be easily rearranged. It was filled with knights, horses, a few ladies, even a phoenix perched atop a tower.

To its left was a western stockaded fort, complete with cavalrymen and Indians. Marshall followed the sound of her steps, touching briefly a knight on a rearing horse.

"It helped, you know, being able to run my hands over three-dimensional things. Then all I had to do was enlarge them in my mind to understand the size of a real castle." He dropped his hand to his side.

"Buildings, structures of any sort, are hard for a blind person to grasp. I can walk up and lay my hand on a wall and know if it's brick or stone or wood, but when it goes up out of my reach, it's not really there for me. And trees...." His fingers found the canopy of a perfectly-formed oak tree about 10 inches tall. "This very tree was the one that gave me the understanding I needed."  He closed his eyes a moment, remembering. "That's why it's still here."

She gazed at him, aware that she loved him more, not at all sure just how that could be, but knowing it was true. Each moment she loved him more than the moment just passed. "May I hold it?"

He picked it up, placing it in her hands. She closed her own eyes, running her fingers over it, its complicated layers of foliage, its branches and trunk, trying to get inside what it was like for him, never having seen a tree in its entirety. "I'm glad you've kept it," she said. "It should be kept...always."

He took her down the hall to Jeff's room, where the walls were filled with sports posters, maps, aerial views of the Grand Canyon and Ayers Rock. Shelves contained model motorcycles, sports trophies, books on military history. "Mom wanted to keep it just as he left it," Marshall said.

At the other end of the second floor, the hallway opened into a large parlor-like area filled with comfortable, padded furniture in shades of dusty rose and beige.  There was a TV, more shelves of books, and a square table with four chairs. In front of a window stood possibly the largest globe Eden had ever seen,  a good three feet in diameter. Fascinated, she walked toward it, finding that all the features had been raised so that Marshall could discern the outlines of the continents, could feel the mountain ranges and even the larger rivers.

He heard the familiar squeak it made as she turned the globe. "Ah, 'Marshall's World'," he chuckled. "That's what Jeff always called it."  A quick stab of longing for his brother made its way through his chest. Eden could see the sudden moisture of it in his eyes. But this was what she had wanted, to see him here in the pottery where his vessel had been fashioned. She took his hand, pressing his knuckles to her lips.

"Thank you," she murmured.

"For what?"

"For bringing me here, for making me a part now of all this."

"All this is alive again for me, you know, because you are here."  He took her in his arms and they stood together for several minutes, not speaking.

After lunch, they settled themselves side by side at the computer downstairs. "It feels like it's been ages since we've written Morgan and Susannah," she sighed as the computer booted up.

After his encounter with George Washington, Morgan tugged his boot back on and walked to the corner of the Duke of Gloucester Street.  He looked to his left where he could see the lights from the Raleigh Tavern sending out their glow into the night, pondering if he really wanted to go there or not.  Quite a number of horses were still hitched in front of it and small groups of men stood about on the walkway, their voices engaged in serious discussion. No, he wanted to be alone, so he continued across the main street and down another short block, turning left on Francis Street.  He'd rented a room on the second floor of a gracious white house not far from the turning to the Capitol building. Opening the picket gate, he walked up to the front of the house and sat on the stoop, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. His jacket and hat lay on the step beside him as he closed his eyes, listening to the night, imagining again what it must be like for Susannah.

A single rider passed, tipping his hat when he noticed Morgan, who had kept his eyes closed and so did not respond. Williamsburg. It seemed its own world now to him, an entire microcosm totally separated from anything he had known before, anywhere he had been before. There were men here he admired, men worthy of admiration.  In his days in the maritime trading business, he'd not come across such a concentration of men of principled mind, men who made him examine his own thoughts, his own motivations for being. It was affecting him more each day that passed. And today...today had been remarkable in every way.  And here in the late evening of that day, he found he had more to think about than he seemed quite able to manage. The main stream of his thoughts, though, were not of Washington or Wythe or Henry but rose on strong wings like geese into the winds of the flyway that would take them home.  The image of that fit for never before had he felt such a sense of migratory pull, as though there were some place he simply must arrive or die.

Eden had been writing and she stopped, turning to him. "It's like that, you know, for me. I must arrive not at you, but somehow in you, in order now to live."

"It says it well, darling, the 'migratory pull'. I like that. I understand that."  He touched her cheek. "And it is that way, as well, for me."

He began to dictate and she typed his words.

Susannah lay on her bed, unable to sleep. Something in her was deeply amazed. In her garden, at the center of her world...he.  Morgan, there in her garden. How? Her mind struggled, trying to wrap itself about the thought that such a thing had happened, had happened without her looking
for it, had just simply...happened.  Her fingers found her lips, lingering there, remembering his. She had only met him, and yet his lips had known hers. Such things did not occur.  But this had. This was real.  Morgan...in her garden.  No one knew. Only she, only he. She smiled, pleased at that, at how it was a personal thing between them.  Was one allowed, really, to have such a personal thing with someone only just met? She didn't care. Morgan had been in her garden and life was not the same as it had been when last she lay in this bed.

She became aware of the pulse in her neck and moved her fingers there, feeling the rapid beat of it. She would not sleep, could not sleep. That she knew. Moving her legs over the side of the bed, she reached into the ewer there, wetting her hands, running them over her cheeks, down her neck. Her breasts ached, as though yearning for his touch.  They had never ached before. Not ever.

"Ok, how do you know about aching breasts, mister?" Eden asked.

Marshall chuckled. "I'll never tell."

She swiveled her chair to face his. "Oh, yes, you will!"

He shook his head firmly side to side, his lips together, curving in a smile.

"Fess up!" she insisted.

So he took his hand and with fingers light as butterfly wings, moved it in a slow curve around her left breast. The breast began to ache, yearning toward him. "Like that," he whispered as

she gasped.

She blew out a few long breaths. "Ok, but that's still me with the aching breast. How do you know they ache?"

"Because doing that makes parts of me ache," he replied, "and I just transpose that onto a female form."

She slid her hand up his thigh then inward. "Here?"  And was pleased that he, too, gasped in response.

"There," he nodded, his voice cracking on the single syllable.

"You realize it's going to take us a long, long time to write this book?"  She began to pull her hand away, but he put his over it, moving it back.

"Book? Was there a book?"

She grinned. "I'm in no hurry."

"I am," he sighed.

"To finish the book," she chuckled.

"Oh, that. That's not what I meant."

"I know."

ON TO PART 84

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