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  Linda hesitates, looks at Kindred Smith. He encourages her, pushing her gently toward Papa S. But Sophie holds tightly onto her mother’s arm.

  “You must come here too.” Papa S. has his palm facing toward them. “And you.” He is looking at Ellis.

  Linda stands and lifts Sophie into her arms. She walks toward Papa S.

  “Go on,” I whisper to Ellis.

  I don’t think he wants to, but he gets up and walks to the head of the table. His mother smiles at him, but his face has no expression. It must be overwhelming, being so close to Papa S. for the first time.

  Papa S. takes Linda’s hand and places her palm on his chest. Does she know how lucky she is? Then he reaches out his palm toward Ellis, but the boy from Outside steps away from him. Papa S. must feel the shock from us all.

  “Ellis.” Linda’s voice is quiet, but I can hear the anger in it. And it makes him step forward again.

  “Now you are one with us.” Papa S. looks at Ellis as his voice swoops down the table. “You have been saved. And now you must give yourself willingly to Seed. Shed yourselves of the bleak Outside. Do not think of it again. Do not let the poison eat your mind.” Papa S. begins to shake. “Tell me that you want to be happy.” He stares at Linda.

  “I do,” she says.

  “And that you want a pure mind.”

  “I do.” Her eyes are wide. She no longer carries the grayness from Outside. Finally she is alive.

  “That you will give yourself completely to Seed.”

  “I will.”

  Papa S. radiates light as he turns to Ellis. “That you will give yourself completely to Seed,” he repeats.

  There is a sudden stillness. A silence that shouldn’t be here.

  Ellis puts his hands in his pockets. He shrugs and smiles. “I will too,” he says.

  For a while, Papa S. won’t take his eyes from him. Then he tips his head to the sky. “It is done,” he calls into the air.

  We sit, unmoving. Linda glances at Kindred Smith and he motions for them to come back to the table. I beam at Ellis as he walks toward me. And I am filled with happiness, because now he is truly one of us. We have saved him. We have saved them all.

  Rachel looks up at Papa S., her eyes wide. He reaches down to touch her long hair. His fingers hesitate at the red flower wound among the strands by her ear. He bends down and with his eyes closed, breathes in its scent. Then he takes Rachel’s hand and leads her back to the house and we are free to talk again.

  Elizabeth leans over and touches Linda’s hand. “I am glad you came.”

  “So am I,” Linda says. She picks lightly at the skin on her nails.

  “Come on, then,” Kate says, standing up and beginning to stack the plates. “I want to hear this piano playing.”

  “You play the piano?” Kindred Smith asks Linda.

  “No. Ellis does,” she says, looking at her son. She has such pride in her eyes that there could be no doubt she is his mother.

  “I try to sometimes.” Kindred Smith laughs. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it music.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Jack says reassuringly.

  “I’m sure Ellis can do better,” Kindred Smith says as he gets up to take the heavy pan from Linda and carries it into the house.

  Bobby stays near me as we gather the glasses. He glances over at Ruby and Sophie as they dance in and out of the tall grass. I kneel down next to him. “You’re still her favorite friend,” I tell him, but his face creases into a scowl and he stomps off toward the kitchen door.

  I look up quickly. Papa S. is not watching from the windows, so hopefully Bobby won’t be punished. But has he forgotten that if he lets jealousy in, it will burrow deep within him and eat through his veins?

  “Shall I take some of those?” Ellis asks me. I’ve piled the glasses high and they tip as I stand up. I don’t have a chance to reply before he’s reaching over and taking the top half from me, all the time looking in my eyes. I hurry away from him before he can see my thoughts.

  We gather in the day room, leaving the Kindreds to sit, talking, at the empty table in the meadow. Through the window, I can see Linda seated between Elizabeth and Kindred Smith. Already she seems different, as though the shell of her Outside self is falling away.

  Ellis sits at the piano and we stand around him. All except Bobby, who won’t move from beside the sofa. Part of me wants to sit with him too. Away from this stranger and the feelings that creep into me whenever I am near him.

  “What shall I play?” Ellis asks.

  “How should we know?” Kate laughs.

  “OK, then.” He moves slightly on the stool, looks down at the pedals and back at his hands.

  Then he begins to play and it’s nothing like Kindred Smith. I could never have imagined that any sound would make me feel this way. The music lifts into the room from Ellis, through his arms, his hands, and it fills me until there is nothing else. It feels like I’m underwater at the lake, yet floating through the sky. There are a thousand butterflies dancing on my skin. I want to close my eyes, but I don’t want to look away, not when his fingers move so fast across the white and black of the piano.

  Ellis stops suddenly. He turns and gestures at Bobby to come over. Bobby looks at him, but he doesn’t move. It’s unlike him to be so hesitant. Even when Jack walks over and kneels down next to him, he just shakes his head. So I go to him and take his hand. I have to help him get rid of these strange feelings before too much damage is done. And I want him to love this music as I do.

  “It’s OK,” I say. “I wasn’t sure at first either.” Then I lead him to Ellis. Bobby looks small next to him on the piano stool.

  “If you put your hand on top of mine,” Ellis suggests, “then you can really feel the music.”

  Bobby doesn’t smile, but he does what Ellis says. Slowly Ellis begins to play again. The music is instant.

  Bobby’s eyes are wide. Their hands play faster and faster, until Bobby begins to laugh. Ellis has healed him. There could never be a better sound than his laughter and this music.

  Ellis is here. I never knew that life could get any better, but it has. Because of Ellis, it has.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On our next free day, the clouds gather in the sky, heavy and waiting.

  “Show me somewhere new,” Ellis says, leaning against the closed kitchen door. “I’ve been working too hard on those engines in the work barn.” He’s wearing proper clothes now, the same as Jack. Yet he still looks different. He has rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and it makes me want to look at the skin on his arms. “Come on, Pearl, take me somewhere I’ve never been before.” His smile makes fingers tiptoe up the back of my neck.

  “How about Dawn Rocks?” Kate says.

  “Dawn Rocks?”

  “We go there the first day of every month,” I say, picking up a plate to dry. “To greet the dawn.”

  “What, like really early in the morning?”

  “It’s amazing then,” I say. Ellis looks at me as if he knows better. Which he can’t, because how can he? Kate carries on washing up with her back to us. “We don’t have to go there,” I say, turning my back to him too. Suddenly I don’t want to take him there. I don’t want to muddy our special rocks with his Outside ways.

  “Go where?” asks Jack as he comes through the door with a pile of plates. Ellis moves out of the way for him.

  “The rocks,” Ellis says.

  “Dawn Rocks,” I correct him. He doesn’t even know to say it right.

  “Today?” Jack asks, and the water splashes up at Kate slightly as he drops the plates into the sink.

  “Yeah,” Ellis says.

  “Sounds good. And if you actually started to help, new boy, we might get there quicker.” Jack laughs.

  So they go out the back door together, to gather more things to wash up from the tables. Kate and I watch them. Ellis, just a bit taller than Jack. They’re deep in conversation and Jack tips his head back to laugh. Kate and I are in silence, tho
ugh, and I don’t know her thoughts. I’m not sure that I know mine.

  When we’ve finished clearing and washing up, the day is ours. The children are building card stacks in the playroom, so it’s just us.

  We go through the meadow, where the Kindreds still sit at the tables, their shoulders hunched against the prospect of rain. I’m beginning to wish I’d brought a sweater. I thought it would be warmer than this.

  “Let’s go the shortcut,” Kate says, so we head off to the right, along the edge of the cornfield. The plants are already shoulder height, the husks growing almost as we watch.

  At the edge of the field, we walk along the bramble hedge until we find our little gateway to the other side.

  “Race you,” Kate suddenly says and she’s running before I even think. So we chase her up to Dawn Rocks. Jack quickly catches her and puts his arms around her waist to pull her back. She’s laughing, kicking her legs in the air as he lifts her off the ground.

  I run past them, but Ellis is already ahead. He turns to me, starts to run backward up the hill.

  “Is that them?” he shouts, pointing behind to the cluster of rocks which sit waiting for us.

  Yes, that’s them. I nod to him, and he turns away and runs again, up the last bit of the hill.

  When I get there, he’s gone. “Ellis?” I call. But there’s no answer. My voice doesn’t even echo. It just falls flat into the gray air. Jack runs up, ahead of Kate, her laugh breaking the quiet. She looks around.

  “Where’s Ellis?” she asks.

  I shrug. “He was here and then he wasn’t.”

  “He’s hiding from us,” Jack says. We don’t often come here without the rest of the family. The rocks feel so still, so incredibly strong.

  “Ellis!” Jack calls.

  “I’m up here.” We look up. He’s standing right at the top. A place we’re forbidden to go. A place of purity, touched only by the sun.

  Even Kate looks shocked. “You’re not allowed up there,” she shouts to him.

  But Ellis stretches his arms out wide and starts to turn around. What’s he doing? Can he not hear her?

  “Get down,” Jack calls. He’s looking around and I know he’s checking for Kindreds, or Papa S.

  “But it’s great up here,” Ellis shouts, still slowly spinning. “I can see for miles.”

  “You’ll get us all into trouble,” I say. Fear is creeping into me. “Please, Ellis.” There must be something about the way I say it, because he stops and he starts to jump down, from rock to rock, until he’s on the earth in front of us.

  “Well, if you ask as nice as that.” He laughs.

  “It’s not funny.” I’m glaring at him, but he doesn’t seem to care what he’s done.

  “Could you see the house from up there?” Jack asks.

  “Yeah, I could see everything.”

  If he could see the house, then they could see him.

  A buzzard swoops down on the wind. It perches on one of the lower rocks. Not even a bird dares go to the top.

  Ellis moves toward me and it makes me look away. He’s reaching out and his hand is under my chin. The feeling in me is instant. I let him gently move my face until his eyes look into mine.

  “Sorry?” he says. I try to keep my eyes stern, but his hand is on my skin. This boy from the Outside is touching me. I struggle to think. But Jack and Kate are watching us and I know I must speak.

  “Just don’t do it again,” I say.

  “I’ll try not to,” he replies.

  I glance at Jack. I need to feel that this is all right. That I haven’t done anything wrong.

  And then, without even talking, we all walk around to the back of the rocks. We climb up to the first stones, where we’re allowed to sit, and we rest our backs against the hard surface, our legs all stretched out in a row. I’m next to Ellis and I can feel his leg against mine.

  “So your mom’s happier here, then?” Kate asks. She is staring at Ellis and he can’t avoid her question.

  “She’s a different person.”

  “Different?” Jack asks.

  “She just wasn’t right. You know.”

  “No, we don’t know,” Kate says. “That’s why we’re asking.”

  A half smile happens on Ellis’s lips, but it doesn’t last. “Mom was all over the place. She couldn’t even work anymore. I reckon she’s been depressed for years.”

  “And Seed is healing her,” I say, pleased.

  “Yes.” Ellis catches my eye. “I feel like I’ve got my mom back.”

  “What about your father?” Jack asks.

  Ellis’s face seems to shut down. “What about him?” He sounds so cold.

  “Maybe he could come here too,” Jack says. “We could help him.”

  “You wouldn’t want him here.”

  “Why?” Kate asks.

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Ellis looks out at the hills rising up behind Dawn Rocks.

  “Papa S. is your father now,” I reassure him. But his eyes stay turned away.

  There’s a low rumbling from the sky, just as it starts to rain. A few warning drops, but then, with no hesitation, the clouds pour their water on us. Kate jumps up, opens her mouth wide toward the sky. The rain beats on the rock, bouncing in all directions.

  I jump down and Kate follows, and then the other two are with us. We all hold hands, lean out, and start to spin. I’m laughing and giddy and when we stop, we look at each other and our clothes are soaked through.

  Kate takes off her top first. “Come on,” she shouts above the pointing rain. She’s laughing and she’s reaching for the top of her skirt, pulling it down, peeling the wet material from her legs. Jack is staring, the rain dripping from his eyelashes, his top clinging to his chest. Ellis laughs, but he looks unsure.

  “Come on, Pearl,” I hear Kate say to me through the noise of the downpour. And so I reach for my buttons, undo my shirt all the way down, and take it from my shoulders and my arms.

  “You too, Jack?” I smile at him. And Kate is laughing, pulling down his suspenders, tugging his shirt free. Jack pushes her hands away, but I’m sure he’s shaking as he takes off his shirt, then his shoes, his trousers. He puts them on the wet rock. And they’re dancing, Kate and Jack, half-naked in the rain, the water spilling on their skin as Ellis and I stand there.

  I step out of my skirt. And I feel free. Ellis doesn’t hesitate for long, and he takes his shirt off. His trousers stick, but he yanks at them. I look at Ellis’s body. His skin is paler than Jack’s and he’s slimmer. The rain is falling on his bare stomach and I can’t look away.

  Kate and Jack take our hands and we’re turning again in the rain. But we don’t look at the sky this time. We watch each other, still laughing, the rain cold, but warm. Thunder cracks and Kate screams, but we keep on turning.

  Ellis looks at me. I feel his eyes on my body, seeing my underwear, seeing my skin, almost all of my skin. And a feeling rushes to my belly and fizzes down my legs. But then he turns away and I feel Jack’s hand in mine.

  Time rushes and stops and rushes and stops and gradually the rain slows down. The water now just taps me slightly. And then we’re standing still, holding hands, soaked to our bones. Suddenly exposed. Suddenly aware. And I want to stay like this, but I want to cover myself too. Part of me wants it never to have happened, but I don’t know why.

  Jack is the first to put his clothes back on. He struggles to pull his trousers up, laughing as he tumbles to the wet grass. Kate smiles as she watches him with her hands on her hips. I reach for my shirt, pull it over my arms, fumble with the buttons.

  “Getting dressed already?” Ellis asks me. That mocking smile is on his lips.

  “I’m cold,” I say. But I’m not. And I don’t understand the feelings I have.

  Kate is the last to put her clothes on. She’s watched us struggle with the wet material, and now we watch her. She’s slow, and doesn’t look at us, as she bends over to pick up her skirt. She puts her legs in, pulls it u
p. I see the look on Jack’s face and it makes me know that he is changing. Am I losing him?

  And then we walk, in silence, away from Dawn Rocks, the last of the rain squeezed out of the sky.

  He knows that I am here. The little boy. He watches me and he knows.

  He speaks to me when no one sees. But I do not understand what he says. I do not know what he asks.

  There are footsteps outside my room. I step down from the window and sit quietly on the chair. And I wait.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Papa S. has called me to him. I was hoping for good news, hoping for the words that make me his Companion. But as I stand in his study, he has barely spoken to me. He is sitting in his chair behind his desk, with his back to me, his face toward the window.

  “Pearl,” he says, his voice so quiet. “You have dissatisfied me and Mother Nature.” I want to ask why, but the word doesn’t come out. “You must ask for forgiveness.”

  I know, as soon as he says that word. I will be in that room again.

  He says nothing else, but beckons for me to follow him. Walking toward the room, I can hear the sounds of the children outside. And I’m walking, my bare feet on the wooden floor, toward the door. I reach out for the perfectly round door handle. I hold my hand there and I wait for my legs to run. But they don’t, because I trust Papa S., and I’m turning the handle. The door breathes as it opens itself to me and I step inside.

  I close the door and there’s silence. It’s like the world outside has disappeared and I’m the only one left. I walk into the small room and I want to run away, but I know that Papa S. loves me.

  Then it begins.

  At first it is so quiet that I can barely hear it. But it gets louder. The sound of a woman crying. She’s asking someone to stop, but they don’t, because her cries are getting louder. And she’s begging them now, not to hurt her, don’t hurt her, but they don’t listen and she starts to scream. A sound from so deep within the core of her that I am shaking and even though I tell myself to breathe, she’s still screaming and they’re hurting her and it doesn’t stop. My hands are over my ears, but it doesn’t block out the noise. Nothing can block out the sound of her begging, the sound of her scream ripping through her body, her skin.