I rested awhile, looking at the shimmering shards littering the hill beneath me, feeling kind of proud of myself that I made it at least this far.
Finally I stood up, turned, and jumped the rest of the way. The top was perfectly flat and covered with long grasses whose tips reached up and caressed my aching legs as I walked toward this yew tree.
Under the tree sat a lady wearing a white robe, and her hair was long and dark, and her face almost as pale as her dress.
I don’t know why, but she seemed familiar to me, and when I got close she lifted her head and smiled.
She looked at me with her sad, dark eyes, as if she knew me, and something I had done or failed to do had disappointed her. Then she asked me a question and I woke up.
“You have been dreaming,” a voice said.
I scooted up in the bed and saw Bennacio sitting in the rocker by the fireplace.
I brought my hand to my face and it came away wet. I’d been crying.
“There was this . . . lady,” I said. I cleared my throat. “All in white, with dark hair.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked me a question.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Bennacio had a bemused expression on his face, as if he knew what I’d been dreaming.
“What was the question?” he asked.
“She asked me . . . she asked me where the master of the Sword was.”
“And what was your answer?”
“I didn’t have an answer.”
“Hmmm.” He was smiling at me. Not a big, wide smile, but a secret little smile, like he knew what my answer should have been and that maybe I knew it too, and all that was holding me back was my reluctance to think things through.
“Who was she, Bennacio?”
“That is not for me to say.”
“How come?”
“She came to your dream, Alfred.”
I remembered him talking about angels as if they were real and wondered if the Lady in White was one. But why would an angel talk to me?
“I never believed in angels and saints or even God, much,” I told Bennacio.
“That hardly matters,” he said. “Fortunately for us, the angels do not require our consent in order to exist.”
Everything about this Bennacio guy reminded me of my own insignificance. I didn’t think he was trying to put me down, though. He had stepped up to a different level long before he met me. It wasn’t his fault I was still scrubbing around at the bottom of the slag heap.
“I never really gave much thought to stuff like that,” I said. “I guess one of my biggest problems is I don’t take the time to think things through. If I did, the Sword would still be under Mr. Samson’s desk and Uncle Farrell would be alive. Everybody would be alive and Miriam wouldn’t be crying but maybe sewing on a tapestry. Did she make that? It must have taken her a very long time. What happened to Windimar, Bennacio?”
“I have told you. He fell near Bayonne.”
“No, I mean, what happened to him?”
“Do you really wish to know?” He studied me for a minute, and I wondered why he had come in here while I slept. It was like he knew I would be waking up and he wanted to be there when I did.