Pilgrimage by Zenna Henderson Read Free Book Online

turned at the gate, his face hidden in the shadows.
    "But I'm not giving up," he said quietly. "Valancy is my love."
    The next day was hushed and warm, unusually so for December in our hills. There was a kind of ominous stillness among the trees, and, threading thinly against the milky sky, the slender smokes of little brush fires pointed out the dryness of the whole country. If you looked closely you could see piling behind Old Baldy an odd bank of clouds, so nearly the color of the sky that it was hardly discernible, but puffy and summer- thunderheady.
    All of us were restless in school, the kids reacting to the weather, Valancy pale and unhappy after last night. I was bruising my mind against the blank wall in hers, trying to find some way I could help her.
    Finally the thousand and one little annoyances were climaxed by Jerry and Susie scuffling until Susie was pushed out of the desk onto an open box of wet water colors that Debra for heaven only knows what reason had left on the floor by her desk. Susie shrieked and Debra sputtered and Jerry started a high silly giggle of embarrassment and delight. Valency, without looking, reached for something to rap for order with and knocked down the old cracked vase full of drooping wildflowers and three-day-old water. The vase broke and flooded her desk with the foul-smelling deluge, ruining the monthly report she had almost ready to send in to the county school superintendent.
    For a stricken moment there wasn't a sound in the room, then Valancy burst into half-hysterical laughter and the whole room rocked with her. We all rallied around doing what we could to clean up Susie's and Valancy's desks, and then Valency declared a holiday and decided that it would be the perfect time to go up-canyon to the slopes of Baldy and gather what greenery we could find to decorate our schoolroom for the holidays.
    We all take our lunches to school, so we gathered them up and took along a square tarp the boys had brought to help build the dam in the creek. Now that the creek was dry they couldn't use it, and it'd come in handy to sit on at lunchtime and would serve to carry our greenery home in, too, stretcher fashion.
    Released from the schoolroom, we were all loud and jubilant and I nearly kinked my neck trying to keep all the kids in sight at once to nip in the bud any thoughtless lifting or other Group activity. The kids were all so wild, they might forget.
    We went on up-canyon past the kids' dam and climbed the bare dry waterfalls that stair-step up to the mesa. On the mesa we spread the tarp and pooled our lunches to make it more picnicky. A sudden hush from across the tarp caught my attention. Debra, Rachel and Lizbeth were staring horrified at Susie's lunch. She was calmly dumping out a half dozen koomatka beside her sandwiches.
    Koomatka are almost the only plants that lasted through the Crossing. I think four koomatka survived in someone's personal effects. They were planted and cared for as tenderly as babies, and now every household in the Group has a koomatka plant growing in some quiet spot out of casual sight. Their fruit is eaten not so much for nourishment as Earth knows nourishment but as a last remembrance of all other similar delights that died with the Home. We always save koomatka for special occasions. Susie must have sneaked some out when her mother wasn't looking. And there they were-across the table from an Outsider!
    Before I could snap them to me or say anything Valancy turned, too, and caught sight of the softly glowing bluey green pile. Her eyes widened and one hand went out. She started to say something and then she dropped her eyes quickly and drew her hand back. She clasped her hands tightly together, and the girls, eyes intent on her, scrambled the koomatka back into the sack and Lizbeth silently comforted Susie, who had just realized what she had done. She was on the verge of tears at having betrayed the people to an Outsider.
    Just then Kiah and Derek rolled