He looked, and saw a single star gleaming on the breast of the night.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yes,” he said, and suddenly, for no reason, his eyes filled with tears. Just where had he been all of his goddamned life? Where had he been, what had he been doing, who had been
with him while he did it, and why did he suddenly feel so grimy and abysmally beshitted?
Her lifted face was terrible in its beauty, irrefutable in this light, but the beauty was
unknown to its possessor, who only looked at the star with wide wondering eyes, and
laughed softly.
“Star light, star bright,” she said, and stopped. She looked at him. “Do you know it, Eddie?”
“Yeah.” Eddie kept his head down. His voice sounded clear enough, but if he looked up
she would see he was weeping.
“Then help me. But you have to look.”
“Okay.”
He wiped the tears into the palm of one hand and looked up at the star with her.
“Star light—” she looked at him and he joined her. “Star bright—”
Her hand reached out, groping, and he clasped it, one the delicious brown of light
chocolate, the other the delicious white of a dove’s breast.
“First star I see tonight,” they spoke solemnly in unison, boy and girl for this now, not man and woman as they would be later, when the dark was full and she called to ask him if he
was asleep and he said no and she asked if he would hold her because she was cold; “Wish
I may, wish I might—”
They looked at each other, and he saw that tears were streaming down her cheeks. His own
came again, and he let them fall in her sight. This was not a shame but an inexpressi- ble
relief.
They smiled at each other.
“Have the wish I wish tonight,” Eddie said, and thought: Please, always you.
“Have the wish I wish tonight,” she echoed, and thought If I must die in this odd place, please let it not be too hard and let this good young man be with me.
“I’m sorry I cried,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I don’t usually, but it’s been—”
“A very trying day,” he finished for her.
“Yes. And you need to eat, Eddie.”
“You do, too.”
“I just hope it doesn’t make me sick again.”
He smiled at her.
“I don’t think it will.”
6
Later, with strange galaxies turning in slow gavotte over- head, neither thought the act of love had ever been so sweet, so full.
7
They were off with the dawn, racing, and by nine Eddie was wishing he had asked Roland
what he should do if they came to the place where the hills cut off the beach and there was
still no door in sight. It seemed a question of some impor- tance, because the end of the
beach was coming, no doubt about that. The hills marched ever closer, running in a
diago- nal line toward the water.
The beach itself was no longer a beach at all, not really; the soil was now firm and quite
smooth. Something—run-off, he supposed, or flooding at some rainy season (there had
been none since he had been in this world, not a drop; the sky had clouded over a few times,
but then the clouds had blown away again)—had worn most of the jutting rocks away.
At nine-thirty, Odetta cried: “Stop, Eddie! Stop!”
He stopped so abruptly that she had to grab the arms of the chair to keep from tumbling out.
He was around to her in a flash.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He saw he had mistaken excitement for distress. She pointed. “Up there! Do you see something?”
He shaded his eyes and saw nothing. He squinted. For just a moment he thought . . . no, it
was surely just heat-shimmer rising from the packed ground.
“I don’t think so,” he said, and smiled. “Except maybe your wish.”
“I think I do!” She turned her excited, smiling face to him. “Standing all by itself! Near where the beach ends.”
He looked again, squinting so hard this time that his eyes watered. He thought again for
just a moment that he saw something. You did, he thought, and smiled. You saw her wish.
“Maybe,” he said, not because he believed it but because she did.
“Let’s go!”
Eddie went behind the chair again, taking a moment to massage his lower back where a steady ache had settled. She looked around.
“What are you waiting for?”
“You really think you’ve got it spotted, don’t you?”
“Yes!”
“Well then, let’s go!”
Eddie started pushing again.
8
Half an hour later he saw it, too. Jesus, he thought, her eyes are as good as Roland’s. Maybe better.
Neither wanted to stop for lunch, but they needed to eat. They made a quick meal and then
pushed on again. The tide was coming in and Eddie looked to the right—west—with rising
unease. They were still well above the tangled line of kelp and seaweed that marked high
water, but he thought that by the time they reached the door they would be in an
uncom- fortably tight angle bounded by the sea on one side and the slanting hills on the
other. He could see those hills very clearly now. There was nothing pleasant about the view.
They were rocky, studded with low trees that curled their roots into the ground like arthritic
knuckles, keeping a grim grip, and thorny-looking bushes. They weren’t really steep, but
too steep for the wheelchair. He might be able to carry her up a way, might, in fact, be
forced to, but he didn’t fancy leaving her there.
For the first time he was hearing insects. The sound was a little like crickets, but higher
pitched than that, and with no swing of rhythm—just a steady monotonous riiiiiiii sound
like power-lines. For the first time he was seeing birds other than gulls. Some were biggies
that circled inland on stiff wings. Hawks, he thought. He saw them fold their wings from
time to time and plummet like stones. Hunting. Hunting what? Well, small animals. That
was all right.
Yet he kept thinking of that yowl he’d heard in the night.
By mid-afternoon they could see the third door clearly. Like the other two, it was an
impossibility which nonetheless stood as stark as a post.
“Amazing,” he heard her say softly. “How utterly amaz- ing.”
It was exactly where he had begun to surmise it would be, in the angle that marked the end
of any easy northward prog- ress. It stood just above the high tide line and less than nine
yards from the place where the hills suddenly leaped out of the ground like a giant hand
coated with gray-green brush instead of hair.
The tide came full as the sun swooned toward the water; and at what might have been four
o’clock—Odetta said so, and since she had said she was good at telling the sun (and
because she was his beloved), Eddie believed her—they reached the door.
9
They simply looked at it, Odetta in her chair with her hands in her lap, Eddie on the
sea-side. In one way they looked at it as they had looked at the evening star the previous
night— which is to say, as children look at things—but in another they looked differently.
When they wished on the star they had been children of joy. Now they were solemn,
wondering, like chil- dren looking at the stark embodiment of a thing which only belonged
in a fairy tale.
Two words were written on this door.
“What does it mean?” Odetta asked finally.
“I don’t know,” Eddie said, but those words had brought a hopeless chill; he felt an eclipse stealing across his heart.
“Don’t you?” she asked, looking at him more closely.
“No. I…” He swallowed. “No.”
She looked at him a moment longer. “Push me behind it, please. I’d like to see that. I know
you want to get back to him, but would you do that for me?”
He would.
They started around, on the high side of the door.
“Wait!” she cried. “Did you see it?”
“What?”
“Go back! Look! Watch!”
This time he watched the door instead of what might be ahead to trip them up. As they
went above it he saw it narrow in perspective, saw its hinges, hinges which seemed to be
buried in nothing at all, saw its thickness . . .
Then it was gone.
The thickness of the door was gone.
His view of the water should have been interrupted by three, perhaps even four inches of
solid wood (the door looked extraordinarily stout), but there was no such interruption.
The door was gone.
Its shadow was there, but the door was gone.
He rolled the chair back two feet, so he was just south of the place where the door stood,