The day before, orain, I had imagined activity and noise: shouted instrus and arms sending messages in urgent semaphore; es, pla and slow; stone crashing on stone. Instead, as I arrived at the lodge gates and looked toward the demolition site, everything was silent and still.
There was nothing to see; the mist that hung in the air made everything invisible that was more than a short distance away. Eveh was indistinct. My feet were there one moment, gohe . Lifting my head, I walked blindly, trag the path as I remembered it from my last visit, as I remembered it from Miss Winter』s descriptions.
My mind map was accurate: I came to the gardely when I expected to. The dark shapes of the yew stood like a hazily paiage set, flattened into two dimensions by the blank background. Like ethereal bowler hats, a pair of domed forms floated on the cloudlike mist, the trunks that supported them fading into the whiteness beh. Sixty years had left them rown and out of shape, but it was easy today to suppose that it was the mist that was softening the geometry of the forms, that when it lifted, it would reveal the garden as it was then, in all its mathematical perfe, set in the grounds not of a demolition site, nor of a ruin, but of a house intact.
Half a tury, as insubstantial as the water suspended in this air, was ready to evaporate with the first ray of winter sun.
I brought my wrist close to my fad read the time. I had arrao meet Aurelius, but how to find him in this mist? I could wander forever without seeing him, even if he passed within arm』s reach.
I called out 「Hello!」 and a man』s voice was carried bae.
『Hello!「
Impossible to tell whether he was distant or close by. 「Where are you?」
I pictured Aurelius staring into the mist looking for a landmark.
『I』m o a tree.「 The words were muffled.
『So am I,「 I called back. 」I don』t think yours is the same tree as mine. You sound too far away.「
『You sound quite near, though.「
『Do I? Why don』t you stay where you are aalking, and I』ll find you!「
『Right you are! An excellent plan! Though I shall have to think of something to say, won』t I? How hard it is to speak to order, when it seems so easy the rest of the time… What dismal weather we』re having. Never known murkiness like it.「
And so Aurelius thought aloud, while I stepped into a cloud and followed the thread of his voi the air.
That is when I saw it. A shadow that glided past me, pale iery light. I think I k was not Aurelius. I was suddenly scious of the beating of my heart, and I stretched out my hand, half fearful, half hopeful. The figure eluded me and swam out of view.
『Aurelius?「 My voice sounded shaky to my own ears.
『Yes?「
『Are you still there?「
『Of course I am.「
His voice was in quite the wrong dire. What had I seen? It was not Aurelius. It must have been an effect of the mist. Afraid of what I might yet see if I waited, I stood still, staring into the aqueous air, willing the figure to appear again.
『Aha! There you are!「 boomed a great voice behind me. Aurelius. He clasped my shoulders in his mittened hands as I turo face him. 」Goodness gracious, Margaret, you』re as white as a sheet. Anyone would think you』d seen a ghost!「
We walked together in the garden. In his overcoat, Aurelius seemed even taller and broader than he really was. Beside him, in my mist-gray raincoat, I felt insubstantial.
『How is your boo