The Ghostwriter's Words

Sara: Homecoming

Steve assured Sara he was fine walking the remainder of his journey back to The Truth as the transparent object that had transported them halfway around the world dissipated into the apparent nothingness from which it had originally formed. An ancient tree, the ring of box hedges surrounding it, and enough earth to hold and nourish their roots all rose from the ground atop what turned out to be the roof of a gigantic freight elevator emerging with a rumble shaking the ground beneath their feet.

Sara explained that the tree and box hedge weren't part of an ingenious camouflage to hide access to the caverns below from The Faith but resulted from centuries of disuse. Just as with ancient cities, things erode and disintegrate back into the dirt from which they came, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, then things grew in the resulting soil, and what was left was lost beneath. She said, "That's what happens over time," nostalgically remembering the colossal tree as a sapling long before she became aware of all that existed below. Some groundskeeper planted the box hedges centuries after that job had been her father's, and someone or something had tended them since, none with any notion of what nature hid buried beneath them.

Claire's and Sara's possessions began floating through the elevator doors as if carried in the arms of invisible dock workers, with the rest stacked neatly on the ground, awaiting their turn. Sara could tell Claire was fretting about their things, especially her art, and promised, "We'll hang your paintings around the house, and I'll create another studio for you. In fact," Sara paused a moment, allowing her imagination to work, then nodded with satisfaction and assured Claire, "You're going to love it. It has panoramic views out over the ocean and..."

"House?" Claire asked, interrupting as she turned to gaze up at the majestic, modernistic glass palace a few hundred feet beyond where they stood. To anyone seeing it for the first time, it seemed more likely to house a museum or a theatre to seat a thousand spectators.

"Yes," Sara assured her. "It's just a house."

"Like, you're just a girl?"

"Yes, like I'm just a girl," Sara insisted, recognizing the annoyance that remained in Claire's tone. "There is still a lot to explain, but I will. I promise. I'll tell you everything. I'll answer any question you have and tell you the truth."

"Like, who else you've fucked?"

Sara expelled a long breath, reminding herself to have patience, then repeated, "There are more than I can remember. I haven't lied about that. This conversation will be easier once you have a Magick Hat." That statement once again left Claire staring back at her with incomprehension. Even a Magick Hat, Sara recognized, would be more easily explained once Claire had one of her own

As Sara and Steve were about to say their goodbyes, she suddenly remembered, "No. Wait a minute if you aren't in too much of a hurry. I did promise you something."

Sara dropped her travel bags in the house's entryway, an arboretum that dwarfed the one housing Claire's studio, her old studio. Her new studio would astound her, Sara thought, smiling, and she couldn't wait to provide a guided tour. She asked Claire to stay, right there, where she was, please, she'd be back; then went in search of Sammy or whoever might be there at the house, passing directly through a wall again, just as they'd passed through the side of the object which had flown them halfway around the world, and what appeared to be the glass exterior of the house only a moment before.

It occurred to Sara that it would have been the middle of the night for Sammy when she'd inadvertently sent her distress signal. Knowing Sammy, she doubted he'd been able to return to sleep afterward and regretted any anxiety she'd caused him on a day that should be all about him, not drama she could have easily avoided if she'd only planned better.