How could I forget? My whole being screamed with exhilaration. It was an electrifying pleasure, almost painful. The phosphorescent explosion not only was inside my head but also burst from the core of the universe. Our bodies merged together, blended into each other, and it did not matter that our daily lives took place on completely different tracks. Within the whirlpool of the spring, we were one body, but actually we were all the bodies in the world, an endless torrent of living breathing material, separated into individuals only so that it might tell itself a bedtime story.
Happy barking accompanied the lurch of being thrown to the ground. Brunette fell upon Jean, who got up at once and breathlessly stroked and hugged and praised her. Maybe this helped him recover from the existential combustion we had just experienced.
“The guards will soon come to see what is going on,” I said in a panic when I heard some voices. Jean, who was clearly relieved to be back in his comprehensible, quiet, green world, stood up.
“I will go reassure them,” he proclaimed. “Wait here for me.”
“Please,” I said.
“Please,” he said and kissed my hand. “Stay,” he told Brunette. I sat down beside the burbling spring and watched her wistfully, passing my hand through the silky waters. I heard whispers of giggles and sighs in my ears, but I resolutely let go of any fear.
“People call everything that is beyond their grasp ‘madness,’” I said aloud to Brunette, then I felt like a truly crazy person. Brunette buried her snout in my shoulder. I stroked and hugged her.At least I know that I really have touched the sublime, I told myself,and now I must distance myself from it and come back down to the ground before I lose my way back.
Jean returned and sat down beside me. For a few minutes, we did not say anything. We looked at each other, smiling and sighing.
“I must go,” I said finally, when I could no longer discern between the smiles and the sighs and the whispers floating up to me like an invisible witness from the spring. “I’m about to completely lose my mind.”
Silently, I handed Jean the garb that he had lent me, nicely folded inside a cloth bag. I was afraid that if the clothes remained accessible to me, their shining silk might tempt me back into the other world.
“Will we never meet again?” Jean asked in a voice thick with sadness.
“Let us not make such absolute declarations as ‘never,’” I said. Further silence. “Maybe I can come back to visit you here when I recover, if you will still come back to the Pilgrim Castle sometime,” I added after some thought. “And if you want, you can leave me a message. A small note in a corked earthenware vessel to be hidden in an agreed-upon location.” I looked around and pointed to the spot where the trunk of the tree was wet from the spray of water. “Here, in the ground under this part of the tree, we’ll carve a small cross into it.”
Jean smiled as if I had suggested something completely useless but took my hand and kissed it with complete focus.
I was not satisfied with this and kissed him on the lips. I felt that I was melting into him, and the whispering inside my head grew stronger. The hum returned.
“Goodbye for now, Jean d’Ibelin, Count of Arsur. May you find blessings at every turn,” I said, swallowing my tears.
“Goodbye, Lady Édith, Fairy of the Spring,” he said very quietly.
I held out my finger, and he made a cut in it. I squeezed Lily’s coin in my fist and plunged it into the spring.
CHAPTER 26
The first thing I did when I got home was call my parents.
“What’s this, speaking again?!” my father picked up teasingly.
“The workshop’s finished!” I replied, laughing. “How’s Lily? Can I talk to her?”
From the moment I was drawn back into the spring and then spat back out into the twenty-first century, I missed her terribly. Even though the plan had been that I would meet my parents in Tel Aviv the following day and collect her from there, I thought of driving to Jerusalem to pick her up that day.
“Hmm, they went out for a walk,” said my father. “We’ll call you when they get back.”
We spoke a little more about how things were with them (“She is such a good, sweet girl, even your mother says so”), how things were with me (“It was an extraordinary experience, and disorienting, but I’m happy to be home”), about some news story of which I had no knowledge, and the weather forecast for the coming days.
I made myself tea and drank it in long, slow sips and walked around the house. Traces of Jean still lingered, the memory of him thrilled by the accuracy of the family “portraits” (as in the photos of the three of us onthe corkboard beside my computer), putting his hand inside the fridge and taking it out, frolicking before me in the shower. I did not want to think about him so much.
It had been sublime, and now it was time to let go. I got into the shower, and for almost an hour I let the images run through my mind, nonjudgmentally, unafraid, as though I were watching an adventure movie inside my head.
When I finally got out of the shower, I saw a missed call from my mother. I called her back, still wrapped in a towel, and spoke to her and then Lily. I was touched by how much my mother was enjoying their time together. She told me about the walk they took through the Mahane Yehuda market, how the vendors at every stall gave Lily some kind of treat because she charmed everyone, and I surged with maternal pride.
“Mama, Nana Tasha doesn’t like Robinod,” Lily reported to me first. This was her nickname for her grandmother, Natasha, to distinguish from Nana Simone.
“I like Robinod fine!” I heard my mother object in the background. “But not the Disney movie.”
“I’ll meet you in Tel Aviv tomorrow and take you home,” I told her. “I really miss you.”
