The Radiant Road Read Free Page B

empty.
    â€œThat’s west,” her father said, gesturing to the sea. “The sun sets red and lovely over that sea.” He sat still for a moment, then abruptly opened his door and got out. Clare followed him around to the cliff’s edge, feeling wet salt air on her face: she had forgotten that, too. How many things had she forgotten? She was shaken, disoriented, by how familiar and right it was.
    The sea wind swept around her, lifted up her hair, and dropped it again. Her hair began to curl in random wisps.
    â€œYou do have your mother’s hair,” said her father, running a hand through it as he walked back to the trunk.
    â€œBut your eyes,” said Clare automatically. It was what they always said.
    â€œAs brown as trees,” her father agreed, as he always did. His shoulders were hunched in a little, as if he were warding off a blow.
    Protected from the ocean, set into the grassy north side of the hill, was a narrow black door, old and thick. Clare turned back to watch the changing sea as her father opened the trunk and began unloading suitcases.
    â€œGive a working man a hand, here, princess?”
    Clare slipped on her backpack and picked up a suitcase, waiting as her father unlocked the narrow door with an old-fashioned iron key, long and toothed. The door opened, smooth and silent.
    Right away came the rich, complicated smell of earth and stone, a smell so familiar that Clare’s eyes surprised her by blurring wet.They entered a dim passageway, much narrower than a hall, made of enormous slabs of gray stone beside and above them. The floor was dirt. Clare’s father, who was not tall, almost had to duck his head in the passage. They held their suitcases in front of them, edging inward.
    More like a cave than a house , thought Clare. She did not remember this, it was nothing she knew, and for a moment, she had the bad tunnel feeling again. I won’t know this place, and I won’t belong here.
    But they emerged into a huge round room, airy and cool, with curving walls of gray stone and a high, domed ceiling. To her right, high in the wall, was a small opening, lined with stones—a window, but with no glass. Clare remembered, with shocking clarity, asking why their only window had no glass. Her mother’s reply, as she looked up from painting a toenail, smiling: “We leave that window always open for the fairies.”
    Fairies , thought Clare. Story for a kid. But she did remember this place, or at least, her bones remembered it, or her blood did. It was unfamiliar, and it was the most familiar place there had ever been. And that was odd, because this place was wreathed in Strange. It was almost as if it were made of Strange. All the fairy-makings she had seen all her life, all the patches of Strange she passed through—it’s as if they had all been fragments or echoes of this place, this home .
    She realized something. With only that one small window, itshould be dark inside. And yet soft white light, soft as starlight, filled the room. She looked up and saw, somehow without surprise, that yes, of course: the ceiling was thick with stars.
    That’s right, I remember: my house has the stars inside it.
    But when Clare looked more closely, she saw that the old gray stones of the ceiling were studded not with stars, but with some sort of clear rock that carried the sunlight from the outside to in.
    â€œVery clever, that,” said her father, pointing up, “clever for now, astounding for the ancient times when this place was made. It’s fused quartz—somehow they found all these long chunks of quartz that had been heated hot enough to become clear as glass. The pieces hang down to bring the light from outside in. Can you see?”
    She did see. The light poured through the lovely quartz like water through a straw. By that sunny starlight, she saw a great stone room, like a cathedral, but older, softer edged. The walls were made of gray rock,