Little, Big by John Crowley Page A

were various, chosen for, oh, picturesqueness, they looked like foreign dignitaries conversing together at an embassy affair—and between them the lawns, kept down you know, and the flower-beds and fountains. It seemed that you would any moment see a hunting party appear, lords and ladies, hawks on their wrists. Look now! Forty years since it's been properly cared for. You can still see the pattern, what it all was meant to look like, but it's like reading a letter, a letter from oh a long time ago, that's been left out in the rain and all the words have run together. I wonder if he grieves at it. He was an orderly man. See? The statue is 'The Syrinx.' How long till the vines pull it down, or the moles undermine it? Well. He would understand. There are reasons. One doesn't want to disturb what likes it this way."
    "Moles and things."
    "The statue is only marble."
    "You could—ouch—pull up these thorn-trees, maybe."
    She looked at him as though, unexpectedly, he had struck her. She cleared her throat, patting her clavicle. "This is Auberon's lane," she said. "It leads to the Summer House. It's not the directest way, but Auberon ought to see you."
    "Oh yes?"
    The Summer House was two round red brick towers squat as great toes, with a machicolated foot between them. Was it intended to look ruined, or was it really ruined? The windows were out of scale, large and arched and cheerfully curtained. "Once," Cloud said, "you could see this place from the house. It was thought, on moony nights, to be very romantic. . . . Auberon is my mother's son, though not my father's—my half-brother, then. Some years older than I. He's been our schoolmaster for many years, though he's not well now, hasn't been out of the Summer House much for, oh, a year? It's a pity. . . . Auberon!"
    Closer now he could see the place had stretched out habitation's hands around it, a privy, a neat vegetable garden, a shed from which a lawn mower peeked out ready to roll. There was a screen door, rhombic with age, for the central toothed entrance, and board steps at a slant, and a striped canvas sling-chair in the sun there by the birdbath, and a small old man in the chair who, when he heard his name called, jumped up or at least rose up in agitation—his suspenders seemed to draw him down into a crouch—and made for his house, but he was slow, and Cloud had come near enough to stop him. "Here's Smoky Barnable, who's going to marry Daily Alice today. At least come and say hello." She shook her head for Smoky to see her patience was tried, and led him by the elbow into the yard.
    Auberon, trapped, turned at the door with a welcoming smile, hand extended. "Well, welcome, welcome, hm." He had the distracted chuckle of troubled old people who look within, keeping watch on failing organs. He took Smoky's hand and almost before they touched sank again gratefully in his sling-chair, motioning Smoky to a bench. Why was it that within this enclosure Smoky felt a troubling of the sunlight? Cloud sat in a chair by her brother, and Auberon put his white-haired hand over hers. "Well, what's happened?" she said indulgently.
    "No need to say," he said undertone, "not before . . ."
    "Member of the family," Cloud said. "As of today."
    Auberon, his throat still making soundless chuckles, looked at Smoky. Unprotected! That's what Smoky felt. They had stepped into this yard and lost something they had had in the woods; they had stepped out of something. "Easy enough to test," Auberon said, striking his bony knee and rising. He retreated into the house rubbing his fingers together.
    "It's 
not
 easy," Cloud said to no one, looking up at the blank sky. She had lost a portion of her ease. She cleared her throat again, contemplated the gray birdbath, which was supported by a number of carved figures, gnomes or elves, with patient bearded faces, who seemed in the act of bearing it away. Cloud sighed. She glanced at a tiny gold watch that was pinned to her bosom. It had little