The Signature of All Things

Jehovah? You are an intelligent woman, Alma. Try to comprehend this.”
    Alma pressed her fists against her eyes again. She would not allow herself to weep, but now she knew a dreadful truth: Ambrose had permitted Tomorrow Morning to touch him, whereas he had only recoiled from her in abhorrence. It was possible this information made her feel worse than anything else she had yet learned today. It shamed her that she could concern herself with such a petty and selfish matter after hearing such horrors, but she could not help herself.
    “What is it?” Tomorrow Morning asked, seeing her stricken face.
    “I longed to couple with him, too,” she confessed at last. “But he would not have me.”
    Tomorrow Morning looked at her with infinite tenderness. “So this is where we are different, you and I,” he said. “For you relented.”
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    N ow the tide was low at last, and Tomorrow Morning said, “Let us go quickly, while we have our opportunity. If we are to do this at all, we must move now.”
    They left the canoe behind on its unreachable ledge, and exited the cave. There was, as Tomorrow Morning had promised, a narrow route along the bottom of the cliff, upon which they could safely walk. They walked for a few hundred feet and then began to ascend. From the canoe, the cliff had seemed sheer, vertical, and unscalable, but now, as she followed Tomorrow Morning, putting her feet and hands just where he put his, she could see that there was, indeed, a pathway upward. It was almost as if stairs had been cut, with footholds and handholds placed precisely where they would be needed. She did not look down at the waves below, but trusted—as she hadlearned to trust the Hiro contingent—in her guide’s competence and her own sure-footedness.
    About fifty feet up, they came to a ridge. From there, they entered a thick belt of jungle, scrambling up a steep slope of damp roots and vines. After her weeks with the Hiro contingent, Alma was in fine hiking trim, with the heart of a Highland pony, but this was a truly treacherous climb. Wet leaves under her feet made for dangerous slips, and even barefoot it was difficult to find purchase. She was tiring. She could see no sign of a path. She didn’t know how Tomorrow Morning could possibly tell where he was going.
    “Be careful,” he said over his shoulder. “ C’est glissant .”
    He must be weary, too, she realized, for he did not even seem to recognize that he just had spoken to her in French. She hadn’t known that he spoke French at all. What else did he have in that mind of his? She marveled at it. He had done well for an orphan boy.
    The steepness leveled out a bit, and now they were walking alongside a stream. Soon she could hear a dim rumbling in the distance. For a while, the noise was just a rumor, but then they came around a bend and she could see it—a waterfall about seventy feet tall, a ribbon of white foam that emptied noisily into a churning pool. The force of the falling water created gusts of wind, and the mist gave form to this wind, like ghosts made visible. Alma wanted to pause here, but the waterfall was not Tomorrow Morning’s destination. He leaned in to her to make himself heard, pointed toward the sky, and shouted, “Now we go up again.”
    Hand over hand, they climbed beside the waterfall. Soon Alma’s dress was soaked through. She reached for sturdy clumps of mountain plantain and bamboo stalks to steady herself, and prayed they would not come unrooted. Near the top of the waterfall was a comfortable hummock of smooth stone and tall grasses, as well as a tumble of boulders. Alma determined that this must be the plateau of which he had spoken—their destination—though she could not at first determine what was so special about this place. But then Tomorrow Morning stepped behind the largest boulder, and she followed him. There, quite suddenly, was the entrance to a small cave—as tidily cut into the cliff as a room in a house, with walls eight feet up on every side. The cave was cool and silent, and smelled of minerals and soil. And it was covered—thoroughly carpeted—with the most luxuriant mantle of mosses Alma Whittaker had ever seen.
    The cave was not merely mossy; it throbbed with moss. It was not merely green; it was frantically green. It was so bright in its verdure that the color nearly spoke, as though—smashing through the world of sight—it wanted to migrate into the world of sound. The moss was a thick, living pelt,