“I am here.” I swung wide my arms then to her voice and to those trees. I am here, I repeated silently. After a moment, I drew down the path toward Miss Grange, who stooped, then plucked and carefully stowed the dank masses in her basket, intent on her harvest. Though I was quite warm from our walk, she had not thrown off her light cloak, and her long hands slid in and out of the loose gray sleeves as she picked. She did not speak to me again, and so I simply watched her.

Did I dream? I think I did in a fashion. She had halfway filled her basket, and I suddenly wished to tell her something large, something to show that her trust in me was not misplaced—how the story had lodged in me and grown—

“Maisie?”

Miss Grange had stood, and she regarded me now with her level blue eyes, a mushroom cupped in her palm. There was a streak of dirt across her forehead.

I took a step forward, then halted.

“What is it, Maisie?”

I shook my head, unable to speak. She looked at me, then bent again to her collecting.

I did not know how to say what had suddenly surged over the confines of my thoughts. “I—”

She looked up.

“There is such a wild longing in me,” I blurted out.

“Ah.” Her hands burrowed in beneath the domed heads. “And what is it you long for, Maisie?”

I was silent, reflecting. She looked up again.

“Not for, Miss Grange, toward.”

“Toward?”

“Yes. Toward. As if—” I stopped. “As if I am pressed up against the window in my room, my whole body straining to reach past the glass, to see—”

“To see?”

I shook my head. “To see. To see. I cannot name it, but I know it lies just there—some idea, some vision past what is framed by the glass, some place past this.”

She did not answer.

“What is a longing such as that, Miss Grange?”

She stooped again and did not look at me.

“You are opening, my dear.”

“Opening?”

“Yes. Readying to begin.” She stood.

“Begin? What is it I am to begin?”

She was quiet for a moment, and then she raised her eyes and looked straight at me, as if she had made a decision.

“Your part in the story.”

“My part?” I regarded her. “In what story?”