He started to cry. He wanted the woman to come and pick him up again. But she just kept looking at the house, and though he couldn't see her face something about the way she stood, her arms hanging at her sides, convinced him that all the happiness he'd heard in her voice had deserted her, and that now she was consumed with yearning. She wanted to be there, in that splendid, white-pillared place, but she was forbidden.

And still he bawled, doing his best to get her to attend to him, his sobs echoing around the glade of moss-draped trees with such violence birds rose in panic from the branches and fled away. Finally, she gave up watching the house, and looked back at him.

It was his mother.

Why was he so astonished by that? Why did the sight of her face so startle him that the dream-scene fluttered and threatened to be extinguished? It was his mother; mothers were supposed to carry their babies in their arms, weren't they?

And yet he was shocked to see her; distressed even. It wasn't the fact that her face was tear-streaked and pale (that was his preferred state for a woman's face) it was the fact of her very presence here, where he sensed the uncanny. She belonged to a more mundane existence, whose minor enchantments could be bought and sold like any other commodity; not here, not here.

She went down on her knees beside him, as if she intended to pick him up. Tears fell from her eyes, and splashed on him. Then she said the only word in the entire dream he understood. She said:

"Goodbye."

Those syllables said-and without kissing him, without laying so much as a finger upon him-she stood up again, and walked away, leaving him there in the grass.

He started to cry again, his voice shrill and pathetic. But now his lips could form words-

"Don't leave me!" he sobbed. "Mama! Mama! Don't leave me!"

He woke to the din of his own voice, crying out in his sleep. He sat up in bed, his heart beating furiously. He waited for the inevitable retreat of the images that his mind had conjured up, but they didn't go. Even with his eyes wide open, feeding on a hundred concrete details of his bedroom, the sights he'd just seen and the feelings he'd felt insisted upon him.

Perhaps this was part of his transfiguration: his mind revisiting old anxieties so that they could be dealt with and sloughed off. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, but any change-especially one as powerful as that which had seized him-brought with it some measure of discomfort.

He got out of bed, and went to the window to open the drapes. As he did so-as his hand caught hold of the heavy fabric-he was suddenly seized by a sickening suspicion. He put on his robe, and went across the landing to his study, where he'd left Holt's journal. He'd begun reading it as soon as his brother had brought it to him, but events had overtaken his analysis, and he'd not returned to it. Now he began to search through its dog-eared pages, scanning the text. He passed over the passages about Benton-ville, and the section dealing with Holt's return to his house; on through the portions dealing with the events in the East Battery, on through Holt and Nickelberry's departure from Charleston. The deserters were moving north, in Galilee's company, heading back to the Barba-rossas' territory. There were four or five pages devoted to the precise methodology of entrance: several small diagrams that almost looked like brands, and paragraphs speaking of the mysteries of L'Enfant, which if unsolved would prove fatal to any who attempted to gain access to the Barbarossa residence. He lingered long enough on this passage to confirm that the solutions had indeed all been set down on the page, then he moved on to look for a description of the house itself.

And there, just a few pages from the end of the journal, he found the passage he was afraid he'd find.

I have never seen such a house as was presented before us as we came between the trees. Holt wrote, nor felt so strongly the sense that we were walking in the presence of things unseen, forces that would have done us calamitous harm had we not been Samaritans carrying a prodigal back onto his native soil. That's two Biblical stories in one, but that's probably appropriate, for I believe that here, gathered in this place, were enough mysteries to be the subject of a dozen Testaments.

So the house. It was painted white, with a classical fagade, such as you might see in many great plantation houses; but there rose above these familiar forms a dome of such beauty and magnitude, shining white in the sunlight-

Garrison put the book down. He'd read all that he needed to read. The house in his dream was the same which Holt had written about: the Barbarossas' great mansion. He'd be going there soon enough. But did the dream mean that he'd already been there? If not, how had he imagined the house so well?

Mystery upon mystery. First the death of the old man, and all the destruction that had accompanied it. Then his transfiguration: the force he'd seen in the mirror, blazing back at him. Now this enigma: dreaming of his mother abandoning him on the grounds of the Barbarossa home.

He'd always been a man who trusted his intellect: in matters of money and in the management of human beings it didn't do to be too emotional. But a wise intellect knew its limitations. It didn't go where analytical power had no jurisdiction. It fell silent, and let the mind find other ways to comprehend whatever troubled it.

Here was such a border, where intellect retreated. To go on, into the place of sloughings and furies and abandonments that lay ahead, he would need to look to his instincts, and hope they were sharp enough to protect him.

Others had taken similar journeys and lived to tell the tale. One such traveler had written the very journal that sat there on Garrison's desk: the captain whose life and seed lay fatally close to the root of the Geary family tree.

Perhaps that same prospect lay ahead for him; perhaps he was on this journey so as to found a dynasty of his own. The idea had never occurred to him before, but why would it? He'd been sweating in service of the Gearys all his life; a sterile preoccupation at best. Now he was free both of his servitude and his skin. It was time to think things over from the beginning. To find wombs; to make children. And to take them-in his own arms if need be-and lay them down in the grass where he'd been lain, where they might see the pillars and the dome of the palace that the Barbarossas had dreamed into being, but which he would steal from them, by and by, to house his own sons and daughters.

This time, Rachel didn't come to the island as the pampered Mrs. Mitchell Geary. The deferential Jimmy Hornbeck wasn't there to meet her, eager to cater to her every whim. She rented a car at the airport, loaded in her bags, and with the help of a map she'd been given at the rental office drove to Anahola. The sky was overcast, the heavy, rainbearing clouds that had previously masked the heights of Mount Waialeale now lowering over the entire island. It was still hot, however; humid, in fact. She decided against sealing the car windows and turning up the air-conditioning. She wanted to smell the air: the fragrance of the flowers, the sharpness of the sea. She wanted to be reminded of what it had felt like to be here before, not knowing what lay in wait for her.

It was impossible, of course, to return to a state of innocence, especially when its loss had brought with it such far-reaching consequences. But as she turned off the main road and wound her way down the rutted track that led to the house, she was surprised to discover how readily she could make believe the agonies of the recent past belonged to somebody else, and that she was coming here unburdened.