“Damn him,” he said.
She lifted her shoulders.
“And so there is nothing I can do for you, is there?” he said. “Strong, self-sufficient Emmy. You were always the same. It was always a ridiculous fallacy to believe you weak and vulnerable because you could not hear or speak, yet many people believed it. And probably still do. Perhaps I should ask what I can learn from you. We always think of teaching you, Emmy. Teaching you to communicate. Perhaps we should do the learning—and learnnotto communicate, or to do it in a different way. Now there is a thought. Perhaps we could learn your peace if we could share your silence. What is it like? ’Tis not a dreadful affliction to you, is it? You have found meaning in silence. You are almost like a different being. You have perhaps the strongest character of anyone I have ever known.”
He had stopped signing. And he had spoken at great length, as he had always used to do. She had always understood him, perhaps because she had loved to gaze at him. She felt anything but strong. At this moment she almost wished she had given in this morning and let life happen to her for the rest of her days. She would have had Ashley—for the rest of her life. As her companion, her lover, her husband. No! No, she would never have had him. Even if she had agreed to marry him, she could never have him. Ashley’s heart was given, buried with his dead wife. She could never be happy with just what was left—especially when it was offered out of a sense of obligation, an obligation she had placed him under.
“Perhaps one day I will learn silence,” he said, and his one good eye smiled gently at her, making him look like the old Ashley despite the mutilation of the rest of his face. “But in the meantime perhaps I should teach you to speak, Emmy. Now that might be a gift worth giving.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth.
“Have you ever tried?” he asked. He leaned slightly forward toward her. “I suppose ’twould not be impossible. You make sounds, you know, Emmy, especially when you laugh. You could probably speak if you could only hear. Have you ever tried?”
When I was a small child,she told him with busy and eager hands,Idid speak a little.
He gazed at her. “You?” he said. “You could speak? You could hear, Emmy? What happened?”
Ihad a fever,she told him as best she could.And then I could not hear.
“Zounds,” he said, “I did not know that. Do you remember sound, Emmy? Do you remember speech?”
No,she told him sadly.No. I was very small.
“You should be able to speak again then, Emmy.” He had leaned forward, looking eager and almost boyish despite his battered face.“Haveyou tried?”
She had often sat before a looking glass forming with her mouth the words she read on other people’s lips. She had even tried making sound. But she had no way of knowing if the resulting effort was speech. She had never tried it out on anyone. And she could not remember how it felt to speak.
“Zounds, youhave.”He smiled broadly and then fingered his lip again. “Admit it.”
She nodded, feeling embarrassed.
“Sayyes,”he said. “Let me hear you.”
She felt breathless, as if she had been running for five miles without stopping. She should never have admitted the truth. But he would have known.
“Sayyesto me.” His smile had softened.
She drew breath and moved her lips in careful formation of the word. At the same time she forced what she thought was sound. Then she hid her face in her hands.
There was laughter in his face when she gathered enough courage to remove her hands and peep up at him. He had beenlaughing.“The word was correctly formed,” he said, “and there was sound. But there was no communion between the two, Emmy. I believe you blocked the sound—perhaps with the back of your tongue? It came through your nose.”
She bit her lip, horribly mortified. What had happened to his idea of learning silence? Wouldshelaugh athimif he got it wrong?
“Try again,” he told her. “Let the sound come through your mouth. Let the air come through your lips.”
She did not know how. She could not remember.Say the word to me,she demanded with one hand. But when he did so, she still did not know how. She wriggled closer to him until their knees almost touched.Again,she commanded.
“Yes,” he said while she stretched out one hand and set her fingertips lightly against his throat. She could feel the vibrations.Again,she motioned, frowning in concentration.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
She set her fingers against her own throat and tried to make vibrations. He had told her to let the air out through her mouth. She set the other hand before it. She could feel the air—and then the vibrations. She darted a look up at him.
“You have it, by my life,” he said. “Sound, Emmy, coming through your lips. Now sayyes.”
“Yyaaahhhzzz,” she said.
The gleam in his good eye was not exactly amusement. It was... triumph. The type of look she had seen in Luke’s eyes when Joy took her first step.
