Gathering Blue - Lois Lowry [59]
"Your beautiful shirt," she murmured, and he smiled again.
"Matt told me that it's the same shade as the sky on a sunny summer-start morning," he said.
Kira agreed. "Yes," she said. "That's it, exactly!"
"Much the same as the blossom on a morning glory vine, I would think," the man said.
"Yes, that's true! But how —"
"I haven't always been sightless. I remember those things."
They could hear the sound of running water. "Matt? Don't drown them!" the man called. "It would be a very long trip back to get more!"
He turned back to Kira. "I would be happy to bring more, of course. But I think you won't need that."
"Please," Kira said, "sit down. And we'll have a meal sent up. It's time for dinner anyway." Even in her confusion, she tried to remember the basic courtesies. The man had brought her a gift of great value. Why he had done it, she couldn't begin to comprehend. Nor how hard it must have been to come a great distance with no eyes and no guide but a lively boy and a bent-tailed dog.
And at the last of the journey, when Matt had run ahead with his treasured scrap of blue, the blind man had come alone. How was it possible?
"I'll call the tenders and tell them," Thomas said.
The man looked startled and concerned. "Who's that?" he asked, hearing Thomas's voice for the first time.
"I live down the hall," Thomas explained. "I carved the Singer's staff while Kira did the Robe. Maybe you don't understand about the Gathering, but it's just ended, and it's a really impor —"
"I know about it," the man said. "I know all about it.
"Please. Don't call for food," he added firmly. "No one must know that I'm here."
"Food?" Matt asked, emerging from the bathroom.
"I'll have them bring our dinners to my room down the hall, and no one will know," Thomas suggested. "We'll all share it. There's always more than enough."
Kira nodded agreement, and Thomas left the room to summon the tenders. Matt scampered behind him, alert to the prospect of food.
Now Kira found herself alone with the stranger in the blue shirt. She could tell from his posture that he was very tired. She sat down, facing him, on the edge of the bed and sought in her mind the right things to say to him, the right questions to ask.
"Mart's a good boy," she said after a moment's silence, "but he forgets some important things in his excitement. He didn't tell you my name. I'm Kira."
The blind man nodded. "I know. He told me all about you."
She waited. Finally, into the quiet, she said, "He didn't tell me who you are."
The man stared with his unseeing eyes into the room, beyond the place where Kira sat. He began to speak, faltered, took a breath, then stopped.
"It's beginning to get dark," he said finally. "I'm facing the window, and I can feel the change in daylight."
"Yes."
"It's how I found my way here after Matt left me at the edge of the village. We had planned to wait and arrive at night, in the darkness. But there were no people about, so it was safe for us to enter in daylight. Matt realized it was the day of the Gathering."
"Yes," Kira said. "It began very early in the morning." He is not going to answer my question, she thought.
"I remember the Gatherings. And I remembered the path. The trees have grown, of course. But I could feel the shadows. I could feel my way along the center of the path by the way the light fell."
He smiled wryly. "I could smell the butcher's hut."
Kira nodded and chuckled.
"And when I passed the weaving shed, I could smell the fabrics folded there, and even the wood of the looms.
"If the women had been at work, I would have recognized the sounds." With his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he made the repetitive muted clacking sound of the shuttle, and then the whisper of the threads turning into cloth.
"And so I made my way here all alone. Matt met me then and brought me to your room."
Kira waited. Then she asked, "Why?"
As she watched, he touched his own face. He ran his hand over the