When I returned to Adams's house, I found Twilight in front of the two full bookshelves on the far side of the main room. Her eyes scanned the spines methodically, and when I got close, I saw, or thought I saw, a speck of drool on her lower lip. She raised a hoof at the Icelandic Sagas, stopped just short of touching the first of the two volumes, and pulled away.
"I think you could look at those books," I said. "Just avoid the ones with crosses on them."
She turned to me. "Why are they special?" Her tone was earnest, not flippant.
"Good question," I said. "I like reading it sometimes—I have a copy myself. Some people... well, they're touchy about it. It would take a long time to explain."
She turned back to the shelf. "Does it have something to do with him having more than one copy?"
"Sort of. It's a very old book, with different... translations..." As I said this, a quiet inkling entered the back of my head. But when I turned my mind's eye upon it, it vanished like a match-flame before a gust.
"What's up?" Twilight must have noticed my contemplative expression.
"Nothing. I was just wondering: You can read our language, can't you? As well as speak it."
"Actually," she said, "I was wondering how you were speaking my language." She tapped her head with one hoof, her face a picture of intense concentration. "It may have something to do with the spell I cast. That can happen with certain complicated magics that aren't properly documented. Your friend, um..."
"Adams," I said.
"Adams... He was nearby when the magic gate opened." She began pacing back and forth, again thinking out loud. "Could the spell have copied his linguistic knowledge into my brain? Was that one reason it took so much energy all of a sudden? It would make sense to include something like that; it wouldn't be good to drop into a completely unfamiliar place, not knowing the language. Starswirl, you really were a genius.
"But then, why didn't Adams notice when that happened? Because he was asleep, of course. He said he found me right after waking up. Yes, that makes sense."
"Listen," I said. "About him..."
"Yes?" She must have sensed the unease in my voice, for a little crease of worry appeared on her brow.
I stepped away from Twilight and lowered myself into Adams's easy chair to make my appearance less threatening. "Something you should know—he's afraid of you."
Twilight bit her lower lip. "That book says something about unicorns, doesn't it." It wasn't a question.
"And dragons," I said. "Among other things."
She looked at the bookshelf again. "What exactly does it say?"
"All I remember is... dragons are evil." I leaned forward. "And you've actually met them?" I couldn't stop an undertone of wonder from creeping into my voice.
She nodded. "Guess I should have kept quiet. I should leave as soon as I can. I've offended him, and, well..." She trailed off.
"You're as scared of him as he is of you."
"Does that help?"
"I don't think he'd believe you if you told him."
Twilight sat back on her haunches, and her ears drooped. "I guess I can't be angry with him," she said. "I've known a lot of pon—um, people—who get ideas in their heads, and won't be rational or reasonable about them. And someone with a book collection can't be all bad."
"You and him would get along, you know," I said, "if you love literature as much as you seem to." This was true, and I felt a little pang of sadness about it. Adams did not have many friends.
The creak and slam of a screen door came from outside the kitchen. Adams marched into the room.
Two pairs of eyes followed him. He ignored us.
He walked to the counter drawers, opened one, and withdrew a long knife.
The kitchen's fluorescent light glinted off its edge.
He turned to the refrigerator, opened it, and withdrew a bag of carrots. He then put a handful of these on a cutting board and began chopping them into large chunks.
I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding.
Adams put the carrot sticks on a plate and placed it on the kitchen table, along with a bowl of water. He turned and stalked down to the basement, the entrance to which was between the kitchen and foyer.
There was a pregnant pause.
Twilight rose, and walked to the table.
"I guess this is a good sign," I said, following her.
She nodded, and picked up one of the sticks with the same weird telekinetic ability she had used before. Adams had not peeled the carrots, but if this bothered Twilight, she did not show it.
"Even so," she said between bites, "I still think I should leave as soon as I can. It's really too bad, but if I don't know anything about the people here, and they seem to already know some things about unicorns, and they've made their minds up..." She levitated the bowl and sipped at it, like a human would from a cup.
But we didn't already know, I thought. Nothing in the story Twilight had told, nor in the way she had spoken or acted, matched any mythology I had read about. In fact...
In a flash of insight, the inkling that had tickled the back of my mind burst into my consciousness. "Excuse me, Twilight." I rose, and hurried to the room where Adams kept the laptop he used for correspondence.
* * *
"She's not biblical."
"What?"
"Here—look."
I had found Adams sitting at the basement workbench, flipping back and forth between pages in the Bible and reading them by the glow of a trouble light. Now, I held up the laptop and pointed to one paragraph in particular.
"Right here. The King James translation was wrong. The Hebrew word was 're'um', which translates to 'auroch.' That was a subspecies of large cattle."
Adams said nothing, but stared at the screen, his eyes flitting across the paragraph once, twice, three times. The corners of his mouth turned down. Despite everything, I felt a little sorry for him.
"Well," he said at last, "She's something." There was no positive inflection in his words.
I decided to press the logical conclusion. "So, there's no reason for any unpleasant behavior."
"Never said there was." His voice had a grouchy undertone, as if he was annoyed at having to explain the obvious.
The book on the bench still lay open, and he turned back to it, and resumed leafing through.
"I think I'll let her stay in my house," I said, "until she can leave."
Adams looked out the basement's small ground-level window. "Weather's still rough."
* * *
Twilight and I stepped into the storm, and out of habit I made to lean into the wind. But there was another flash of magenta, and I found myself inside a transparent, luminous sphere that deflected the wind and rain. Bemused, I stared for a moment at the drops running down the field's outer edge, then looked at Twilight, whose horn again glowed.
She smiled a little at my perplexed expression, and gestured with a foreleg. "Shall we?"
"This station doesn't have a spare dwelling," I said as we walked. "But these houses were built for families, so there's plenty of room. I keep a cot and some sheets handy in case we need to put someone up for a while."
"Thank you very much," she said. "Hey, what's in there?" From an outbuilding close to my house, there came a constant low rumbling.
"The engine room," I said.
"What kind of engines?"
"Diesel."
"Never heard of it." She pointed her snout at the building. "May I see them?"
"You'd have to get the okay from Adams," I said.
Twilight did not press the issue.
As we entered my basement's door, Twilight lowered the weather shield bit by bit, like someone folding an umbrella while bringing it indoors. Inside, she looked to and fro at the gear and various junk arranged around the walls and under the stairs: tools, work benches, scrap timber, flotsam from beaches, and so on.
"That's interesting," she said. "You have a lot of the same tools we do." She put a hoof on a sledgehammer leaning against the near wall. "Yours are bigger, though."
"Are you cold?" It had only just occurred to me.
"Just a little," she said, turning to me. "Why?"
"The spare clothes won't fit you. But I'm guessing your people normally go naked."
Twilight cocked an eyebrow. "Is that unusual here?"
For a moment, I considered how to answer this. "We always wear clothes," I said, "except when bathing, or... doing things clothes get in the way of." I had never been comfortable talking about such matters. I started up the stairs and motioned for her to follow me.
My house's floor plan was much like Adams's, but since mine was built on a small hill, and was not quite as deep-set into the ground, my main floor afforded an excellent view of the land and sea around Cook Point. But at the moment, the only clear images were the rain pelting the windows, and the beams from the light tower as they circled around and around through the early morning darkness.
Twilight's eyes brightened when she saw the nearly full bookshelf next to the largest window, and the sea charts that covered much of the walls. She turned to me with an expression that implicitly said, "Can I, please?"
"Help yourself," I said.
She trotted to the shelf and eyed the selection like a starving man given a menu. "I guess it makes sense that lighthouse keepers would have personal libraries."
"Out here, the mind stagnates without them," I said.
A hardcover volume glowed magenta and floated down toward my guest.
"To Kill a Mockingbird," I said. "Good choice. Adams gave me that, when he was done with it."
Mockingbird still hovered next to Twilight's head as she turned to respond. "He's not really as mean as he acts, is he?"
"Not once you get to know him," I said. "He just has a few hangups." At that moment, exhaustion caught up to me without warning, and I put a hand on the doorway to steady myself. "Um, listen. I bet you're tired, and my shift doesn't start until noon. I'll set up the cot, we'll both get some sleep, and we'll sort everything out during the day."
"Great!" Twilight said. "What a relief. I was afraid you didn't even have daylight in this part of this world."
I chuckled a bit at this as I made my way to the spare room. In the back of my mind, I wondered if my visitor was a dream or hallucination that would vanish by dawn.
In a few minutes, the accommodations were in order, and I bade Twilight a good rest. She put a forehoof on the cot, then paused and turned to me.
"Hey," she said, "uh, there's no tactful way to ask this, but what do you call yourselves? Your species, I mean."
"Humans," I said.
"'Humans...'" She rolled the word around in her mouth. "Thanks. That was driving me crazy."
Despite my exhaustion, I found myself wide awake when I reached my own bed in the room across the hall. I switched on the reading lamp on the bedside table. There were six books on that table, and my hand happened to fall upon the large one with the cross on the cover. I cracked it at a random page, and read the first lines my eyes found.
...And I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, "Come and see." And I saw, and behold, a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given to him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
I closed it. I switched off the lamp. I lay awake in the dark, and turned the last few hours' events over in my head.
It was almost too much to comprehend. In a short span of time, everything I knew had been turned inside-out, and I could not decide whether to mourn the simpler past, or look forward to whatever the future would hold. For better or worse, it would be interesting. In the meantime, I had to wait, and that was the worst part of it all. I doubted things could truly go back to the way they had been, but I did not know enough to be certain.
My visitor had given me no logical reason to fear her, but in the dark, alone with my thoughts, I found myself wishing there was a lock on my bedroom door.