"Go!"
And as he still hovered on the fringes of the group, "Go!" the men shouted again.
One of them bent down, took a stone, threw it.
"Go, go, go!"
There was a shower of stones.
Bleeding, he ran away into the darkness.
From the red-lit kiva came the noise of singing.
The last of the boys had climbed down the ladder.
He was all alone.
All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of the mesa.
The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight.
Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon.
The bruises hurt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight.
At the edge of the precipice he sat down.
The moon was behind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death.
He had only to take one step, one little jump. ... He held out his right hand in the moonlight.
From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing.
Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light.
Drop, drop, drop.
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow ...
He had discovered Time and Death and God.
"Alone, always alone," the young man was saying.
The words awoke a plaintive echo in Bernard's mind.
Alone, alone ...
"So am I," he said, on a gush of confidingness.
"Terribly alone."
"Are you?" John looked surprised.
"I thought that in the Other Place ... I mean, Linda always said that nobody was ever alone there."
Bernard blushed uncomfortably.
"You see," he said, mumbling and with averted eyes, "I'm rather different from most people, I suppose.
If one happens to be decanted different ..."
"Yes, that's just it." The young man nodded.
"If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.
They're beastly to one.
Do you know, they shut me out of absolutely everything?
When the other boys were sent out to spend the night on the mountains-you know, when you have to dream which your sacred animal is-they wouldn't let me go with the others; they wouldn't tell me any of the secrets.
I did it by myself, though," he added.
"Didn't eat anything for five days and then went out one night alone into those mountains there."
He pointed.
Patronizingly, Bernard smiled.
"And did you dream of anything?" he asked.
The other nodded.
"But I mustn't tell you what."
He was silent for a little; then, in a low voice, "Once," he went on, "I did something that none of the others did: I stood against a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus on the Cross."
"What on earth for?"
"I wanted to know what it was like being crucified.
Hanging there in the sun ..."
"But why?"
"Why?
Well ..." He hesitated.