the mountain had turned upside down in the rain, like a branch floating in a swollen stream, and gertrude was walking through the clouds with her favorite sheep, the one which had been carried off by a wolf the previous winter.
the old woman was a rock and was waiting for her on the other side of the mountain.
the rain was not getting them wet, but they had to stay on the clouds to keep it from doing so.
suddenly the sheep turned into a gray cat and the clouds disappeared.
saint james and the archangel and a third person - a young woman in a long blue dress - appeared out of the rain. saint james pointed to gertrude and the other two laughed.
gertrude woke up. she immediately forgot the dream, as she always did. nor did she wonder "was it a dream?" she never did.
something was pressed up against her - not a sheep or a dog.
it was dark - pitch dark. she was in a hut, and could hear a very light rain beating on the roof of the hut.
she remembered she had accepted the offer of denise, the sheep-shearing girl, to spend the night in her hut. it was denise who was pressed up against her, with her left arm across gertrude's back. they were both lying on a straw pallet in the middle of the hut.
there were no windows in the hut, and only one door, which must have been shut tightly as no light was coming in from the edges of it.
gertrude gently pushed denise's arm off of herself, and sat up in the darkness.
she had never slept so close to another person, when the old woman was alive they would sometime sleep together in the hut on winter nights but with gertrude in a corner and the old woman in front of the door.
she remembered denise giving her some food on a plate and herself eating more than she had ever eaten at one time in her life before. and denise laughing at her because she ate so little.
and denise had given her a little cup of what she called wine. gertrude had heard of wine before, but had never tasted it.
she remembered denise talking. and talking and talking and talking.
and then something else had happened. she could not remember exactly what.
gertrude either remembered things or she did not.
denise had kissed her a couple of times, she remembered that much.
something strange had happened. life was strange - gertrude accepted that. but what had happened, whatever it was, was really strange.
stranger than the old woman dying. or her favorite sheep being carried off by the wolf. stranger than meeting st james, or the archangel.
suddenly the room was filled with bright light. gertrude was blinded, and threw her hands up in front of her face.
when she was able to adjust her eyes to the light and lower her hands she saw someone standing before her. for a second she thought it must be denise, but then she saw it was the young woman with the blue dress from the dream, who had laughed when st james had pointed to gertrude.
denise had not awakened. this frightened gertrude, much more than the appearance of the young woman in blue.
was she dead? gertrude reached back and touched denise's arm.
"why are you touching her?" the young woman asked her in a sharp voice - the sharpest and clearest voice gertrude had ever heard.
gertrude stared up at her. "i wanted to see if she was alive."
"she is alive. do not worry about her. pay attention to me."
"who are you?"
"you do not know who i am?"
"no."
the young woman laughed. "so what they told me was true. but you do know, do you not, that you are wicked?"
"no, i do not. i do not know what that means."
"it means that you are damned."
gertrude did not know what that meant either. she looked back at denise again. how could she not wake up?
"i told you to look at me, not her."
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