He rose.
The flat, smooth, climbing quality of it — and she was gripping him with everything she had, her legs wrapped, her hands at his forearms, her face at his shoulder with the specific, height-afraid, not-letting-go quality of a woman who had been carried before and was not yet past the part where carrying meant falling.
The courtyard got smaller below them.
Her daughter got smaller.
She was watching her daughter's face go small with the specific, amber-eyed, watching-it-shrink quality of a woman who knew what the face below her looked like because she had worn that face herself in this same courtyard.
She was crying again.
The flat, quiet, not-making-sound crying of someone who had returned to the crying after a brief interval and was doing it at the specific, low, not-going-to-stop-for-a-while register.
He did not say anything.
He held her.
He carried her higher.
