So the Sevens returned to Instruction, and their Instructor did her best to impart to them the knowledge that she believed to be suitable and worthwhile. So far as Katharine was concerned, though, it was wasted effort; when she left the school that afternoon, she remembered nothing that her Instructor had said during those last three hours. Her mind was too full of the strange, frightening, wonderful reminder that had broken so mysteriously into her afternoon's routine.

I wandered lonely as a cloud… What was a cloud, she wondered? What were vales and hills, what were trees, and stars, and waves? What was a lake, and a breeze, and a bay? Above all, what were daffodils? The reminder had been all about them, and they were clearly important, but Katharine couldn't begin to guess what they were. All she knew was that they were golden – and she knew what gold was, it was a kind of soft metal that you made wires out of. Maybe a daffodil was some kind of a wire – but no, that didn't make sense. Why would you have ten thousand wires all in the same place? And, if you did, they would be too heavy to flutter, wouldn't they?

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze… There was another strange word, dancing. There were so many strange words in that reminder – but it wasn't just nonsense, she was sure of that. She knew what it was like to make up words that didn't mean anything; she and all her classmates had spent a day doing it as Threes, as an object lesson in why precision of language was important, and they hadn't produced anything like the reminder. Their words had just been silly; the words of the reminder were…

"Beautiful," she said aloud.

Her friend Ophelia, who was walking home with her, turned and stared at her in puzzlement. "What?"

Katharine jumped slightly; she'd been so occupied with her thoughts that she'd almost forgotten that Ophelia was there. "Oh, nothing," she said.

"But you said something," said Ophelia. "A word, I think. Something about being full."

"Beautiful," said Katharine again.

"That's right," said Ophelia. "What does it mean? I never heard that word before."

"I'm not sure," said Katharine, trying to think where she herself had heard it. "It's what the reminder was, I think."

Ophelia's eyes widened slightly, and her lips grew tight and pursed for a moment. "You probably shouldn't say it, then," she said. "I don't think we should be talking about that reminder." (She didn't ask which one, though there had been several that day.)

"Why not?" said Katharine. "There wasn't anything bad about it."

"Yes, there was," said Ophelia. "It's not the kind of reminder a Speaker's supposed to give. When people do what they're not supposed to, that's bad."

This was very good logic for a Seven of the Community, and Katharine didn't quite know how to answer it at first. But she was sure the reminder wasn't bad, and so she thought furiously in silence for a minute or two as the two of them continued walking. Then, abruptly, she turned to Ophelia and said, "But who was supposed to give the reminder, then?"

"Nobody," said Ophelia with certainty. "It wasn't a real reminder. It didn't mean anything, so it didn't have to be…"

"Of course it meant something!" Katharine exclaimed.

"What?" Ophelia challenged.

"Well… I don't know," Katharine admitted. "But it meant something. Otherwise, it wouldn't be beautiful."

"Stop that!" said Ophelia, sounding irritated. "We're not Twos anymore, Katharine. We're not supposed to use words when we don't know what they mean."

"But I know what it means," said Katharine, helplessly. "I just can't explain it."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know anything that's beautiful except the reminder!" said Katharine. "I didn't even know there was a beautiful before I heard the reminder! And you don't like the reminder, so how can I tell you what beautiful means?" And she dropped her head to blink back a sudden onrush of tears.

Ophelia was silent for a long moment. Katharine was almost afraid to look up at her at first; she supposed that Ophelia would be angry with her for shouting at her, and she didn't like to see her friends being angry with her. When she finally raised her head, though, what she saw in Ophelia's face wasn't anger at all. It looked more like fear – like the fear that had been in her mother's face when she had been a Four, and had cut her hand with the kitchen knife.

"Ophelia?" she said uncertainly. "Is something wrong? I apologize if I made you unhappy."

Ophelia swallowed. "I accept your apology," she said, her voice slightly unsteady for the first time that Katharine could remember. "But I think I should… that is… I want to go back and ask the Instructor something."

"Oh," said Katharine. "All right. Do you want me to go with you?"

"No," said Ophelia, a little too quickly. "No, that's all right, Katharine. You go on ahead, and maybe I'll catch up with you later."

Katharine nodded, and Ophelia turned and walked as quickly back toward the school as she could without actually running. Katharine watched her go for a few minutes, frowning slightly; she appreciated Ophelia's politeness in not actually saying that she wanted to get away from her, but it still made her a little unhappy to realize that that was clearly what she had meant.

As Katharine turned and continued her walk back to her family's dwelling, she thought about her altercation with Ophelia, and the strange word that had started it. Beautiful. The words of the reminder were beautiful. What did that mean?

It didn't just mean that they were precise, or clear. They were those things, she was sure; even though she didn't know what half of them meant, she felt certain that they conveyed definite ideas, and that nobody who knew their meanings would have been confused about the way they were used. In fact, there were some of them that she saw herself were unusually precise – gay, for instance. She'd never heard the word before, but she could tell from the whole sense of the reminder that it meant happy – and a special kind of happiness, Katharine thought: a full, carefree kind of happiness, not about this thing or that thing, but about everything at once. (She wondered if she had ever been gay, or if she'd ever met anyone else who was feeling gay. She wasn't sure, but she hoped she had.)

But the reminder's language wasn't beautiful just because it was precise (though she was fairly sure that, if it hadn't been precise, it wouldn't have been beautiful). There was something else about it that was even more important – which, to Katharine, seemed a strange thing. How could anything about language be more important than whether it was precise? Precision was a measure of how well your words matched your thoughts, and the whole purpose of language was to communicate what you were thinking. What else could words be for?

But it seemed that there was more. Her Instructor's lessons, for instance, were always precise, but Katharine had never wanted to repeat them to herself over and over again, to savor the feeling of them inside her mouth, or to listen to someone else say them and simply delight in their sound. About the reminder, however, that was precisely how she felt; indeed, as she walked along, she kept catching herself whispering portions of it under her breath, even though there was no-one else around to listen.

Maybe beautiful meant that it brought pleasure, then. ("And then my heart with pleasure fills…" she whispered.) But no, that wasn't right, either. The reminder clearly hadn't brought pleasure to Ophelia, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. Besides, if something was important only because it brought you pleasure, that meant that you were more important than it was, and that wasn't the way it was with the reminder. The reminder was much more important than she was; if she had to cut her hand again, or run away and never see her mother and father again, so that the reminder could keep being beautiful, that would be the right thing to do.

She shivered at that thought, and hoped that it would never become real. Maybe Ophelia was right to be a little afraid of the reminder, and not be sure whether it was good for the Speaker to have given it. Maybe it was dangerous – or not dangerous, exactly, but too important for just anyone to hear. The Elders were probably wise enough to know about it safely; it wouldn't change their lives, or make them unable to do what they were supposed to. But for the ordinary residents of the Community, maybe it was different.

But then the words of the reminder swept back into her mind, and she laughed aloud at her own absurdity. Clearly, if she could think such things, she still didn't understand what it meant for something to be beautiful. How could it be bad for someone to know about something beautiful? Everyone should know about something beautiful. In fact, the best thing would be for everyone and everything to be beautiful – but she didn't suppose that could ever happen. Which was too bad.

And now she was almost to her dwelling. As she hurried the last few steps down the path, the door opened and her mother came out, a worried look on her face. "There you are, Katharine," she said. "Are you all right?"

Katharine smiled, and nodded. "Yes, Mother, I'm fine," she said.

Her mother glanced vaguely down the path. "Where's Ophelia?" she said. "She's usually with you when you get back."

"She went back to ask the Instructor something," said Katharine.

"Oh," said her mother. "Well, I hope that didn't upset you too much. I know how unpleasant it can be to be left alone."

Katharine shook her head. "No, I didn't mind the solitude," she said.

She hadn't meant to use that word, but her mind was so full of the reminder that it slipped out before she could stop it. She winced, and wasn't really surprised when her mother paled and licked her lips. "Yes, well, you'd better come inside now," she said. "Dinner's almost ready, and we don't want… dinner's almost ready."

Katharine nodded, and solemnly climbed the steps to the door, wondering what she was going to do when they reached the sharing of feelings.