I was asleep and then suddenly awake, all parts of me. Getting up, I played the fiddle softly for a few minutes, then went downstairs past her door.
Listening at the keyhole, I could hear the dog’s paws trembling on the floor as she raced through a dream forest chasing a hare. She houghed a little, then settled. I could not hear her mistress, though, and while I longed to tap on the door, to go into the room, which would be hot with Sparrow’s breath, I dared not. She needed the healing sleep.
So I tiptoed outside, sat for a bit on the front stoop, all a-tremble. Looking up at the moon, the stars, Mars with its bloody halo, I promised myself not to think on my father, lest it call him to me. But I sniffed the air. It was free of everything except the scent of Sparrow—heather and heat.
I wiped a hand across my brow because I was sweating profusely even though the night air was cool. So I decided to walk swiftly around the garden in the hope that the odors would take me out of my fevered longing.
The ground was still warm beneath my bare feet, the overturned earth comfortable between my toes. In the small, puzzling breeze, the smells of the newly planted flowers and herbs were almost overwhelming. But then the arum, brought hungrily to life under the moon, forced its violent, acrid smell into my nostrils. I could feel it traveling down into my throat. Dragon Root. Wild Turnip. Cuckoopint. Devil’s Ear. It was all of that and more. For some reason I began to weep, though the way a dog does, without actual tears.
“Boy, why are you crying?” She whispered it, the sound caressing my ears.
I spun around. Sparrow was standing there, haloed by moonlight, in a long, white, sleeveless, slightly tattered nightgown, the neck scooped low in front. I could see the mounds of her breasts, and below the shadow of her pubic hair. The faded tattoos on her arms took on an unearthly look, as if the snaky forms were beckoning to me.
“What makes you think I’m crying?” I asked.
“Sorry. It’s a line from a book I love.” She smiled. I could not tell if she was mocking me or simply stating a fact.
“What book?”
“A book called Peter Pan. I was given it in one of the twenty or so foster homes I was put in. The only halfway decent one, actually. I took the book with me when I ran away.” She smiled. “I always ran away.”
I stepped a moment closer to her, hoping, praying she would not run away now. “Do you still have the book?”
She didn’t step back. “Of course not. That was years ago.”
“I thought you were asleep, that the fiddle might have soothed you enough to . . .”
“I needed to think. I was sitting on the dark side of the porch when you came out. I watched you walk out into the garden.”
I hadn’t smelt her. Or rather, I thought I was carrying the smell from upstairs. I hadn’t even heard her. What kind of a tracker . . . ? It was that bloody arum that fuddled me.
Well, no more, I thought, taking another step toward her. Now I could truly smell her, the heather, the blood under the fragile shield of skin. The sour/sweet smell between her legs, wet, welcoming. I smiled back thinking that the heat was not just coming from me. She was as aroused as I.
And then she pushed into my opening arms and we kissed, mouths open, tongues thrusting, until we were both so dizzy with the kisses, we sank down into one of the furrows, first she on top of me, then me on top of her.
I waited till she had opened entirely like a flower, pushed her gown above her knees, so tight and taut from my desire and the arum and the moon and the heather smell, I thought I would burst before entering her.
“I am a . . .” she whispered, “I never before . . .”
But I already knew. Virgins simply smell different, new, honest. And then her legs went around my back and we were both ready. I was on my knees and about to . . .
She screamed.
Someone tumbled across my shoulders. There was a startled laugh. A shout.
Sparrow pushed herself away from all of us, her gown once again covering her long, beautiful legs, and she was away, like a deer in the forest pursued by dogs, though none of us—not me or the old lady or the Jack—tried to follow.