MADELEINE'S HANDS dig deeper, searching for a tin of pastilles, a pair of opera glasses, the buckle from a stagehand's belt. It would be lovely to find something useful, something with which she could begin: like a nail. The earth feels cool as she shovels through it. But then, there in the soil, is something warm. And twisting. It wriggles against her with curiosity, or possibly affection. It is not, she hopes, a worm. She would not like to have such a humble thing attached to her. For when she moves her hands through the dirt, it follows.
If she pulls herself rudely enough from the ground, if she stamps her feet and flaps her arms and trembles all over like a tambourine, then perhaps the worm will think better of the arrangement, and leave her alone.
Madeleine shakes so hard that the sky turns colors. She wants to make herself clear to her new appendage. She shakes so hard that even once she stands still, the world keeps tilting, fireworks keep bursting, her limbs stay unfamiliar to her, and when she lifts her dirty hands before her face, she does not recognize them. Her paddles, which have taken her to places she would never otherwise have seen, have disappeared. Her two great mitts! In their place she finds ten wiggling digits: slender and stretching and bumping into one another in their newness. How funny, Madeleine thinks, to go looking for a little knife, and then a nail, and to find instead, in the cool black soil, her fingers.