III

Nottin gh am Heights Elementary School Tuesday, August 27 - Saturday, September 21, 1991

Russell

RUSSELL STROKED THE GLOW-IN-THE-DARK BATMAN symbol on his new T-shirt as he rehearsed what he would say when he had to share his summer vacation with his new fifth grade class. And where did you go on your summer vacation? Russell rolled his eyes. He could just hear the teacher’s sing-song first day nicey-nicey voice. As if by the time the twentieth kid told about a trip to the beach the teacher wasn’t bored out of her mind. I worked all summer for my stepmother’s parents. They hate me; I hate them. I had a great summer. I hate my stepmother. She hates me.

He looked over at Jeanie who was driving him to his first day at his new school, Nottingham Heights Elementary. She had taken Russell shopping for new school clothes on Saturday, at the Kmart in Garner. She had at first refused to let him get the Batman T-shirt, but had given in. Even so, this morning Jeanie had not been happy to see Russell wearing it.

“You are hell-bent on wearing that T-shirt on your first day, aren’t you? Russell, we got you some nice clothes for school and you want to wear that. If that don’t beat all. Haven’t you got any sense? I swear, I don’t know why I bother. I should have never let you talk me into buying it. I treat you as if you were my own . . .”

She had kept talking all through breakfast and out into the car. Not even another fire in the kitchen trash can, a small one this time, slowed her down. Damn, if that wasn’t the strangest thing–I wonder if there is something in the can’s metal, maybe I should call the fire department—come on, Russell, let’s go, it’s out, get in the car . . . Russell wondered if she slowed down to breathe. He was trying hard not to listen to anything she had to say to him on the way to school. Now she was talking about how tired she was with the twins coming and all and she couldn’t always drive Russell to school, but since it was the first day and all, well. Russell nodded and uh-umed and tried to focus on the radio. It was on a top 40 station and he wanted to turn it up, but the last time he had done that in the car his father had popped him.

Focusing on the radio didn’t work; he could still hear Jeanie talking. Maybe closing his eyes and trying to remember last night’s dream would shut her out. He had had another good dream, not like the ones he usually had. Sometimes he would be in front of his class in his underwear or in nothing. Or the teacher would be yelling and yelling as he cowered under his desk. He would be sitting in a reading group, stumbling over words in the simplest book, words he knew he knew. Or his father would be chasing him through the house, the yard, into the woods. And lately there were dreams that left him with stained sheets in the morning. Russell looked over at Jeanie as casually as possible. Six months pregnant. She looked like she had swallowed half-a-watermelon. Looking at Jeanie and thinking about her being pregnant and how she got pregnant made Russell feel the way he felt when he woke up from the stained-sheet dreams. He hadn’t been sure where each part fit but after discovering a stack of old Playboys and Penthouses in the corner of the attic, he now had a pretty good idea. Looking at the pictures and at Jeanie and thinking about her and his father made Russell want to touch himself. And that made him think of other things, of things that scared him, that it was the naked men in Penthouse that he had looked at the longest. No, he would just have to be sure he was looking at naked women the next time, that’s all, that would do it. As for who was in the sheet-staining dreams—no, he wouldn’t remember. He couldn’t even get his mind around that. He was a boy, so it was impossible, end of story.

Russell shook his head. Last night’s dream hadn’t been one of the sheet-stainers. It had started with his father chasing him, yelling and throwing rocks. Russell had run into the woods and hadn’t stopped running until he came to a meadow and could no longer hear his father’s voice. And as he stood there, Russell knew he had escaped from a bad dream into a good one, as all around the edges of the meadow were the white trees. A winged horse stood in the meadow grass, waiting for him, and said for Russell to climb on his back. They had flown high above the trees and Russell could remember the cold air on his chest and in his hair. He could feel the horse’s sides against his legs and hear the beating of the great wings. And the horse’s voice: throaty and rough.

He had found bruises on the insides of his thighs this morning in the shower. Russell had examined them in amazement, even pushing at them to the point he had cried out in pain, as the water beat on his head.

I was really there.

“It’s going to be another hot, sticky day, with highs in the mid-nineties, and lows tonight in the lower seventies . . .”

“We’re there. Russell, at least run a comb through your hair,” Jeanie said.

Russell blinked and sat up to read the neatly lettered sign on the hill just above where they were parked: NOTTINGHAM HEIGHTS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. The building looked like every other school Russell had ever seen, in Oklahoma, Kansas, and North Carolina. It was one story, brick, with two wings spreading out from the center. A limp American flag hung on the flagpole. Tall pine trees grew around the building and brown needles and pine cones covered the side walk and the grass. Pine needle littered steps led up to the front door. Evergreen shrubbery lined the sidewalk and hugged the walls. Maybe I’ll tell them I went to the beach for two weeks and got up every day to go swimming and ride the waves and fish off the pier and look for sea shells and build sand castles and at night we’d go out to a seafood restaurant, Captain Bill’s, for a big dinner and ...

“I swear, Russell, will you wake up? I ain’t got all day,” Jeanie snapped, her hands on her hips, from the top of the stairs. He tried to walk as fast as she was, but he couldn’t. Russell was walking into a new school and each step was bringing him closer to the questioning and frowning teachers and the laughing and whispering students in his worst dreams. He wasn’t entering a safe place. He almost bolted when the front door closed behind them.

“Wait here,” Jeanie said, and after pushing back her blond hair, went into the office. Russell sat down at a round table between the front door and the office door and turned to face a line of kindergartners looking him over. Russell was sure they were whispering about how big his feet were. At least they didn’t know he was twelve and in the fifth grade. The kindergarten teacher came back from wherever she had been and stood in front of the line, one hand high in the air, the other shushing. The kids copied her and trotted off obediently down the hall. Russell looked into the office. Jeanie was talking with a small, dark woman, her hands moving like birds just startled by a hunter. If Jeanie’s hands were cut off, Russell thought, she wouldn’t be able to talk.

He could her muffled voice through the glass. “You know, Miz Bigelow, the child failed kindergarten and first grade ’cause his daddy and mama split up. That woman drove his daddy crazy, what with all her boyfriends and one day she just up and took the baby and left, didn’t say kiss my foot . . .”

Looking straight down I could see into the forest. The golden and silvery leaves and the white trunks were shining in the moonlight. A few trees, like dark flowers in the silver and white, had green leaves, so dark a green they were black. Here and there, I saw fir trees, sort of like spruces, blue-green-silver. Two moons shone in the sky ...

Finally Jeanie stopped talking and started filling out and signing forms. A few minutes later, she and the small, dark lady came out into the lobby. “Russell, this is Miss Bigelow, the principal here,” Jeanie said. “She’ll tell you which bus to take to get home. You know where the key is. Stay inside and do your homework when you get home. I’ll get home about when your daddy does, around six or so. Behave yourself, bye.”

Russell rolled his eyes when she finally left for Food Lion. He let himself relax the tiniest bit—but not too much. He couldn’t in a school; he wasn’t safe. Miss Bigelow closed the door behind Jeanie and turned to face Russell. He was alone with her and the silence. The halls were empty. Inside the office, a black lady, Trudy Anderson according to her name plate, sat behind a paper-cluttered desk and typed, the phone cradled on her shoulder. Russell looked up at Miss Bigelow, his hands tight in his lap beneath the table. She really was little; Russell could tell he was already taller. She had short, streaked blond hair that somebody seemed to have whacked off and leathery skin. Miss Bigelow had a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other and she was nodding her head as she gave Russell a sharp appraising look.

“Well, now that we have checked each other out, are you ready to go to your new classroom?” Miss Bigelow asked in a quick voice. “I’m not gonna bite you and you aren’t gonna bite me—you aren’t, are you? Ready?”

“Uh, no, I mean, I’m ready. Yeah, let’s go,” he said. Russell followed Miss Bigelow down the hall. She talked a mile a minute about the school: here was the library, over here was the computer lab, the art room, this was a second grade, and Nottingham children were expected to behave, walk on the right side of the hall, and when a teacher raised her hand, that was the signal to be quiet. Got that? Her tennis shoes made no sound on the linoleum. (Russell had never seen any teacher, let alone a principal, wear tennis shoes at school.) All he could hear was her voice until she opened a door at the end of the hall, Mrs. Collins’s fifth grade, here we are.

Russell felt like an idiot standing in front of the class while the principal and Mrs. Collins huddled together over his thick folder. He knew every kid in the room was watching him. So look at something else, huh? Stare out the window, why doncha? Just leave me alone, okay? Russell stared back, especially at a brown-haired girl wearing glasses in the second row. She was small and slight and looked really smart. You could tell. After she looked away, Russell knew he could make her miserable. It would be easy.

A very small blond-haired boy looked at Russell in frank recognition, as if he had always known Russell and had just seen him the day before. Russell had never seen anybody with eyes like the boy had, almost the color of a dog’s, a golden brown.

“Third new one this morning, Mrs. Collins. Mrs. Markham got the first one, filled her up, you got the last two. Have a good first day, Russell; I’ll check on you this afternoon,” Miss Bigelow said and she left, closing the door behind her.

“Class, we just met Malachi; this is Russell White. Russell, why don’t you sit over there by Malachi in the third row. Mrs. Perry, could you get Russell his books?” Mrs. Collins said. Russell saw an older, grey-haired, heavy woman, in a bright flowered dress, heave herself up out of her chair in the back of the room. She smiled in his direction and he sat down by the funny-eyed Malachi who was very intently reading his spelling book.

Mrs. Perry looked like Miss McNeil, Russell thought. Almost just like her. He wondered if she would be as nice as Miss McNeil. From Thanksgiving to Easter, in first grade, Miss McNeil had been Russell’s teacher. She was a big, dark-haired woman who was con - stantly dieting. She ate celery sticks and peanut butter for snacks and Carnation Breakfast bars for lunch. Russell and his little brother had then been living with their grandmother. She took Russell to school his first day.

“This is my daughter’s boy, Russell,” his grandmother had said and left Russell at the door. (He had written his grandmother once after moving to North Carolina. The card had come back marked Addressee Deceased. He had sent a birthday card to his mother in Arizona at the same time; that card had come back marked Addressee Moved, No Forwarding Address.) Russell stood in the doorway for a long moment until Miss McNeil crossed the room and took him by the hand.

“Russell. Did you know your name means red-haired, like a fox? And your hair sure is red. We’re studying names right now. Let me show you a picture of a fox in this book. See, he lost his tail and he’s trying to get it back. He has to ask three people. to help,” she said and she sat down in a small chair in front of the blackboard. She patted a chair beside her and Russell sat down. “After Christmas, when we study Indians—there are lots of Indians in Oklahoma, you know—you can be Red Fox.” Russell leaned over to look at the book. He inhaled her peanut butter aroma.

Each day had been like that. Russell would wake up early and be out the door, zooming through breakfast to catch the bus. The wait on the playground before the first bell took forever. Miss McNeil was always there when he raced in the classroom door. He signed Red Fox on all his papers, printing in big block letters—

“Russell. Russell? You need to open your social studies book now. Put the rest in your desk. Now. Let’s get off to a good start, shall we?”

Russell sighed. Mrs. Collins was staring fixedly at him from her desk. He looked away quickly and pulled his social studies book out of the stack still on top of his desk. Her eyes were hard and cold and dark.

“First page, the bottom,” someone whispered.

It was the golden-eyed boy. Russell managed a half-smile in thanks and opened his book.

Jeff

Jeff’s seat was in the back of the room. Mrs. Markham, his new teacher, had been very apologetic about having to put him at the very back, but Jeff didn’t care. He liked it in the back, especially today his first day in a new school, the first day after summer vacation. He had sat in the back at his last school and the school before that. Jeff could be invisible in the back and dissolve into the pale green wall, where no one and nothing could touch him. When the teacher asked a question, she wouldn’t even see him. His last teacher hadn’t, until everything had happened, of course, and everybody knew. After that, he would look up to find her watching him. She would look away quickly, sighing guiltily.

He was pretty sure Mrs. Markham knew, too, but she wasn’t sneaking looks at him as if he were some strange bug dropped in her class.

Mrs. Markham’s class was having art. Earlier in the morning, Mrs. Markham had had sharing so everybody could tell the class about at least one thing they had done for summer vacation. When she had looked at Jeff, he had shook his head: no. It wasn’t that his foster parents, the Clarks, hadn’t taken Jeff swimming and to the movies, and even for one week, to the beach; rather it was that Jeff didn’t want to talk. Besides, for the rest of the summer, after leaving his father, Jeff had felt as if he were watching a very long, long movie, one in which his character seemed to have a very small part.

Jeff watched the art teacher, Miss Melton, as she passed out huge sheets of white drawing paper. He liked how smooth and clean the paper felt. Jeff carefully printed his name in the lower left-hand corner. She handed out crayons next and then started explaining just what today’s art project was . . . Jeff stood on the sand, on the crest of a dune; he was on the same beach. Above him was the same star-crowded sky as before. Jeff inhaled and then exhaled in a loud whoosh. In, out, in, out. There. Finally he started walking through the sand and the dune grass; he liked the wet way the grass licked at his leg.

“I wonder how this place looks in daylight,” Jeff whispered. He had never felt so safe as on this beach, but still Jeff knew things hid in the shadows and the corners and came out when the sun was down. And once they were out, there was no way to send the things back.

What was that shadow—a dragon, a flying dragon? Yes. Great bursts of yellow and orange flame shot out of the shadow’s mouth and its huge black wings blocked the stars. The dragon circled the beach and then landed half-way between the dunes and the surf. A black tidal pool was between the dragon and Jeff He watched as the dragon settled down, folding its wings and tucking in its tail. Its eyes glowed molten gold and bright sparks fell out of its mouth. He could hear some of the sparks hissing on the wet sand.

Jeff had no idea how long he stood there, watching the dragon watch him, its hot eyes half-open, hazy smoke from its nostrils blurring the air. There was nowhere to run—and how could he outrun a creature that could fly and breathe fire? The only place he could begin to be safe was in the water and the dragon lay right beside the pool and between Jeff and the sea. The dragon’s tail had come untucked and twitched back and forth, the way a cat’s tail would, drawing huge patterns in the sand. Its green scales glittered in the double moonlight and starlight.

Finally he made his way down the dune, slipping and sliding until he was on the hard-packed wet sand. He took another deep breath and walked toward the dragon—this was a dream, after all, wasn’t it? He couldn’t be hurt in a dream, could he? Not really, right? The water in the tidal pool came up to his knees and felt warm on his feet, like bath water. The dragon watched him as he waded across the pool. Jeff stopped, still in the pool, but now less than ten feet from the monster. Jeff was sure the dragon knew his name and all about him—even what had happened in the dark. How and why, Jeff had no idea.

“Okay, dragon, here I am. You aren’t going to eat me, are you?”

When the dragon spoke, its voice sounded the only way Jeff had thought a dragon could sound: low and deep, like slow thunder. “No, Human Boy, I am not going to eat you. I want you to look down in the water. What do you see?”

Jeff looked down to see his face in the dark water and wavery reflections of the two moons. He saw his black hair, all shaggy and rough about his face. The face that looked back was pale and his hazel eyes looked greener and deeper. His ears—what had happened to his ears? Both his ears were pointed. Jeff touched each point gently, pulled at each one—they were real. He traced the shapes of his ears with his fingers—what? His ears felt smooth—yet looked pointed. And he had felt the points.

“Dragon,” Jeff said and held up his hand to ask a question. The monster nodded and Jeff took a step forward and fell into the pool and kept falling. And falling, falling, through the water, through a close darkness. He couldn’t see or hear or touch anything, not even his hands, his own face. He tried to scream but found he had no voice or even a mouth. His corporeal self was gone. Finally, Jeff heard a sound, a loud tearing, and with a thud, he hit the floor and he could find his hands and feet, his head, and he could see. He was in his bedroom, on the floor, surrounded by his dinosaurs ...

“You must be the new boy Mrs. Markham was telling me about.”

Jeff looked up to see the art teacher standing over him. A blue pencil stuck out of her hair and green and red chalk was smeared on her cheek.

“May I see your drawing, Jeff? I don’t think I have ever seen anything quite like it.”

Jeff handed her his drawing and the woman held it out at arm’s length.

“Tell me about it, Jeff. Have you been to this beach before?”

“Just once, this summer, for the first time,” Jeff said very slowly. “I just drew what I remembered and added the dragon for fun.” Please don’t ask me any more questions, just give me my drawing back. Or you can have it; just don’t ask me any more questions.

“May I put this up for the rest of the class to see? It’s really good.”

Jeff shrugged; it didn’t matter what she did or what he might say. Adults always did whatever they wanted. Jeff sank back in his seat and watched as the art teacher showed the drawing to the class, talking about its strong colors and shapes and imagination. Jeff wanted to drop through the floor.

Russell

Monday morning the second week of school Russell woke up in the afterglow of another special dream: the white trees, the meadow, a flying horse, a centaur. The centaur had told him to do something; it would help him understand if he did it. Russell tried to remember as he stretched out in bed, light half on his face from the window, his feet pushing against the sheets, but the centaur’s words were gone. He got up and stretched again and looked out the attic window into a sky of grey and black clouds, pregnant with rain. If only he could remember.

Trying hard to remember, so hard he didn’t watch where he was going on the bus got Russell into a fight. And every bit of the glowy feeling left by the dream was gone when he found himself across the desk from Miss Bigelow. She was on the phone when the driver brought Russell into the office and gestured him into a chair where he sat and waited, staring around her office. A dark blue Duke mug with cold coffee sat on the corner of a coffee-stained desk calendar. File trays flanked the heavily written-on calendar on both sides. Papers and manila folders spilled out of the trays like magazines on a living room table. File cabinets, two or three umbrellas, a coat hanging on a rack. An enormous Blue Devil poster on the wall, and framed photographs of teachers standing on the front steps of the school. The phone call went on and on—an unhappy parent, the bus hadn’t even slowed down—and Russell started squirming in the chair. What would she do if he just got up and ran?

“Don’t even think about it, Russell, sit right there. No, no, not you, Mrs. McHannahan. I’ll take care of this, I’ll talk to the driver this afternoon. You’re welcome. Good-bye.”

Miss Bigelow hung up the phone and pushed back in her chair, picked up the bus discipline report, and then looked at Russell. “Well, this isn’t getting off to a good start, now, is it?” Miss Bigelow said, glaring at him over her dark-rimmed glasses. “It looks like you’re up to your old tricks again, now, doesn’t it? I’ve got a thick handful here of old bus disciplinary reports from your last two schools,” she added and flipped the current one onto her desk.

“Do you think your parents will be pleased to hear about this? And I am going to call them, Russell, I promise you that. We don’t have this kind of behavior at Nottingham Heights, Russell. Two more of these and you’ll be walking to school. Follow me?” She leaned further back in her chair, her hands steepled together. Russell wondered if she leaned back any further if the chair would flip over and send old Miz Bigelow flying through the window.

“Yeah.” Please don’t call Daddy. Maybe he won’t be home; maybe he will be out on a job. Maybe I can get home before he does and erase the answering machine and he’ll never know.

“Yeah what?”

“Yeah, you’re making yourself clear, Miz Bigelow.”

“Yes ma’am is what I was looking for. Go on to class, Russell.”

She didn’t even ask me what happened. She didn’t even ask me if it was my fault. That other kid started it. Same old crap.

Things didn’t get better in the classroom. Russell had left his homework on his night-table. He had been too busy trying to remember what the centaur had told him to do. He didn’t try to explain to Mrs. Collins, he didn’t think she would believe him, and besides, she was too busy delivering a speech on being responsible and getting off on the right foot and fulfilling one’s potential. She repeated a mind is a terrible thing to waste about three times. Russell sat stony-faced as she went on and on. He had heard it all before, even the wasted mind. Teachers must all read the same book. God, he hated her and this was only his fifth day in her room. If he had a cream pie to throw at her or maybe a trip wire between her desk and the door. Or a bucket of water on top of the door.

In the library Russell tried to trip Hazel to make himself feel better.

“First, last, and only warning, Russell,”Mrs. Perkins, the librarian said, her hands on her hips. When he yelled at the yellow-eyed boy with the funny name for looking at him, she blessed him out in front of the entire class. She was so hot and bothered by what Russell had done that she was sweating. But, then, Russell thought, not listening, waiting for his chance to speak, I’m sweating, too. It got real hot in here all of a sudden.

“But he was looking funny at me! He was—I swear he was, as if he knew me! You’re not being fair—”

The smoke alarm over the library door went off—so loud and piercing that everyone, including Mrs. Perkins, winced in pain, covered their ears. A few of the kids started crying and kept crying as the kids were herded out into the hall and back to their classroom.

But even with a reprieve in the library, by the end of the day Russell’s name was on the board with three checks beside it, thus guaranteeing a U for his weekly conduct grade (“And it’s only Monday and the second week of school, Russell; am I going to have to put you in a cage for the rest of the year?”) and a whipping from his father, phone call or no phone call. But the truly worst thing was that all the magical afterglow of the dream was gone, gone, gone. And he couldn’t even remember how the centaur sounded, let alone his words.

“I’m going to call your mother at work this afternoon, Russell. I will certainly have a lot to tell her,” Mrs. Collins said with a thin smile when his bus was called.

She’s my stepmother, you bitch. She’s not my real mother. I hate her and I hate you.

Russell thought Jeanie sounded a lot like Mrs. Collins that night at the dinner table. Jeanie probably memorized everything Mrs. Collins said word for word, he thought, as he pushed his food around his plate. “She said the boy is angry all the time, Larry. He talks back and is dis-ruptive in the classroom and gets into atterca—fights and he got in trouble on the bus today, too. He’s gotta ride that bus, Larry. I can’t run him out to school every day. I’m already late for work when I get sick in the mornings . . .”

“He don’t need no coun-ser-lor,” his daddy said when Jeanie finally ran out of Mrs. Collins’s words. “Boy, got anything to say for yerself? Don’t you know the hell how to behave? You wanna walk yer sorry ass to school? Huh? Answer me boy.”

“No.”

Even though this time his daddy used the buckle end of the belt Russell still managed not to cry out. He knew that not crying made his daddy hit him all the harder, but if Russell could keep back the tears until he was safe up in his attic room it would be a small victory. When he did finally get upstairs, Russell let himself cry until he was weak and tired. Then he sat up and gingerly walked over to his dresser and his Nativity scene. Outside he could see it was raining. The sky brightened every few minutes with lightning, throwing the trees into sharp, black silhouettes. The rumbling thunder sounded like rocks rolling down a mountain. He took each statue out. First the fox, then the two sheep, the cow, and the donkey. The shepherds, the three kings, and Mary and Joseph. The Baby he left in the manger.

I hate him. Russell put the shepherds and kings back in. Why didn’t she take me instead of Adam? I loved her the best. I’ve got homework to do. Then the sheep, the donkey. The cows and the fox. I hate him. Mary and Joseph. I think I have a test tomorrow. I hate him. Why is it so hot in here? The windows are open. It’s pouring down rain. It smells hot. Why can’t I remember what the centaur said? Time for some fresh grass for the manger.

 

“Well, Russell, to what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?” the librarian asked, her arms folded tightly across her chest. “Didn’t you tell me yesterday you would never set foot in a library again as long as you lived?”

Russell sighed. He knew this was going to happen. He considered telling her why he wanted some books. Russell shook his head. Mrs. Perkins wouldn’t believe he had had dreams two nights in a row in which a centaur had told him to go find books about his magic dreams.

“Miz Perkins, I’m sorry about yesterday; I apologize,” Russell said. Did she know there was a big stain on the carpet? “And, well, I want to read some books about centaurs and flying horses and dragons.” Russell finally looked up. Mrs. Perkins was smiling. She almost looked pretty when she smiled. Maybe she wasn’t going to give him too hard a time.

“Centaurs? Flying horses? Russell White, as I live and breathe, I never would have guessed it.”

“I really am sorry about yesterday, really. I really am.”

The librarian raised one eye skeptically. Finally she shook her head and laughed. Russell laughed, too, nervously.

“Okay, Russell. Centaurs, flying horses, and dragons. I think I have just the book for you. Let’s go over to the L’s in fiction.”

Russell followed her across the room, wishing he were invisible. He was sure the girls over by the dictionary, who were both in his room, were talking about him. One of them was that Hazel Richards who thought she was so smart. She had skipped a grade. They were probably telling each other Russell White was such a dummy he had failed two grades. He wished he had worn a clean T-shirt and jeans without holes in the knees. Or shorts—maybe he wouldn’t feel so hot then. But he had to wear jeans—so no one would see the bruises and cuts on his legs. The girls would laugh if they had seen: he’s so bad his daddy beats him. He had tried to wear his glow-in-the-dark Batman T-shirt but Jeanie had insisted it be washed. He pressed down his cowlick for the millionth time and listened to Mrs. Perkins.

“Here, Russell, try these two first: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian. They are the first two in a series. Let me see, I thought so. Here is something about centaurs in Prince Caspian. I’ll just stick this marker here for you. You don’t think they will be too hard, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Russell said as he leafed through the books, mentally cringing at how many words he saw. If I go slow, I’ll be okay, he thought. “The librarian at my last school, she read us some Greek stories and showed us The Hobbit at Christmas. I know a little about these kinds of stories.” I dream them all the time now.

“Well, good. Now, when you’ve finished these, I have some more I can show you about the same things. The Greek stories are over there in the 292’s,” she said, pointing toward a near corner.

“Thanks a lot for helping me.”

“You’re very welcome, Russell. And Russell, please wash your hands before you read, won’t you?”

Russell bit his lip to keep his quick, hot words inside. If he had been Red Fox the Indian he could have whacked her with a tomahawk. The animal Red Fox would have chomped on her leg. For a minute he had been liking her.

“Russell—what is wrong with that thing? Everybody out—go on, I’ll fix it, go on, hurry. Just hand me the cards, Russell, I’ll take care of them . . .”

The smoke alarm had gone off again. Beads of sweat trickled down Mrs. Perkins’s forehead.

Russell started reading the books as soon as he got back to class, opening Prince Caspian where Mrs. Perkins had put the bookmark. He read slowly, his lips moving as he sounded out the unfamiliar words: “... and after a pause, Caspian heard the sound of hoofs . . .”

“Russell. I think you have morning work to do, don’t you? Spelling sentences. Put the book up and get to work. I don’t want to have to tell you more than once.”

“... there came in sight the noblest creature Caspian had yet seen, the great Centaur, Glenstorm ... His flanks were glossy chestnut and the beard that covered his chest was golden red . . .” Just like in the dreams—

“Russell White, did you hear me? Put the book up and get to work. Now.”

“But, Miz Collins, it’s all in here, just like I dreamed—” Russell swallowed down the rest of his words.

“Russell. Put. The. Book. Up. Now.”

“All right, all right, I heard you the first time. I was just trying to read my books. You let Hazel read her books, why can’t I read mine, huh?” Russell glared hard at Hazel who quickly looked away and down into her library book, one hand covering her face. “And you let him, Mal-what’s-his-name, Yellow Eyes, read his book.” This time it was Russell who looked away first; for a moment Malachi’s funny eyes looked even harder than Miz Collins’s did.

“Hazel and Malachi happen to be done with their morning work. Put the book up.”

Russell slammed the two books into the bottom of his desk and jerked out his spelling book. He dropped it on the desktop.

“You aren’t fair,” he muttered and pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and slapped it down by the spelling book. He looked up at Mrs. Collins. Just how mad was she? Uh oh, she was standing up—now she was leaning over her desk. A strand of her blond hair fell across her very red face. The entire room was silent. Everybody was watching her and Russell, back and forth, like the tennis matches on TV. Russell felt the back of his neck get warm. He was sweating-why was he so hot?

“Russell, I have already given you fair warning.”

“I haven’t done anything, Miz Collins. I put up my library books and I got out my spelling book and a piece of paper, see? Now I’m gonna do my spelling, see?”

“Russell, I’ve had it. Put your name on the board with a check beside it. That makes twice this week, doesn’t it? Thank goodness you start Resource soon.”

He scrawled his name in big, droopy letters and then drew a lazy check by it. I hate you Miz Collins. I hate you I hate you I hate you. I just wanted to read a book. You don’t yell at anybody else for read - ing. That goody-goody Hazel gets away with everything. Russell stomped back to his seat and flipped open the spelling book. He wrote his name in the upper right hand corner, then Spelling, and September 4, 1991. There was a smudge on his notebook paper. He looked at his hands: they were dirty, after all. Russell carefully made a few more smudges in his spelling book. Then, even more carefully, he copied the fill-in-the-blank sentence from the book. I’ve got to be good. I want her to let me go back to the library.

 

Russell slipped out of the kitchen in the middle of his father and stepmother’s arguing over how clean she didn’t keep the house. His father had started banging on the table as Russell closed the kitchen door. It was an old argument and Russell wondered why his father cared so much about how clean the house was when his work room was a trash heap. Larry White sometimes even wore the same T-shirt for over a week and his pickup truck was a nest of gum and candy wrappers, old beer and soft drink cans, and cigarette butts, which had spilled out of the ash tray. And tonight, as he banged on the table, Larry White had on a T-shirt yellow with brick dust and dirt ringed the fingernails on the banging fist. So what if he had found the Styrofoam container from the stew beef on the kitchen counter in a drying pool of blood?

Each step up the stairs made the bickering grow fainter and when Russell closed his own door, it was like stepping into a cocoon of silence. First he went over to his dresser and checked to be sure everything was still there in his Nativity. He moved the red fox a little closer to the sheep and then, after some thought, moved a camel closer to the Baby’s head. Then he picked up The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and opened it to the first page. Here, he thought, was proof, confirmation, that his magic dreams were real: somebody else had had the same dreams years ago and had written them down as stories. Just like the centaur had said he would find in the library.

Russell read slowly out loud. Chapter One. Lucy Looks Into a Wardrobe. Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air raids ...

Hazel

Hazel wondered how somebody knew if they were going crazy or not. It was almost six o’clock and in a minute, either her grandfather or her grandmother was going to call her down for dinner. When she had sat down at her computer to play Worldmaker, she had just gotten home from school—a little after three-thirty.

Two-and-a-half hours ago.

“Alexander, do you think we are both going crazy? I mean, you were there, too, with the dragon and everything,” Hazel asked her cat who only looked back at her through half-open eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. And you know, I think you are bigger. Hmm, I can test that out,” Hazel said. She went over to her desk and hunted out a piece of white paper and an ink pad. Her grandmother had given her a name stamp for a stocking stuffer at Christmas. Hazel smoothed the paper out on her desk and opened the ink pad. Then she scooped up the cat (he seemed to feel heavier) and took him over to the desk and carefully made a paw print. She put the protesting Alexander down and then dated the print 9-5-91.

“Tomorrow we’ll do it again,” she told the cat. “And I can do one more experiment.” She took a Polaroid camera out from a desk drawer. After focusing and carefully balancing the camera on her shoulder in front of the closet mirror, she snapped her picture. “Tomorrow we’ll see if my eyes are more grey than blue.”

Should she tell her grandparents about the dreams and the changes? About what the Worldmaker game had turned into? What would her grandparents do—send her to a doctor? Hazel shook her head. That would depend on her getting them to focus on her. Hazel sighed. Doing that sometimes required too much effort.

“Hazel! Dinner’s ready, come down,” her grandfather yelled.

“Coming!” Hazel ran from the room. Downstairs, she knew, at the dinner table, with her grandparents chattering, the food being passed back and forth, glasses and silverware clinking, it would be safe and normal. Upstairs would be a dream.

Hazel took the stairs two at a time.

Jeff

Jeff looked at the Resource teacher, Miss Findlay. She wanted him to write about his dreams. She wanted him to write a story about his dreams and make a book. Everybody in the school was supposed to write a book for Young Writers. The whole school was part of the Young Writers Project and they were all going to write a story and illustrate it and make a cover and everything.

It was going to be fun.

Jeff sighed. Which dream should he write about? The ones with the centaur and the dragon and the swimmers? Or the other ones—the ones the doctor Mrs. Clark took him to see twice a week kept asking about? Jeff so far had told the doctor nothing. He wanted to forget what happened; why couldn’t they figure that out?

The doctor wants me to say it, to tell the secret. But I already have—twice before, and look what happened. Dad’s gone; Mom’s gone; I’m not at home. Why doesn’t the doctor just tell me he already knows the secret? I told before and everything went crazy. I didn’t have these magic dreams before I told. If I told again ...

He sharpened his pencil and started writing. I met a—

“Miss Findlay, how do you spell centaur?”

“Centaur. First time anyone’s ever asked me how to spell that. Let me look it up.” She pulled the dictionary into her lap and flipped through the pages. “C-E-N-T-A-U-R. Centaur. Do you know what one is? Where did you learn that word?”

“I met one,” Jeff said and kept writing.

Malachi

There was a note on the medicine cabinet mirror from his father when Malachi got home Friday afternoon. Meet me and Uncle Jack at the Kuntry Kitchen, six, dinner. Okay, Malachi thought, and tossed the paper into the waste basket. He looked back into the mirror, something, he realized, he had been doing a lot lately. Were his eyes any more different than yesterday? More golden, more bronze-colored? Malachi had noticed they were changing early in May, just around the edges, as if a stain was slowly spreading through his irises.

He snapped his fingers and there was a quick flash of white light and a sudden rush of air, and the balled up note floated up to rest in his open palm.

And now, today, something new, something different, and a little scary. Malachi was glad his father was still at the library; this way he had an hour-and-a-half to think and try and figure things out. Today he had felt the thoughts of the other new kids. He had figured out how to tune out other people’s thoughts weeks ago. Now, just these three. Not very clearly, more like when he and his dad were in the car listening to the radio and they were leaving a station’s range. The sound would pop and skip, static replaced words. But still, he had felt Russell’s anger, Hazel’s bewilderment and fear, and the very dark fear of Jeff, the boy across the hall, in Mrs. Markham’s room. Then there was the other thing. He had dreamed of these three kids. They were all in his dreams of the magical place, with all the strange creatures, the place where his mother was from, Faerie. He had seen Jeff on the beach and Russell and Hazel, in the meadow in Faerie.

Malachi shook his head. Now he felt hot and flushed and his hands hurt from making the hot flash and the air rush. His hands really hurt. This pain was new, too, as if with each change, he had to pay a price. He sat down on the tub, suddenly feeling very, very tired. Carefully he pulled out of his shirt the charm his dad had given him in August.

“Your mother wanted you to have it when you reached a certain age. I am thinking you are that age now, son. Puberty. A little earlier than most kids, but maybe fairies mature faster,” his dad had said when he had finished telling Malachi about the night of and the day after his birth. “I don’t want you to ever take it off—not even to take a bath. Promise me.”

“I promise, Dad. Do you think the Fomorii are going to come back?”

“Yes.”

Malachi turned the charm over in his hand. It felt heavier—at least he thought it did. And it tingled, sort of, when he moved it. Or had it? He shook his head. The twelve-pointed star was more than just a charm, but what else, he wasn’t quite sure.

God, he was tired. Maybe Uncle Jack was home—they could walk over to the Kuntry Kitchen together. Malachi slowly got up and went down to his dad’s study, to look out the window and see if Uncle Jack’s car was in the driveway. No, just Uncle Jack’s new wife’s car. Hilda. She wanted him to call her Aunt Hilda, but he couldn’t quite it do it, and Mrs. Ruggles sounded too formal. She was all right, Malachi thought, although Thomas hated her. But then Thomas hated everybody these days.

He could walk over to the Kuntry Kitchen with her and Uncle Jack—he’d be home from State in—all of sudden, a high tide of fatigue rushed in. It was as if between one moment and the next, Malachi had done some incredible exercise, like run the track fifty times or pick up a car. It was all he could to get from the window sill to his dad’s desk chair and sit down. It had been doing the magic, what else could it have been? But it was such a little amount; it didn’t seem fair.

In about fifteen minutes Uncle Jack would come home and he and Hilda would walk over to the restaurant. In fifteen minutes his dad would go out the back door of the library and stroll across the open field between the library and the shopping center. They would all think he was with the other, until they all sat down at the Kuntry Kitchen. Malachi gave his dad about five minutes after that before he would rush home.

Twenty minutes.

That wasn’t so long to wait and the phone was so far away—he wasn’t sure he could even make it into the kitchen in twenty minutes. I’ll just sit here, put my head on the desk—

Ohhh, now he was sick. Could he make to the bathroom before puking—not quite so far as the phone?

Malachi stood slowly, pushing himself up against the desk and then, holding first to the chair, then the bookcase, the wall, Malachi made it to the study door.

The pain pushed him down to the floor. The wind began to rise then, a low moaning in the hallway. Behind him loose papers on his dad’s desk began to scatter. The bathroom door was ten feet down the hall, past his father’s bedroom, across from his.

The other three—the kids he had first seen in his dreams, and now at school—they would be four together. Just like the dreams said: earth, air, water, and fire. In the dreams they had all been together, linked, the four quarters making the whole. Would he be as sick if they were altogether?

Eight feet to go. The wind was moaning now, and flowing up and down the hall, a quick warm air river.

It’s because I’m half-fairy, he thought. That’s why this is happening. A whole fairy would know how to handle magic. But the others—he was sure they didn’t have fairy mothers-Stop thinking. Get to the bathroom. Five feet. Push against the wind. No, just be still, let the wind go, let the light ooze out of his nose, his eyes, his ears. His dad would be home soon. He lay flat on the floor, waiting for his dad’s footsteps on Beichler Road, hurried, quick. Then he would feel his dad’s fear, the fear that his dad would be riding like a great dark horse. The door would open and his dad’s aura, his dad’s arms, would reach out and take him in.

Thomas

Thomas looked up from his computer, a bank-account application form in his hand. From the center, where Thomas was, he could see the entire room, all twenty-five other workstations, most busily doing what he was doing. One man was taking a coffee break, his cup in both hands, as he stared off into space. Two women, also on break, were laughing over something one of them had found in the News and Observer. Right beside him was another woman, frowning at the form in her hand. Thomas tried to remember her name. Amy? Andrea, no—Angela, Angela Hughes. She had just started at the bank last week. Dark red hair, darker hazel eyes. She was, he thought, as good a person as any to experiment with—just another of the masses, the expendable ones, as the high priestess called them. Pick one, or another, the high priestess had told him, practice the magic, the power that is yours, second-degree witch, Wicca Initiate, practitioner of the Old Religion.

“The more you use magic, Thomas,” the high priestess had said, “the easier it will be to keep using and the more you will want to. Think of it as a stain permeating every cell. The heart and aura you ate—a catalyst to make the stain penetrate deeper . . .”

Thomas touched the amulet around his neck, pressing it hard against his bare skin, the coldness of the metal a welcome sensation. He pressed it again, hard enough for the amulet to cut his skin. Just a drop of his own blood on the metal was enough to jolt him, give him a taste of magic: bitter, pungent, strong. He looked at Angela again and now, like a blush around her body, Thomas could see her aura, a pale, pale yellow. Thomas lifted his finger and, as if it were cigarette smoke in a bar, a tendril of the yellow drifted up and curled through the air. He let it wrap itself around his finger.

Look up, say yes.

“Yes? Is something the matter?” she said, looking puzzled.

After that it was easy.

Lunch, dinner, a movie, then coffee. And Angela was in Thomas’s living room, lying against him, her head on his shoulder. Thomas undid her hair, loosing the long braid crowning her head, into a dark red fall. Each touch was like another nibble on the yellow, another taste. He reached down and pulled off her shoes, then her stockings, stopping to stroke all that bare flesh. Then, the blouse, one button at a time, one shoulder, then the next, and a quick bite, just a nip. Her body with his touches, her yeses part of each movement. He unhooked her bra and her breasts fell into his hands, her nipples hard as he licked and sucked each, drinking in the yellow. Then the skirt, her panties, and her entire body glowed.

Now me.

She started with his shoes and socks, and then his shirt, sliding it up his chest, and then over his head, and then back to his chest. When she sucked and licked his erect nipples, Thomas felt his skin sucking in return, taking in still more of the yellow. She paused at the amulet, and then kissed each one of the star’s five points. Thomas groaned, a low guttural cry, and his entire body quivered. Angela moved down to his pants and undid his belt, unzipped, and peeled down his pants and shorts. She ran her fingers over his penis, lightly, her nails like the claws of a small bird. Then her mouth, wet, warm. Then up his chest, to his mouth, and they were together and off the couch and she opened and he entered.

At Mabon Thomas would take her heart. And the Dark Ones would be plain and visible, no longer creatures of the periphery of his vision, at the edges of his dreams.

Russell

Russell started Resource on September 9, the Monday of the third week of school. Miss Findlay came to get him personally. He was a little scared of her when she walked in the room and asked for him. Russell could tell this tall, thin black woman wouldn’t take any mess off anybody.

“Russell. Go with Miss Findlay. You can correct your test when you get back. You’ll be going to her trailer every day at about this time,” Mrs. Collins said from where she sat in reading group. “You’ll have reading with her; take your book with you.”

Russell had done exactly as she had said, not wanting Miss Findlay to wait a minute more than she had to. She stood in the classroom door, arms folded across her chest, watching, as he hurriedly got his things together.

“Ready? Let’s go. You’re late starting Resource here—paperwork and all that mess,” she said as she closed the classroom door behind them. Russell felt drab beside her. Miss Findlay had a bright, multicolored scarf around her head, and her dress flowed and swirled about her, looking at first red, then pink, then orange. “Let me fill you in on what the class project is: we are, each one of us, making a book. In fact, everybody in school is or will be for the Young Writers Conference. I’m just getting a head start . . .”

Resource at Nottingham Heights was in a narrow, rusty trailer parked between three or four pine trees and some pyracantha bushes on one side and the faculty parking lot on the other. Inside the trailer was something like an obstacle course, with file cabinets jutting out at odd angles, crammed book cases overflowing on the floor. Russell followed Miss Findlay into the trailer to a seat near her desk. She kept talking the whole time about this book she wanted him and the rest of the kids to write. There were five other boys and two girls already writing, their desks all in a row, their backs to the windows. Half were from Mrs. Collins’s class. Russell guessed the others were Mrs. Markham’s kids.

“We are writing stories from dreams. Here is a list of dreams the class came up with—if you can’t remember any of your own. Now the rest of the class got started last week so I want you to work hard today to catch up. Try and get something on paper today before you leave. Are you with me, Russell? We’ll do reading in a while. Russell?” Miss Findlay said as she sat down, pulling her swirling dress in.

“Yeah, I think so,” Russell said. Writing about a dream would be easy. He took out a piece of paper, and started writing: One night I had a dream. I was standing in a big, grassy meadow in the middle of the night. The sky was filled with stars and there were two moons in the sky ...

“Russell, I do believe you wrote enough today to have caught up with the others,” Miss Findlay said when Resource was over. “I bet you will be able to have your first draft done by Friday. Good work. Now, class . . .”

Russell was surprised at how easy the story came that week. For the first time ever the words just came and he could trust them to be right and true. They didn’t twist and distort themselves on the paper. The story began with the flying horse and ended with the centaurs, just as he planned, just as he had dreamed. His hands even seemed to be working smoothly—his pencil didn’t snap and fly across the room or jab and tear the paper. There were lots of misspelled words, Russell was sure of that, but they weren’t scrawled all over the paper or smeared from being erased and rewritten over and over. When Friday came he handed in the story with the rest of the Resource class, sure he had done a good job and his hands hadn’t betrayed him. It was a good story.

 

The next Monday morning when Russell walked into Mrs. Collins’s room, she told him to go see Miss Findlay immediately. Hey, maybe she’s read my story and she loved it. She wants to get it published and let everybody read it. I’ll get to read it over the intercom—

Miss Findlay glared at Russell when he stepped into the trailer. She was tapping her long fingernails on the desk.

What have I done now? I just got off the bus and I went straight down the hall and then I came straight here. I haven’t done anything. She won’t believe me whatever it is. She’s like all the rest—why did I think she would be different? Boy, I was sure dumb. And the feeling was the same: bitter, angry, and hard, all tied together with overwhelming sadness. No matter how many times he promised himself he would never let himself like a teacher, let alone trust one, he did. Over and over and over.

“Russell. Let me get straight to the point. I read your story last night and I wanted to talk to you first before I do anything else.” She opened his folder on her desk and motioned for Russell to come and sit beside her.

“Is something wrong with it? I worked really hard on it. I know a lot of the words are misspelled, but you said not to worry about that right now. Didn’t you like it?” Russell asked as he sat down. He could smell Miss Findlay’s perfume, light and sweet.

“Russell, I liked your story all right. I liked it the first time I read it, when I read Jeffrey Gates’s story. Except for some rearranging of the order and a few details, same story. And you and Jeff have never written anything as good before. I even called your old teachers, just to be sure. I talked to Mrs. Perkins this morning and she told me both of you have come in and checked out fairy tales. What do you have to say for yourself? Tell me the truth: you copied this from a book in the library, didn’t you?” She stared at Russell with The Look.

Jeff Gates? Oh, yeah, that shrimpy little kid in Miz Markham’s class. He sits three chairs from me here and he never talks.

“I didn’t copy my story from nobody. I wrote it all myself. I worked really hard at it.” Why is it so hot in here?

“Russell. Please,” Miss Findlay interrupted, her voice sharp and cutting. “You could not possibly have written anything like this. I know you and Jeff live close to each other. You even ride the same bus. Now, tell me the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth. I didn’t copy anything! Did you ask Jeff? What did he say? I’ve never even talked to Jeff. I did it all myself.” Russell gripped the seat of his chair with both hands. It was really hot in the trailer. Russell could see sweat beads on Miss Findlay’s forehead.

“Don’t raise your voice at me, young man. Jeff isn’t in school today; I’ll deal with him when he gets back. Neither one of you is capable of work of this quality—it’s just too good. You’re getting off to a bad start, Russell—Mrs. Collins wasn’t even surprised that you did this. I am very disappointed in you.”

“Miz Collins is a liar and she hates me. I’ve never copied anybody’s work ever and I wrote every word of that story myself. It’s my dream! It’s the best work I’ve ever done in school and you think I cheated. I didn’t.” Russell stood. He wished he could take back every word he said, every word he had written; he wished he had stayed in bed, safe in the warm darkness, the covers over his head.

“I told you not to raise your voice at me. Very well. Russell, you leave me no choice. I will have to give you a zero and call your father. This goes in the trash,” Miss Findlay said and held his folder over the can.

“Don’t throw my story away!” He jerked the folder out of the startled woman’s hand and bolted for the door. Russell made his face as tight as he could; if he let go for a second, he knew he would bawl his head off.

“Russell White, you come back here this instant. Don’t you dare run away from me.”

Russell tripped right at the door and looked up to see Miss Findlay, her hair, wet with sweat, falling about her face, her bra transparent through her wet blouse.

“Get up. Now. You don’t look hurt to me.”

“No, let me go, don’t touch me,” Russell yelled and pushed her hands away, as she tried to pull him to his feet. He pulled away, his back to the metal door, breathing hard, and sweating. He was drenched with sweat and the air was close and hot, so hot it almost hurt to breathe.

“I said: get up, boy. If you lay a hand on me, you will be sorrier than you ever have been.”

“I didn’t touch you, leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone, I didn’t cheat.” He scrambled to his feet and pressed himself as flat as he could against the door and watched Miss Findlay. The only person he had ever seen as angry had been his daddy. She took a step closer and raised her hand.

“No,” and Russell held his own hand up to stop her and he hit the air. It was as if the air in front of him had suddenly acquired substance and heat. The spongy, hard air was hot—realty hot. He pushed the air when she took another step toward him and to both his and Miss Findlay’s astonishment, the hard air knocked Miss Findlay down, sprawling on the trailer floor. Now Russell could see the hard air—it was glowing white-yellow and it looked like fire. It flew over Miss Findlay, as she tried to stand, singeing her hair. When she ducked, the air-fire smashed into the bookcase behind her desk. The books, the papers, the wooden shelves, the games—everything burst into flames. Miss Findlay half-stood, her back to Russell, staring in total disbelief at the burning bookcase.

Russell ran.

He didn’t look back to see if she was coming after him, if she was fighting the fire; Russell just ran. He threw himself against the trailer door and took the steps down in one leap, gasping as he felt the cooler outside air. He ran to the building, banged the door open, and then, took one look back. There Miss Findlay was, staggering dazed out the door, smoke coming out with her. He couldn’t see inside the trailer—only smoke, thick, black, and everywhere.

Russell turned and ran across the hall to the opposite door that faced the playground. Once outside again, Russell took off, kicking up blue gravel. The hounds were after the Red Fox. He barked as he ran past the surprised PE teacher who was taking a kindergarten class out. The fox raced down the hill and across the playground and into the woods surrounding the school. A fox could hide anywhere: under a log, in a thicket, just lay still, panting, while the hounds ran around like crazy. But the hounds could smell, maybe the fox should find a creek . . .

Branches slapped and scratched Russell’s face and he was a boy again. Foxes didn’t get popped on the forehead by a dogwood or get spider webs caught in their hair. And foxes didn’t trip over logs. Russell slammed against the ground, twisting his ankle as he fell. He dropped his folder and the pages of his story flew everywhere. After what seemed like a long time, Russell started crying. There was the fire alarm, and the siren and the fire truck horns. He had burned up the Resource trailer. Miss Bigelow was going to kill him. It was bad enough he had pushed a teacher—he could hear the principal’s machine gun voice repeating those words and over—but he had burned up the trailer. She would never believe him that it had been an accident, he hadn’t meant to, and had no idea how the fire had started, it just had.

Magic—it had to be magic. Yeah, right, magic.

“Russell? Are you all right? What in the hell happened? Everybody’s outside, the fire trucks are here, Margaret Mary—Miss Findlay—is—and you, out here. What in the hell did you do? Have you lost your mind?”

Russell rolled over and sat up to see Miss Montague, the PE teacher, coming through the trees. “I think I sprained my ankle. Can you help me walk?” Russell asked. He figured trying to explain what happened was not worth the trouble.

“You must have lost your mind. Come on, child, let me help you. Let’s go, Russ,” she said and they started back to the building, leaving his story behind in the leaves and pine needles.

Russell sat outside the office for a long time, waiting until the fire was out and the trucks, the police, and the WRAL Channel 5 Action News van had left and everybody was back inside. He had never felt so tired in his life and wanted nothing more but to go home and crawl into bed and sleep, sleep, sleep. But his ankle hurt too much and the scratches from the tree branches stung. Even so, he did nod off once, but woke up when his head drooped. Finally after what seemed like days, Mrs. Anderson came out of the office and told Russell Miss Bigelow was ready to see him.

“Now, be smart, boy,” Mrs. Anderson said, shaking her head. “You are in a world of trouble—just say yes ma‘am and no ma’am. Don’t you even dream of talking back. Now, just stand there until they tell you to come in.”

Miss Findlay was talking when Russell stepped inside Miss Bigelow’s office. “Bad wiring in that old trailer, Hallie. What else could it have been to blaze up like that?”

“You’re probably right—but there has to be some sort of investigation, insurance, the fire department. We’ll put Resource in the computer room until we can get a new trailer. Russell, come in,” Miss Bigelow said, shaking her head. She leaned back in her chair, her glasses in one hand, the other rubbing the bridge of her nose.

Russell leaned against a bookcase as the women talked to him. He was afraid to look any of them in the eye, so he stared at the floor and took Mrs. Anderson’s advice: no ma‘am, yes ma’am, I don’t know, ma’am. He refused to admit he had copied part of his story from any book. His unacceptable behavior, his poor attitude, and his lack of concern for his school work were all discussed in detail.

“Don’t you understand, Russell?” Miss Bigelow said. “Don’t you see we just want the best for you? All of us—Mrs. Collins, Miss Findlay, myself?”

“Yes ma’am, I understand, I see,” Russell said, wishing he could sit down. His ankle was really hurting now.

“We do care, Russell. But you have to care, too, or it doesn’t make any difference,” Miss Bigelow said. Miss Findlay nodded her head in agreement. Russell wondered how the hot, hard air had felt when it hit her and he wondered how to do it again. He had felt something when he had pushed—he had felt strong. Really strong. And when the fire had started—

“What do you have to say for yourself? Well?” Miss Bigelow asked. “Don’t you at least have something to say to Miss Findlay? Russell?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Findlay,” Russell said and then looked directly at Mrs. Collins. She looked back at him as if she were looking at crap on the floor. What the hell. He was already in trouble up to his neck. “But Miz Collins, she hates me. She never listens to me and—uuuhh—” Russell stepped on his bad ankle.

“That’s enough. I’m going to suspend you for the rest of the week. I’ve already called your father; he’s on his way—what’s the matter?”

“My ankle. I fell in the woods.”

“Come on, Russell. Let’s go into the health room. Why didn’t you say something?” Miss Bigelow stood up, looking exasperated.

I hate you I hate all of you the first time I do a good job and ...

Russell hobbled behind Miss Bigelow. He didn’t look back at either Mrs. Collins or Miss Findlay.

 

Russell sat in the lobby again, his sprained ankle propped on a chair, with a bag of crushed ice on it. There was a little pool of water on the floor beneath his foot. His schoolbooks for the rest of the week were stacked at his side, along with a detailed list of assignments tucked in the top book. Miss Findlay had left explicit instructions how Russell was to rewrite his story. He watched out the front, waiting for his daddy to come, wanting him to hurry up and get it over with.

There was the pickup pulling up. He couldn’t see his daddy’s face until he was halfway up the sidewalk. Miss Bigelow must have called him at work, at the construction site. Larry White was wearing a sweat-stained, holey T-shirt and mortar-spattered jeans. There was more mortar in his daddy’s hair, little white pieces, like snow. Mr. White barely looked at Russell when he came in, just a quick flick of his eyes as he went into the office.

That was enough. Russell knew what his daddy was going to do when they got home: another whipping, a long and hard one this time. No supper. Grounded. Restricted to his room. No TV. Same old thing.

 

Russell went slowly up the stairs after his daddy left to go back to work. At least I don’t have to go back to school for the rest of the week. Nobody’ll see the bruises and cuts. He was careful not to let the bag of ice, newly filled, drip on the floor. It was a relief to close his bedroom door and lie down gingerly on the bed. The ice felt pretty good on his ankle and the bed felt soft to his rear and his back. Russell closed his eyes. He didn’t want to read, to think, to watch TV, to do anything. He just wanted to be quiet on his bed and let the silence hold him and keep him safe.

I wonder what ol’ Miss Findlay said to Jeff Did she call his folks? I’ve never even talked to him. He’s in the very front, right next to Miss Findlay’s desk. Needs a haircut, all that hair in his face. How’d he write the same story as me? We’d have to have had the same dream.

We’d have to have had the same dream.

Russell sat up, no longer tired or wishing for stillness. He knew what stop Jeff got off the bus and he was pretty sure which house was his. It wasn’t far; Russell could walk if he had to. He looked down at his ankle: still swollen, still throbbing some. Crutches. From once before, when he had broken his leg. They were in the downstairs closet. Russell got up slowly and half-hopped, half-hobbled to the door. He stopped by his dresser and first touched the red fox, then the Baby for good luck. His mother used to do that.

From the front steps of Russell’s house to the front door of Jeff’s house, was, Russell thought, between a quarter and a half-mile. It might as well have been ten. He only fell two or three times on the crutches before he got used to them, but each fall made his ankle hurt worse. By the time he got to the road, Russell’s T-shirt was again glued to his body. The welts on his back and rear stung from the sweat. The ones on his legs started bleeding again, streaking red through the dirt.

“The Red Fox wouldn’t let a little sprained ankle stop him,” Russell told himself, panting, when he got to the end of his driveway. He could see the entrance to Greenwood Estates—at least it was downhill. “Jeff had the same dream. There’s gotta be a reason.”

The Red Fox set off.

Russell and Jeff

Jeff woke up Monday morning while it was still dark, and for too long a moment, he had not known where he was. He had tried to scream, but a hand covered his mouth, shoving his scream back through his teeth, down his throat. Only when he tried to pull the hand away did he realize it was his own hand and he was in the Clarks’ house, the same house he had woken up in since May. He was safe.

Jeff looked at the clock on the dresser. 5:14. As he watched, the last red digit slowly changed from a four to a five. The Clarks got up most mornings around 6:30 or so. They took turns showering and using the bathroom and then came and got him up. Getting him up, Mrs. Clark had told him yesterday, eyeing him over her coffee, lately had been like waking the dead.

Not this morning, Jeff thought. After that dream, he didn’t want to go back to sleep. It had been some weeks since he had had such a dream. Before, he had had them almost every night—alone in the dark and knowing he wasn’t alone, that someone was just beyond his reach, waiting, and was going to put a hand over Jeffs mouth and ... He had dreaded sleep. Now, there were the other dreams: the centaur, the swimmers, the sea beneath two moons. But going back to sleep now was too risky, there was no guarantee which dream would be waiting for him.

After checking to be sure the dinosaurs he had brought from his father’s house were still on his dresser, Jeff went out in the hall, into its silence. No light made a line beneath the Clarks’ bedroom door and the bathroom door was open. Jeff tiptoed into the bathroom and closed and locked the door behind him. He flicked on the light and blinked at the sudden brightness and the colors’ sudden shift from shades of grey to sand-colored tiles, beige walls, and a white curtain over the window. The transparent shower curtain was covered with big red and blue fish. Taking a shower was sort of like being inside an aquarium.

Jeff loved showers, the longer the better, with torrents of hot water pouring over his head and swirling around his feet. He kept the plug in so he could pretend to be swimming in the rain. The water could get just deep enough so he could lay on the bottom of the tub and be underwater, the multicolored fish over his head.

Jeff peeled off his pajamas and got in the tub and carefully pulled the curtain so there was as little space between the plastic and the wall as possible. He turned on the water, twisted the shower knob, and grabbed the shampoo. Rivers of shampoo, Pert Plus, lather, hung all over his body like sea foam, like snow, like cotton candy. Water beat on his head. Lather frothed at his feet. He lay down and stretched as the water rained all over and around him. And nobody came to stop him, to pound on the door, find a key to the lock, come in. Nobody.

Now he was safe in the shower; for too long a time, he hadn’t been.

Finally, reluctantly, Jeff turned off the water and got out of the shower, shivering at the sudden touch of cooler air. He wrapped himself in a huge towel, as if he were an Arab in a desert robe. As he enjoyed the feel of the soft towel on his skin, he noticed his ears. He straightened up to dry his hair and looked into the mirror.

“My ears,” Jeff said and with a corner of his towel, wiped the fog off the medicine cabinet mirror, and looked again. His ears were pointed, like the swimmers and the centaur. He tapped the mirror: solid real glass. He pinched himself—definitely awake—and touched his ears, running a finger on the outer edges. He turned his head to the left and the right: both ears were pointed. Unmistakably pointed. Could he cover them with his hair? Jeff heard, as he fumbled through a drawer looking for a comb, the seemingly faraway tinny ringing of the Clarks’ alarm clock.

Uh-oh.

Mr. Clark would call a doctor, or the social worker, and Mrs. dark—what would she do? Jeff had no idea, but he didn’t want to find out. He grabbed his pajamas and darted back to his room, closing the door just in time, as he heard the Clarks’ door open. Jeff pulled his covers over his head and lay very still. Deep breath, take a deep breath, he told himself, think. He had half-an-hour before one of the Clarks would come and shake him awake. And see his ears. He felt them again to be sure: still pointed. There was no way he was going to school like this. Sick—he would just have to be sick today. Jeff would tell the Clarks his stomach hurt and he felt too sick to go and . . .

Mr. Clark came to wake Jeff up. Jeff could tell by the heavy sound of the footsteps in the room. “Jeff? Time to get up.”

Jeff groaned. “I don’t feel good. My stomach hurts. And my head. They both hurt,” Jeff said, his voice muffled by the bedspread and the sheet. He groaned again and pulled himself into a ball in the middle of the bed. “Can I stay here today?”

“Ellen? Jeff says he’s sick. His stomach and his head. I don’t know if he has a temperature; I haven’t touched him.”

Mrs. Clark was there in a minute.

“Jeff, let me see if you have a fever. Let me feel your forehead.”

“No, don’ touch me, please. I told you I don’t feel good. My stomach hurts and my head hurts.” Jeff could feel the two of them hesitating. He was sure they were looking at each other the way grownups did, with raised eyebrows and crossed arms. He groaned again, just to be on the safe side. Then the Clarks walked out of the room to talk; Jeff could hear them whispering in the hall. Then one of them, Mrs. Clark, walked away, and Mr. Clark came back in Jeffs room.

“Okay, Jeff, maybe you’d better not go to school today. Ellen’s going to stay with you—”

“I can stay by myself.”

“No, you can’t. You may be almost eleven, but you are not staying here by yourself. Ellen will stay here this morning and I’ll bring some work home this afternoon, work in the study. Now, go back to sleep.”

The door to his room closed and Jeff listened to Mr. Clark’s footsteps down the hall and into the kitchen. Then the hall door closed, cutting off almost all sound from the kitchen—he could just hear their voices, the radio, the clatter of dishes . . .

 

That afternoon, when the doorbell rang, Jeff was so deep in a saurian struggle he didn’t hear it the first or the second time. When the chimes echoed for a third time, Jeff jumped. The clock on his dresser said 3:31. Mrs. Clark wouldn’t be home until five-thirty and Mr. Clark wouldn’t come out of his study until then, either.

“Jeff, is someone at the door? If it is a salesman, tell him we don’t want whatever it is,” Mr. Clark yelled, his voice muffled.

“I’ll go see,” Jeff yelled back, giving up the last pretense of being sick. He knew they were on to him and couldn’t quite figure out why they had let him get away with it. At least he had managed to keep his ears hidden when Mrs. Clark had taken his temperature in the morning. She had stared hard at the thermometer, gave him a small smile, and had left the room. Adults were just plain crazy sometimes. Now, who was there? A salesman, or maybe JWs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, like those who came by his parents’ all the time. Or two Mormons, with their bicycles behind them, in their skinny, black ties and starched, white shirts, their faces shining as if they had scrubbed them clean before each house. Or Baha‘is, with their broken record on peace and oneness. Magazine salesmen, maybe. Baha’i, Mormon, JW, or whatever, Jeff wanted them to go away. If he stayed quiet and made no dinosaur noises, maybe they would decide nobody was at home, stuff their tracts in the door, and leave.

The door bell chimed a fourth time and then whoever it was started knocking. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baha’is, and Mormons didn’t pound on the door. Neither did salesmen. Jeff put down the allosaurus and the plesiosaur and ran to the front door.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called, but the knocking got louder and louder. The door bell rang again as Jeff finally jerked the door open.

“Russell White? What are you doing here?”

Jeff knew who Russell was from Resource, but he had never spoken to the older and bigger boy; he had never even said the boy’s name. Russell was a head taller than Jeff, and Russell was twelve, almost thirteen, and Jeff wasn’t quite eleven. Russell’s red hair looked ragged, with little spikes jutting up in odd places on his head. Jeff was surprised to see Russell’s eyes were as green as his own. Russell leaned on the porch railing, crutches under his arm. His face was flushed and sweat dripped from his forehead. One foot was wrapped in an Ace bandage.

“You don’t look sick. Yer not even wearing your pajamas,” Russell finally said. Jeff grinned in spite of himself. He had on a tyrannosaurus T-shirt, bright orange with a brilliant cherry red rex, another gift from the Clarks. Trying not to look obvious, Jeff smoothed his own shaggy hair just to be sure his ears were still covered.

“Jeff, who’s there?”

Russell froze and Jeff jerked around. Mr. Clark stood in the living room doorway, his glasses in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other.

“Russell White, from school.”

“I brought him his homework,” Russell said quickly. “I, uh, live close by. I sprained my ankle.”

Mr. Clark looked first at Jeff, then at Russell, then back at Jeff again, and shrugged.

“That was awfully nice of you to do that on a sprained ankle. Let me know when you want to go home. I’ll drive you. Just come and get me in the study, Jeff.”

“Okay, Mr. Clark.”

Russell waited until Mr. Clark had gone down the hall and they both had heard the door closed.

“Yer not sick. And he knows it, too.”

“Well, I feel a whole lot better. I’ll probably be back at school—soon,” Jeff said hastily. “What happened to your foot? And what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school? You didn’t bring me my homework—we aren’t even in the same class, except for Resource.”

“I fell this morning at school. In the woods behind the playground. I was running away.”

“Running away? From school? Are you running away now?”

“No, I came to see you. Gotta question I need to ask. It’s important,” Russell said. “Uh, could I sit down? Just for a minute. My ankle really hurts and it’s kinda hot out here. My daddy would really be fussing if I were standing around with the front door open, letting all the cool air out. If we had air conditioning, that is. Gotta lotta fans.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess so.”

“Why do you call your folks Mr. and Mrs. Clark? Isn’t your name Gates?”

Jeff made no reply except to open the front door as wide as possible and to step back and let Russell limp into the living room. Russell sat down gingerly and then lifted his foot up on the couch.

“My daddy whipped me pretty hard ’cause I got in trouble in school and they had to call him to come get me. The reason I got in trouble is why I came to see you.”

“I don’t know if Mrs. Clark would want you to put your feet up on the couch like that,” Jeff said slowly, as he looked around the room. He wasn’t sure if Mrs. Clark would care or not about feet on the furniture. His mother couldn’t stand it. Her living room had been kept like a church: quiet, still, and unsullied. This living room was different. Where his mother had five magazines, no more, no less, fanned out on the coffee table, Mrs. Clark had six or seven, dog-eared and coffee-stained, lying every which-away. His mother had wall-to-wall carpets, Mrs. Clark had throw rugs on wood floors. Where his mother had—

“Why do you call your mama and daddy Mr. and Mrs. Clark? Aren’t they yer real folks?”

“No, they’re my foster parents. How’d you get in trouble? What do you want to ask me?” Jeff said quickly as he sat down in a chair across the room. For a long moment Russell didn’t answer. He wrinkled up his face as if he were thinking really hard and picking out each word separately.

“Okay,” Russell finally said. “Remember that story we hafta write for Miss Findlay? The book we’re supposed to make?”

“What about it?”

“Well, I got into big trouble over mine today,” Russell said, giving Jeff a curious look. “Miz Findlay said I copied mine out of a fairy tale book and that it was just like yours. She said you musta copied yers from the same place since they were about almost exactly the same thing.”

“I didn’t copy my story,” Jeff said, wishing he hadn’t let Russell in the house.

“I didn’t copy mine, either. I got it in a dream. Didya have the same dream? Ya gotta tell me, because if you did—”

“What kind of dream?” Jeff said quickly and got up from his seat and went to the picture window, and started pulling the curtain drawstrings. The room grew light, then dark, then light. He could see Russell’s face reflected in the glass, then it would disappear, reappear. Maybe if he stood there long enough, Russell would give up and hobble home. “The dreams you got yer stories from. About the flying horse, the dragon, the centaur, Roth.”

“His name wasn’t Roth, it was Thorfin—”

“But you met him in that meadow, right? It was night-time and there were all those stars, tons more than here at night, and two moons, right? You did, you did, I can tell by the way yer looking away. I knew it!” Russell crowed, shaking both fists over his head like a boxer. “I just knew it. Did you see the monsters, too—the red-eyed monsters?”

“Red-eyed monsters?”

“Yeah, right before waking up sometimes, real quick, with fire-whips,” Russell said impatiently.

“I’ve dreamed about the centaur, the dragon, the flying horse, and the swimmers, mostly the swimmers. No red-eyed monsters.”

“None? Oh well, maybe, I just see ’em and nobody else. Swimmers I haven’t seen yet. Anyway, I think all of it, all of them, are real, just like here is real.”

“Real?”

“Yeah, real. I woke up with a glowing white flower once, that left glowing dust on my hand—it was real,” Russell said and Jeff nodded. He, too, had awakened in the middle of the night with a luminous bloom on his pillow.

“There’s something else,” Jeff said, feeling both enormous relief and surprise. He would have never guessed in a million years Russell to be the one he would tell his dreams to, but it didn’t matter. It felt good to finally be telling someone. Maybe he was glad Russell had come over after all. “This is why I pretended to be sick today.” Jeff walked over to the couch and sat down by Russell. “Look,” he said, and pushed back the hair covering his pointed ears.

“Just like the centaur’s ears,” Russell whispered. Jeff sat very still while Russell touched each ear, tracing the point with his fingers. Then Russell felt his own ears. “Still round.”

“I bet they’ll start changing soon. I just noticed mine this morning in the bathroom. Do you feel, well, different, since you started having the dreams?”

“This morning,” Russell said slowly, “before I ran away, when I was with Miss Findlay, I pushed her away without touching her, and, I think I started a fire—the trailer burned up. Man, Jeff, what are we gonna do?”

“A fire? Wow. I thought about running away, too,” Jeff said with a shrug. “You know every other kid in school is going to laugh at us. The teachers will probably call the doctor or Social Services or something. I wish we could go there, where the dreams are—why couldn’t we, if it’s real?” Jeff said. He was almost, but not quite, sure he could trust Russell. After all, this Russell who was sitting on the couch with him, his feet propped up on one of Mrs. Clark’s embroidered pillows, didn’t seem to be quite the same person who got into so much trouble at school all the time.

“I think we can, Jeff, but we just have to figure out how. I’ve been trying to. I’m reading this book about Peter and Lucy and how they went to Narnia. They went in through a wardrobe one time, and the other time a magic horn called them—”

“What’s a wardrobe? Narnia? What are you talking about?” Jeff asked.

“A wardrobe is sorta big closet for yer clothes, but it’s not built into the wall. A big box, sorta—I have one—and in the book the wardrobe is magic and they go inside and keep on going and going until they’re there. And Narnia, man, it’s so much like our dream-place—there are centaurs and ...”

Jeff listened, amazed, as Russell told him the story. Russell, reading? In Resource, when Miss Findlay asked him to read, Russell would refuse until she fussed him out. Then he would read very slowly, as if each word was something he was seeing for the first time.

“But we don’t have a magic wardrobe or a magic horn. We aren’t even there together in our dreams—”

“I know. Hey, I know what we can do, Jeff,” Russell interrupted, talking fast. “We’ll sleep in the same room, go to bed thinking about there, and I bet we’ll be in the dream-place together—but I can’t go anywhere for two weeks ’cause of what happened at school—”

“I could come over to your house, Russell,” Jeff said. “Would that be okay? I think the Clarks would let me. They want me to make friends,” Jeff said and quickly looked away. Were he and this big, loud troublemaker boy going to be friends? “But they will want to meet your folks.”

Russell shook his head. “No way my daddy’s gonna let me haf company while I’m grounded. Lissen, can you sneak out, without telling the Clarks? How ’bout this Friday, we could do it this Friday, you could come over after seven and before nine—they’re going over to Jeanie’s folks house—and I’ll be looking for you, get a flashlight, blink it three times at my window, any one of the windows on the roof on the side facing the trees—”

“And I’ll wear black and my moccasins—”

“Yeah, all right, gimme five, man,” Russell said and Jeff laughed and slapped Russell’s open hand. “We’re gonna go there, it’ll happen—oww—”

“What’s the matter? Your ankle?”

“My back and my butt. Where my daddy hit me—I told you he whipped me. I moved too quick just then. It ain’t nothing.” Russell leaned back into the couch.

“Your dad beats you?”

“Yeah, all the time—hey, show me your room,” Russell said quickly, changing the subject. “Ya gotta lotta neat stuff?”

Jeff laughed when he opened his bedroom door and Russell gasped. Dinosaurs were everywhere. The shelves lining the far wall were crawling with dinosaurs of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A two-foot green tyrannosaurus towered over plastic and metal and stuffed dinosaurs. A herd of triceratops roamed across Jeff’s desk. A poster of diving plesiosaurs covered another wall and a mobile of five more plesiosaurs floated above the desk. Another mobile of swooping pterodactyls slowly turned over the bed. Some dinosaurs were wind-up toys and some were carefully built models. Some were paperweights and eraserheads. Dinosaur books and comics spilled off the desk onto the floor. A blue apatosaurus sat in the desk chair, poking its head out of a shoe box.

“The plesiosaurs are my favorites. The Clarks gave me the apatosaurus when I came to stay with them in April.”

“Wow. Where’d you get so many?”

“I’ve been collecting them ever since kindergarten. Birthdays, Christmas, and, other—times my dad just got them for me. But, I left a lot of the ones he gave me there. I know all the kinds there are,” Jeff said and reeled off a long list of polysyllabic names. He hoped the names would make Russell forget what he had just said about his dad and the dinosaurs left behind.

“I thought you weren’t any good at school stuff,” Russell said when Jeff finished his recitation with ankylosaurus. “Howdya remember all those long names?”

“I can remember what I hear and my dad and my mom would read me the names. Mr. Clark reads them to me now. I can’t write them down too good; I get all the letters tangled up. Hey, there’s the bus,” Jeff said and pointed out the window. His dad had always brought home a new dinosaur the day after, either as a reward or an apology—Jeff wasn’t quite sure. It’s your mother’s fault, son, don’t you see that? If she hadn’t left, I wouldn’t need to. None of it. Here, you were a good boy last night, here’s a new dinosaur ... Jeff shook his head, hoping the memory would somehow tumble out of his head and break on the floor.

“Well,” Russell said, “if the bus is here, it’s already gone past my house. I’d better get on home before Daddy or Jeanie get back. Whatcha going to do about your ears tomorrow? You can’t stay home all week.” Russell picked up his crutches and started out toward the living room and the front door.

“I’ll wear a headband or something,” Jeff said. “Can you ride a bike with your ankle? You’re never going to get home on time in crutches. Let me get Mr. Clark; he really won’t mind driving you home.”

“Nah, I’d better go by myself. Gotta bike?” They were at the front door and already Russell was sweating.

“No, but the Clarks do. They keep lots of stuff around for different foster kids. Got a whole closet full of girl stuff. I’ll go get the bike; you wait on the front steps.”

Jeff ran around to the back of the house and came back wheeling a bicycle. He watched as Russell climbed on, wincing when he saw the pain in Russell’s face when he started pedaling.

“It hurts some, but I’ll be okay. I’ll hide it under the house and you can ride it back on Saturday morning. Can you hide the crutches until Friday? I don’t think I can carry them. A headband, huh? Like the tennis players on TV? What are you gonna say to Miss Findlay about your story?”

“I won’t push her like you did—I don’t know; I’ll think of something. See you Friday?”

“Yeah,” and Russell took off.

I’ll just pull my dumb kid routine, Jeff thought. Miss Findlay will go on and on and I’ll just nod my head and say yes ma‘am and no ma’am. She would eventually get tired of talking and then she’ll tell me I’m going to get a zero and that she was going to call my parents.

“I wonder what the Clarks will say,” Jeff said out loud, remembering his mom and dad had never done anything when teachers called. Somehow he doubted the Clarks would be the same. He stood on the stoop, watching until Russell was out of sight. Jeff shook his head. Had he really just agreed to sneak out of the house late at night, go down the road and sneak into somebody else’s house, spend the night—and repeat it all to get back into his bed before the Clarks found out?

He had and he was going to do it.

 

It rained all day, a constant deadening downpour. Even Narnia paled by late afternoon, especially when Russell reached Chapter Fourteen. Reading about Aslan getting killed by the White Witch was more than a little depressing. And it made him think for the first time of what else might be happening to him. The dreams about the centaur, the flying horse, and the dragon were wonderful and he had found them all in Narnia and in the other fairy tales. But there were other creatures in the stories as well: “... such people! Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures ... Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Wooses, and Ettins ... and the Witch herself.

Russell shuddered. He wished Jeff could come right then and just be there, someone else nearby, another voice to take his attention away from the drumming rain and the shadows inside and outside. At least he hadn’t seen any creatures like the Narnian monsters in his dreams. Not yet, anyway. But if the good things were real, then the bad things were probably real, too. Even the Garden of Eden had had snakes. Finally Russell got up, closed the book, and the Red Fox haunted the house, trapped, trying to find a way out before the hunter came in his pickup. It sniffed and clawed at the doors, poked its nose in all the closets, growing more frantic by the minute. Finally the beast collapsed in front of the TV, its tongue hanging out.

 

When Russell’s stepmother put supper on the table it was still raining—a heavy rain, splattering, splashing on the windows, running off the roof, making waterfalls from the gutters to the ground. The weatherman said on the evening news the rain was probably going to last all night, bringing welcome relief from the August heat. The farmers sure needed it. I don’t care about the farmers—now, Jeff won’t come. He won’t come. Why would he want to come to my house any - way —

“Eat, Russell. Stop playing with your food,” his father snapped.

Maybe the rain is making him grumpy, too, Russell thought, as he carefully scooped up some mashed potatoes. Or it is because he and Jeanie have to go over to her folks’ house to pick up some baby clothes and meet Jeanie’s sister’s fiance. Daddy doesn’t like Jeanie’s folks any more than I do.

Being grounded did have some advantages. Russell always felt like a caged animal at Jeanie’s folks’ house, a very small and very neat, too neat, place. Her mother had a cabinet of little china figurines that she was always dusting. Little lace doilies covered the couch and the chairs and were beneath every lamp. Russell had broken a china shepherdess once and the old lady had scowled at him ever since, even though he had apologized a hundred times over. He had even tried to glue the shepherdess back together. Spilling the glue hadn’t helped. Maybe that was why she had let Russell in only as far as the porch all summer.

When his father and Jeanie had finally left, Russell started washing the supper dishes, alternating with each plate or cup: he’s gonna come, he’s not gonna come. He jammed the last one in the drainer, not gonna come. Okay, I’ll fix that, he thought and held the plate high over his head. It made a satisfying crash when it hit the floor. Russell thought about dropping a few more but decided sweeping all the pieces wasn’t worth the trouble. Or having Jeanie wonder just what was happening to her dishes.

He sat down with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in the kitchen. That was the door Russell had told Jeff to use. Maybe Narnia wouldn’t be so spooky now, even though it was still raining and a wind was rising.

“Chapter Fifteen. Deeper Magic From Before The Dawn of Time. While the two girls crouched in the bushes with their heads covering their faces, they heard the voice of the Witch calling out ... I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been—”

There was a knock and before Russell could jump up, Jeff came in, carrying the crutches and a flashlight and covered from head to toe in a dripping, black poncho. He grinned at Russell, laid the crutches on the floor and pulled the poncho over his head.

“You came; you’re here,” Russell said, getting sprayed as Jeff shook out the poncho, surprised at just how happy he was to see the other boy.

“Of course I’m here; I told you I was coming. It was kind of scary coming down here; I hope the Clarks don’t check the lump in my bed. Can I hang this up somewhere?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, you did tell—yeah, in my room, upstairs. C‘mon, let’s go. And I don’t need the crutches anymore, see? Let me put ’em back in the upstairs closet. C’mon. I thought you were going to blink your flashlight three times,” Russell said over his shoulder.

“I forgot. Hurry up, I’m dripping everywhere.”

Russell hesitated at the door to his bedroom before opening it. What would Jeff think of his narrow, little iron cot, his banged-up dresser, and the yard sale lamp and table? And his old wardrobe with the cracked mirror on the inside door, the big, brown rug Russell had found in a dumpster? There was plenty of time for Jeff to turn around and go home.

“Is the door stuck, Russ?” Jeff asked and reached around him to shove the door open. “Where am I going to sleep? Two of us can’t fit in your bed; it’s too small. Where’d you get this manger scene? You can sit in your window, cool. You have an alarm clock? Great, I have to get back before the Clarks wake up.”

Russell ran and got extra blankets, a pillow, and a sleeping bag. When he got back to his room he dumped everything on the rug and they made a bed there.

“Are you sleepy? What time is it?” Jeff asked as he sat down to pull off his wet shoes and socks. “Should we go ahead and go to sleep? I’m not sleepy, are you? Are there any spells in your books we’re supposed to say? I heard a door slam downstairs—your folks back?”

“It’s ‘bout 9:30. I’ll set the alarm for 6:30—there. I’m not sleepy, either. Yeah, that’s them. They went over to Jeanie’s—she’s my stepmother—mama’s house. We’ll hafta whisper.”

“Are they going to check on you? I could hide in that big closet of yours—is that the wardrobe you were telling me about?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Nah, they won’t come up. I wish we had gotten some food from downstairs, though.”

“Hey, I brought some stuff. I got a box of cinnamon graham crackers and a bag of popcorn in my knapsack here,” Jeff said and pulled the food out. “And half-a-liter of Pepsi.”

“All right; let’s eat.”

As they ate and drank, passing the bottle back and forth to take swigs out of it, Russell read aloud from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. He didn’t look at Jeff as he read, afraid again of Jeff laughing. Jeff said nothing. Instead he rolled over on his back to listen, and dropped popcorn in his mouth, one kernel at a time.

“Wanna read some?” Russell asked, his mouth full of graham crackers.

“Russell, I wasn’t kidding when I told you I had a hard time reading. You read fine. I bet if Miss Findlay or Mrs. Collins heard you they’d be amazed and you’d never have to go to Resource again. I don’t read aloud, remember? I’m the dummy.”

Russell nodded. He had forgotten what had happened just last week when Miss Findlay asked Jeff to read. The silence had gone on forever and Jeff had turned to stone.

“I’m not a really good reader, either, though, like Hazel or that Malachi in my class. Yer not a dummy—remember Miss Findlay said being in Resource wasn’t being dumb? Anybody who knows as much about dinosaurs as you do isn’t dumb.”

“Maybe. You’re the first kid I ever told about my dinosaurs. I kept them a secret. Want some more popcorn? Keep reading.”

Russell grabbed another handful and read on, slowly turning the pages, his voice filling up the room, a softer counterpoint to the steady, metallic beat of the rain on the tin roof. Finally his words became slow and heavy and he found himself squinting and yawning at the same time.

“Ready to go to sleep?” Russell asked, looking down at Jeff through half-closed eyes. “Gotta go to the bathroom? Next door—but be real quiet.”

After they both had sneaked in and out of the bathroom, they got into bed, Jeff snuggling deep into the sleeping bag, Russell into his cot. He had to get back out and check the door and cut off the light, but finally he could roll over to talk to Jeff, until finally their voices became disembodied in the dark, loose and drifting. One voice told the other good night and the other answered and the room was quiet except for the steady rain and the soft, soft sounds of rhythmic breathing.

At first Jeff could see nothing. Feel nothing. He knew Russell was near, just beyond the tips of his fingers, but he could not reach him. He had nothing with which to reach. Then, as if his arms, his legs, his entire body, had all been asleep, Jeff felt a tingling all over and stumbled into cool air and wet grass. There was Russell, less than an arm length away. They were standing in tall grass at the edge of some woods. Jeff could see, not far away, where the land dropped away, and beyond was his sea, painted with silver and gold and white and the light of the two moons. A salty wind blew away the thickness in his head. He inhaled and exhaled and shook himself. Behind them was the yellow road Russell had dreamed and his glowing white trees.

“Hey, Russ, are you all right?” Jeff shouted over the wind.

“Yeah, I’m okay. We’re here; we made it,” Russell shouted back. “It’s true: magic is real. We have on the same clothes we wore to bed. I’ve got my NC State tank top and yer wearing underwear.”

“Well, I can’t go back and get my clothes.” Jeff thought he would be embarrassed to be caught in his underwear, but he wasn’t.

“Nope, no going home now. At least for a while. We’re here, Jeff. In Narnia—or some place just like it. Fairyland,” Russell said and punched Jeff on the arm. “I haven’t been right here before, but this is your sea, isn’t? I smelled it back in the meadow, where we met the centaurs and the dragon. I think I saw it when I rode the flying horse—look! Jeff, look down there! Do you see?” Russell had stepped a few feet away and stood at the edge of the cliff. “Come look. You hafta look Jeff; it’s really something to see down there.”

The cliff didn’t drop straight down into the ocean. A few feet from where Russell and Jeff were standing rough steps had been cut into the stone. The steps broadened and became stairs that hugged the cliff wall as they zigzagged down to the beach. The stairs ended in a dark pool, which was separated from the sea by a jumble of rocks. Waves slapped and broke on the rocks, spewing foam into the air. Beyond the rocks, in the open sea, people looked up at the two boys. Jeff could see the round, shiny heads of dolphins and the crested heads of the swimmers. Farther out a lone dolphin jumped in a long graceful arc, its body shimmering in the moonlight.

“There are the swimmers I told you about, Russ. C’mon, they are waiting for us; they want us to swim with them,” Jeff said, not knowing how he knew, but even so sure he was right.

There was a swimmer waiting for them by the tidal pool when Jeff and Russell reached the bottom. He was a boy, a little older than Russell, Jeff thought, but then who knew how to tell the ages of anyone here? The swimmer was only a little taller than Russell and his hands and feet were like a frog’s, long and webbed. A crest divided the swimmer-boy’s skull and ran down his spine. He shook his head as he stood there, shaking water out of his long, black-green hair. Soft, feathery growths on the boy’s neck fluttered as he stood there, as if there were tiny birds in his throat. The swimmer-boy looked as if he were wearing a dolphin’s skin: sleek, smooth, and black and blue and green and grey, like the sea. The colors seemed to move as he did, as he came down from the rocks and waded through the pools to where Russell and Jeff waited at the foot of the cliff stairs.

“Did I swim with you before?” Jeff asked. “This is Russell. We came together this time, to swim—can we?”

“That’s why I’m here, to take you both swimming,” the swimmer-boy said, his words sounding wet, as if waves linked the syllables together.

“Out there?” Russell said. They could hear, mixed with the sounds of the waves and the wind, voices calling and dolphins squeaking.

“Where else but there?” the boy said, laughing. Then the boy took Jeff’s right hand and Russell’s left hand and led them up and over the rocks and down to the beach. Russell gasped when they came down to the sand. Jeff laughed, remembering how the sea and the beach looked to him the first time he had dreamed. It was as if the sand were a huge, white carpet unrolled at their feet, curving out and out and around and then disappearing far away into the night. Foam made a white line separating the sea from the earth. The water glittered and shone. It had been bright from the cliff but from the beach it was as if there was light beneath the water, a submarine moon shining up to meet its sky sisters. Dolphins and swimmers were everywhere and way, way out, was that a whale’s spout shooting out water?

“The water is warm. You don’t need clothes,” the swimmer-boy said and ran out in the water. When it was up to his waist, he jumped out in a long, low dive. A minute later, the boy surfaced and called for Russell and Jeff to come on, come and go swimming. Jeff looked at Russell, shrugged and peeled off his undershirt and stepped out of his underwear. He ran into the water and turned back to wait for Russell.

 

Russell didn’t move. Would the swimmer and Jeff be able to see his body in the moonlight? Could he trust his body not to react the way it had in his wet dreams, the way he found himself some mornings? But he couldn’t stay here, on shore. Russell gulped and pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it and his shorts on top of Jeffs clothes. He looked down his legs: they were crisscrossed with faint red and white lines. There were more scars on his back and scabbed lines, fresh from earlier in the week. Long, angry streaks striped his buttocks. Once his daddy had been so mad he had started beating Russell in the shower. Russell wished for a cloud to cover at least one of the moons.

“Hey, Russ, what are you waiting for? C’mon. The water is really warm; it’s like a bathtub.”

Jeff had waded out until the water was up to his chest, the waves parting around his body. The water will hide my scars, Russell thought, and he walked into the sea.

“Catch me, Russell!” Jeff yelled and dived backward into a wave and was gone. Russell ran, then, yelling and splashing, and a wave slapped him in the face and flipped him over, up, and down. He stood up, spitting out water, his feet barely touching the ground. The cuts on his back smarted and the salt burned the insides of his mouth and stung his eyes. Where was Jeff? There, with the swimmer-boy, diving into another wave, and a dolphin, no, two, three, four. Another swimmer. Russell looked back and saw the cliff rising sharply above the beach, a dark silver wall. The forest crowned it in black shadows. As far as Russell could see, the cliff divided the land from the beach and the sea. He turned and started swimming, calling for Jeff to wait up, he was coming, hey, waaiiitt uuuppp.

Something bumped Russell gently on his side, then it nipped on his legs with tiny, sharp teeth. Russell rolled over and found himself face to face with a dolphin. It was squeaking excitedly. What are you saying? I can almost understand—you want me—The dolphin nudged Russell again and turned so he could grab its back fin. When Russell had both hands tightly on the fin, the dolphin leaped straight up into the air. It curved and twisted and dove down and Russell fell off. When he came up again, sputtering and spitting, shaking his head to get the water out of his ears, the dolphin was waiting for him to jump again.

“Russell! Russell! Look!”

Russell, one hand on his dolphin, turned to face Jeff on the back of another dolphin arching above the water. The dolphin flipped and Jeff went flying, legs and arms everywhere. He came up a few feet away from Russell. Between them, apparently content for the moment to float, was another darker dolphin. Russell’s dolphin squeaked and nuzzled the darker one. Russell strained to listen—if he could just listen a little harder, a little longer—he would know what they were saying.

“They’re saying it’s time to ride and jump again, to go farther out, where Tasos—the swimmer-boy—is waiting with other swimmers. See, out there, Russ,” Jeff said, gasping and laughing at the same time and pointed to the open sea, shimmering between light and dark before them.

“Jeff, you know what they’re saying? You know what their squeaks mean?”

“Don’t you? It’s like—” But the dolphins wouldn’t let Jeff finish. In the next minute Russell and Jeff were airborne again, and then, down, down, into the water, and up again. Down again, past the warm into the dark coolness. Russell could just see Jeff’s body, milky white against the grey-black dolphin. Bright-colored fish, some glowing as if they had fires inside, swam around and between and over and under them. The dolphins, too, seemed to glow suddenly, as if a fire flamed inside, then, just as suddenly, the flames went out. The swimmer-boy—was it Tasos? Another? Russell couldn’t tell, as there were three, no, five, no two, no—four? swimmers with them and the fish and the dolphins. Again and again they went up into the air and its quick coolness and down through the warm into the cold dark.

Finally, after how long neither could later guess, Russell and Jeff were floating on their backs, looking at the night sky. They were alone: all the dolphins and swimmers had disappeared. The sea was calm. Russell felt he was beginning to know this night sky—he was sure he recognized the huge, bright star to the left of the bigger moon from his last dream. Below the big star were five yellow stars in a circle. The two moons had faces, just like the moon back home. Back home? If he walked far enough, Russell thought, would he eventually be able to reach his house? But he had only read of places like this in books, in fairy tales: the swimmers, the dragon, the flying horse, the centaurs. He was in Faerie. Russell wished he could learn the magic rather than dreaming it. Then he could be here whenever he wanted. Here was safe. He could hear faintly the waves breaking on the beach. How far away was that and how deep was the water where they were?

“Where’d everybody go?” Russell asked sleepily. If he fell asleep here, would he dream of home, but he was in a dream now, wasn’t he? If somebody came upstairs and shook him awake, where would he be?

“I don’t know, but Tasos is coming, took—and two dolphins. I heard them in the water—here they are,” Jeff said. With a splash, the swimmer-boy came to the surface. The two dolphins started bumping Russell and Jeff with their heads, like great sea cats. Bright pictures flashed in Russell’s head: dolphins leaping, diving, racing through the water, far, far from any land. The swimmers were with them and all around was only the sea and the sky and laughing, laughing, everyone was laughing, laughing, laughing.

“They have all gone home,” Tasos said. The bright pictures vanished. “It’s time for you both to go home and you have to be on land for your dream to finish. Russell, you ride Akeakamai; Jeff, you ride Puka. Straddle them like a horse. That’s right. They won’t jump; I made them promise.”

“We have to go now? Can we come back later?” Russell asked. He wanted one more leap in the air on a dolphin’s back so he could let go and drop, a naked cannonball, into the ocean.

“Yes, if you can find the way here without dreaming. There will be no more dreams,” Tasos said, his webbed hand resting lightly on Akeakamai’s head.

“How? Where do we look?”

“You are looking in the old stories, yes? That is all I know to tell you. I would tell you more if I could but I am too young to know those mysteries. Akeakamai and Puka know more but I don’t know how to translate what they know into words or even images you could understand. You have to go now. I will look for you again.” Tasos slapped each dolphin, and then slipped under the water and was gone.

Neither Russell or Jeff spoke as the dolphins slowly swam them back to shore. When they could see the sand below them, they slid off and started swimming. The dolphins bumped them one last time and Russell had one quick, bright picture to flash again: him, Jeff, the two dolphins in a faraway sea. Then the dolphins disappeared.

“We can touch bottom now,” Jeff said and turned to look again for the dolphins and the swimmers. There was only the sea. He paused again when they reached the beach, this time to look up at the night sky. “You know, I never really looked at the stars before. Not here or back there. Sometimes I hate the night back there.”

“There are so many more stars here,” Russell whispered. The smaller moon was directly over their heads. The larger moon was low and just above where sea and sky met. Russell thought a tidal wave might be able to slap it into the water. The two moons gave them two shadows, like ink stains on the sand. Both their bodies looked very pale, as if they were ghosts.

“C’mon, we gotta go,” Russell finally said and touched Jeff lightly on the arm. He looked away from Jeff then, at the sand, the surf. “Where are our clothes, anyway?” Part of him wanted to cover himself—he was certain now in the light of the two moons there would be no way Jeff could not see his scars. He felt as if they were all blinking red, like ribbons of Christmas lights under his skin. Maybe he won’t notice, or if he does, he won’t say anything. I wish I could peel them off, like sunburned skin.

“Over there, see,” Jeff said and turned away from the sky and ran up the beach, toward the rocks. Russell could see a small, white lump just past the tideline. Jeff turned back to wave his white undershirt like a flag. “They’re full of sand. Here’s yours.”

Russell sighed and walked over and picked up his clothes to shake them out. He wondered, as he dried himself with his T-shirt, that if he hadn’t, would he wake up naked and wet on Saturday morning? “I guess we should go back to the cliff, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess so—look, Russ, out there,” Jeff said and pointed to the ocean. Outlined in moonlight they could see one lone dolphin jumping high in the air. For a long moment, the dolphin seemed frozen, a gilded silhouette. Then there was only the sea.

“That was for us,” Jeff said.

“Yeah. It was Puka,” Russell said. There had been another bright flash of recognition. “Akeakamai’s below the water, but she’s not far away.” The first brightness had been followed by another, each one like a mallet striking a xylophone, one clear note, then another.

“Your ears are pointed now, Russ,” Jeff said as he bent over to pull his underwear on.

Hilda Ruggles

“Of course I will meet you for lunch, Thomas,” Hilda Ruggles had said early Saturday morning. “Where? The Art Museum? What a lovely idea. Twelve? See you there.” Hilda hung up the phone, feeling very satisfied. She hated Jack and his only son being estranged to the point of no contact: no phone calls, visits, nothing. If having lunch with Thomas could begin a reconciliation between father and son, and if she could bring it about—My gift to you, Jack, she thought.

She glanced at the clock. Eleven-thirty. By the time she drove from Garner to the museum it would be just about twelve. Hilda gathered her handbag from the bedroom and stopped one last time, in front of the bathroom mirror. Not bad for a forty-something woman, she thought. No grey, body in shape, minimum number of crow’s feet around the eyes. Hilda ran a brush through her light brown hair. She looked good in this simple green summer dress, sandals and bag to match. All this effort for a sulky stepson. But it would make Jack happy and making Jack happy made her happy. Good enough reason.

Hilda paused a second time on the way out. Should she call Jack? Let him know what she was up to? Jack had left early in the morning for his office at State, to grade papers, he had said. No, I want this to be a surprise. And if it doesn’t work, no false hopes.

 

Hilda Alice Palmer had met Jack Ruggles a year ago one July afternoon, in a bar on Hillsborough Street. Jack had been sitting on a stool at one corner of the bar counter, nursing a Michelob draft as he graded English 112 essays with a green felt-tip pen, totally oblivious to the world. Hilda had come by after work, hot and tired and bothered. She worked as a lab manager for State’s chemistry department. Hilda hated her job and hated her professor-boss. Hilda wasn’t too keen on academics in general, not after her first husband, a religion professor at Meredith, had traded her in for one of his nubile undergraduates. She longed to get a job in private industry; then she could tell all these PhD so-and-sos to go to hell.

When Hilda sat down two stools over from Jack and realized who he was, Jack Ruggles, English prof and the author of two rather obscure labyrinthine novels she couldn’t understand, Hilda had almost got up and walked out. What the hell and, hey, she had as much right to sit at the bar as anyone else, including Dr. Ruggles, thank you very much. And as much as she hated to admit it, Jack didn’t look half-bad. She sighed—was she hopelessly attracted to professors?

It was the sigh that got Jack’s attention. He looked up from an essay bleeding green and smiled.

“Bad day, huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Hilda had said and took her beer and sat by Jack, thinking she must be crazy. But that hair—she wanted to run her fingers through it, smooth down the back cowlick.

She met Ben Tyson and his son, Malachi, on her fourth date with Jack, at what was evidently one of their haunts, the Kuntry Kitchen in Garner. It didn’t take Hilda much more than a few sips of sweet ice tea to realize that meeting Ben and his towheaded son with the curious golden-yellow-brown eyes, was meeting almost all of Jack’s family.

“Why didn’t you tell me Ben is The Friend, practically your brother, and that Malachi’s your godson, Jack?” Hilda said later that evening.

“I didn’t want you to feel like you were being inspected,” Jack said sheepishly.

“But I was, wasn’t I? Well, did I pass?”

“With flying colors. And tomorrow, I want you to meet my son, Thomas.”

Hilda and Jack had gotten married at Christmas, with blessings from Ben and Malachi, the NCSU English Department (the chair had sidled up to Hilda at the reception to whisper they were all counting on her to make Jack behave), and from Hilda’s two children.

Thomas had come late to the wedding; he didn’t stay for the reception.

 

I’m not going to give up getting that boy to like me, Hilda thought as she rode the glass elevator down to the lower level of the North Carolina Art Museum. Not yet, anyway. Get him and his father to make peace. At least that wasn’t her fault. Hilda thought of herself as good with children. Her own kids had turned out pretty well, despite their father’s predilection for sweet young things. And she got along well with Ben’s little boy, although she did wish Jack would go ahead and tell her what was wrong with the child. Why was he getting sick all the time and why did Ben look so worried and—well, afraid?

Well, he will tell me eventually, Hilda thought as she looked out through the walls of the glass elevator. She loved being able to see the green lawn spreading out from the Museum. True, the clear view of the state correctional center for juvenile delinquents, barbed wire fence and all, did take some away from the scene’s charm. Hilda smoothed her hair one more time and then went in the Museum restaurant. There was Thomas at a table, with two glasses of tea, lemon slices in each.

“I thought you might be hot driving over here and all,” Thomas said smiling, and handed her a glass when she sat down. “It’s Red Zinger, with lemon and mint. One of your favorites, right?”

“Yes, Thomas, it is. How’d you know?” Hilda said and studied Thomas when the waiter came over to take their order. He looked very little like his father; Jack had said his son was practically a clone of his first wife. Black hair and dark, deep-set eyes, sallow skin. Too many hours at computer terminals for Central Carolina Bank, she thought as she sipped her tea. Just the way she liked it. And he’s nervous, too. But then Thomas had always seemed nervous, like a cat ready to run, ever since she met him.

“Well, Thomas,” Hilda said when the waiter had left. “Here I am. What do you—want—to—ta—a—a—” It was as if suddenly Hilda was trying to walk and talk underwater. She could barely get her mouth open, move her hand. “Tho—helll—”

Hilda tried to move her hand and knocked over her tea. Thomas was saying something, he was shouting, and other people were getting up, moving shadows, and the waiter, what was he doing? She tried to open her mouth again and fell across the table.

Thomas

It had been too easy. His plan had worked to perfection, even down to the last detail, when he had simply stepped into the crowd of people around Hilda and walked away. A simple masking spell—he didn’t become invisible, he just became unnoticed and unremembered. Someone would, eventually, call his father; he could handle the rest—just as Thomas wanted him to do. Talking to the doctors at the hospital, filling out the paperwork, sitting by her bed. Not that it would do any good, he thought as he pressed up on the elevator. After a week of a deep coma, Hilda Ruggles would simply die. The poison was slow but irreversibly fatal—and wouldn’t show up on any blood test. Thomas stepped into the elevator just as the paramedics came racing down the stairs. Her heart would beat slower and slower, with the rests in between longer and longer, until, finally, her heart would stop. And he, Thomas, an adept at the black arts, would have the power of her life-force in him, seeping in, as it seeped from her. And he would grow stronger and stronger and stronger, until one day he wouldn’t need poison anymore—he would be able to suck the life out himself, like a vampire.

He had to kill her. It had to be the deliberate and rehearsed murder of someone close and not close, of his family and not of his family. The life had to be stolen and done with malice and the stealing had to be slow and measured. The better to savor it, of course. Later, with more power, the sudden, quick feedings would be the way. And with each life, Thomas would receive power, pure, unadulterated power. Even now he could taste the hint of Hilda’s life, her energy a bittersweet, almost yellow flavor. Just the hint of what he would have when she finally died.

Thomas stopped at the Museum Shop to buy postcards and a kaleidoscope. Innocent things. He made small talk with the sales clerk and then waited as the paramedic, carrying a stretcher and Hilda, rushed past him and out in the waiting ambulance. He watched it race away, sirens first a moan, then a full wail, and then, a casual stroll to his car. Tonight, he thought, as he backed his car out, he would take control of the coven. They would all bend the knee to him, the High Priest of the Dark Ones, the soul-vampire of soul-vampires, the Witch King, the Herald of The Change. Taking the boy, when the time came, would be so easy. And with the boy under his control, the boy’s soul a conduit of energy, then Thomas could, well ...

From the journal of Ben Tyson, Late Saturday night, September 21, 1991

Jack called me from Rex this afternoon and told me about Hilda and Thomas. He was crying.

“Ben, it had to have been Thomas—some of his black witchcraft. The museum waiter described him perfectly. He just left her there, Ben, passed out on the table. My own son. And she won’t wake up. The doctors are running test after test and she won’t wake up—”

Jack ran out of words then; he was crying too hard.

“I’m coming,” I told him. “I’ll get Malachi and we’ll be right there.”

“My own son is evil. Just like those damn Fomorii. Thomas is a monster.”

 

I asked Malachi about Thomas on the way to Rex Hospital. Had he noticed anything?

“Dad, I don’t remember the Fomorii, not like you do. You saw them when I was a baby. But sometimes I think they are shadows in my dreams—the dreams where I see the three others—”

“You didn’t tell me you were dreaming about the Fomorii.”

“I didn’t want to worry you and I am not sure, Dad. Just sometimes when I dream of Faerie, there are shadows there, red-eyed shadows.”

“And Thomas?” I asked, quickly looking at Malachi. He looked as tired as he sounded. He had lost more weight and there were dark bruises on his arms and his skin seemed paler and more translucent. His hair was definitely paler, whiter. And his eyes. My son’s eyes weren’t golden-brown-yellow anymore. They are golden-bronze and luminous and they glow, even in the daytime.

People are starting to notice.

“He feels bad, Dad. Just being around him is like being inside a cold shadow.”

“When have you been around him? Has he been around the house lately? Mal, you’ve got to stop keeping all this stuff secret,” I blurted, my fear and anger and love twisting into one knot in my stomach. I am not going to let someone else I love die because of my stupidity and ignorance.

“No, no, not for some time. Just in the dreams.”

 

We stayed at the hospital with Jack most of the afternoon, until Hilda’s son arrived from Charlotte and her daughter from Wilmington . We sat in her room and watched her, the IV dripping into her arm, the monitors showing that somewhere in that deep, deep sleep Hilda was alive. Barely.

It was a long afternoon. I tried to talk to Jack, about what the doctors said and then about anything else I could think of His class, new books at the library, whether State could beat Carolina in basket - ball this fall. I gave up after a while; Jack just wasn’t talking anymore. He didn’t cry, not then. He looked beaten, empty, as if it was all he could do to sit there in that chair and hold Hilda’s hand.

Malachi slept for most of the time. But when Hilda’s son arrived, he woke up and just as we were about to leave, he touched her on the forehead. For an instant, his hand glowed against her skin. Then, just as quickly, a pulsing light shone around Hilda’s head, then it was gone.

I was the only one who noticed.

He told me in the elevator Hilda was going to die.

“Her aura is getting dimmer and colder. Dad, pretty soon it’s going to wink out and she’ll be gone.”

“Can you do anything?” I said, remembering when his mother had shown me my aura years ago and how far that light had extended from my body, shimmering and vibrating.

“I’m just a kid, Dad, and half-human,” Malachi said and took my hand.

I felt like an idiot. Yes, my half-human half-Daoine Sidhe son, my first-born, my only child, can fly and has psychokinetic powers. Telepathic, too, I guess. But he’s just ten; he won’t be eleven until March.

 

We drove straight from the hospital to St. Mary’s, for the Saturday evening vigil mass. Somehow I felt it was important for us to be there, to light another candle for Hilda, to make the sign of the cross and kneel and pray. To rise and sing when the priest came in, pray again, and sing the Gloria. Each part of the mass, in its right place and at its right time, felt so familiar and comforting. Outside the world seems to be unraveling, changing, metamorphosing. But inside I knew when to kneel and when to stand, when to sing and to pray, and when to listen.

The celebrant was Father Jamey Applewhite and this time he didn’t speak of the mystery. Rather he spoke of loving one another, and using love as an enabling force, a power, a strength.

Is love enough to combat the Fomorii who haunt me and my son? To stop Thomas, the evil son of my best friend? Is love enough to stop the accelerating craziness? Is there anything else strong enough? Love hadn’t saved Emma twelve years ago. Love hadn’t saved Valeria ten years ago. And love won’t keep Hilda alive.

When we shook hands in front of the church, I told Father Jamey I might want to talk to him, if that would be okay, if he was going to be around St. Mary’s. I usually went to St. Anthony’s—well, I had been going, kind of—

“It’s okay,” he said, laughing. “Call me anytime. Nice to meet you, and you, too, Malachi.”

What will I say to this priest? That I am scared and desperate and haven’t yet found the nearest gate?

I don’t know.

 

Malachi had a nightmare. The Fomorii had cornered him and were getting closer and closer, their eyes on fire, their fangs and claws dripping blood. He screamed and I ran in there and shook him and held him. He was leaking light all over the place. He insisted I tell him the story again—

Malachi fell asleep before I finished. Now I am going to lie down beside my son and try to sleep.