Downstairs, they slid under the door and out into the last of the night.
Littlest looked around as they began their journey back. "Where is the Horde now?" she asked.
"Out there," Thin Elderly told her. "They are always out there."
27
Meticulously the young woman typed her son's name and created a place for him in Mrs. MacMahon's third grade class. He was a document now. He had a permanent place in her computer. John was part of a large group, since all of the Rosewood Elementary students were there, listed alphabetically and then individually, with their grades and their food allergies and their emergency numbers and their authorized pick-up-from-school people and their medical histories. John's chicken pox was there, and his ear infections, and the name of his doctor, and his broken arm—
She shuddered briefly, remembering last year's fracture; John was seven then. Duane still lived with them, and they lived in fear, she and John: what kind of mood would he be in when he came home (if he came home)? Sometimes he was Fun Daddy, laughing and as boisterous as a boy. But more and more by then, by the time John was seven, Duane was someone else, the person he had turned into, the person they didn't know, the person they feared.
They thought it was their fault. If they were nicer, or if she cooked better, or spent less money, or picked up the toys, or if they kept their hair combed a different way, then Fun Daddy would come back. So they tried. And sometimes it worked; that was what always threw her off balance, that it worked sometimes, and she could wheedle him out of his ugly mood and it would be the three of them again, laughing. But this happened less and less often. And not that night, the night he broke John's arm, the night she called the cops, the night she said "no more."
"Coming for coffee?" The school nurse leaned through the door and pointed to her watch. Break time.
She smiled and nodded. "Just typing in my boy's records. He's starting third grade. Look!" She pointed proudly to the computer screen, to the name "JOHN."
The woman came closer and bent down to look. "I didn't know you had a son. Is this his picture?" She picked up a small framed photograph from the desk and smiled at the little boy in a baseball uniform.
"Yes. He's eight."
"Was he here last year?"
She shook her head. "No. We moved over the summer."
"He your only one?"
She nodded.
"Hard," the nurse said, "with you working. What's he been doing all summer? Camp?"
"No. He's been visiting someone." She darkened the computer screen and they started down the hall toward the teachers' lounge where they all had coffee together on the midmorning break.
"A grandma? My kids go to their grandmother's."
"John doesn't have a real grandmother. They're both dead. But this woman's like a grandmother—a fake one, I guess..."
"A surrogate grandmother," the nurse said, smiling. "Lucky kid."
"Yes. And he's going to keep staying with her for a while. She'll bring him to school each day."
The guidance counselor held the door to the teachers' lounge open for them.
"I still have to get my act together. I had a whole lot of problems. I've had sort of a tough time since I got divorced."
The guidance counselor, overhearing the comment, said with a grin, "Haven't we all!"
Tears, suddenly, came to the young woman's eyes. Embarrassed, she brought her hand to her face, but it didn't help; she couldn't hold the tears back. "Oh!" she said. "I'm sorry!"
The fifth grade teacher, looking up from the table where he was going through a stack of papers, noticed her, stood, and came forward. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Stupid broad. Crying.
She cringed. Apologized. Hid her face.
One by one, though, they hugged her.
John's mother took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. "Sorry!" she said. "I don't know what came over me!" She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and reached for the coffee mug that had her name magic-markered onto it. Each time she entered this room, she felt as if she had found a home.
"And my mom will be there? You're sure?"
"Right there in the office, at her desk. We'll stop in to see her before we go to the classroom. Remember the office where I took you to visit last week?"
He nodded and adjusted the belt that held up his jeans. "You think my mom is pretty?" he asked.
"I do."
"She's like a movie star."
"Yes, I could see how beautiful she is. And I could see how much she loves you."
"My dad really loves her a lot. The only reason he went to California was because he got a really good job there. He's like a millionaire almost. He's going to buy us a really good car, not junky like yours. He's maybe buying a Ferrari."
"That would be exciting. Is everything stowed in your backpack?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Where's my jacket?"
"Right here." She handed it to him. "What's this in the pocket?"
"My lucky shell."
He showed her, and the woman turned it over in her hands. She recognized the small pink seashell that had been on the table beside his bed. It curved into itself, with a deep coral color at its center. "It's so lovely," she said.
"Yeah. Me and my mom were at the beach. We picked up shells. She kept one but hers was kind of broken. This one was the best. This is my favorite. It's a lucky one."
"It's very fragile, John. Breakable. You've done a great job of taking care of it so far. But I'd hate for it to get broken. Do you think it's a good idea, taking it to school?" She gave it back to him.
"I need it for luck."
She nodded. "Would you trust me to take care of it during the day? I could keep it safe for you here. You know you'll be coming back here to sleep for a while, until your mom is ready for you."
He stroked the little shell. "You think other kids might break it, at school?"
"Not purposely. But it's so delicate, John, that even if someone bumped into you in the hall, it could shatter."
"I wouldn't care. I'd punch anyone who bumps into me."
For a moment he made an angry face. He threw a feigned punch. "I'd get a gun. I'd—"
He looked at her. "I don't want to leave it behind. I need it."
"I have an idea, then. We'll let your mom take care of it each day. How about that? She can keep it on her desk. I noticed that she didn't have any decorations except for that little framed photograph of you. Your seashell could stay right beside that picture."
His face brightened. "Then we'd both have good luck!"
"You certainly would."
He zipped his jacket, with the shell in his pocket.
She helped him arrange his backpack with its blue straps over his thin shoulders.
At the door he turned. The dog, lying on the kitchen floor, drummed his tail on the pine boards. "Toby," John said, "you can't come. But I'll be back here after school. I'll give you a biscuit when I get home."
Walking to the car, he said to the woman with a swagger, "Toby likes me better'n you." She laughed at his boast. John looked up at her and grinned.
28
Littlest One and Thin Elderly were returning to the Heap in the earliest dawn. It was fall. She walked beside him happily, fluttering away occasionally to pick a late flower or gather a dry, brightly colored leaf. She was proudly wearing the golden badge that she'd been awarded by Most Ancient, the badge that honored her courage.
Tonight had been an ordinary night, a night with no battles to fight, and it was a quiet, companionable trip back, the two of them side by side.
"I'm so glad the boy is fine," Littlest said. "I gave him a fun going-back-to-school dream now that he's getting used to third grade. He has some schoolbooks now that I touched. Spelling and such."
"The woman is fine, too," Thin Elderly replied. "Less lonely. Busier. And very, very proud of the boy.
"You were good with the boy, Littlest," he added. "I hope your next assignment is a house with a child in it."
"My next assignment?" she asked, startled.
"Yes, now that you don't need to work with an instructor. Now that you've learned what you needed to know, and grown up—"
"Oh, I haven't, Thin Elderly! I haven't grown up at all! I still play and act foolish! Look!" she said. She threw herself forward in a cartwheel, then a somersault, and turned pleadingly toward him.
He laughed slightly, watching her. "Your playfulness serves you well. It served the boy well. But it's time—"
"You mean my job is ending? Oh, please don't say my job is ending!" Suddenly she was bewildered and near tears.
Thin Elderly, weary, was plodding along. He yawned. "Of course not. People always need dreams. Their whole lives, they must dream.
"The boy will be leaving that house eventually, though. And you will be, too. You'll be reassigned, now that you've proven yourself.
"Hurry, dear," he reminded her. "It's getting early." He looked toward the east, where the sky was lightening.
"Oh," Littlest said in relief, "you mean I'll go to his new house! I do hope it will have lots of things to touch! I was a little worried," she confided, "because he had so few things in the woman's house. But it turned out all right, didn't it?" She twirled around happily and leaned down to pick another wildflower.
"No, you'll probably have a completely new assignment. Another dream-giver already has the house that the boy will be moving to, the place where his mother lives."
Littlest stopped twirling. She looked at Thin Elderly in despair. "But—" She began to speak, then stopped herself. She looked embarrassed. Finally she moved close to Thin Elderly and spoke in an extremely small and private voice, directly into his ear.
"I love the boy," she whispered.
He looked shocked. He spoke firmly to her. "You mustn't. You can't. It isn't permitted."
She touched his hand and reminded him of something. "But remember that time when you thought the Horde had gotten me?"
He nodded.
"You cried," she pointed out. "I could tell you'd been crying! And didn't that mean...?"
Thin Elderly recalled that terrible time. He sighed. "It was a lapse," he explained. "I am not a perfect dream-giver. I let myself, just for a moment, feel something that we are not allowed to feel."
"Why not?" she asked him.
"Love is a human emotion. And we are not human."
There it was. He said it with such certainty. And it was the thing she had always wondered, the thing she had asked about again and again. No one had ever given her a true answer. Now she felt—she knew—that Thin Elderly was telling her the truth. So. She was not human.
"What am I, then? What are we?" she asked.
He took a deep breath. This was always so hard to explain. "We are imaginary," he told her gently, "and we live within."
She frowned. "We live in the Heap," she pointed out.
He nodded. "The Heap is within."
"Within what?"