Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (3 page)

 
          
 
Into the air, over the valleys, under the
stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds,
fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew. She soared
in doves as soft as white ermine, stopped in trees and lived in blossoms,
showering away in petals when the breeze blew. She perched in a lime-green
frog, cool as mint by a shining pool. She trotted in a brambly dog and barked
to hear echoes from the sides of distant barns. She lived in new April grasses,
in sweet clear liquids rising from the musky earth.

 
          
 
It's spring, thought Cecy. I'll be in every
living thing in the world tonight.

 
          
 
Now she inhabited neat crickets on the
tar-pool roads, now prickled in dew on an iron gate. Hers was an adaptably
quick mind flowing unseen upon
Illinois
winds on this one evening of her life when she was just seventeen.

 
          
 
"I want to be in love," she said.

 
          
 
She had said it at supper. And her parents had
widened their eyes and stiffened back in their chairs. "Patience,"
had been their advice. "Remember, you're remarkable. Our whole family is
odd and remarkable. We can't mix or marry with ordinary folk. We'd lose our
magical powers if we did. You wouldn't want to lose your ability to ^travel' by
magic, would you? Then be careful. Be careful!"

 
          
 
But in her high bedroom, Cecy had touched
perfume to her throat and stretched out, trembling and apprehensive, on her
four-poster, as a moon the color of milk rose over
Illinois
country, turning rivers to cream and roads to platinum.

 
          
 
"Yes," she sighed. "I'm one of
an odd family. We sleep days and fly nights like black kites on the wind. If we
want, we can sleep in moles through the winter, in the warm earth. I can live
in anything at all—a pebble, a crocus, or a praying mantis. I can leave my plain,
bony body behind and send my mind far out for adventure. Now!"

 
          
 
The wind whipped her away over fields and
meadows.

 
          
 
She saw the warm spring lights of cottages and
farms glowing with twilight colors.

 
          
 
If I can't be in love, myself, because I'm
plain and odd, then I'll be in love through someone else, she thought.

 
          
 
Outside a farmhouse in the spring night a
dark-haired girl, no more than nineteen, drew up water from a deep stone well.
She was singing.

 
          
 
Cecy fell—a green leaf—into the well. She lay
in the tender moss of the well, gazing up through dark coolness. Now she
quickened in a fluttering, invisible amoeba. Now in a water droplet! At last,
within a cold cup, she felt herself lifted to the girl's warm lips. There was a
soft night sound of drinking.

 
          
 
Cecy looked out from the girl's eyes.

 
          
 
She entered into the dark head and gazed from
the shining eyes at the hands pulling the rough rope. She listened through the
shell ears to this girl's world. She smelled a particular universe through
these delicate nostrils, felt this special heart beating, beating. Felt this
strange tongue move with singing.

 
          
 
Does she know I'm here? thought Cecy.

 
          
 
The girl gasped. She stared into the night
meadows.

 
          
 
"Who's there?"

 
          
 
No answer.

 
          
 
"Only the wind," whispered Cecy.

 
          
 
"Only the wind." The girl laughed at
herself, but shivered.

 
          
 
It was a good body, this girl's body. It held
bones of finest slender ivory hidden and roundly fleshed. This brain was like a
pink tea rose, hung in darkness, and there was cider-wine in this mouth. The
lips lay firm on the white, white teeth and the brows arched neatly at the
world, and the hair blew soft and fine on her milky neck. The pores knit small
and close. The nose tilted at the moon and the cheeks glowed like small fires.
The body drifted with feather-balances from one motion to another and seemed
always singing to itself. Being in this body, this head, was like basking in a
hearth fire, living in the purr of a sleeping cat, stirring in warm creek
waters that flowed by night to the sea.

 
          
 
I'll like it here, thought Cecy.

 
          
 
"What?" asked the girl, as if she'd
heard a voice.

 
          
 
"What's your name?" asked Cecy
carefully.

 
          
 
"Ann Leary." The girl twitched.
"Now why should I say that out loud?"

 
          
 
"Ann, Ann," whispered Cecy.
"Ann, you're going to be in love."

 
          
 
As if to answer this, a great roar sprang from
the road, a clatter and a ring of wheels on gravel. A tall man drove up in a
rig, holding the reins high with his monstrous arms, his smile glowing across
the yard.

 
          
 
"Ann!"

 
          
 
"Is that you, Tom?"

 
          
 
"Who else?" Leaping from the rig, he
tied the reins to the fence.

 
          
 
"I'm not speaking to you!" Ann
whirled, the bucket in her hands slopping.

 
          
 
"No!" cried Cecy.

 
          
 
Ann froze. She looked at the hills and the
first spring stars. She stared at the man named Tom. Cecy made her drop the
bucket.

 
          
 
"Look what you've done!"

 
          
 
Tom ran up.

 
          
 
"Look what you made me do!"

 
          
 
He wiped her shoes with a kerchief, laughing.

 
          
 
"Get away!" She kicked at his hands,
but he laughed again, and gazing down on him from miles away, Cecy saw the turn
of his head, the size of his skull, the flare of his nose, the shine of his
eye, the girth of his shoulder, and the hard strength of his hands doing this
delicate thing with the handkerchief. Peering down from the secret attic of
this lovely head, Cecy yanked a hidden copper ventriloquist's wire and the
pretty mouth popped wide: "Thank you!"

 
          
 
"Oh, so you have manners?" The smell
of leather on his hands, the smell of the horse rose from his clothes into the
tender nostrils, and Cecy, far, far away over night meadows and flowered
fields, stirred as with some dream in her bed.

 
          
 
"Not for you, no!" said Ann.

 
          
 
"Hush, speak gently," said Cecy. She
moved Ann's fingers out toward Tom's head. Ann snatched them back.

 
          
 
"I've gone mad!"

 
          
 
"You have." He nodded, smiling but
bewildered. "Were you going to touch me then?"

 
          
 
"I don't know. Oh, go away!" Her
cheeks glowed with pink charcoals.

 
          
 
"Why don't you run? I'm not stopping
you." Tom got up. "Have you changed your mind? Will you go to the
dance with me tonight? It's special. Tell you why later."

 
          
 
"No," said Ann.

 
          
 
"Yes!" cried Cecy. "I've never
danced. I want to dance. I've never worn a long gown, all rustly. I want that. I
want to dance all night. I've never known what it's like to be in a woman,
dancing; Father and Mother would never permit it. Dogs, cats, locusts, leaves,
everything else in the world at one time or another I've known, but never a
woman in the spring, never on a night like this. Oh, please—we must go to that
dance!"

 
          
 
She spread her thought like the fingers of a
hand within a new glove.

 
          
 
"Yes," said Ann Leary, "I'll
go. I don't know why, but I'll go to the dance with you tonight, Tom,"

 
          
 
"Now inside, quick!" cried Cecy.
"You must wash, tell your folks, get your gown ready, out with the iron,
into your room!" "Mother," said Ann, "I've changed my
mind!"

 
          
 
The rig was galloping off down the pike, the
rooms of the farmhouse jumped to life, water was boiling for a bath, the coal
stove was heating an iron to press the gown, the mother was rushing about with
a fringe of hairpins in her mouth. "What's come over you, Ann? You don't
like Tom!"

 
          
 
"That's true." Ann stopped amidst
the great fever.

 
          
 
But it's spring! thought Cecy.

 
          
 
"It's spring," said Ann.

 
          
 
And it's a fine night for dancing, thought
Cecy.

 
          
 
". . . for dancing," murmured Ann
Leary.

 
          
 
Then she was in the tub and the soap creaming
on her white seal shoulders, small nests of soap beneath her arms, and the
flesh of her warm breasts moving in her hands and Cecy moving the mouth, making
the smile, keeping the actions going. There must be no pause, no hesitation, or
the entire pantomime might fall in ruins! Ann Leary must be kept moving, doing,
acting, wash here, soap there, now out! Rub with a towel! Now perfume and
powder!

 
          
 
"You!" Ann caught herself in the
mirror, all whiteness and pinkness like lilies and carnations. "Who are
you tonight?"

 
          
 
"I'm a girl seventeen." Cecy gazed
from her violet eyes. "You can't see me. Do you know I'm here?"

 
          
 
Ann Leary shook her head. "I've rented my
body to an April witch, for sure."

 
          
 
"Close, very close!" laughed Cecy.
"Now, on with your dressing."

 
          
 
The luxury of feeling good clothes move over
an ample body! And then the halloo outside.

 
          
 
"Ann, Tom's back!"

 
          
 
"Tell him to wait." Ann sat down
suddenly. "Tell him I'm not going to that dance."

 
          
 
"What?" said her mother, in the
door.

 
          
 
Cecy snapped back into attention. It had been
a fatal relaxing, a fatal moment of leaving Ann's body for only an instant. She
had heard the distant sound of horses' hoofs and the rig rambling through
moonlit spring country. For a second she thought, I'll go find Tom and sit in
his head and see what it's like to be in a man of twenty-two on a night like
this. And so she had started quickly across a heather field, but now, like a
bird to a cage, flew back and rustled and beat about in Ann Leary's head.

 
          
 
"Ann!"

 
          
 
"Tell him to go away!"

 
          
 
"Ann!" Cecy settled down and spread
her thoughts.

 
          
 
But Ann had the bit in her mouth now.
"No, no, I hate him!"

 
          
 
I shouldn't have left—even for a moment. Cecy
poured her mind into the hands of the young girl, into the heart, into the
head, softly, softly. Stand up, she thought.