Gossamer

The dog next. The dog was so important! She gathered the feel of silky warm fur under his collar, around his neck, behind his ears, the places that the boy liked to scratch. She added in the cool moistness of the black nose, the thump of the tail against the floor, and the liquid look of his brown eyes as he gazed upward at the boy.



There! She bestowed it in a tiny radiant burst.



But she could feel that she was beginning to falter. Her hover was weak. She breathed deeply again, collecting what strength remained in her. She sorted in her mind through the remaining fragments, in case she had to stop. What was the most important of those she had left?



The butterfly. Of course! She had never bestowed the butterfly on him before, because it was new to him—and to her, too, with its damp, unfolding golden wings. The dried chrysalis was empty now, just papery discarded pieces at the base of the jar. She hadn't bothered to touch them at all. What mattered was the new and vibrant life, resting there on the twig he had carefully placed for it. Remembering the prohibition against the touching of living creatures, Littlest had known she was breaking a rule. But it had seemed so important. She had used her tiniest, most delicate touch, not wanting to frighten or damage the butterfly. But the fragments she had gathered there were very strong, and she could feel them again now as she gathered them closer and closer to her surface: Flying! Beginning! She leaned down and bestowed those feelings upon the boy.



Then, just the tiniest bit of the seashell; she had given it to him often before, so she needed only a reminder of it. And the donkey, silly old Hee-Haw. She was tempted to leave the donkey out, but then it seemed important: the patchedness of it, the lumpy comfort.



She bestowed those, and with them went the last of her energy. She was very shaky now.



But she knew he needed the words. And so she summoned them and breathed them into his ear:



Laughter.



Courage.



But they took everything she had left, and she could not sustain her hover or flutter away. She heard the Horde stampede coming through the wall as she fell. Her strength completely gone, she curled into a ball, into the smallest she could make herself, and rolled under the boy's bed, just out of the way of the stomping, flailing hooves.



***



The little boy had not heard the pawing at the exterior wall of the house, or the snorting of dilated nostrils as the huge creatures breathed themselves through, sweaty sides heaving and rippled with power. His sleep was undisturbed by the hot whoooosh and hisssss as they transferred the horrors they carried into his small being.



Across the hall, in the bedroom with pink rosebuds and ribbon garlands on its wallpaper, the woman, too, slept unaware, as did her dog. Thin Elderly had bestowed on her every fragment of contentment he could muster before he fluttered back down, slid, exhausted, under the door to the attic stairs, and made his way up to the place he and Littlest had agreed to meet. Behind him he heard the Horde enter, and he thought he must hug Littlest tightly so that she would not be terrified by such a horrible sound: Hundreds of hooves! The snorting and whinnying! And the smell, too, was awful. Tired though he was, he hurried up the attic stairs to find her and reassure her that they had done all they could.



She was so brave, he thought, for such a tiny thing. So diligent! For all of her playing and dancing and merriment and curiosity, she was a hardworking little dream-giver, devoted to the job. He decided that he would suggest to Most Ancient, when they returned, that Littlest One be given a special commendation for tonight's work. No other dream-giver for decades had had to face a Horde, and none as small as Littlest had ever done so. She should be honored in some special way.



Pleased with his idea (but he wouldn't mention it to her, he decided; it would be a surprise; he could picture her look of surprise and her delighted laughter), he reached the top of the stairs and called into the attic, hoping she could hear him above the terrible Horde sounds below.



"Littlest?"



But the attic was empty. Frantically, Thin Elderly searched. When he realized that she had not made it, that she had been trampled and scorched by the creatures below, that she had been crushed and kicked aside as they went about their evil work, Thin Elderly huddled, grief-stricken, in the corner of the attic. Head in his arms, he wept.



26



The little boy was someplace strange: a field of some sort, and he was wearing a cap. Yes: a baseball field, that's what it was. There was a scoreboard that said 00, and he held a bat and squinted from under his cap, hoping to hit the pitched ball that came toward him. There were crowds watching. He hoped they would cheer.



But he fell. Someone had pushed him from behind, and now his face was in the dirt. When he tried to get up, the person behind him held him there so he became paralyzed; he couldn't move at all, and the man rubbed his face in the dirt. Hard. There were pebbles in the dirt, sharp bits of rocks, and his face was bleeding, and the man kept laughing and laughing and the boy couldn't understand why, or what he had done to make this happen.



***



The room was quiet now, for the beasts had gone, their work completed. Silently Littlest One uncurled herself, moved out from under the bed, and stood up on wobbly, tired legs. She could hear the boy moving restlessly and she tried to flutter up, but her fluttering energy had not yet returned. She stood on tiptoes to watch him and could see that his sleep was very troubled. He thrashed in the bed.



There was nothing left, she thought, for her to do to help him, except to hope with all her being. She stood very still, closed her eyes, clenched her tiny teeth, made her hands into little fists, and willed the dreams that she had given him to work their power.



***



Then, suddenly, a woman began to sing. Her voice was one that had a smile in it, and she sang, "I went to the animal fair, the birds and the beasts were there—" It made him laugh. They both laughed, he and the woman, and he was able to get up now because the man had disappeared.



He reached for the bat, and the crowd cheered because he had overcome something terrible. It was better than a home run, the overcoming! He felt so strong! He turned to show the woman how strong he was, how proud of being strong, but now he could see that the man was there again; now he was hitting the woman—hitting her in the face over and over, saying, "Stupid broad, stupid broad," and when he tried to run and help her he couldn't move. He was very small, suddenly, and naked, and his mouth was full of something that tasted terrible. The man was shoving more and more of it into his mouth and ordering him: "Swallow! Swallow!"



***



Laughter, Littlest thought, with all her being, as she stood resolutely on the braided rug beside the boy's bed. Courage!



***



"The big baboon, by the light of the moon, was combing his auburn hair..." The woman had begun to sing again. How strong she was, he thought! She had escaped the man! And the song was funny! He began to laugh, and when he did, the thick dog food fell from his mouth to the ground, and there was Toby, scarfing it down! How funny that was! The woman saw that and laughed with him, and the man was angry, but the laughter took his power away altogether. He was useless now, the man. He disappeared. The man was gone, and the woman sang, and they laughed and laughed, and then the boy picked up the bat and hit the ball and the crowd cheered and cheered and cheered, and beside him, as he ran the bases, fluttering there just by his shoulder, was a yellow butterfly—



***



Littlest opened her eyes and looked. The boy was smiling now in his sleep. I did it! she thought with joy, and hoped that Thin Elderly would be proud of her.



Thin Elderly! Where was he? She wanted to tell him about the boy. She wanted to hear about the woman, to know whether their hard work had been able to save the pair. Littlest rushed to the hall and looked around, but he was not in sight. Suddenly, just as she was beginning to panic, she remembered their agreement to meet in the attic. They had been so rushed, so scared, with the Horde approaching, that they had made the plan in a hurried way, and she had almost forgotten. How worried he would be! She scampered down the hall, her energy beginning to return now, slid under the door, and ran up the dusty staircase, calling his name. He came to her from the corner where he had been huddled, wiping tears from his face, and took her into his arms.



"I thought I'd lost you," he told her.



"I'm safe! I hid!" Littlest said. "And the boy is all right! I watched while he had a nightmare, but then the dream pieces came to him and he smiled and the nightmare went away!"



Thin Elderly smiled in relief. "Littlest," he said, "we do such important work. Sometimes we forget that. Let's go down now and check on the woman."



Together they descended the attic stairs, tiptoed to the door of the pink flowered bedroom, and peered inside. On his bed, the dog, Toby, snored lightly and moved his legs as if he were running in his sleep.



"I gave him a very quick fragment of squirrel-in-park, just to keep him occupied," Thin Elderly explained in a low voice.



A moan sounded from the bed. "Oh, dear," said Littlest, hearing it.



They both watched as the woman tossed her head and whimpered. "She's caught in a nightmare," Thin Elderly murmured in distress.



***



She stood helplessly, watching as a tiny child crouched on the floor. "Eat it!" a man was saying, and pushing the little boy's face into a bowl. In the background, a woman wept, and she was weeping, too, but both of them were powerless. "Eat it! Eat it!" the man kept snarling, but the child refused. He looked up at her and she reached toward him—



***



"Hold my hand," Littlest whispered. "Hope with all your heart. And think the words." She reached over and took Thin Elderly's hand and together they wished dream strength into the woman. Peace, they thought. Family.



***



—and suddenly it was not that child at all, but her own self, her own little-girl self, wrapped in a soft blanket, with a woman, a mother, reading her a story, and outside it was snowing.



But where was the tortured boy? She looked around, out into the snow, thinking he would be cold, but he was not there—he was here with her, wrapped beside her in the blanket!



Then someone began to cry. Several people were crying. One was a young soldier, who leaned toward her, but he was pulled away, and there was a sound of shots, and she could hear him weeping, but only for an instant, because she looked down then and the little boy was there, smiling, and he was the soldier, or perhaps the son of the soldier, or the memory of the soldier. He was alive, and happy, and he held a stuffed donkey, and a dog was there, too. The boy and the dog and the donkey were her family, and no one was crying anymore, and the snarling man had gone away, and they were all together and safe. It was peaceful.



***



Her breathing slowed and became soft and regular. She smiled. Whatever had troubled her had ended. Thin Elderly and Littlest One relaxed. "She's fine," Thin Elderly said. "She's going to be fine."



"We did it!" Littlest said proudly.



"Well," Thin Elderly replied, "we helped."



He took her hand. "It's almost morning," he pointed out. "We must hurry back. The others will already be back in the Heap."



"Well, they didn't have to deal with the Horde," Littlest pointed out importantly, "the way we did."