Iing down these recolles of my early years so far removed from their unfolding, I am fooled, as all are, by time itself. My parents, long gone from my world, live again. The redcoated woma only once, abides more persistently in mind than what I did yesterday or whether I had thistles and honey or elder-berries for breakfast. My sisters, now grown into their middle years, are ever infants to me, two matg cherubs, ris of curls, chubby and helpless as cubs. Memory, which so founds our waking life with anticipation a, may well be our orue earthly solatioime slips out of joint.
My first nighttime foray into the woods left me exhausted. I burrowed beh a heap of coats and blas and furs, and by midday, a fever burned. Zanzara brought me a cup of hot tea and a bowl of nasty broth, or-derio "drink, drink, sip it." But I could not stomach a single swallow. No matter how many layers they heaped upon me, I could not get warm. By nightfall, I shook untrollably with chills. My teeth rattled and my bones ached.
Sleep brought strange, horrible nightmares where everything seemed to happen at once. My family invaded my dreams. Hands joihey stand in a half circle around a hole in the ground, silent as stones. My father grabs me around the ankle and pulls me from the hollow tree where I lie hidden as me on the ground. Then he reaches in again and yanks each twin by the ankles and holds them aloft, the girls giggling in fear and pleasure. And my mother admonishes him: "Dont be so hard on the boy. Where have you been, where have you been?"
Then I am on the road, in the arclight streaming from an old Ford, the deer supine on the pavement, its breathing shallow, and I synize my res-piration with its rhythms and the redcoated woman with the pale green eyes says: "Who are you?" And she bends to my face, taking my in her hands, to kiss me on the lips, and I am a boy again. Me. But I ot remember my name.
Aniday. A wild child like myself, a girl named Speck, leans over to kiss my forehead, and her lips y hot skin. Behihe oak leaves turn into a thousand crows that take off in unison, flying away in a great twisting, singing tornado of wings. Sileurns after the drumming flock escapes to the horizon and m breaks through. I give chase to the birds, running so fast and so hard that my skin splits a seam on both sides and my heart drums against my ribs until halted by the deathly appearance of a roiling black river. trating with my entire mind, I see to the other side, and there on the bank, holding hands around a hole in the ground, are my father and mother, the woman in the red coat, my two sisters, and the boy who is not me. They stand like stones, like trees, staring into the clearing. If I summon ce to jump into the water, I may reach them. Blackwater once carried me away, so I stand on the bank, calling out in a voice that ot be heard, with words no one uand.
I dont know how long I was delirious with fever. ht, a day or two, a week, a year? Or longer? When I awakened under a damp steely sky, I felt snug and safe, although my arms ahrobbed with stiffness and my insides felt scraped raw and hollow. Attending me, Ragno and Zanzara played cards, using my belly as a table. Their game defied logic, for they had not mao swipe a full deck. Mixing remnants from many different packs, they ended up with nearly a hundred cards. Each of them held a fistful, and the remainder sat in a jumble on my stomach.
"Do you have any que?" Ragno as