The magician reached down abruptly, and she felt a swift, cool whisper in her hair. He held up a small silver figure of a horse and asked with mock severity, "What are you doing, keeping a horse up in there? You shouldn't have a horse if you don't have a stable for it."
She froze for an instant, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and then clutched at the silver horse as greedily as any child. "That's mine! Where did you get it?"
"I gave it to you." The magician's voice sounded as impossibly distant as her childhood, long gone on another coast.
And then came his command: "Remember."
At first she had enjoyed herself. Matthew was fat and awful as usual, but his birthday had been an excuse to bring together branches of the family that rarely saw one another, traveling in to Central Park from places as whispered and exotic as Rockaway and Philadelphia. She was excited to see her whole family, not just her parents and her very small baby brother, and Matthew's mother and father, but also uncles and aunts and cousins, and some very old relatives she had never met before in her life. They all gathered together in one corner of the Sheep Meadow, where they spread out picnic blankets, coverlets, beach towels, anything you could sit down on, and they brought out all kinds of old-country dishes: piroshki, pelmeni, flanken, kasha, rugelach, kugel mit mandlen, milk bottles full of borscht and schav-and hot dogs and hamburgers too, and baked beans and deviled eggs, and birthday cake and candy and cream soda. It was a hot blue day, full of food.
But a four-year-old girl can only eat and drink so much… and besides, after a while the uncles all began to fall asleep on the grass, one by one, much too full to pay attention to her… and all the aunts were sitting together telling stories that didn't make any sense… and Matthew was fussing about having a "stummyache," which she felt he certainly deserved. And her parents weren't worth talking to, since whenever she tried they were busy with her infant brother or the other adults, and not really listening. So after a time she grew bored. Stuffed, but bored.
She decided that she would go and see the zoo.
She knew that Central Park had a zoo because she had been taken there once before. It was a long way from the picnic, but even so, every now and then she could hear the lions roaring, along with the distant sounds of busses and taxis and city traffic that drifted to her ears. She was sure that it would be easy to find her way if she listened for the lions.
But they eluded her, the lions and the zoo alike. Not that she was lost, no, not for a minute. She walked along enjoying herself, smiling in the sunlight, and petting all the dogs that came bouncing up to her. If their owners asked where her parents were, she pointed firmly in the direction she was going and said, "right up there," then moved on, laughing, before they had time to think about it. At every branching of the path she would stop and listen, taking whatever turn sounded like it led toward the lions. She didn't seem to be getting any closer, though, which eventually grew frustrating. It was still an adventure, still more exciting than the birthday picnic, but now it was beginning to annoy her as well.
Then she came around a bend in the path, and saw a man sitting by himself on a little bench. To her eyes he was a very old man, almost as old as her great-uncle Wilhelm-you could tell that by his white hair, and the deep lines around his closed eyes, and the long red blanket that his legs stretched out in front of him. She had seen other old men sitting like that. His hands were shoved deep into his coat pockets, and his face lifted to the angle of the afternoon sun.
She thought he was asleep, so she started on past him, walking quietly, so as not to wake him. But without opening his eyes or changing his position, he said in a soft, deep voice, "An exceptional afternoon to you, young miss."
Exceptional was a new word to her, and she loved new words. She turned around and replied, trying to sound as grown up as she could, "I'm very exceptional, thank you."
"And glad I am to hear it," the old man said. "Where are you off to, if I may ask?"
"I'm going to see the lions," she told him. "And the draffs. Draffs are excellent animals."
"So they are," the old man agreed. His eyes, when he opened them, were the bluest she had ever seen, so young and bright that they made the rest of him look even older. He said, "I used to ride a draff, you know, in Africa. Whenever I went shopping."
She stared at him. "You can't ride a draff. There's no place to sit."
"I rode way up on the neck, on a little sort of platform." The old man hadn't beckoned to her, or shifted to make room for her on the bench, but she found herself moving closer all the same. He said, "It was like being in the crow's-nest on the mast of a ship, where the lookout sits. The draff would be swaying and flowing under me like the sea, and the sky would be swaying too, and I'd hang onto the draff's neck with one hand, and wave to all the people down below with the other. It was really quite nice."
He sighed, and smiled and shook his head. "But I had to give it up, because there's no place to put your groceries on a draff. All your bags and boxes just slide right down the neck, and then the draff steps on them. Draffs have very big feet, you know."
By that time she was standing right in front of him, staring into his lined old face. He had a big, proud nose, and his eyebrows over it were all tangly. To her they looked mad at each other. He said, "After that, I did all my shopping on a rhinoceros. One thing about a rhinoceros"-and for the first time he smiled at her-"when you come into a store, people are always remarkably nice. And you can sling all your packages around the rhino's horn and carry them home that way. Much handier than a draff, let me tell you."
He reached up while he was talking and took an egg out of her right ear. She didn't feel it happen-just the quick brush of his long fingers, and there was the egg in his hand. She grabbed for her other ear, to see if there might be an egg in there too, but he was already taking a quarter out of that one. He seemed just as surprised as she was, saying, "My goodness, now you'll be able to buy some toast to have with your egg. Extraordinary ears you have-my word, yes." And all the time he was carrying on about the egg, he was finding all kinds of other things in her ears: seashells and more coins, a couple of marbles (which upset him-"You should never put marbles in your ears, young lady!"), a tangerine, and even a flower, although it looked pretty mooshed-up, which he said was from being in her ear all that time.
She sat down beside him without knowing she was sitting down. "How do you do that?" she asked him. "Can I do that? Show me!"
"With ears like those, everything is possible," the old man answered. "Try it for yourself," and he guided her hand to a beautiful cowrie shell tucked just behind her left ear. Then he said, "I wonder… I just wonder… " And he ruffled her hair quickly and showed her a palm full of tiny silver stars. Not like the shining foil ones her preschool teacher gave out for good behavior, but glittering, sharp-pointed metal stars, as bright as anything in the sky.
"It seems your hair is talented, too. That's exceptional."
"More, please!" she begged him.
The old man looked at her curiously. He was still smiling, but his eyes seemed sad now, which confused her.
"I haven't given you anything that wasn't already yours," he said. "Much as I would otherwise. But this is a gift. From me to you. Here." He waved one hand over his open palm, and when it passed she saw a small silver figure of a horse.
She looked at it. It was more beautiful, she thought, than anything she had ever seen.