In the morning, before the sun rose, she came into the house and lifted the small singing harp from its pedestal. They followed her out to the proper kennel and looked on as she played the harp for the child. The harp sang a familiar lullaby: “Go to sleep, go to sleep, all is well, all will be well when you awaken, sweet one.”
There were tears in the boy’s mother’s eyes, and his father held her. “Don’t cry, sweet one. All is well,” he told her. “All will be well.”
She said through sighs, “I sewed some cloths for the baby’s hair. For when she has more hair.”
“Maybe they’ll allow her to keep them,” the father comforted.
“But will they allow her to keep the baby?” the mother sobbed.
The father breathed a gloomy sigh. “All will be well,” he said.
It was early in the morning before the sun, and the father went to work, and then the mother, and the boy looked in on his female man and her baby man one more time and then latched the door of the proper kennel with its proper lock and went to school.
“In the western forests, we hunted the mans of the forest to near extinction. They were not the most appetizing, being lean and tough-muscled, but they made the best pets, for their nature was loyal and they had the gift of speech and mimicry. They could work in the mines. They could be bred with other man-forms to produce singing mans, and musical mans, and art mans, and thinker mans, and seer mans for the blind. But the tygas began to disappear. Then the olyphant. Then the red-breasted sparrow. Then the spiny roos. The green grass became black sand. And you may venture a guess as to how we solved the crisis in the western forests. We apologized to great nature for our error and returned things to the way they used to be. We had tampered selfishly without considering the consequences of our actions. We look at great nature and we see chaos and disorder. But seeing is a way of not seeing. We think that we can go in and straighten out the randomness and bring order. Build a dam here. Build a bridge there. Remove this life-form in large numbers here because it looks prettier over there. Seeing is a way of not seeing. It is a paradox, but true: the randomness and seeming chaos of great nature brings vibrant life in all its forms; the order and straightening out that our kind imposes on great nature brings death and decay. It is a paradox, indeed: order is death; disorder is life. We are cursed to have to learn this lesson again and again. In order to solve the crisis in the forests, we brought back the mans of the forest. The green of grass is the skin of the earth. Man scratches the skin when it itches. Soon the tygas were back and then the olyphants, the red-breasted sparrows, and the spiny roos. The despoiled grass grew green again. The lesson here is take what you need from great nature, but don’t overtake. And don’t fix great nature — it isn’t broken.”
“It isn’t broken,” repeated the boy who owned the female man.
That evening as the boy, his mother, and his father were eating their dinner, there came a knock at the door.
The boy opened the door and there was his friend, the wealthy boy, but also his father.
There were other people with them, some of them looking important in uniforms or professional clothes. There were documents in their hands to be signed, and his father signed them wordlessly. His mother sat at the table, sighing with her head in her hands.
After the signing was done, one of the professionals who had come with the group asked, “Where is the infant man?”
The boy’s father said, “She’s in the back with her mother. There is a proper kennel in the back.”
The professional asked, “Do we need light?”
The father shook his head. “No. There is light back there,” he said, then led them through the grand room to the back of the house.
The wealthy boy walked side by side with the poor, upon whose shoulder his hand rested. “You can come over every day to see her. You can bring your man over every day to see her. So it will be like your new home, except that it’s at my house. You can visit anytime you want, I promise.”
Solemnly did the boys exchange their secret handshake.
When they got there, the door to her proper kennel would not open. The female man had propped something against it and they could hear the baby man crying inside.
The professionals looked in through the window and found her crouched down low. A plank of wood she had torn from an inside wall was angled against the door. Against this she pressed to keep them from entering.
One of the professionals nodded his head and another smiled. “Smart little female man,” one said admiringly.
They leaned against the glass of the window, and when it broke, they reached inside and grabbed her. One of them strapped the muzzle over her face. The other picked up the baby and handed it to the wealthy boy’s father.
His mother quietly wept, his father stood there with a hand over his mouth, and the boy restrained in his arms his muzzled female man, who clutched desperately for her child.
The boy shushed her and gently comforted, “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”
His mother quoted great scripture through her tears: “A mother gives life to her child. A mother gives her life for her child.”
His father put his arms around his mother. “It’ll be okay, beloved. I promise.” He added gloomily, “She is but an animal.”
His mother quoted scripture: “There is no sound in the world more sorrowful than a mother grieving her child.”
When it was over, the boy stayed with his man in her proper kennel until she had ceased to weep. When she was finally asleep, he went back into the house and into his room where he sat by the window and stared out into the backyard. He fell asleep that night sitting up in bed by the window that looked out onto her proper kennel.
And the candle in the window of her proper kennel no longer burned.
Before the boy went to school the next morning, he brought out her food, but she was despondent and would not eat.
When he returned from school that afternoon and went straightway out to see her, she was asleep. He did not want to wake her, so he went back into the house.
As they ate their meal that evening, his mother said, “I think it is so cruel to take her baby like that. In my head, I keep hearing the baby crying. The cry is so sweet. It makes me so sad.”
His father said, “Well, she’s just an animal. She’ll probably forget all about it in a day or two. They’re not as attached to their children as we are.”
His mother said, “The baby still cries in my head. I wish it would stop.”
The boy jumped up from the table and ran out through the back door, shouting, “I hear the baby too, Mother, but not in my head!”
His father hollered after him, “Where are you going?”
They listened, but now there was silence in the back — there was not even the sound of the baby’s crying in the mother’s head.
The boy came back inside holding the baby.
His female man walked beside him.
His mother gasped.
The boy explained, “We should have fixed the glass window in her proper kennel, Father. She broke out and went and got her. When I looked in on her after school she was sleeping, but I thought I heard a baby. She had hidden her behind her body to keep her from my sight.”
His father said, “Well, now, this is bad. She broke out of her proper kennel and broke into their house again. This is very bad.”
“They’re coming again. You know that they are coming,” said his mother frantically. “How much more of this can I take?”