Now, the mans of the snow I saw in the zoo that day were different from all the other mans I have ever seen before, and I have seen a lot of mans. There are mans who live in the forest, and they are really small and their skin is a very dark color to blend in with the leaves. There are mans who live on the plains, and they have almost no hair on their bodies. There are mans who live in the mountains, and they have long colorful body hairs, long legs, and tiny light-colored eyes. Amazing as these mans are, the mans of the snow are different from all of them.
The mans of the snow are not as tall as most other mans, and they are fairly plump. My teacher says the extra fat is to keep them warm and their pale color is to help them blend in with the snow so that other predators as well as prey can’t see them coming. Unlike other mans, the mans of the snow make actual clothes. They hunt the great white beos and use their hides to protect against the freezing cold. On their feet, they wear the hide of beo like primitive shoes to protect from the snow. And when they remove their shoes, you notice that their feet are different from all other mans on earth — they cannot grasp with their feet, for their feet have no thumbs. In that respect, their feet are similar to our own.
The other thing that makes the mans of the snow different from all other mans is that they are the greatest hunters of all. The people at the zoo brought in a great white beo and we watched as the mans of the snow hunted it. The people in the zoo did not let them actually kill the beo, but we got to see them preparing their tools for the hunt, setting up in attack formation, and then launching their spears. One spear hit the beo and he growled a mighty growl and then they brought down a wall between the two cages so that the mans couldn’t hurl any more spears at it. The mans of the snow are very exciting to watch at a zoo, and it would probably be great to own one as a pet, but they are very expensive.
Even though my parents are not wealthy, I am fortunate that I have owned three mans in my life. My first man was not really mine and I had to give him back. My second man was a musical man and a fighting man, and I loved her very much, but she died. Now I own the best man of all. She has red hair, she is musical, and I know this will be hard to believe, but she is a talking man. Sometimes she and I argue over things because she has strong opinions. I have only had her for six months, but we do everything together and go everywhere together. We are best friends. We will be best friends forever. I never knew I could love anything so much.
In conclusion, I am so happy that I have a man. She is fun to play with. Her music is fun to listen to. She is fun to talk to when she is not being sarcastic. My life has improved a lot since she came into it. I think every child should have a man.
11
Red Locks
Now listen, Red Locks,” the boy told his female man. “I’m going to read something I wrote about you.”
“About me?”
He showed her the paper. “I wrote it for school.”
“Why me?”
“Because I love you,” he said. “You are my favorite thing in the whole world.”
“Then by all means, you should read it to me,” she said.
The boy began to read.
And she listened, enraptured.
12
The Oaf
The boy grew up and was a boy no more.
The boy grew up and became a full-grown oaf, as was his father and his father’s father before him.
He was wed and started a family. And times were hard, so he and his young family were forced to remain with his parents.
For a time, they said.
And one year became two, and two became four, and four became eight, and ten years later, ten regular years, he was still going to bed and waking up in his childhood room, though he had a wife and somewhere scattered around the house were his two children.
He thought often about the mans of his childhood. He thought about them every night, despite all that had happened and how things had changed.
One night in his bed he lay awake thinking about his mans, and there came a persistent tapping on his window. He arose and there was a man looking inside the window at him — a female man with red hair, green eyes, and frecks.
Frecks and wrinkles.
In regular years she would be eighteen. In man years she would be fifty-four.
He rushed out into the backyard and hugged her so tight she begged him to release her, and he did. And then she hugged him back and seemed unwilling to let him go.
She said, “I missed you so.”
The boy who was now an oaf said, “And I missed you.”
In the yard with her were three other mans and an odd-looking little oaf that he had never seen around these parts. She introduced everybody but the oaf, who looked to be a simpleton. She said, “This is my husband Rufus, but everyone calls him Jack. This is my son Bob, and this is my daughter Janet.” And then she told them, “This is my old master, Zloty. He was the best master I ever had.”
He shook all of their little hands and then hugged them all, including Rufus who could also be called Jack.
“Zack?”
“No, I’m Jack,” said Jack. “Adventurer, scholar, and giant-killer at your service.”
Zloty shrugged, for he did not understand. Then he eyed the pinhead oaf again to see if maybe he knew him, and again it was nobody that he knew.
And then he thought, It is dangerous these days for mans to travel through the streets. It is illegal for them to be out and about without a leash or an escort. So many of them have been killed. So many of them have been stolen. In this neighborhood, so many of them have been stolen and made into a meal. If the scientists don’t work fast, all of the free-range mans will be dead. The swamp of the Eternal Grass has already dried up. In the north, the great white beos are gone and the ice caps are melting. So maybe this pinhead with them is someone she met after being stolen from me, and she contacted him first and made him her escort so that they all could pass through the streets without worrying about the authorities.
But the oaf was rather short for an oaf, standing a little less than three hla-cubits, while the oaf Zloty, who was considered slightly below average in height by oaf standards of his day, stood four and a half hla-cubits. The pinhead, Zloty figured, was just a little bit taller than a boy at the start of puberty, which made him a very short adult male oaf. And he had frecks on his face and arms, which was very unusual for an oaf. In ancient days, frecks were believed to be a sign of bad fortune and the infant born with them was strangled by its parents after its first suckle to please the great creator.
Her family moved to the other side of the backyard to give her some time alone with her old master. She explained to him all that had transpired since she had been stolen from him. She explained to him the new world in which they lived.
“It is a long, long journey that can only be made by foot. We are separated from your world by about 70,000 zlazla hla-cubits of stairs, but in many ways our world is much like yours. We have war, poverty, racism, sexism, religious intolerance, crime — we are destroying our natural environment.”