The Anything Box

the people in my dream. And he's talking to me—for the first time!"
Aunt Daid was changing. Her face was filling out and her eyes widening, her
body was straining at the old black dress that wasn't saggy any more. Before I
could draw a breath, the old dress rustled to the ground and Aunt Daid—I mean
she was standing there, light rippling around her like silk—a light that cast
no shadows nor even flickered on the tangled growth in the hollow.
It seemed to me that I could see into that light, farther than any human
eyes ought to see, and all at once the world that had always been absolute
bedrock to me became a shimmering edge of something, a path between places or
ABC Amber Palm Converter,http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
a brief stopping place. And the wonder that was the existence of mankindwasn't unique any more.
"Oh, if only I am cured!" she cried. "If only I don't ever have to gothrough this nightmare again!" She lifted her arms and drew herself up into aslim growing exclamation point.
"For the first time I really know I'm dreaming," she said. "And I know thisisn't real!" Her feet danced across the hollow and she took both my numbhands. "You aren't real, are you?" she asked. "None of this is, is it? Allthis ugly, old, dragging—" She put her arms around me and hugged me tight.
My hands tingled to the icy fire of her back and my breath was tangled inthe heavy silvery gleam of her hair.
"Bless you for being unreal!" she said. "And may I never dream you again!"
And there I was, all alone in the dark hollow, staring at hands I couldn'tsee, trying to see the ice and fire that still tingled on my fingertips. Itook a deep shuddery breath and stopped to grope for Aunt Daid's dress thatcaught at my feet. Fear melted my knees and they wouldn't straighten up again.I could feel terror knocking at my brain and I knew as soon as it could breakthrough I'd go screaming up the hollow like a crazy man, squeezing the blackdress like a rattlesnake in my hands. But I heard Pa saying, "Bring her back,"and I thought, "All my grampas saw it, too. All of them brought her back. It'shappened before." And I crouched there, squinching my eyes tight shut, holdingmy breath, my fingers digging into my palms, clutching the dress.
It might have been a minute, it might have been an hour, or a lifetimebefore the dress stirred in my hands. My knees jerked me upright and I droppedthe dress like a live coal.
She was there again, her eyes dreaming-shut, her hair swinging like thestart of music, her face like every tender thing a heart could ever know. Thenher eyes opened slowly and she looked around her.
"Oh, no!" she cried, the back of her hand muffling her words. "Not again!Not after all this time! I thought I was over it!"
And I had her crying in my arms—all that wonderfulness against me. All thatsoftness and sorrow.
But she pulled away and looked up at me. "Well, I’ll say it again so Iwon't forget it," she said, her tears slipping from her face and glitteringdown through the dark. "And this time it'll work. This is only a dream. My ownspecial nightmare. This will surely be the last one. I have just this onenight to live through and never again, never again. You are my dream—this isall a dream—" Her hands touched the wrinkles that started across her forehead. The old black dress was creeping like a devouring snake up her and her fleshwas sagging away before it as it crept. Her hair was dwindling and tarnishingout of its silvery shining, her eyes shrinking and blanking out.
"No, no!" I cried, sick to the marrow to see Aunt Daid coming back over allthat wonder. I rubbed my hand over her face to erase the lines that werecracking across it, but the skin under my fingers stiffened and crumpled andstiffened and hardened, and before I could wipe the feel of dried oldness fromthe palm of my hand, all of Aunt Daid was there and the hollow was fading asmy eyes lost their seeing.
I felt the drag and snag of weeds and briars as I brought Aunt Daid back—asobbing Aunt Daid, tottering and weak. I finally had to carry her, allmatch-sticky and musty in my arms.
As I struggled up out of the hollow that was stirring behind me in a windthat left the rest of the world silent, I heard singing in my head, Life isbut a dream . . . Life is but a dream. But before I stumbled blindly into theblare of light from the kitchen door, I shook the sobbing bundle of bones inmy arms—the withered cocoon, the wrinkled seed of such a flowering—andwhispered,
"Wake up, Aunt Daid! Wake up, you!"
ABC Amber Palm Converter,http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The Substitute
"But I tell you, Mr. Bennett, he's disrupting my whole room! We've got to dosomething!" Miss Amberly's thin, classroom-grimed fingers brushed back thestrand of soft brown hair that habitually escaped from her otherwise neatlydisciplined waves.
Mr. Bennett, twiddling a pencil between his fingers, wondered, as hesometimes did at ten-after-four of a weekday, if being a principal was a signof achievement or of softening of the brain, and quite irrelevantly, how MissAmberly would look with all of her hair softly loose around her face.
"What has he done now, Miss Amberly? I mean other than just be himself?"
Miss Amberly flushed and crossed her ankles, her feet pushed back under thechair. "I know I'm always bothering you about him, but Mr. Bennett, he's thefirst student in all my teaching career that I haven't been able to reach. Iheard about him from the other teachers as he came up through the grades, butI thought . . . Well, a child can get a reputation, and if each teacherexpects it of him, he can live up to it good or bad. When you put him in myclass this fall, I was quite confident that I'd be able to get through tohim—somehow." She flushed again. "I don't mean to sound conceited."
"I know," Mr. Bennett pried the eraser out of the pencil and tried to pushit back in. "I've always depended on you to help straighten out problemchildren. In fact I won't deny that I've deliberately given you more than yourshare, because you do have a knack with them. That's why I thought that Keeley. . ." He tapped the pencil against his lower lip and then absently tried towiden the metal eraser band with his teeth. The metal split and bruisedagainst his upper lip. He rubbed a thumb across his mouth and put the pencildown.
"So the new desk didn't work?"
"You ought to see it! It's worse than the old one—ink marks, gum, wax, oldwire!" Miss Amberly's voice was hot with indignation. "He has no pride toappeal to. Besides that, the child isn't normal, Mr. Bennett. We shouldn'thave him in class with the others!"
"Hasn't he been doing any work at all?" Bennett's quiet voice broke in.
"Practically none. Here. I brought today's papers to show you. Hisspelling. I gave him fourth grade words since he barely reads on that leveland would be lost completely on seventh grade words. Look, beecuss. That'sbecause, liby. That's library. Well, just look at it!"
Bennett took the dirty, tattered piece of paper and tried to decipher thewords. "Pretty poor showing," he murmured. "What's this on the bottom. Vector,Mare Imbrium, velocity. Hm, fourth grade spelling?"
"Of course not!" said Miss Amberly, exasperation sharpening her voice."That's what makes me so blistering mad. He can't spell cat twice the sameway, but he can spend all spelling period writing down nonsense like that. Itproves he's got something behind that empty look on his face. And that makesme madder. Stupidity I can make allowances for, but a child who can andwon't—!"
The slam of a door down the emptying hall was an echoing period to heroutburst.
"Well!" Bennett slid down in his chair and locked his fingers around onebent knee. "So you think he really has brains? Mrs. Ensign assured me lastyear that he was a low-grade moron, incapable of learning."