Gossamer by Lois Lowry Page B

explained in a low voice.
    A moan sounded from the bed. "Oh, dear," said Littlest, hearing it.
    They both watched as the woman tossed her head and whimpered. "She's caught in a nightmare," Thin Elderly murmured in distress.
    ***
    She stood helplessly, watching as a tiny child crouched on the floor. "Eat it!" a man was saying, and pushing the little boy's face into a bowl. In the background, a woman wept, and she was weeping, too, but both of them were powerless. "Eat it! Eat it!" the man kept snarling, but the child refused. He looked up at her and she reached toward him—

    ***
    "Hold my hand," Littlest whispered. "Hope with all your heart. And think the words." She reached over and took Thin Elderly's hand and together they wished dream strength into the woman. Peace, they thought. Family.
    ***
    —and suddenly it was not that child at all, but her own self, her own little-girl self, wrapped in a soft blanket, with a woman, a mother, reading her a story, and outside it was snowing.
    But where was the tortured boy? She looked around, out into the snow, thinking he would be cold, but he was not there—he was here with her, wrapped beside her in the blanket!
    Then someone began to cry. Several people were crying. One was a young soldier, who leaned toward her, but he was pulled away, and there was a sound of shots, and she could hear him weeping, but only for an instant, because she looked down then and the little boy was there, smiling, and he was the soldier, or perhaps the son of the soldier, or the memory of the soldier. He was alive, and happy, and he held a stuffed donkey, and a dog was there, too. The boy and the dog and the donkey were her family, and no one was crying anymore, and the snarling man had gone away, and they were all together and safe. It was peaceful.

    ***
    Her breathing slowed and became soft and regular. She smiled. Whatever had troubled her had ended. Thin Elderly and Littlest One relaxed. "She's fine," Thin Elderly said. "She's going to be fine."
    "We did it!" Littlest said proudly.
    "Well," Thin Elderly replied, "we helped."
    He took her hand. "It's almost morning," he pointed out. "We must hurry back. The others will already be back in the Heap."
    "Well, they didn't have to deal with the Horde," Littlest pointed out importantly, "the way we did."
    Downstairs, they slid under the door and out into the last of the night.
    Littlest looked around as they began their journey back. "Where is the Horde now?" she asked.
    "Out there," Thin Elderly told her. "They are always out there."

27
    Meticulously the young woman typed her son's name and created a place for him in Mrs. MacMahon's third grade class. He was a document now. He had a permanent place in her computer. John was part of a large group, since all of the Rosewood Elementary students were there, listed alphabetically and then individually, with their grades and their food allergies and their emergency numbers and their authorized pick-up-from-school people and their medical histories. John's chicken pox was there, and his ear infections, and the name of his doctor, and his broken arm—

    She shuddered briefly, remembering last year's fracture; John was seven then. Duane still lived with them, and they lived in fear, she and John: what kind of mood would he be in when he came home (if he came home)? Sometimes he was Fun Daddy, laughing and as boisterous as a boy. But more and more by then, by the time John was seven, Duane was someone else, the person he had turned into, the person they didn't know, the person they feared.

    They thought it was their fault. If they were nicer, or if she cooked better, or spent less money, or picked up the toys, or if they kept their hair combed a different way, then Fun Daddy would come back. So they tried. And sometimes it worked; that was what always threw her off balance, that it worked sometimes, and she could wheedle him out of his ugly mood and it would be the three of them again, laughing. But this