WAS by Geoff Ryman

them out on the ground to freeze. You didn't have to walk on an ice road. You would run at it and stop walking. And then you'd slide. It was like flying. They made an ice road all the way down the hill. They could ride down that inside hessian sacks, spinning and giggling and landing in a heap at the bottom. It almost never hurt. When it did, Wilbur would get worried and rub Dorothy's ankles until they were better. He never hit her, like Max did. He would stop Max from hitting her. "You don't hit girls," Wilbur said.

    "Why not?" said Max.

    "Because they're smaller than you. If you hit her, then I'll hit you, just so you know what it's like."

    "And I'll tell Mama."

    "And I'll tell Mama that you were hitting on Dorothy, which is why I hit you."

    Max thrust out his jaw with hatred of his bigger, stronger, wiser brother and walked away, back down the hill, leaving his snowman behind.

    Max was all right most of the time. You needed Max for most of the games. But it was nicer when it was just Dorothy and Will. After Max had gone, Will and Dorothy talked together about how much they hated Kansas.

    "Just a big pile of dirt," said Wilbur.

    "Just a big pile of dirt and nothing to do," said Dorothy.

    "Nothing to do but work."

    "You just got to wait and wait."

    "And do your chores or go to school." The way Will said it made it sound like something disgusting.

    "Sk-ew-ew-l," said Dorothy, imitating him. She admired Will because he had been to school and then quit and never went back.

    "Stuff your head until it hurts and then tell you you're stupid." Will glowered and kicked at the snow. Dorothy kicked at the snow too.

    "One day, I'll get out of here," he said. "One day, I'll just get on the train, and go West." West was the approved direction. Nobody ever went Back East, that was giving up. Everybody talked about going West.

    "I want to see an Indian," Dorothy said.

    "I seen loads of 'em," said Wilbur. "Till about three years ago, there used to be a whole reservation of the Kansa, out at Council Grove. Most of 'em dressed like poor white people and were drunk a lot. I saw one once kept waving a letter and my papa read it and it was from a judge and the judge said that this was a good Indian."

    "He didn't wear feathers?" Dorothy was disappointed.

    "Well, that was before all the Kansa left and went down the Nation. I expect they dress like Indians now."

    "Aunty Em talks about the Indians a lot."

    "She don't know nothing about it," said Wilbur.

    Dorothy wanted to believe that, except that Aunty Em really did have a lot to say about the Indians: how they spoke, what they wore.

    "Down the Nation, the Indians wear feathers," Dorothy said, reassuring herself, "and they're bright red, and they ride horses without a saddle and don't have to do anything they don't want to do."

    "They live in tents, not houses," said Will. "And when they want to move, they just get up and go."

    "And they hide in the grass, and nobody can see them," whispered Dorothy. "They're invisible."

    Will was smiling, crookedly. "Well, we can't see 'em. Maybe they're all around us all the time, only we don't see them."

    "Maybe they live underground," said Dorothy. It was a game of pretend. Will still smiled. "Maybe you can hear 'em sing at night, under the ground."

    "I wish I was an Indian," said Dorothy.

    "There's some kinds of Indian I'd want to be," said Will, leaning back and looking terribly adult. "And some I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to be one of them tame Indians that try to be farmers. I'd want to be out in the Territory."

    "Let's pretend we're going to run away and join the Indians," said Dorothy.

    Will smiled again and shook his head. "Nope. I don't want to pretend that. No point doing that unless you're going to do it for real."

    He was right, of course. It would have been fun to pretend, but pretend was for things that could never happen. But there were Indians, and they did have a land of their own, the Territory, and you really could