WAS by Geoff Ryman Page A

go there. You don't pretend something like that. You plan it. Dorothy was suddenly sure that she knew Wilbur's secret. Will was planning to go there. It was a secret she would lock in her heart and keep safe away.

    Will was almost a man. He was calm and kindly like an adult, but he talked to kids. Dorothy knew that that was somehow wrong, talking to her as if she were anyone else, but she liked it.

    She could tell him about how mean Aunty Em was, how she made her do things, and Will understood and didn't say anything to his parents, who would only go to Aunty Em and tell her what Dorothy had said. And he would tell Dorothy in turn about his parents. He made her understand that they weren't mean. In fact they could be nice. But his daddy was drunk all the time and didn't do anything, and the farm was falling apart and his mama was unhappy and kept complaining.

    "Craziest place for gloom," he told her. "They just can't wait to hunker down and be unhappy. And I can't run that place by myself and I'm not going to. I don't want to be a smelly old farmer."

    "Uncle Henry smells," said Dorothy. "I can't stand it."

    "That's 'cause he's got bad teeth," said Will.

    "He tries to kiss me with his beard. And his beard smells too," said Dorothy.

    They sat on the hessian bags listening to the gentle hiss of snow landing on fresh snow. It was nice, doing what they weren't supposed to do, letting snow fall on them. The snow fell in big, light clumps that sat on their stockings.

    "Eskimos are Indians that live right far north, all the way up in British America," said Will. "They make their houses out of snow."

    Dorothy could see the Eskimo houses, sparkling in one of those bright, blue-sky days in winter. She saw an Eskimo town, their snow castles all lined up.

    "Doesn't it get cold?"

    "Nope. You see, you get enough snow, it shuts the cold out, just like anything else."

    Another wonderful thing. Snow was warm if you got enough of it. There was a logic that made the world beneficent. It was a nice world, if you were an Indian.

    "Indians are a lot nicer," said Dorothy.

    "Except when they get mean and kill people," Will reminded her.

    Dorothy scowled. That was the trouble with Indians. That was the thing that never made sense. Everybody liked Indians, even the adults. They bought Indian blankets. The Jewells had one up on the wall, and it was bright red and yellow in bumpy shapes. And they had an Indian buffalo hide on the floor, with the horns still on. Everybody liked Indians, but everybody was afraid of them too, and Indians tried to kill them.

    "Why do they do that?" Dorothy asked in a small voice.

    "Cause this used to be their country and we took it."

    "But they got the Territory."

    Will was silent. It didn't make sense to him either, even to him. They listened to the snow falling.

    "I used to think the snow came straight from God," said Will, looking up. "Used to think it fell straight off Him in pieces. Asked my papa if His dandruff was snow."

    "I used to think rain was God crying," said Dorothy.

    "Then it freezes over Kansas, 'cause Kansas is so cold."

    "Let's just sit here," said Dorothy. "Let's just sit here so the snow covers us up and see if it keeps us warm."

    They let the snow settle over them. They sat shoulder to shoulder and watched themselves turn white. Then they heard Mr. Jewell shouting. He was far away in the fields, standing in the snow, a small dark smear, like charcoal. He was angry. Shouting for them to come back inside. What the blazes did they think they were doing?

    "Your daddy swears," whispered Dorothy.

    "Does a lot of other things as well," said Will, with a grunt, and stood up.

    It was like the two of them were putting on masks. "We're terrible sorry, Mr. Jewell," said Dorothy. "We weren't cold. The snow would keep us warm."

    "You get on into the house,", said Mr. Jewell to his son. You couldn't move around adults without doing something wrong. It was the last time Dorothy saw Will.

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