Zenna Henderson - The Anything Box

VIP免费

2024-12-20 0 0 356.14KB 100 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

K:\eMule\Incoming\Zenna Henderson - The Anything Box.pdb.pdb

PDB Name: Henderson, Zenna - The Anything

Creator ID: REAd

PDB Type: TEXt

Version: 0

Unique ID Seed: 0

Creation Date: 28-10-2002

Modification Date: 28-10-2002

Last Backup Date: 1-1-1970

Modification Number: 0

Enter the

HORRIFYING

LYRICAL

POIGNANT

TERRIBLE

BEAUTIFUL

UNIQUE

World of

Zenna Henderson

where "a rare combination of energy, sensitivity and imagination add upto an

exciting talent."

Other Avon books by Zenna Henderson

PILGRIMAGE 29173 $1.25

THE PEOPLE: No DIFFERENT FLESH 29165 1.25

HOLDING WONDER 24737 1.50

The Anything Box

ZENNA HENDERSON

AVON

PUBLISHERS OF BARD, CAMELOT AND DISCUS BOOKS

All of the characters in this book are fictitious,

and any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:

Corporation

Imagination:

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 1

Company ,

AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

959 Eighth Avenue

New York, New York 10019

Co., Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-24001 ISBN:

0-380-01745-8

portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Doubleday &

Co., Inc., 277 Park Ave. New York, New York

First Avon Printing, February, 1969 Third Printing

Cover illustration by Hector Garrido

AVON TRADEMARK REO. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND

FOREIGN COUNTRIES, REGISTERED TRADEMARK----

MARCA KEGISTRADA, HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

To all my friends who have spoken

for an Anything Box,

but especially for R. G.

who has no need of his now.

Contents

The Anything Box

Subcommittee

Something Bright

Hush!

Food to All Flesh

Come On, Wagon!

Walking Aunt Daid

The Substitute

The Grunder

Things

Turn the Page

Stevie and The Dark

And a Little Child—

The Last Step

The Anything Box

I suppose it was about the second week of school that I noticed Sue-lynn

particularly. Of course, I'd noticed her name before and checked her out

automatically for maturity and ability and probable performance the way most

teachers do with their students during the first weeks of school. She had

checked out mature and capable and no worry as to performance so I had

pigeonholed her— setting aside for the moment the little nudge that said, "Too

quiet"—with my other no-worrys until the fluster and flurry of the first days

had died down a little.

I remember my noticing day. I had collapsed into my chair for a brief

respite from guiding hot little hands through the intricacies of keeping a

Crayola within reasonable bounds and the room was full of the relaxed, happy

hum of a pleased class as they worked away, not realizing that they were

rubbing "blue" into their memories as well as onto their papers. I was

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 2

meditating on how individual personalities were beginning to emerge among the

thirty-five or so heterogeneous first graders I had, when I noticed

Sue-lynn—really noticed her—for the first time.

She had finished her paper—far ahead of the others as usual—and was sitting

at her table facing me. She had her thumbs touching in front of her on the

table and her fingers curving as though they held something between

them—something large enough to keep her fingertips apart and angular enough to

bend her fingers as if for corners. It was something pleasant that she

held—pleasant and precious. You could tell that by the softness of her hold.

She was leaning forward a little, her lower ribs pressed against the table,

and she was looking, completely absorbed, at the table between her hands. Her

face was relaxed and happy. Her mouth curved in a tender half-smile, and as I

watched, her lashes lifted and she looked at me with a warm share-the-pleasure

look. Then her eyes blinked and the shutters came down inside them. Her hand

flicked into the desk and out. She pressed her thumbs to her forefingers and

rubbed them slowly together. Then she laid one hand over the other on the

table and looked down at them with the air of complete denial and ignorance

children can assume so devastatingly.

The incident caught my fancy and I began to notice Sue-lynn. As I

consciously watched her, I saw that she spent most of her free time staring at

the table between her hands, much too unobtrusively to catch my busy

attention. She hurried through even the fun-est of fun papers and then lost

herself in looking. When Davie pushed her down at recess, and blood streamed

from her knee to her ankle, she took her bandages and her tear-smudged face to

that comfort she had so readily—if you'll pardon the expression—at hand, and

emerged minutes later, serene and dry-eyed. I think Davie pushed her down

because of her Looking. I know the day before he had come up to me, red-faced

and squirming.

"Teacher," he blurted. "She Looks!"

"Who looks?" I asked absently, checking the vocabulary list in my book,

wondering how on earth I'd missed where, one of those annoying wh words that

throw the children for a loss.

"Sue-lynn. She Looks and Looks!"

"At you?" I asked.

"Well—" He rubbed a forefinger below his nose, leaving a clean streak on

his upper lip, accepted the proffered Kleenex and put it in his pocket. "She

looks at her desk and tells lies. She says she can see—"

"Can see what?" My curiosity picked up its ears.

"Anything," said Davie. "It's her Anything Box. She can see anything she

wants to."

"Does it hurt you for her to Look?"

"Well," he squirmed. Then he burst out. "She says she saw me with a dog

biting me because I took her pencil— she said." He started a pell-mell verbal

retreat. "She thinks I took her pencil. I only found—" His eyes dropped. "I'll

give it back."

"I hope so," I smiled. "If you don't want her to look at you, then don't do

things like that."

"Dern girls," he muttered, and clomped back to his seat.

So I think he pushed her down the next day to get back at her for the

dogbite.

Several times after that I wandered to the back of the room, casually in

her vicinity, but always she either saw or felt me coming and the quick sketch

of her hand disposed of the evidence. Only once I thought I caught a glimmer

of something—but her thumb and forefinger brushed in sunlight, and it must

have been just that.

Children don't retreat for no reason at all, and though Sue-lynn did not

follow any overt pattern of withdrawal, I started to wonder about her. I

watched her on the playground, to see how she tracked there. That only

confused me more.

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 3

She had a very regular pattern. When the avalanche of children first

descended at recess, she avalanched along with them and nothing in the

shrieking, running, dodging mass resolved itself into a withdrawn Sue-lynn.

But after ten minutes or so, she emerged from the crowd, tousle-haired,

rosy-cheeked, smutched with dust, one shoelace dangling, and through some

alchemy that I coveted for myself, she suddenly became untousled, undusty and

un-smutched.

And there she was, serene and composed on the narrow little step at the

side of the flight of stairs just where they disappeared into the base of the

pseudo-Corinthian column that graced Our Door and her cupped hands received

whatever they received and her absorption in what she saw became so complete

that the bell came as a shock every time.

And each time, before she joined the rush to Our Door, her hand would

sketch a gesture to her pocket, if she had one, or to the tiny ledge that

extended between the hedge and the building. Apparently she always had to put

the Anything Box away, but never had to go back to get it.

I was so intrigued by her putting whatever it was on the ledge that once I

actually went over and felt along the grimy little outset. I sheepishly

followed my children into the hall, wiping the dust from my fingertips, and

Sue-lynn's eyes brimmed amusement at me without her mouth's smiling. Her hands

mischievously squared in front of her and her thumbs caressed a solidness as

the line of children swept into the room.

I smiled too because she was so pleased with having outwitted me. This

seemed to be such a gay withdrawal that I let my worry die down. Better this

manifestation than any number of other ones that I could name.

Someday, perhaps, I'll learn to keep my mouth shut. I wish I had before

that long afternoon when we primary teachers worked together in a heavy cloud

of Ditto fumes, the acrid smell of India ink, drifting cigarette smoke and the

constant current of chatter, and I let Alpha get me started on what to do with

our behavior problems. She was all raunched up about the usual rowdy loudness

of her boys and the eternal clack of her girls, and I—bless my stupidity—gave

her Sue-lynn as an example of what should be our deepest concern rather than

the outbursts from our active ones.

"You mean she just sits and looks at nothing?" Alpha's voice grated into

her questioning tone.

"Well, I can't see anything," I admitted. "But apparently she can."

"But that's having hallucinations!" Her voice went up a notch. "I read a

book once—"

"Yes." Marlene leaned across the desk to flick ashes in the ash tray. "So

we have heard and heard and heard!"

"Well!" sniffed Alpha. "It's better than never reading a book."

"We're waiting," Marlene leaked smoke from her nostrils, "for the day when

you read another book. This one must have been uncommonly long."

"Oh, I don't know." Alpha's forehead wrinkled with concentration. "It was

only about—" Then she reddened and turned her face angrily away from Marlene.

"Apropos of our discussion—" she said pointedly. "It sounds to me like that

child has a deep personality disturbance. Maybe even a psychotic—whatever—"

Her eyes glistened faintly as she turned the thought over.

"Oh, I don't know," I said, surprised into echoing her words at my sudden

need to defend Sue-lynn. "There's something about her. She doesn't have that

apprehensive, hunched-shoulder, don't-hit-me-again air about her that so many

withdrawn children have." And I thought achingly of one of mine from last year

that Alpha had now and was verbally bludgeoning back into silence after all my

work with him. "She seems to have a happy, adjusted personality, only with

this odd little—plus."

"Well, I'd be worried if she were mine," said Alpha. "I'm glad all my kids

are so normal." She sighed complacently. "I guess I really haven't anything to

kick about. I seldom ever have problem children except wigglers and yakkers,

and a holler and a smack can straighten them out"

Marlene caught my eye mockingly, tallying Alpha's class with me, and I

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 4

turned away with a sigh. To be so happy— well, I suppose ignorance does help.

"You'd better do something about that girl," Alpha shrilled as she left the

room. "She'll probably get worse and worse as time goes on. Deteriorating, I

think the book said."

I had known Alpha a long time and I thought I knew how much of her talk to

discount, but I began to worry about Sue-lynn. Maybe this was a disturbance

that was more fundamental than the usual run of the mill that I had met up

with. Maybe a child can smile a soft, contented smile and still have little

maggots of madness flourishing somewhere inside.

Or, by gorry! I said to myself defiantly, maybe she does have an Anything

Box. Maybe she is looking at something precious. Who am I to say no to

anything like that?

An Anything Box! What could you see in an Anything Box? Heart's desire? I

felt my own heart lurch—just a little—the next time Sue-lynn's hands curved. I

breathed deeply to hold me in my chair. If it was her Anything Box, I wouldn't

be able to see my heart's desire in it. Or would I? I propped my cheek up on

my hand and doodled aimlessly on my time schedule sheet. How on earth, I

wondered—not for the first time—do I manage to get myself off on these

tangents?

Then I felt a small presence at my elbow and turned to meet Sue-lynn's wide

eyes.

"Teacher?" The word was hardly more than a breath.

"Yes?" I could tell that for some reason Sue-lynn was loving me dearly at

the moment. Maybe because her group had gone into new books that morning.

Maybe because I had noticed her new dress, the ruffles of which made her feel

very feminine and lovable, or maybe just because the late autumn sun lay so

golden across her desk. Anyway, she was loving me to overflowing, and since,

unlike most of the children, she had no casual hugs or easy moist kisses, she

was bringing her love to me in her encompassing hands.

"See my box, Teacher? It's my Anything Box."

"Oh, my!" I said. "May I hold it?"

After all, I have held—tenderly or apprehensively or bravely—tiger magic,

live rattlesnakes, dragon's teeth, poor little dead butterflies and two ears

and a nose that dropped off Sojie one cold morning—none of which I could see

any more than I could the Anything Box. But I took the squareness from her

carefully, my tenderness showing in my fingers and my face.

And I received weight and substance and actuality!

Almost I let it slip out of my surprised fingers, but Sue-lynn's

apprehensive breath helped me catch it and I curved my fingers around the

precious warmness and looked down, down, past a faint shimmering, down into

Sue-lynn's Anything Box.

I was running barefoot through the whispering grass. The swirl of my skirts

caught the daisies as I rounded the gnarled apple tree at the corner. The warm

wind lay along each of my cheeks and chuckled in my ears. My heart outstripped

my flying feet and melted with a rush of delight into warmness as his arms—

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, my palms tight against the Anything

Box. "It's beautiful!" I whispered. "It's wonderful, Sue-lynn. Where did you

get it?"

Her hands took it back hastily. "It's mine," she said defiantly. "It's

mine."

"Of course," I said. "Be careful now. Don't drop it."

She smiled faintly as she sketched a motion to her pocket. "I won't." She

patted the flat pocket on her way back to her seat.

Next day she was afraid to look at me at first for fear I might say

something or look something or in some way remind her of what must seem like a

betrayal to her now, but after I only smiled my usual smile, with no added

secret knowledge, she relaxed.

A night or so later when I leaned over my moon-drenched window sill and let

the shadow of my hair hide my face from such ebullient glory, I remembered the

Anything Box. Could I make one for myself? Could I square off this aching

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 5

waiting, this outreaching, this silent cry inside me, and make it into an

Anything Box? I freed my hands and brought them together, thumb to thumb,

framing a part of the horizon's darkness between my upright forefingers. I

stared into the empty square until my eyes watered. I sighed, and laughed a

little, and let my hands frame my face as I leaned out into the night. To have

magic so near—to feel it tingle off my fingertips and then to be so bound that

I couldn't receive it. I turned away from the window—turning my back on

brightness.

It wasn't long after this that Alpha succeeded in putting sharp points of

worry back in my thoughts of Sue-lynn. We had ground duty together, and one

morning when we shivered while the kids ran themselves rosy in the crisp air,

she sizzed in my ear.

"Which one is it? The abnormal one, I mean."

"I don't have any abnormal children," I said, my voice sharpening before

the sentence ended because I suddenly realized whom she meant.

"Well, I call it abnormal to stare at nothing." You could almost taste the

acid in her words. "Who is it?"

"Sue-lynn," I said reluctantly. "She's playing on the bars now."

Alpha surveyed the upside-down Sue-lynn whose brief skirts were belled down

from her bare pink legs and half covered her face as she swung from one of the

bars by her knees. Alpha clutched her wizened, blue hands together and

breathed on them. "She looks normal enough," she said.

"She is normal!" I snapped.

"Well, bite my head off!" cried Alpha. "You're the one that said she

wasn't, not me—or is it 'not I'? I never could remember. Not me? Not I?"

The bell saved Alpha from a horrible end. I never knew a person so serenely

unaware of essentials and so sensitive to trivia.

But she had succeeded in making me worry about Sue-lynn again, and the

worry exploded into distress a few days later.

Sue-lynn came to school sleepy-eyed and quiet. She didn't finish any of her

work and she fell asleep during rest time. I cussed TV and Drive-Ins and

assumed a night's sleep would put it right. But next day Sue-lynn burst into

tears and slapped Davie clear off his chair.

"Why Sue-lynn!" I gathered Davie up in all his astonishment and took

Sue-lynn's hand. She jerked it away from me and swung herself at Davie again.

She got two handfuls of his hair and had him out of my grasp before I knew it.

She threw him bodily against the wall with a flip of her hands, then doubled

up her fists and pressed them to her streaming eyes. In the shocked silence of

the room, she stumbled over to Isolation and seating herself, back to the

class, on the little chair, she leaned her head into the corner and sobbed

quietly in big gulping sobs.

"What on earth goes on?" I asked the stupefied Davie who sat

spraddle-legged on the floor fingering a detached tuft of hair. "What did you

do?"

"I only said 'Robber Daughter,'" said Davie. "It said so in the paper. My

mama said her daddy's a robber. They put him in jail cause he robbered a gas

station." His bewildered face was trying to decide whether or not to cry.

Everything had happened so fast that he didn't know yet if he was hurt.

"It isn't nice to call names," I said weakly. "Get back into your seat.

I'll take care of Sue-lynn later."

He got up and sat gingerly down in his chair, rubbing his ruffled hair,

wanting to make more of a production of the situation but not knowing how. He

twisted his face experimentally to see if he had tears available and had none.

"Dern girls," he muttered, and tried to shake his fingers free of a wisp of

hair.

I kept my eye on Sue-lynn for the next half hour as I busied myself with

the class. Her sobs soon stopped and her rigid shoulders relaxed. Her hands

were softly in her lap and I knew she was taking comfort from her Anything

Box. We had our talk together later, but she was so completely sealed off from

me by her misery that there was no communication between us. She sat quietly

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 6

watching me as I talked, her hands trembling in her lap. It shakes the heart,

somehow, to see the hands of a little child quiver like that.

That afternoon I looked up from my reading group, startled, as though by a

cry, to catch Sue-lynn's frightened eyes. She looked around bewildered and

then down at her hands again—her empty hands. Then she darted to the Isolation

corner and reached under the chair. She went back to her seat slowly, her

hands squared to an unseen weight. For the first time, apparently, she had had

to go get the Anything Box. It troubled me with a vague unease for the rest of

the afternoon.

Through the days that followed while the trial hung fire, I had Sue-lynn in

attendance bodily, but that was all. She sank into her Anything Box at every

opportunity. And always, if she had put it away somewhere, she had to go back

for it. She roused more and more reluctantly from these waking dreams, and

there finally came a day when I had to shake her to waken her.

I went to her mother, but she couldn't or wouldn't understand me, and made

me feel like a frivolous gossipmonger taking her mind away from her husband,

despite the fact that I didn't even mention him—or maybe because I didn't

mention him.

"If she's being a bad girl, spank her," she finally said, wearily shifting

the weight of a whining baby from one hip to another and pushing her tousled

hair off her forehead. "Whatever you do is all right by me. My worrier is all

used up. I haven't got any left for the kids right now."

Well, Sue-lynn's father was found guilty and sentenced to the State

Penitentiary and school was less than an hour old the next day when Davie came

up, clumsily a-tiptoe, braving my wrath for interrupting a reading group, and

whispered hoarsely, "Sue-lynn's asleep with her eyes open again, Teacher."

We went back to the table and Davie slid into his chair next to a

completely unaware Sue-lynn. He poked her with a warning finger. "I told you

I'd tell on you."

And before our horrified eyes, she toppled, as rigidly as a doll, sideways

off the chair. The thud of her landing relaxed her and she lay limp on the

green asphalt tile—a thin paper doll of a girl, one hand still clenched open

around something. I pried her fingers loose and almost wept to feel

enchantment dissolve under my heavy touch. I carried her down to the nurse's

room and we worked over her with wet towels and prayer and she finally opened

her eyes.

"Teacher," she whispered weakly.

"Yes, Sue-lynn." I took her cold hands in mine.

"Teacher, I almost got in my Anything Box."

"No," I answered. "You couldn't. You're too big."

"Daddy's there," she said. "And where we used to live."

I took a long, long look at her wan face. I hope it was genuine concern for

her that prompted my next words. I hope it wasn't envy or the memory of the

niggling nagging of Alpha's voice that put firmness in my voice as I went on.

"That's playlike," I said. "Just for fun."

Her hands jerked protestingly in mine. "Your Anything Box is just for fun.

It's like Davie's cow pony that he keeps in his desk or Sojie's jet plane, or

when the big bear chases all of you at recess. It's fun-for-play, but it's not

for real. You mustn't think it's for real. It's only play."

"No!" she denied. "No!" she cried frantically, and hunching herself up on

the cot, peering through her tear-swollen eyes, she scrabbled under the pillow

and down beneath the rough blanket that covered her.

"Where is it?" she cried. "Where is it? Give it back to me, Teacher!"

She flung herself toward me and pulled open both my clenched hands.

"Where did you put it? Where did you put it?"

"There is no Anything Box," I said flatly, trying to hold her to me and

feeling my heart breaking along with hers.

"You took it!" she sobbed. "You took it away from me! And she wrenched

herself out of my arms.

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 7

"Can't you give it back to her?" whispered the nurse. "If it makes her feel

so bad? Whatever it is—"

"It's just imagination," I said, almost sullenly. "I can't give her back

something that doesn't exist."

Too young! I thought bitterly. Too young to learn that heart's desire is

only play-like.

Of course the doctor found nothing wrong. Her mother dismissed the matter

as a fainting spell and Sue-lynn came back to class next day, thin and

listless, staring blankly out the window, her hands palm down on the desk. I

swore by the pale hollow of her cheek that never, never again would I take any

belief from anyone without replacing it with something better. What had I

given Sue-lynn? What had she better than I had taken from her? How did I know

but that her Anything Box was on purpose to tide her over rough spots in her

life like this? And what now, now that I had taken it from her?

Well, after a time she began to work again, and later, to play. She came

back to smiles, but not to laughter. She puttered along quite satisfactorily

except that she was a candle blown out. The flame was gone wherever the

brightness of belief goes. And she had no more sharing smiles for me, no

overflowing love to bring to me. And her shoulder shrugged subtly away from my

touch.

Then one day I suddenly realized that Sue-lynn was searching our classroom.

Stealthily, casually, day by day she was searching, covering every inch of the

room. She went through every puzzle box, every lump of clay, every shelf and

cupboard, every box and bag. Methodically she checked behind every row of

books and in every child's desk until finally, after almost a week, she had

been through everything in the place except my desk. Then she began to

materialize suddenly at my elbow every time I opened a drawer. And her eyes

would probe quickly and sharply before I slid it shut again. But if I tried to

intercept her looks, they slid away and she had some legitimate errand that

had brought her up to the vicinity of the desk.

She believes it again, I thought hopefully. She won't accept the fact that

her Anything Box is gone. She wants it again.

But it is gone, I thought drearily. It's really-for-true gone.

My head was heavy from troubled sleep, and sorrow was a weariness in all my

movements. Waiting is sometimes a burden almost too heavy to carry. While my

children hummed happily over their fun-stuff, I brooded silently out the

window until I managed a laugh at myself. It was a shaky laugh that threatened

to dissolve into something else, so I brisked back to my desk.

As good a time as any to throw out useless things, I thought, and to see if

I can find that colored chalk I put away so carefully. I plunged my hands into

the wilderness of the bottom right-hand drawer of my desk. It was deep with a

huge accumulation of anything—just anything— that might need a temporary

hiding place. I knelt to pull out leftover Jack Frost pictures, and a broken

bean-shooter, a chewed red ribbon, a roll of cap gun ammunition, one striped

sock, six Numbers papers, a rubber dagger, a copy of The Gospel According to

St. Luke, a miniature coal shovel, patterns for jack-o'-lanterns, and a pink

plastic pelican. I retrieved my Irish linen hankie I thought lost forever and

Sojie's report card that he had told me solemnly had blown out of his hand and

landed on a jet and broke the sound barrier so loud that it busted all to

flitters. Under the welter of miscellany, I felt a squareness. Oh, happy! I

thought, this is where I put the colored chalk! I cascaded papers off both

sides of my lifting hands and shook the box free.

We were together again. Outside, the world was an enchanting wilderness of

white, the wind shouting softly through the windows, tapping wet, white

fingers against the warm light. Inside, all the worry and waiting, the

apartness and loneliness were over and forgotten, their hugeness dwindled by

the comfort of a shoulder, the warmth of clasping hands—and nowhere, nowhere

was the fear of parting, nowhere the need to do without again. This was the

happy ending. This was—

This was Sue-lynn's Anything Box!

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 8

My racing heart slowed as the dream faded—and rushed again at the

realization. I had it here! In my junk drawer! It had been here all the time!

I stood up shakily, concealing the invisible box in the flare of my skirts.

I sat down and put the box carefully in the center of my desk, covering the

top of it with my palms lest I should drown again in delight. I looked at

Sue-lynn. She was finishing her fun paper, competently but unjoyously. Now

would come her patient sitting with quiet hands until told to do something

else.

Alpha would approve. And very possibly, I thought, Alpha would, for once in

her limited life, be right. We may need "hallucinations" to keep us going—all

of us but the Alphas—but when we go so far as to try to force ourselves,

physically, into the Never-Neverland of heart's desire—

I remembered Sue-lynn's thin rigid body toppling doll-like off its chair.

Out of her deep need she had found—or created? Who could tell?—something too

dangerous for a child. I could so easily bring the brimming happiness back to

her eyes—but at what a possible price!

No, I had a duty to protect Sue-lynn. Only maturity— the maturity born of

the sorrow and loneliness that Sue-lynn was only beginning to know—could be

trusted to use an Anything Box safely and wisely.

My heart thudded as I began to move my hands, letting the palms slip down

from the top to shape the sides of—

I had moved them back again before I really saw, and I have now learned

almost to forget that glimpse of what heart's desire is like when won at the

cost of another's heart.

I sat there at the desk trembling and breathless, my palms moist, feeling

as if I had been on a long journey away from the little schoolroom. Perhaps I

had. Perhaps I had been shown all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of

time.

"Sue-lynn," I called. "Will you come up here when you're through?"

She nodded unsmilingly and snipped off the last paper from the edge of

Mistress Mary's dress. Without another look at her handiwork, she carried the

scissors safely to the scissors box, crumpled the scraps of paper in her hand

and came up to the wastebasket by the desk.

"I have something for you, Sue-lynn," I said, uncovering the box.

Her eyes dropped to the desk top. She looked indifferently up at me. "I did

my fun paper already."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes." It was a flat lie.

"Good," I lied right back. "But look here." I squared my hands around the

Anything Box.

She took a deep breath and the whole of her little body stiffened.

"I found it," I said hastily, fearing anger. "I found it in the bottom

drawer."

She leaned her chest against my desk, her hands caught tightly between, her

eyes intent on the box, her face white with the aching want you see on

children's faces pressed to Christmas windows.

"Can I have it?" she whispered.

"It's yours," I said, holding it out. Still she leaned against her hands,

her eyes searching my face.

"Can I have it?" she asked again.

"Yes!" I was impatient with this anti-climax. "But—"

Her eyes flickered. She had sensed my reservation before I had. "But you

must never try to get into it again."

"Okay," she said, the word coming out on a long relieved sigh. "Okay,

Teacher."

She took the box and tucked it lovingly into her small pocket. She turned

from the desk and started back to her table. My mouth quirked with a small

smile. It seemed to me that everything about her had suddenly turned

upwards—even the ends of her straight taffy-colored hair. The subtle flame

about her that made her Sue-lynn was there again. She scarcely touched the

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 9

floor as she walked.

I sighed heavily and traced on the desk top with my finger a probable size

for an Anything Box. What would Sue-lynn choose to see first? How like a drink

after a drought it would seem to her.

I was startled as a small figure materialized at my elbow. It was Sue-lynn,

her fingers carefully squared before her.

"Teacher," she said softly, all the flat emptiness gone from her voice.

"Any time you want to take my Anything Box, you just say so."

I groped through my astonishment and incredulity for words. She couldn't

possibly have had time to look into the Box yet.

"Why, thank you, Sue-lynn," I managed. "Thanks a lot I would like very much

to borrow it some time."

"Would you like it now?" she asked, proffering it.

"No, thank you," I said, around the lump in my throat. "I've had a turn

already. You go ahead."

"Okay," she murmured. Then—"Teacher?"

"Yes?"

Shyly she leaned against me, her cheek on my shoulder. She looked up at me

with her warm, unshuttered eyes, then both arms were suddenly around my neck

in a brief awkward embrace.

"Watch out!" I whispered laughing into the collar of her blue dress.

"You'll lose it again!"

"No I won't," she laughed back, patting the flat pocket of her dress. "Not

ever, ever again!"

Subcommittee

First came the sleek black ships, falling out of the sky in patterned

disorder, sowing fear as they settled like seeds on the broad landing field.

After them, like bright butterflies, came the vividly colored slow ships that

hovered and hesitated and came to rest scattered among the deadly dark ones.

"Beautiful!" sighed Serena, turning from the conference room window. "There

should have been music to go with it."

"A funeral dirge," said Thorn. "Or a requiem. Or flutes before failure.

Frankly, I'm frightened, Rena. If these conferences fail, all hell will break

loose again. Imagine living another year like this past one."

"But the conference won't fail!" Serena protested. "If they're willing to

consent to the conference, surely they'll be willing to work with us for

peace."

"Their peace or ours?" asked Thorn, staring morosely out the window. "I'm

afraid we're being entirely too naive about this whole affair. It's been a

long time since we finally were able to say, 'Ain't gonna study war no more,'

and made it stick. We've lost a lot of the cunning that used to be necessary

in dealing with other people. We can't, even now, be sure this isn't a trick

to get all our high command together in one place for a grand massacre."

"Oh, no!" Serena pressed close to him and his arm went around her. "They

couldn't possibly violate—"

"Couldn't they?" Thorn pressed his cheek to the top of her ear. "We don't

know, Rena. We just don't know. We have so little information about them. We

know practically nothing about their customs—even less about their values or

from what frame of reference they look upon our suggestion of suspending

hostilities."

"But surely they must be sincere. They brought their families along with

them. You did say those bright ships are family craft, didn't you?"

"Yes, they suggested we bring our families and they brought their families

along with them, but it's nothing to give us comfort. They take them

everywhere—even into battle."

"Into battle!"

"Yes. They mass the home craft off out of range during battles, but every

time we disable or blast one of their fighters, one or more of the home craft

spin away out of control or flare into nothingness. Apparently they're just

ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html

Page 10

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

K:eMuleIncomingennaHenderson-TheAnythingBox.pdb.pdbPDBName:Henderson,Zenna-TheAnythingCreatorID:REAdPDBType:TEXtVersion:0UniqueIDSeed:0CreationDate:28-10-2002ModificationDate:28-10-2002LastBackupDate:1-1-1970ModificationNumber:0EntertheHORRIFYINGLYRICALPOIGNANTTERRIBLEBEAUTIFULUNIQUEWorldofZenna...

展开>> 收起<<

Zenna Henderson - The Anything Box.pdf

共100页,预览20页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Zenna Henderson - The Anything Box

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: