Ray Bradbury - From the Dust Returned

“Love,” she said. “Where is my love!?”

She had said it at supper. And her parents had stiffened back in their chairs. “Patience,” they advised. “Remember, you’re remarkable. Our whole Family is odd and remarkable. We must not marry with ordinary folk. We’d lose our dark souls if we did. You wouldn’t want to lose your ability to ‘travel’ by wish and desire, would you? Then be careful. Careful!”

But in her high attic room, Cecy had touched perfume to her throat and stretched out, trembling and apprehensive, on her four-poster, as a moon the color of milk rose over Illinois country, turning rivers to cream and roads to platinum.

“Yes,” she sighed. “I’m one of an odd family that flies nights like black kites. I can live in anything at all—a pebble, a crocus, or a praying mantis. Now!”

The wind whipped her away over fields and meadows.

She saw the warm lights of cottages and farms glowing with twilight colors.

If I can’t be in love, myself, she thought, because I’m odd, then I’ll be in love through someone else!

Outside a farmhouse in the fresh night a dark-haired girl, no more than nineteen, drew up water from a deep stone well, singing.

Cecy fell—a dry leaf—into the well. She lay in the tender moss of the well, gazing up through dark coolness. Now she quickened in a fluttering, invisible amoeba. Now in a water droplet! At last, within a cold cup, she felt herself lifted to the girl’s warm lips. There was a soft night sound of drinking.

Cecy looked out from the girl’s eyes.

She entered into the dark head and gazed from the shining eyes at the hands pulling the rough rope. She listened through the shell ears to this girl’s world. She smelled a particular universe through these delicate nostrils, felt this special heart beating, beating. Felt this strange tongue move with singing.

The girl gasped. She stared into the night meadows.

“Who’s there?”

No answer.

Only the wind, whispered Cecy.

“Only the wind.” The girl laughed, but shivered.

It was a good body, this girl’s. It held bones of finest slender ivory hidden and roundly fleshed. This brain was like a pink tea rose, hung in darkness, and there was cider wine in this mouth. The lips lay firm on the white, white teeth and the brows arched neatly at the world, and the hair blew soft and fine on her milky neck. The pores knit small and close. The nose tilted at the moon and the cheeks glowed like small fires. The body drifted with feather-balances from one motion to another and seemed always humming to itself. Being in this body was like basking in a hearth fire, living in the purr of a sleeping cat, stirring in warm creek waters that flowed by night to the sea.

Yes! thought Cecy.

“What?” asked the girl, as if she’d heard.

What’s your name? asked Cecy carefully.

“Ann Leary.” The girl twitched. “Now why should I say that out loud?”

Ann, Ann, whispered Cecy. Ann, you’re going to be in love.

As if to answer this, a great roar sprang from the road, a clatter and a ring of wheels on gravel. A tall man drove up in an open car, holding the wheel with his monstrous arms, his smile glowing across the yard.

“Ann!”

“Is that you, Tom?”

“Who else?” He leaped from the car, laughing.

“I’m not speaking to you!” Ann whirled, the bucket in her hands slopping.

No! cried Cecy.

Ann froze. She looked at the hills and the first stars. She stared at the man named Tom. Cecy made her drop the bucket.

“Look what you’ve done!”

Tom ran up.

“Look what you made me do!”

He wiped her shoes with a kerchief, laughing.

“Get away!” She kicked at his hands, but he laughed again, and gazing down on him from miles away, Cecy saw the turn of his head, the size of his skull, the flare of his nose, the shine of his eyes, the girth of his shoulders, and the hard strength of his hands doing this delicate thing with the handkerchief. Peering down from the secret attic of this lovely head, Cecy yanked a hidden copper ventriloquist’s wire and the pretty mouth popped wide: “Thank you!”

“Oh, so you have manners?” The smell of leather on his hands, the smell of the open car from his clothes into the tender nostrils, and Cecy, far, far away over night meadows and autumn fields, stirred as with some dream in her bed.

“Not for you, no!” said Ann.

Hush, speak gently, said Cecy. She moved Ann’s fingers out toward Tom’s head. Ann snatched them back.

“I’ve gone mad!”

“You have.” He nodded, smiling but bewildered. “Were you going to touch me?”

“I don’t know. Oh, go away!” Her cheeks glowed with pink charcoals.

“Run! I’m not stopping you.” Tom got up. “Changed your mind? Will you go to the dance with me tonight?”

“No,” said Ann.

Yes! cried Cecy. I’ve never danced. I’ve never worn a long gown, all rustly. I want to dance all night. I’ve never known what it’s like to be in a woman, dancing; Father and Mother would not permit. Dogs, cats, locusts, leaves, everything else in the world at one time or another I’ve known, but never a woman in the spring, never on a night like this. Oh, please—we must dance!

She spread her thought like the fingers of a hand within a new glove.

“Yes,” said Ann Leary. “I don’t know why, but I’ll go with you tonight, Tom.”

Now inside, quick! cried Cecy. Wash, tell your folks, get your gown, into your room!

“Mother,” said Ann, “I’ve changed my mind!”

The car was roaring down the pike, the rooms of the farmhouse jumped to life, water was churning the bath, the mother was rushing about with a fringe of hairpins in her mouth. “What’s come over you, Ann? You don’t like Tom!”

“True.” Ann stopped amidst the great fever.

But it’s farewell summer! thought Cecy. Summer back before the winter comes.

“Summer,” said Ann. “Farewell.”

Fine for dancing, thought Cecy.

“… dancing,” murmured Ann Leary.

Then she was in the tub and the soap creaming on her white seal shoulders, small nests of soap beneath her arms, and the flesh of her warm breasts moving in her hands and Cecy moving the mouth, making the smile, keeping the actions going. There must be no pause, or the entire pantomime might fall in ruins! Ann Leary must be kept moving, doing, acting, wash here, soap there, now out!

“You!” Ann caught herself in the mirror, all whiteness and pinkness like lilies and carnations. “Who are—?”

A girl seventeen. Cecy gazed from her violet eyes. You can’t see me. Do you know I’m here?

Ann Leary shook her head. “I’ve loaned my body to a last-of-summer witch, for sure.”

Close! laughed Cecy. Now, dress!

The luxury of feeling fine silk move over an ample body! Then the halloo outside.

“Ann, Tom’s back!”

“Tell him, wait.” Ann sat down. “I’m not going to that dance.”

“What?” cried her mother.

Cecy snapped to attention. It had been a fatal moment of leaving Ann’s body for an instant. She had heard the distant sound of the car rushing through moonlit country and thought, I’ll find Tom, sit in his head and see what it’s like to be in a man of twenty-two on a night like this. And so she had started quickly down the road, but now, like a bird to a cage, flew back to clamor in Ann’s head.

“Ann!”

“Tell him to leave!”

“Ann!”

But Ann had the bit in her mouth. “No, no, I hate him!”

I shouldn’t have left—even for a moment. Cecy poured her mind into the hands of the young girl, into the heart, into the head, softly, softly. Stand up, she thought.