Free Gossamer by Lois Lowry Page B

waking. One arm clutched the ragged donkey, and the other was curled around his pillow. He slept with his mouth open, but his breathing was quiet and his sleep was sound.

    He heard nothing. He never heard the tiny nightly flutters as Littlest One arranged herself carefully by his ear and sent shimmers of sparkles into his consciousness. Ordinarily it was a quick bestowal, a tiny moment when she sent him a dream, wished him well, and fluttered away. But tonight she had much harder work to do.
    She tried to put the Horde sounds out of her consciousness, not to be distracted by the danger or by her own fear. She recited to herself the sequence of directions:
    Flutter.
    Hover (she was already there, hovering).
    Center.

    Looking down at the sleeping boy, she centered herself, taking deep breaths, ignoring her own terror, blocking out the horrifying sounds of the fast-approaching enemy. Breathe, she thought. Breathe deeply. After a moment she felt calm and composed. Then:
    Gather! she commanded herself.
    From all her resources she sought the fragments she had been holding. She wrenched them forward, reaching far into herself, pulling them from the deepest corners, unfolding things that had been tucked away, arranging them in sequence. She gathered them and held them, and the volume of them almost suffocated her; she felt as if she might explode. But she held on. Then, one by one, she began the bestowals.
    The baseball game: the curved line of stitches on the ball and then the high thwacking sound of the hit; the smell of an oiled leather glove; the rough feel of the fabric of a uniform with its dirt-encrusted knees; the thick pad of first base under his hand; the mingled shouts and cheers of the neighborhood crowd.
    She leaned forward and with a shimmer of sparkles bestowed it on the boy. Next, the song. She had found it in the boy's treasured photograph of the young woman: a memory of her singing to the boy curled in her lap. A funny song. Littlest couldn't make out the words, really, but she could the melody, and she heard the sound of the boy laughing, and she felt the rhythmic rocking of the chair.

    She leaned forward again, and the tiny sparkling bestowal entered the boy. She saw his mouth move slightly into the curved shape of a smile.
    She found that she was breathing hard and it was becoming difficult to hover. She had combined fragments before, to create the complicated dreams that she thought he would like. But she had never done more than one bestowal at a time. Now, after two, she was tired, and still, within her, there was so much more to give. And so little time left.
    The dog next. The dog was so important! She gathered the feel of silky warm fur under his collar, around his neck, behind his ears, the places that the boy liked to scratch. She added in the cool moistness of the black nose, the thump of the tail against the floor, and the liquid look of his brown eyes as he gazed upward at the boy.
    There! She bestowed it in a tiny radiant burst.
    But she could feel that she was beginning to falter. Her hover was weak. She breathed deeply again, collecting what strength remained in her. She sorted in her mind through the remaining fragments, in case she had to stop. What was the most important of those she had left?

    The butterfly. Of course! She had never bestowed the butterfly on him before, because it was new to him—and to her, too, with its damp, unfolding golden wings. The dried chrysalis was empty now, just papery discarded pieces at the base of the jar. She hadn't bothered to touch them at all. What mattered was the new and vibrant life, resting there on the twig he had carefully placed for it. Remembering the prohibition against the touching of living creatures, Littlest had known she was breaking a rule. But it had seemed so important. She had used her tiniest, most delicate touch, not wanting to frighten or damage the butterfly. But the fragments she had gathered there were very strong, and she could