Free WAS by Geoff Ryman Page B

snow looking for him. Dorothy was rather excited. Will had always talked of getting out of here. She thought he had done it. She thought he had run away and got on a train and become a steamboat pilot on the river or even gone out to the Territory, to join the Indians. She wished he had taken her with him.

    Wilbur had walked clear to the other side of Manhattan to the telegraph poles.

    Dorothy was in bed, listening, when she heard Uncle Henry's boots clunking up the stairs.

    "The boy went and hanged himself," was all he said.

    "What! God have mercy. Has his mother been told?"

    There was silence for an answer.

    "Well we just got to go there," said Aunty Em.

    "She don't want nobody now, Em. She just sits in the corner rocking, and there's no comforting her. She don't want comfort. She just knocks it away."

    "Oh! It just tears the heart! What does she say?"

    Dorothy heard Uncle Henry slump down onto the chair. "She says he was a happy boy. She just says that over and over. He was a happy boy. And she says how she doesn't have anything to remember him by. Bob told me outside, he was going to get a photographer in. Photograph the remains."

    "Horrible habit. I suppose they'll have a wreath with it that says, 'Sleeping in the arms of the Lord.' "

    "It'll be all the woman has."

    Dorothy could stand it no longer. She could very finely gauge what would annoy Aunty Em, what was safe and what was not. She could sense from the fine fierceness in Aunty Em's voice that almost anything would be all right.

    "What's happened to Wilbur!" she said, walking out from behind the blanket.

    "Oh, darling, did you hear?" Aunty Em sounded worried for her, instead of angry. Dorothy had been right.

    "Wilbur's dead, Dorothy," said Uncle Henry.

    Aunty Em tried to hug Dorothy. She somehow always missed, all angles and elbows. "We just have to hope that he's happy in the arms of the Lord," she told Dorothy.

    Dorothy did not need to be told what dead meant.

    "Was it the Dip?" she asked very quietly.

    "Oh honey, now, it wasn't. Wasn't your fault at all." Aunty Em tried to kiss her. "No."

    They weren't going to tell her why her friend had died.

    "What does hanged mean?"

    "Dorothy. That's something you must never mention. If you talk about it, it will only make it worse for everybody. I'll tell you, but you must promise not to talk about it. Say yes."

    "Yes, Ma'am."

    "It means he killed himself, Dorothy. I'm not going to tell you how because it'll just give you nightmares. But he killed himself."

    Dorothy didn't ask why. She knew. It was a way of leaving. She nodded and went back to bed.

    "Dorothy?" asked Aunty Em, her voice trailing after the child. It was Aunty Em who needed to talk. Dorothy didn't. Dorothy threw herself on the tick mattress and pretended to be asleep. She heard Aunty Em pull back the blanket to look in.

    "She's asleep."

    "That's a blessing. Leave her be."

    Dorothy listened again.

    "I knew there was something wrong with that boy."

    "He was all right, Em."

    "There's something wrong, Henry, with a boy that age who prefers to play with little children."

    A few days before, Dorothy and Wilbur had made angels in the snow on the top of the hill. They had lain down on their backs and waved their arms up and down. That made a shape like wings. The trick was to stand up from the snow and then jump away, so that there were no footprints leading from the image. Then you could say that it was a place where an angel had gone to sleep. Will would lean out and lift Dorothy out of hers. So hers were the best.

    Then Dorothy and Wilbur and his little brother, Max, had made three snowmen. Dorothy loved the way the snowballs got bigger and bigger, in layers like a cake, and the crunching noises they made on the snow underneath. Will helped them roll the biggest snowball and lift the smaller snowballs up on top. He would make snow castles.

    Wilbur made an ice road. He carried buckets of water up to the top of the hill and poured