Free The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor by Theodore Taylor Page B

movies and amusement parks, shopped for clothes, and ate at restaurants. It was a heavenly time.
    But all too soon they were sent straight back to the rock, where the wind softly ruffled the thick grass outside their cottage or sometimes roared, flattening the grass and driving sheets of cold rain before it.
    Jon was back to talking to Smacks and the wheeling birds, fishing off the dock, or watching the passing ships through his father's telescope, wishing he were aboard them. Back to the same awful life on Clementine that Eunice had warned him about, and after he did all these things, there was nothing left to do except think and dream, listen to the radio, and practice telepathy.
    On clear nights he'd often look out of his window at the far-off glow of the city, wishing he were there. He thought it would be wonderful to walk on water, to set off across the waves and visit San Francisco. But it would be a long hike. One afternoon he decided it would be much better to tread on air and arrive in the big city without wet feet.
Fly over! Escape the rock! What a terrific idea!
    He talked to Smacks about it, maybe a loony thing to do. But anything he did was okay with Smacks.
    So, during the next few days, Jon thought a lot about body flying. He told his mother, and she said it was quite natural to think about flying through the air, looking down on Earth. She remembered a dream she'd had in childhood, when she'd flown without flapping her arms. She agreed it would be glorious to actually body fly.
    On some nights, in his small bed with its four red posts and the yellow spread on which his mother had embroidered a pelican, Jon would imagine that the bed had mystical powers and could fly out the wide window, over his mother's pots of geraniums. In one dream, he saw himself sitting on the four-poster as it zipped over the waves and then landed in the heart of the city, causing a great commotion.
    Once, he actually got out of bed and measured the window. By tilting the bed just a little, he would be able to pass through with ease.
    On these nights he also practiced telepathy:
Hello, out there. This is Jon Jon jeffers, wanting to talk to someone about being stranded on a rock in the Pacific Ocean. I need advice on how to body fly.
    Somewhere someone had to be listening.

THREE
    ON AN UNUSUALLY SUNNY AND ALMOST warm morning in September, after a windy night with the seas crashing against Clementine Rock, Jon walked down the winding path to the tiny beach cove. He wanted to see if anything had washed up during the night. Smacks trotted behind him, down the fifty-four steps to the water.
    Occasionally, Jon would find a glass fishing-net float from Japan or a wooden box with foreign lettering or a bottle or a life ring. Once, an airplane wing tank washed ashore and Jon's father cut a big hole in it. The tank became a fine swing, up by the red cottage.
    The tide was far out that morning, and Jon poked around the damp, rippled sand with his toes, seeing nothing of interest aside from some empty clam and spiral shells. The sunning seals, which shared their rocks with the fish-diving pelicans and cormorants, were strangely quiet, as if something or someone had cast a spell over the cove. Never had they been so silent. They almost seemed frightened.
    Suddenly, Jon saw
him.
There, sitting on a rock mound to the far side of the cove, was a strange man in a strange costume. A split down the front of his red satin gown revealed pants of the blackest velvet and shoes of red fur that curled up at the toes. His white hair was swept back from his forehead and fell in a braid almost to the middle of his back. On top of his head perched a small black hat that looked like an overturned cup.
    Smacks saw him, too. He always barked at anything that invaded Clementine, even the occasional schools of killer whales that steered too close to the rock. But this time Smacks didn't bark. He stared at the stranger and then turned and ran back up the fifty-four