Free Higher Mythology by Jody Lynn Nye Page A

like the soft, old sheets Keith Doyle had once given the Folk. Or perhaps she would have a brocade, with a white on white pattern and a looser weave to let the dreams through. In the end, it wouldn’t matter what it was, or how it was made, so long as the cloth fit between her two hands.
    The scant, thread-bare weave disappeared in the heart of the vision she imagined. White was the sum of all colors, the Master had told her, so she was merely separating out each from the others when she made her illusions. It was a talent, he explained, like the ability to paint. Practice would give her more scope for her visions.
    Asrai only seemed to see bright colors, so the image of flowers and horses Dola created was exaggeratedly brilliant. A hot, red blossom, then one of deep violet, and one each of sun-yellow and orange-yellow spun in the center of the cloth, surrounded by green leaves and small royal blue blooms. The baby’s eyes flitted from one image to another, her damp, rosebud mouth tilting up in the corners. Dola made a shocking pink horse dash from one edge of the cloth to the other, scattering the flowers, eliciting a shriek from her enchanted audience. The horse’s image grew in the center of the cloth until only its head was visible, its huge, long-lashed eyes blinking soulfully at Asrai.
    “I saw that pony on the television when we lived beneath the library, before you were born,” Dola said, delighted. “Perhaps by the time you’re grown, we’ll have a horse like that here on the farm.”
    The horse shrank and began to run across and back on the white field of cloth. Asrai’s wide eyes followed every passage. Orange and sea-blue horses followed the pink one onto the insubstantial track, legs floating in rhythmic sequence like the beating of a heart. When the baby kicked her small legs and gurgled happily, Dola brought all three horses back onto the cloth and made them race around in a circle. She gave them wings, and they began to glide. Asrai let out a happy shriek.
    Movement among the trees at the edge of the Folks’ land distracted Dola. Concentration broken, she let the veil fall to her lap. Deprived of her entertainment, Asrai exclaimed a note of protest.
    “Hush, little one!” Dola whispered suddenly, putting a gentle hand on the baby’s chest. She peered down the hill into the trees.
    She couldn’t discern shapes through the thick stands of pines, but a metallic boom told her it couldn’t be animals crashing about back there. Big Folk did sometimes drive up and down in the roads of the Forest Preserve, but the predominant sounds were almost always engines running. This was different. The baby cooed again, demanding attention.
    “Be silent, little one,” Dola begged Asrai, and gathered her into her lap.
    A big brown truck with a cylindrical tank backed out of the forest and onto the land at the top of the meadow, just beyond the Hollow Tree property line, not far from the head of the marsh waters. Dola stared at it as a Big man climbed out of the passenger seat. He walked around to the back and opened a pipe that began to dribble dark liquid underneath the body of the truck. Dola sat frozen, clutching the baby in her arms. Suddenly, she realized she was visible to him. Her eyes and the eyes of the man met.
    ***

C HAPTER F IVE
    Grant Pilton squinted up at the hilltop and put a hand over his eyes to shield them from the light.
    “There’s a kid up there, watching us,” he called to Jake Williamson. “A little girl.”
    “What?” Williamson climbed down from the truck cab. “Ms. Gilbreth’s not gonna like that. She don’t want witnesses. Where is she?”
    Pilton pointed. “Right up there.”
    Williamson squinted. The little girl up there looked about five or six years old. “Maybe she don’t know what she’s seeing. Let’s talk to her.”
    They walked toward her. The little girl sat frozen in place, her wide blue eyes fixed on them like those of a deer caught in the headlights of an