The Wind From a Burning Woman: Six Stories of Science Fiction by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online Page B

not. If you didnt recognize him, youd hardly know me.
    Do you know him? I asked. She nodded. Who was he? Who are you?
    Were both full of stories. Just tell them from different angles. You arent afraid of us, are you?
    I was, but having a woman ask the question made all the difference. No, I said. But what are you doing here? And how do you know?
    Ask for a story, she said. One youve never heard of before. Her eyes were the color of baked chestnuts, and she squinted into the sun so that I couldnt see her whites. When she opened them wider to look at me, she didnt have any whites.
    I dont want to hear stories, I said softly.
    Sure you do. Just ask.
    Its late. I got to be home.
    I knew a man who became a house, she said. He didnt like it. He stayed quiet for thirty years, and watched all the people inside grow up, and be just like their folks, all nasty and dirty and leaving his walls to flake, and the bathrooms were unbeatable. So he spit them out one morning, furniture and all, and shut his doors and locked them.
    What?
    You heard me. Upchucked. The poor house was so disgusted he changed back into a man, but he was older and he had a cancer and his heart was bad because of all the abuse he had lived with. He died soon after.
    I laughed, not because the man had died, but because I knew such things were lies. Thats silly, I said.
    Then heres another. There was a cat who wanted to eat butterflies. Nothing finer in the world for a cat than to stalk the grass, waiting for black-and-pumpkin butterflies. It crouches down and wriggles its rump to dig in the hind paws, then it jumps. But a butterfly is no sustenance for a cat. Its practice. There was a little girl about your agemight have been your sister, but she wont admit itwho saw the cat and decided to teach it a lesson. She hid in the taller grass with two old kites under each arm and waited for the cat to come by stalking. When it got real close, she put on her mothers dark glasses, to look all bug-eyed, and she jumped up flapping the kites. Well, it was just a little too real, because in a trice she found herself flying, and she was much smaller than she had been, and the cat jumped at her. Almost got her, too. Ask your sister about that sometime. See if she doesnt deny it.
    Howd she get back to be my sister again?
    She became too scared to fly. She lit on a flower and found herself crushing it. The glasses broke, too.
    My sister did break a pair of Moms glasses once.
    The woman smiled.
    I got to be going home.
    Tomorrow you bring me a story, okay?
    I ran off without answering. But in my head, monsters were already rising. If she thought I was scared, wait until she heard the story I had to tell! When I got home my older sister, Barbara, was fixing lemonade in the kitchen. She was a year older than I but acted as if she were grown-up. She was a good six inches taller, and I could beat her if I got in a lucky punch, but no other wayso her power over me was awesome. But we were usually friendly.
    Where you been? she asked, like a mother.
    Somebody tattled on you, I said.
    Her eyes went doe-scared, then wizened down to slits. Whatre you talking about?
    Somebody tattled about what you did to Moms sunglasses.
    I already been whipped for that, she said nonchalantly. Not much more to tell.
    Oh, but I know more.
    Was not playing doctor, she said. The youngest, Sue-Ann, weakest and most full of guile, had a habit of telling the folks somebody or other was playing doctor. She didnt know what it meantI just barely didbut it had been true once, and she held it over everybody as her only vestige of power.
    No, I said, but I know what you were doing. And I wont tell anybody.
    You dont know nothing, she said. Then she accidentally poured half a-pitcher of lemonade across the side of my head and down my front. When Mom came in I was screaming and swearing like Dad did when he fixed the cars, and I was put away for life plus ninety years in the bedroom I shared with younger brother Michael.