We Don't Know Why by Nancy Springer Read Free Book Online Page B

Not Kris. Kris had never had such eyes. These were pictures of—what was the word?
    Someone was crying. I looked, and there was a woman kneeling before me with a dying child in her arms.
    My heart turned over. The child, a tiny girl presented to me in a dress fit for a bride—there were big insects of some kind crawling on her frail face, and she was so weak she didn’t move to brush them off. She seemed barely conscious. Some sort of wasting illness—her tawny skin was stretched dry and hot over her bones. The mother knelt there weeping, a short sturdy woman with her black hair parted in the middle. That was all I could see, the very straight part in her hair, she bowed her head so low. What did she want of me? What did she think I was, a doctor?
    A—what was the word—an angel?
    I had to get out of there. I swung my feet down and stood up. Wobbled a little, but I made it. Braced myself against the—altar? Grabbed some more bread and some of the fruit piled there. My head didn’t feel too awful now, after more sleep, though my body felt highly unreliable. I tottered down the steps of my platform, then hung onto the benches—there were rows of benches with backs—and walked out. The place was full of people who parted widely to let me through, but then followed me at a distance. I could feel them gazing at me, at my pale hair haloed in the light of the aspiring windows, at my shining torso panels, at my shining flight foils that looked like wings.
    They had brought me here—to this cathedral of angels—because they thought that was what I was.
    And then they had brought me the child to heal.
    What should I do? I would have saved the child if I could, but I didn’t know how. Should I try anyway? Lay on hands? No, that was stupid, I would be totally faking it. I was totally faking it. Should I take off my equipment? But if they knew the truth, they might kill me.
    I did nothing. I did not even walk away for long. Outside there was nothing to hold on to, and I couldn’t get far before my knees started to give way. I sat down on the grass. This was a hilltop sanctuary. Down below were a village, a river in spring flood, people netting fish from the shore and pulling dead leaves out of gardens and going about their business. I guess they had to do that, even though there was an angel watching. Somebody had to fix supper. Life had to go on.
    The river leapt and rippled like a lizard. Geese flew over in a vee, crying to the sky. The crying woman with the dying child sat down some distance from me. Other people sat down with her, very quietly, making a large circle, a halo of people, around me.
    “I wish I could talk with you,” I said.
    They gazed back at me with fear and probably some resentment, probably wondering: Why hadn’t I saved the little girl? Nobody smiled. Even the babies were silent, cute little stubby brown babies like puppies. I looked mostly at the babies and the children as I ate my bread and my fruit, and the little ones were not afraid to look back at me, their dark eyes wide and sober in their small faces.
    “Don’t ever die,” I said to them.
    I remembered Mykel, though his eyes had not been wide and dark, but gray and sharp like mine. My father and I would never know exactly what had happened to him. There was no hope of finding a body; there would be no ashes to scatter in space. I hated the universe for Mykel’s sake. I hated everything.
    Except these people and their brown babies. I guess I didn’t hate them.
    I heard cries, and thought for an instant that it was the yelping geese. But then the cries rose to screams, and I saw down below—two boys in a frail splinter of a boat, mid-river. Stupid, stupid, what were they doing on that killer water? Paddling hard, they were fighting their way toward shore, but the river was turning them broadside to the current. And the river was far stronger than they would ever be. They could not fight it, they would be swept away—like Mykel had been