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"How'll it look, me around the hills with just one hand showing!"
"Like a five-winged bird hopping on the stones and bramble."
"Or a foot showing!"
"Like a small pink rabbit jumping thicket."
"Or my head floating!"
"Like a hairy balloon at the carnival!"
"How long before I'm whole?" he asked.
She deliberated that it might pretty well be an entire year.
He groaned. He began to sob and bite his lips and make fists. "You magicked me, you did this, you did this thing to me. Now I won't be able to run home!"
She winked. "But you can stay here, child, stay on with me real comfort-like, and I'll keep you fat and saucy."
He flung it out: "You did this on purpose! You mean old hag, you want to keep me here!"
He ran off through the shrubs on the instant.
"Charlie, come back!"
No answer but the pattern of his feet on the soft dark turf, and his wet choking cry which passed swiftly off and away.
She waited and then kindled herself a fire. "He'll be back," she whispered. And t
hinking inward on herself, she said, "And now I'll have me my company through spring and into late summer. Then, when I'm tired of him and want a silence, I'll send him home."
Charlie returned noiselessly with the first gray of dawn, gliding over the rimed turf to where Old Lady sprawled like a bleached stick before the scattered ashes.
He sat on some creek pebbles and stared at her.
She didn't dare look at him or beyond. He had made no sound, so how could she know he was anywhere about? She couldn't.
He sat there, tear marks on his cheeks.
Pretending to be just waking--but she had found no sleep from one end of the night to the other--Old Lady stood up, grunting and yawning, and turned in a circle to the dawn.
"Charlie?"
Her eyes passed from pines to soil, to sky, to the far hills. She called out his name, over and over again, and she felt like staring plumb straight at him, but she stopped herself. "Charlie? Oh, Charles!" she called, and heard the echoes say the very same.
He sat, beginning to grin a bit, suddenly, knowing he was close to her, yet she must feel alone. Perhaps he felt the growing of a secret power, perhaps he felt secure from the world, certainly he was pleased with his invisibility.
She said aloud, "Now where can that boy be? If he only made a noise so I could tell just where he is, maybe I'd fry him a breakfast."
She prepared the morning victuals, irritated at his continuous quiet. She sizzled bacon on a hickory stick. "The smell of it will draw his nose," she muttered.
While her back was turned he swiped all the frying bacon and devoured it hastily.
She whirled, crying out, "Lord!"
She eyed the clearing suspiciously. "Charlie, that you?"
Charlie wiped his mouth clean on his wrists.
