The Search for Joyful by Benedict Freedman

Author:Benedict Freedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

Nine

THAT NIGHT, THE night before I was to get married, I tried to remember—did he actually say, Will you marry me? Did I answer, I will? I smiled and held my talisman against my cheek. This was the last night I would go to bed alone in a narrow virginal white cot. From now on there would be someone beside me, someone waking up with me. I didn’t think it would seem strange, because it was Crazy Dancer, and I felt at home with Crazy Dancer.

I was drifting into sleep, and in my dream there was a feeling of loss, as though I had misplaced something. At first I thought it was Mandy I missed. Suddenly, the hairs of my guardian seemed to crisp and stand erect, as they processed a recollection I didn’t want . . . making his cot up with hospital corners, settling another patient into it, answering the bell that had been his and no longer was. . . .

Elk Girl said very distinctly into my ear, “What about the onyx ring?”

“It’s a keepsake,” I said to Elk Girl. “He said so himself . . . a war trophy, like a German helmet.” In the same breath he’d said, “I’m in love with my nurse.” We kidded about that, they were all in love with their nurses. We took care of them, talked to them, listened to them. Of course they loved us.

My dream shredded into the calm gray fields of sleep. Some time later I looked into thoughtful gray eyes. Elk Girl laughed a harsh laugh.

“It didn’t mean anything,” I told Elk Girl.

“That’s good,” Elk Girl said. “Because it wouldn’t be very smart to marry one man when you’re in love with another.”

“It would be a terrible thing to do,” I said indignantly. “And I am not in love with an enemy soldier. What kind of girl would fall in love with a German?”

“An Austrian, a gray-eyed Austrian,” Elk Girl reminded me.

“I was glad,” I told Elk Girl, “when they moved him to the prison ward.”

Elk Girl regarded me skeptically.

I reached out my hand to her, knowing it wouldn’t touch anything. “It’s Crazy Dancer we should be talking about. It’s Crazy Dancer. Ask the forces you talk with to look out for Crazy Dancer. They’re sending him overseas. Don’t let any harm come to him.”

Elk Girl continued to regard me with that same unnerving look. “He’s in danger all right, but not from enemy fire. Friendly fire is more deadly. It is you yourself who will wound Crazy Dancer and kill his spirit.”

“Never! I’d never do anything to hurt him.”

“You’re marrying him, aren’t you?”

Elk Girl faded. She wouldn’t stay and listen. So it was Crazy Dancer himself I told. The next morning in the parking lot I said not hello but, “I love you.”

His eyes shone, and the spirit in him shone. I set down my suitcase and showed him the guardian wolf tail.

“He travels with us?” Crazy Dancer asked. “Good. He will help us find our way between worlds.

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