More Than Human Read Free

on the rich new green. Some jewels shrank and some fell and then the earth in a voice of softness, and leaves in a voice of texture, and flowers speaking in color, were grateful.
       Evelyn crouched on the window seat, elbows on the sill, her hands cupped to the curve of her cheeks, their pressure making it easy to smile. Softly, she sang. It was strange to hear for she did not know music; she did not read and had never been told of music. But there were birds, there was the bassoon of wind in the eaves sometimes; there were the calls and cooings of small creatures in that part of the wood which was hers and, distantly, from the part which was not. Her singing was made of these things, with strange and effortless fluctuations in pitch from an instrument unbound by the diatonic scale, freely phrased.
    But I never touch the gladness
May not touch the gladness
Beauty, oh beauty of touchness
Spread like a leaf, nothing between me and the sky but
light,
Rain touches me
Wind touches me
Leaves, other leaves, touch and touch me...
           She made music without words for a long moment and was silent, making music without sound, watching the raindrops fall in the glowing noon.
       Harshly, “What are you doing?”
       Evelyn started and turned. Alicia stood behind her, her face strangely tight. “What are you doing?” she repeated.
       Evelyn made a vague gesture towards the window, tried to speak.
       “Well?”
       Evelyn made the gesture again. “Out there,” she said. “I—I—” She slipped off the window seat and stood. She stood as tall as she could. Her face was hot.
       “Button up your collar,” said Alicia. “What is it, Evelyn? Tell me!”
       “I’m trying to,” said Evelyn, soft and urgent. She buttoned her collar and her hands fell to her waist. She pressed herself, hard. Alicia stepped near and pushed the hands away. “Don’t do that. What was that... what you were doing? Were you talking?”
       “Talking, yes. Not you, though. Not Father.”
       “There isn’t anyone else.”
       “There is,” said Evelyn. Suddenly breathless, she said, “Touch me, Alicia.”
       “ Touch you?”
       “Yes, I... want you to. Just...” She held out her arms. Alicia backed away.
       “We don’t touch one another,” she said, as gently as she could through her shock. “What is it, Evelyn? Aren’t you well?”
       “Yes,” said Evelyn. “No. I don’t know.” She turned to the window. “It isn’t raining. It’s dark here. There’s so much sun, so much—I want the sun on me, like a bath, warm all over.”
       “Silly. Then it would be all light in your bath... We don’t talk about bathing, dear.”
       Evelyn picked up a cushion from the window seat. She I put her arms around it and with all her strength hugged it to her breast.
       “Evelyn! Stop that!”
       Evelyn whirled and looked at her sister in a way she had never used before. He mouth twisted. She squeezed her eyes tight closed and when she opened them, tears fell. “I want to,” she cried, “I want to!”
       “Evelyn!” Alicia whispered. Wide-eyed, she backed away to the door. “I shall have to tell Father.”
       Evelyn nodded, and drew her arms even tighter around the cushion.
    When he came to the brook, the idiot squatted down beside it and stared. A leaf danced past, stopped and curtsied, then made its way through the pickets and disappeared in the low gap the holly had made for it.
       He had never thought deductively before and perhaps his effort to follow the leaf was not thought-born. Yet he did, only to find that the pickets were set in a concrete channel here. They combed the water from one side to the other; nothing larger than a twig or a leaf could slip through. He wallowed in the water, pressing against the iron,