Tigerheart Read Free

third one, since there seemed to be ever so many. On occasion he became convinced that he saw not only the star but The Boy himself, small and glowing and circling the glittering balls of light in the sky. Invariably, however, he would call his father’s or mother’s attention to it, and they would know for sure that it was an airplane merely passing, and not a magic boy reluctant to age. It was probably for the best, though, because if Paul indeed was The Boy, then naturally he couldn’t be in two places at once.
    At least he didn’t think he could. Then again, confronted with the prospect of something he couldn’t do, The Boy tended to dismiss the notion as absurd. He was a wonderful boy, and if he could imagine it, then it could be done. So Paul didn’t know what to think. He asked The Boy about it during one of their late night mirror sessions, but The Boy simply chuckled and said, “What a silly question. If you
are
me, you’re in two places
now
, aren’t you?” He stuck out his lower lip, pulled it, and let it snap back into place.
    “I suppose,” said Paul.
    The Boy shook his head. “You’ll never be me if you just suppose.” Then he flew away from the mirror, leaving Paul with no reflection for several days, making brushing his hair quite a challenge.
    Bonnie left on a night when the skies were starless. She had been there just over a week. Paul had barely had the time to become adjusted to her, and then she was gone, like a relative who had just poked her head in because she’d forgotten to take her hat with her and swung around to pick it up before abruptly departing once more.
    He did not understand why she had left or where she had gone. All he knew was that there was a great deal of tumult late one evening, and the next morning, her bassinet was empty. His mother spent a full week sitting in a rocking chair in the nursery, staring at the empty bed, saying not a word, while his father stood somberly by and occasionally rested a hand upon her shoulder.
    They did not speak to Paul much about the matter except to say that Bonnie would not be with them anymore. Paul, being a wise young fellow, considered the matter and asked if Bonnie had fallen out of her pram and been taken away to the Anyplace by The Boy, making a rare exception and adding a girl to the ranks of the Vagabonds.
    Paul’s father said gently, “Something like that,” and his eyes were a bit wet.
    But Paul’s mother’s eyes were not wet at all. They were hard as steel, hard as the metal of a blade, and her voice as cutting, and she said, “You are not to fill his head with such nonsense anymore. He must learn to accept the world for what it is, with all its unfairness and cruelty. You have treated him like a child and left him ill prepared to deal with reality, and I insist you stop at once.”
    Paul had never heard his mother speak in such a way. It was as if she had been transformed overnight. Paul knew and understood about changes. Knew that at some point, child turns nearly overnight into adult through some mysterious event, the nature of which no one could quite explain to him. He had never, though, considered the possibility of adults likewise undergoing a change and transforming into something as different from adult as adult was from child. That, however, was what happened to Paul’s mother; and whatever it was that she had become, it left her like the mother he’d known in name and visage only. It was as if someone else had set up housekeeping within her. His mother was a mere shade of herself.
    Paul, she simply treated indifferently. She would speak words of love on rare occasion, but they were distant and halfhearted. Paul’s father appeared even more bewildered by the metamorphosis, and she seemed angry with him day and night. Paul could not conceive what his father might have done, and Bonnie herself was hardly in a position to shed any light on the subject, what with being restricted to sitting out on a branch and