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"You have the eyes," she emphasized, widening her own for emphasis.

She looked around our room again and then embraced herself and nodded.

"He's right. There's something." she muttered. "Something not right. Be vigilant," she warned me and stepped back, closing the door.

Even after she left. neither Noble nor I moved for a long moment. Finally he turned to me, biting the inside of his cheek as he often did when he was annoyed or confused.

"I hate this cast." he said, as if that was the whole reason for what had just happened. Why wasn't he j

ust as frightened for us as I was? He went past me into the bathroom and closed the door.

I took a deep breath finally and sat on my bed. It had been so long since I had felt anything spiritual around me, so long since I even thought I had seen Daddy or any of our spiritual family. Maybe there was just too much darkness, too many gray skies. Winter had come earlier this year, crowding fall out of our lives. The winds swept the yellow and golden brown leaves off the trees and turned our surrounding forest into gloomy watchmen waiting for the crisp light of morning to drive back the shadows that thickened and lengthened their reach toward our home and us every night.

Inside our cage the three of us hovered in the living room, the fire in the fireplace crackling. Mommy knitted or worked on some needlepoint, listening to Noble and me recite our lessons or, occasionally, me reading aloud. From time to time she would turn toward a window, her eyes small with suspicion at the sound of the wind. It always made my breath catch and hold, my heart thump.

With Mr. Kotes now long gone from our lives and the breaking of his leg changing his life so. Noble eventually lost interest in his trains and finally agreed to help me and Mommy pack them away to store in the garage. They were to be resurrected and put together on some future date. It was a date left vague, as vague as our future seemed to be in every way, whether it be when we were going to the public school, when we would have friends, when we would go to movies or see ball games or concerts, when, in essence, we would eventually emerge from this thickly woven protective web that Mommy had spun around us.

And adding to all that. I thought, she had cast this very frightening, very general warning over us like a net consisting of icicles. If I felt like I was walking on eggshells before. I certainly did now. Just as it was for her, every sound, every tinkle, caused me to spin around and search for something. I had no idea what it was I should be looking to see. but I did look. I was even afraid to fall asleep too quickly, and many nights I woke up listening hard for any unusual sounds.

Occasionally I could hear Mommy chanting something in the living room below or even behind her closed bedroom door.

She lit candles all over the house and burned her special incense. Every day, especially every night. I would catch her shifting her eyes quickly toward a window or toward the door, her head slightly tilted back as she listened hard.

"Did you hear anything. Celeste?" she would ask me quickly.

I would shake my head, but she would remain still for so long. I thought she might have gone catatonic.

All of this made me more and more nervous. Often I would get up to check on Noble and be sure he was comfortably asleep. If he ever groaned. I felt my body tighten in fear. I would turn on my lamplight on my nightstand quickly. A few times it woke him, and he was angry about it.

"I'm doing it for you. Noble," I would tell him. He would grunt and turn away.

"You're the one who told us you were pushed off the tree," I reminded him every time he yelled at me for crowding him or spying on him.

Finally, one day he told me he had said it because he was afraid of Mommy, afraid she would be even more and at him for climbing the tree. He knew she would believe him and blame someone or something else for what he had done. I was surprised because I realized he was smart enough to know not to use any excuse like that for anything else he did wrong.

Still. I wanted to be sure.

"You really didn't feel anything?"

"I really didn't," he said. "so stop telling me what to do and warning me about this or that. You never leave me alone anymore," he moaned.

One of the reasons he hated being confined was just that. I could see him do anything he did. He couldn't get away fast enough or climb up to the loft in the barn. He turned his frustration and rage into hatred for his cast. Sometimes, when Mommy wasn't looking, he would jab a pen into it and tear just a little of it. He never stopped complaining about itching.

So it was no surprise to me that on the day Mommy decided Noble's cast would be removed, we were to have a party. The celebration hung out there with as much excitement about it as Christmas or birthdays. A special dinner was to be made, and of course. Noble's favorite cake.

"Let's make a fire and burn my cast," Noble suggested eagerly.

To my amazement. Mommy actually thought it was a good idea.

"Fire is a purifier," she said. "That's why fires rage in hell, why evil things flee from it."

"We'll roast marshmallows. too,'" Noble continued.

Mommy didn't like that idea and told him you don't mix up such a thing.

"Either we keep the fire sacred or we don't do it at all," she said.

He was disappointed. but at least he could get his fire and vent his anger and his vengeance on his cursed cast.