boy's hand in her own and walked out under the sun.
The parade was long. It wound up the town's high streets and dove into the low ones. It circled the town hall and marched to the corners of each of the community fields. All around her, the girl saw the people who had bound their lives. There was thebutcher's son, who had taken over from his father, wearing a long, white apron, and brandishing a bouquet of chicken's feet. There was the banker who had loaned them the money for their cottage, bent now double with age and pushing before him a wheelbarrow full of miniature houses and barns, flat wooden disks that symbolized fields and here and there tiny wooden babies with their smooth heads painted gold. There were the other girl and the other boy, her long ago students, grown stouter and duller but essentially the same. They walked together but did not touch each other and the girl's belly was huge with false gravity and her skirt was a labor of green and blue feathers sweeping the ground.
She turned to her own boy and adjusted the shoulder of his paper suit. He was waving to people marching on either side of them, eyes slatted against the heat of the blacksmith's mobile oven. She saw how his face had fallen, how his nose had grown. She saw how his eyes were pushed deep in his skull now, how his cheeks had caved into a slide of folds. His ears started red and thick from the sides of his head. “We are old, we are old,” the girl thought, but just then the band started up. The boy noted how each of the players were dressed like their instrument and the girl saw a reflection of her formidable dress wavering on the back of the tuba player's helm.
They were there: in the sun, on the hill. There was no denying them, either what they had been or this simple thing they had become. The boy leaned over and said something close to her ear. They had reached the top of the highest hill in the town and here the parade disassembled itself, became a crowd pulsing in toward its center and out toward its fringe. The boy and the girl faced their friends and neighbors. Everyone shook each other's hands, gripped each other at the elbow. Some kissed the air behind each other's ears. The tuba bloomed like bubbles rising from the peat and the crowd turned as one to face the town. The trumpet pealed like a tree cleaving in a storm and the crowd sent up a great, booming cheer.
“To the town!” shouted the townspeople and the girl and the boy shouted with them. From here the girl could see the streets unraveled and the fields unwieldy with fruit in these few days before the final cull. The air was crisp and high—a blue, thin air—and she could see the slate roof of her house like the roofs of all her neighbors. It was so clear and small she felt as if she could reach out and fit it on her thumb like a thimble. Around them massed the forest, patched with sunlight, seeming to stream as the clouds streamed across the sun. The forest like a tide, ascending.
“To the fields!” shouted the townspeople and the girl and the boy shouted with them. Within her dress, the girl felt the furs shift about her. Next to her, the girl heard the boy rustle as he shifted his weight.
“To the forest!” shouted the townspeople and a spell that was cast many long years ago suddenly, finally, broke.
A few hours later, when the crowds dispersed, there was found on the cobblestones a drift of brown paper and a heap of torn rabbit skins. Of the boy and the girl, no trace was ever recovered and, after a short search, the townspeople collectively wrung them from their memories. A minor mystery for the October ghost tour. Nothing more.
There was only one witness able to tell the story. This was the butcher's youngest grandson who had happened to be crouched at the girl's skirts at the time. He had been fascinated with her dress, had the intention of thrusting his finger into the hard clasp of one of the claws to see if it would grip, and so he was close, very
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