I Am the Clay by Chaim Potok Page B

trembled.
    “The pond. The fish. The dog.”
    “Yes?”
    “There is magic in this boy.”
    “Magic?”
    “He may be helpful to us.”
    “Let him take his magic and go home,” the old man said.
    “I saw how the dog came to him. How it cured him.”
    “We are too old for a young boy. He brings with him memories.”
    “What memories?”
    “The life I might have had. All the children and grandchildren stolen from me.”
    “And from me,” the woman said after a moment.
    “In the camp we will find a place for him. Let him take his magic. I have no need for magic.”
    “Speak softly,” she cautioned. “There are spirits everywhere.”
    He cringed and looked fearfully around.
    The boy returned and knew from their sidelong glances that they had been talking about him.
    “We will die in this cold if we do not keep up the fire,” the old man said. “The woman and I will take turns.”
    “I will take a turn,” the boy said.
    “You’re a child,” said the woman.
    “I’m a boy. And the wound is healed.”
    “It is too cold for you to be awake now.”
    “I will take my turn,” the boy insisted.
    “Speak to him,” the woman said to the old man.
    “If he wants a turn he should have a turn,” the old man said, thinking of the additional sleep and the fewer hours of numbing torpor by the fire.
    “But he is a child,” the woman said.
    “He is more than a child,” the old man said. “By your own words.”
    The woman began to respond but thought better of it and was quiet.
    “Make sure you don’t fall asleep by the fire,” the old man warned the boy. “Or it will be the last sleep for us all.”
    “When shall I wake you?”
    “Let the fire burn down to this height”—the old man stooped and marked the air with his hands—“and then add wood to it to this height. After you have put wood on it a fifth time, wake me. Good night, Kim Sin Gyu.”
    “I do not know how you are called,” the boy said.
    “Call him Father,” the old woman heard herself answer to her own astonishment.
    “Woman!” said the old man in anger.
    “How may I call him Father?” asked the boy, his voice suddenly rising. “How?” He was crying. “How how how?” He wiped at the tears and looked fiercely at the old man. “I will call you Uncle.”
    The two old people were quiet.
    “Good night, Uncle,” the boy said. And to the woman he said softly, “Good night.”
    He turned his back to them and put a quilt around his shoulders and squatted by the fire.
    After a moment the woman slipped into the quilts on the floor of the ledge. She thought: This boy willlive all his life with those memories. He is too much inside his village.
    The old man slid in quickly beside her and she felt the tautness in his bony frame. He scratched himself furiously and shivered and ground his teeth. Slowly he settled into sleep.
    The boy squatted on the ledge, tending the fire.

    He sat cocooned inside the quilt with only his eyes showing. The fire offered a dancing nimbus of light and caressing fingers of smoke and heat as it played across the ledge and over the two figures sleeping beneath the quilts. Minutes passed and from the mountains came the piercing noises of a night creature: three long shrill cries ringing through the darkness. He shuddered as the sounds penetrated him and brought a tingling to the back of his neck and the tips of his fingers and toes. What had made those fearful noises? A bird caught in its nest by an owl? A rabbit foraging outside its den and suddenly snapped up by a leopard? Are there leopards here? Flames dancing in the wind with a whoof and a puff and streams of sparks whirling off into the terrible darkness. Mother told me once a story when I was a child a fish a rabbit a turtle. Warm voice of Mother with cold earth in it now. A rabbit a turtle a fish. The queen of fishes. How she snapped at a worm one day and caught a hook through her mouth. Pain! With a burst of energy she broke the line and escaped with the