The Stranger by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

nothing else beautiful in our lives, that was beautiful. He loved me.”
    She opened her eyes under the weight of his hands and saw only the underside of a rock. She closed her eyes again.
    “Even though I gave myself up for him,” said Jethro, his voice caught as if it, too, were falling to a terrible fate, “I didn’t understand that it was forever. I was sure he would return and rescue me.”
    Rescue. A lovely word. Certain and sure. I will rescue you, Jethro, thought Nicoletta. I love you. I will rescue you from all curses and dark fallings.
    “But he didn’t, of course,” said Jethro.
    Jethro cried out. A strange terrible moan like the earth shifting. A groan so deep and so long she knew that he was still calling for his father to rescue him.
    Being a monster was not as terrible as being abandoned by his father. Nothing on earth could be worse. Forgotten by your father? A child goes on loving a father who drinks too much, or beats him, or does drugs … but a father who leaves the son to endure horror forever … and even forgets that he did that … it was the ultimate divorce.
    Abandoned. The word took on a terrible force. She could see his feet—that father’s feet—as they walked away. Never to turn around. She could hear the cries, echoing over the years: that son, calling his father’s name. Never to hear an answer.
    “I try not to hate him,” said Jethro. “I try to remember that there were no choices for him. The curse carried him away from me and kept him away. But he was my father!” The voice rose like the howl of a dying animal into the winter air. “He was my father! I thought he would come! I waited and waited and waited.”
    The voice sagged, and fell, and splintered on the forest floor.
    “Oh, Jethro!” she said, and hugged him. He was sharp and craggy but the tighter she held her arms the more he softened. She felt him becoming the boy again, felt the power of her caring for him fight the power of the curse upon him. He removed his heavy hand from her eyes but she kept them closed for a while anyhow.
    “You can emerge from the cave and be a real person some of the time,” she said.
    “It’s a gift of the light. Sunlight, usually. I am surprised that the moonlight is giving me this now. Sunshine is a friend. It doesn’t end the curse, but sometimes it gives me a doorway to the world. Haven’t you noticed that I am only in school on sunny days? I cannot touch the world except on bright days.”
    “I will make all your days bright,” said Nicoletta.
    “You have,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “I think of you when I cannot leave.”
    For a long time they sat in each other’s arms. Moonlight glittered on the fallen snow and danced on the icy fingers of trees. Very carefully she turned to look at him. He was Jethro. She sighed with relief. He had been in there all along, and she—she, Nicoletta Storms—had freed him with her presence. “At least I’ll see you in school,” she said.
    “No. I can’t go again.”
    “Why not? Why not? You have to! Oh, Jethro, you have to come back to school! I have to see you!” She gripped his arms and held him hard.
    “You must forget about me.”
    “I can’t. I won’t. You don’t want me to. I don’t want to. We’re not going to forget about each other.”
    He said nothing.
    “Why do you come to school?” she asked him.
    “To dream of how it might have been. You are my age. The age, anyway, that I was once. The age when I fell. I hear human voices, I recognize laughter. I see human play and friendship.”
    Oh, the loneliness of the dark!
    She pictured her family. How loving they were. How warm the small house was. She thought of Jethro, returning every time to the dark and the rage of the trapped undead. She kissed him, hungrily, to kiss away his loss. Around them the trees leaned closer and looked deeper. “Jethro, it feels as if the woods are alive,” she whispered.
    “They are,” said Jethro. “We were all