Was by Geoff Ryman

Jewell’s hand. She took it and then suddenly seized it hard, a different gesture altogether. Then she moved on.
    It was Dorothy’s turn.
    “I’ve got a present for you, Mrs. Jewell,” said Dorothy.
    Aunty Em turned. What present?
    Mrs. Jewell leaned over, with her great breathy wrinkled weight. Dorothy unfolded the piece of paper from inside her mitten. The present was a drawing. Dorothy passed it up to Mrs. Jewell.
    “Thank you, Dorothy,” said Mrs. Jewell. “What is it?”
    “It’s an Indian,” said Dorothy. “I only had a pencil so it had to be a Kansas Indian. That’s gray. A real Indian would be red.”
    “That’s very nice, Dorothy, now come along,” said Aunty Em, advancing.
    “That’s why he hanged himself,” said Dorothy. “He wanted to be an Indian, a real Indian. But he wasn’t brave enough.”
    “Oh-ho!” cried Mrs. Jewell, unsteadily.
    “He didn’t like it here. He didn’t like school or anything. He wanted to get away.”
    But he was too frightened to leave, and so he felt ashamed. It was shame that made him kill himself. Dorothy could taste the shame and feel the shape it had, but she didn’t have the words for it.
    “Dorothy!” raged Aunty Em, stepping forward. Dorothy was seized, pulled and hauled away. Mrs. Jewell seemed to sag, waving Dorothy away. The drawing fell to the floor.
    “But Uncle Henry said you didn’t understand!” said Dorothy. Aunty Em gave her arm a savage tug. Dorothy knew she had done wrong, but she didn’t care. It was the truth.
    Aunty Em got her to the wagon and bundled her up onto the front seat. “Hurry up, Henry, let’s get away.” Uncle Henry speeded up somewhat. The mule was untied.
    “Dorothy. What am I going to do with you?” Aunty Em’s hand covered her face. Her face moved from side to side. “That poor woman.”
    Dorothy didn’t want to hear what she had done wrong. Everything she did was wrong. “It was a present,” she murmured.
    “It was a present that opened a wound. I told you, Dorothy, not to mention what he did!”
    “But I’m the only one who knows.”
    Knows that there is a nothingness in the wilderness, a great emptiness in the plains and the sky, a nothingness that needs to be filled, not only with houses and horses and plows, but with imagination, an inhuman nothingness that could suck you in and kill you.
    There was no point in talking. How could Dorothy make anyone understand that? She could not explain it; she had no words. She could only endure the incomprehension and the harsh words and the silence.

    It was dark by the time they got home. Scarecrows waved in moonlight. Instead of going inside, Dorothy hopped down from the wagon and ran.
    She ran up the slopes of the bald hill to where the snowmen were. There were still three of them, in a row, as glossy and hard as marble. They were white-blue in moonlight. They were here and Wilbur was not. When the sun came, they would melt, and nothing Dorothy could do would stop it. They would melt away like memories trickling out of her head. There was very little Dorothy could do about anything at all.
    And there were the angels in the snow, a tall one next to a little one. The trick was to leave no footprints, as if you had lain there for a time and flown away to heaven.
    And suddenly, Dorothy was crying. She found she could cry. “Will-hill-bur!” Maybe there were Indians in Heaven. Maybe Wilbur had found them there. Maybe he had finally joined them.
    Maybe not. The tears were soon over. Dorothy had faced death before. She was weary of it, bone-weary. People were here and then they were gone and you had to live as if they had never been here. What once had been, what might have been, could give her nothing. Powdery snow whispered in the wind as it blew. The scarecrows lined up over the wallows, though there was no need for them in winter. Even the wallows were as hard as stone.
    The clouds in the sky were as white as ice, and they raced in thin crystals over the surface