“Someone chewed you up and spit you out,” Matty said. He was sympathetic but matter-of-fact. The hard life and quick death of Forest’s creatures were everyday things. “Well,” he said, “I’ll give you a nice burial.”
He knelt to dig out a spot with his hands in the mossy earth. But when he tried to set the little body down, he found that he was connected to it in a way that made no sense. A painful kind of power surged from his hand, flowing into the frog, and held them bound together.
Confused and alarmed, he tried to scrape the sticky body of the frog off his hand. But he couldn’t. The vibrating pain held them connected. Then, after a moment, while Matty knelt, still mystified by what was happening, the frog’s body twitched.
“So you’re not dead. Get off of me, then.” Now he was able to drop the frog to the ground. The stab of pain eased.
“What was that all about?” Matty found himself talking to the frog as if it might be able to reply. “I thought you were dead, but you weren’t. You’re going to lose your leg, though. And your hopping days are over. I’m sorry for that.”
He stood and looked down at the impassive frog. Churrump. Its throat made the sound.
“Yes. I agree. Same to you.” Matty turned to leave.
Churrump.
The sound compelled him to go back and to kneel again. The frog’s wide-open eyes, which had been glazed with death only a few moments before, were now clear and alert. It stared at Matty.
“Look, I’m going to put you over here in the ferns, because if you stay in the open, some other creature will come along and gobble you up. You have a big disadvantage now, not being able to hop away. You’ll have to learn to hide.”
He picked up the frog and carried it to the thicket of high ferns. “If I had my knife with me,” he told it, “I’d probably just slice through those threads that are holding your leg. Then maybe you could heal more quickly. As it is, you’ll be dragging that leg around and it will burden you. But there’s nothing I can do.”
He leaned down to turn it loose, still thinking about how best to help it. “Maybe I can find a sharp rock and slice through. It’s just a tiny bit of flesh and it probably wouldn’t even pain you if I did it.
“You stay right here,” Matty commanded, and placed the frog on the earth beside the ferns. As if it could hop, he thought.
Back at the edge of the small stream he had crossed, Matty found what he needed as a tool: a bit of rock with a sharp edge. He took it back to where the wounded frog lay, immobilized by its wound.
“Now,” Matty told the frog, “don’t be scared. I’m going to spread you out a bit and then carefully cut that dead leg away. It’s the best thing for you.” He turned the frog onto its back and touched the shredded leg, meaning to arrange it in a way that would make the amputation simple and fast. There were only a few sticky strands of flesh to slice through.
But he felt a sudden jolt of painful energy enter his arm, concentrated in his fingertips. Matty was unable to move. His hand grasped the nearly severed leg and he could feel his own blood moving through its vessels. His pulse thrummed and he could hear the sound of it.
Terrified, Matty held his breath for what seemed forever. Then it all stopped. The thing that had happened ended. He lifted his hand tentatively from the wounded frog.
Churrump.
Churrump.
“I’m leaving now. I don’t know what happened, but I’m leaving now.” He dropped the sharp rock and tried to rise, but his knees were weak and he felt dizzy and sick. Still kneeling beside the frog, Matty took a few long breaths, trying to get his strength again so that he could flee.
Churrump.
“Stop it. I don’t want to hear that.”
As if it understood what Matty had said, the frog turned, flopping itself over from its belly-up position, and moved toward the ferns. But it was not dragging a useless leg. Both legs were moving—awkwardly, to be sure, but the frog was propelling itself with both legs. It disappeared into the clump of quivering ferns.
After a moment Matty was able to stand. Desperately tired, he had made his way out of Forest and stumbled home.
Now, lying on his bed, he felt the same exhaustion, magnified. His arms ached. Matty thought about what had happened. The frog was very small. This was two dogs.
This was bigger.
I must learn to control it, Matty told himself.
Then, surprisingly, he began to cry. Matty had a boyish pride in the fact that he never cried. But now he wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself. Tears ran down his cheeks.
Finally, shuddering with exhaustion, he wiped his eyes, turned on his side, and slept, though it was still midday. The sun was high in the sky over Village. Matty dreamed of vague, frightening things connected to pain, and his body was tense even as he slept. Then his dream changed. His muscles relaxed and he became serene in his sleep. He was dreaming now of healed wounds, new life, and calm.
Six
New ones coming! And there’s a pretty girl among them!”
Ramon called to Matty but didn’t stop. He was hurrying past, eager to get to Village’s entrance place, where new ones always came in. There was, in fact, a Welcome sign there, though many new ones, they had discovered, could not read. Matty had been one of those. The word welcome had meant nothing to him then.
“I saw it but couldn’t read it,” he had said to Seer once, “and you could have read it but you couldn’t see it.”
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? No wonder we get along so well together.” The blind man had laughed.
“May I go? I’m almost done here.” When Ramon ran past and called to them, Matty and the blind man had been clearing out the garden, pulling up the last of the overgrown pea vines. Their season was long past. Soon summer would end. They would be storing the root vegetables soon.
“Yes, of course. I’ll go, too. It’s important to welcome them.”
They wiped their dirty hands quickly and left the garden, closing the gate behind them and following the same path Ramon had rushed along. The entrance was not far, and the new ones were gathered there. In the past, new ones had mostly arrived alone or in pairs, but now they seemed to come in groups: whole families, often, looking tired, for they had come great distances, and frightened, because they had left fearsome things behind and usually their escape had been dangerous and terrifying. But always they were hopeful, too, and clearly relieved to be greeted by the smiles. The people of Village prided themselves on the welcome, many of them leaving their regular work to go and be part of it.
Frequently the new ones were damaged. They hobbled on canes or were ill. Sometimes they were disfigured by wounds or simply because they had been born that way. Some were orphans. All of them were welcomed.
Matty joined the crowded semicircle and smiled encouragingly at the new ones as the greeters took their names, one by one, and assigned them to helpers who would lead them to their living spaces and help them settle in. He thought he saw the girl Ramon had mentioned, a thin but lovely girl about their age. Her face was dirty and her hair uncombed. She held the hand of a younger child whose eyes were thick with yellow mucus; it was a common ailment of new ones, quickly healed with herbal mixtures. He could tell that the girl was worried for the child, and he tried to smile at her in a way that was reassuring.