فصل 16

SIXTEEN

Nathan Field has a dream, lying in his bed that night. It is a summer day, in his dream, with sunlight shafting through green trees, and Nat in the dream is a very small boy, not much more than a baby. His father has his two hands clasped around Nat’s body, and he is throwing him a little way up into the air, laughing. He tosses and catches him, tosses and catches. Nat is laughing too; he can hear his own laughter, happy, gurgling.

He looks down—and sees not just his father’s bright face but hundreds of other faces, all around them, all looking up, laughing and applauding. And he is no longer among green trees but in a theater, though the blue sky is still there at the top; when he looks up, he can see it through an open circle in the roof.

His father tosses him higher, higher, and a great bird swoops down through the O of the open roof and catches him up, holding his clothes in its beak. Hanging there, rising, he looks down, but he is not frightened. Below him, his father, the rows of faces and the theater itself shrink and disappear, and there is only the misty green of the earth and the blue of the sky, and a wonderful sense of being on his way to a great adventure. A sense of freedom.

But a woman’s voice, which he does not recognize, is calling him.

“Nat! Wake up, now! You’re leaving today! Wake up, Nat!”