Days passed. The player painted and strung a necklace of beads . . . blues mostly, with a few green and yellow ones. It could not hold the brush as she did, in those hard slippery talons. Instead, it pared a sliver away from a twig, slid the bead down onto that stop, then dipped the whole bead in the paint. Ofelia watched, amazed, as it waited for the excess paint to run off then upended the twig (neatly holding the painty end in the very tips of talons) so that the bead slid off onto a waiting stand, this made from a larger branch fixed to a base with its twigs uppermost. Bead after bead, dipped the same way, released to land on another of the empty twigs . . . the branch began to look like the holiday trees Ofelia vaguely remembered from the public buildings of her childhood. To her further surprise, the creature pared a separate dipping twig for each color of paint. Children had to be taught to clean a brush after using each color . . . these were not children. Nor were they human, though that became harder to remember as the days passed.
When the beads dried, the creature strung them on twisted grass, not the cord Ofelia offered. And when it had finished its work, it held the completed necklace out to her, hooked on one talon. A gift to replace the one she had given? She could not be sure of anything but the intent. She took it, and put it on. It bobbed at her, and made one of its noises; this one sounded happy, she decided. She smiled and said her thanks aloud, as she would to a person.
The one she thought of as the killer roamed the meadows; Ofelia feared for the livestock at first, but day after day none were missing. When she walked around to check, the killer walked with her, stopping at times to scratch with its long taloned toes at the tallest clumps of grass. Once it even threw itself down, in the tall grass near the river, and rolled on its back like the chickens having a dust bath. Ofelia grinned before she caught herself. It looked ridiculous, wallowing in the grass like that, even without feathers to fluff. She could not imagine what it was doing, unless the grass eased some itch.
The gardener continued to help her find and exterminate slimerods. It seemed to have no other interest; it was often missing from the group that plagued her in the center, hovering when she tried to settle to some task. Several times she found scratch-marks in the dirt around the plants, as if it had cultivated or weeded while she was not there. Perhaps it was only gathering slimerods, or perhaps it understood what her hoe and rake were for.
She heard the sound from inside, where she was drying herself after a shower. A long, rhythmic cry, several voices. Her heart lurched, then raced. In the lane outside, she heard a nearer, answering cry, and then the quick click-and-thud of the creatures running.
Their friends—their families?—must have arrived. Ofelia finished drying between her toes, very slowly, so that she could think. It would be different again. She was tired of difference, but the world had never yet shaped itself to her measure. How many had come this time? And would they, like her creatures (she almost allowed herself to think
She put on the necklaces she had left on the kitchen table. It did not feel like enough. She opened her door and saw nothing in the lane. Down by the river she heard excited voices, then the cattle. She considered. The garment she had been working on, ribbonlike strips of cloth in brilliant colors . . . or the sea-storm one, or the cloak she had embroidered with flowers and faces? The voices came nearer. The cloak: it took less time to put on, and she had it here at home. With the cloak over her shoulders, and her necklaces layered over it, she felt she still lacked something. Bracelets around her wrists, yes, and the bit of crocheted netting that she had once put over her head: the creatures had widened their eyes at that, she recalled.
She went out, along the lane to the turning and then toward the river. She would meet them, not wait at home. It was her place, after all. The cloak lifted a little from her shoulders in the breeze; she peered down it at the upside-down faces with their staring eyes. She could not quite remember why that one had three eyes, and why she had run a double row of eyes down either side, between the faces in front and the flowers behind.
Ahead, a cluster of the creatures coming up from the river. She recognized her necklace on one of them—had the original three returned? And newcomers, one much darker than the others, and one wearing a sky-blue cloak that came halfway to the ground. She paused beside the last house. They were moving now, coming toward her, carrying sacks. Food? Equipment? And the new ones—at least the one in the blue cloak—moved more slowly than the ones she was used to.
