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Amy came to Jennifer with both arms already lifted, her hands opening and closing in the small, impatient way that meant she had decided the matter before anyone else had been consulted. She had been on the rug with a wooden dog and one of Tracey's soft blocks, arranging and rearranging them beside the leg of the coffee table, but whatever work had occupied her there was finished now. Jennifer was sitting on the edge of the sofa with one ankle tucked behind the other, listening to Glenda from across the room, and Amy stopped between Jennifer's knees and tipped her face upward. She didn't say up. She didn't need to. Jennifer leaned down and slid both hands under her arms. “All right, Ames,” she said, and lifted her.
Ordinarily Amy would have folded against Jennifer's side, one arm around her neck and the other reaching immediately for whatever happened to be visible over Jennifer's shoulder. This time Jennifer caught her securely beneath the ribs and, before settling her against a hip, held her out a little way in front. Amy's legs swung free. Jennifer took two slow steps across the carpet, moving her through the room as though the air itself had become a road. “There she goes,” Jennifer murmured. “Super Ames.” The name came so easily that it hardly seemed like a name at all, just one more thing added to the motion. “Flying all by herself.”
Amy's eyes widened at flying. The rest passed by her. She knew flying. She had stood under an enormous sky and watched silver shapes move through it until Glenda had coaxed her away. She knew the little plastic aeroplane that belonged to somebody else's child and made a flat whirring sound when its wheels were pushed hard enough. She knew that aeroplanes had wings. With solemn concentration she stretched both arms sideways, making herself as wide as Jennifer's grip allowed, and began a low sound in her throat. “Nnnnnnnn.” It grew louder as Jennifer took another step. “NNNNNNNN.”
Jennifer laughed once, not at her but with the immediate delight of understanding. “Oh,” she said. “Of course.” She shifted her hands so Amy remained comfortable, then banked her gently around the end of the sofa. Amy's engine rose in pitch. Jennifer did not explain that Super Ames had, for the brief instant of her invention, been a superhero. The child in her hands had already supplied a better answer for herself, and Jennifer had never seen much point in rescuing an imagination from the thing it wanted to become.
Before Jennifer had crossed half the room, Amy noticed the top of the sofa. She had known the cushions, the seam where crumbs disappeared, the arm she sometimes climbed by pulling with both hands. She had never thought about the narrow strip behind it where a comb and a folded bit of paper had been left. From the air, hidden surfaces kept appearing. Amy pointed down at them in astonishment, and Jennifer slowed without explaining that nothing new had actually been revealed. Amy looked from the comb to Jennifer as if Jennifer herself might have arranged the surprise, then immediately searched for the next hidden thing.
The room changed for Amy almost at once. She knew it from the floor, from beneath tables, from the reachable lower half of chairs, from the familiar geography of adult knees. She knew the route from the rug to Glenda and the route from Glenda to the kitchen doorway; she knew the particular edge of the sofa she could pull herself onto if she planted one foot hard enough against the cushion. From Jennifer's hands, none of it stayed where it belonged. The lamp shade, usually an object high enough to be ignored, came close enough that she stared into its cream fabric. The top of the coffee table flattened beneath her like a little country. The backs of chairs became things she might pass rather than things she had to go around.
Jennifer noticed the direction of her gaze and slowed beside the lamp. “Super Ames has reached the clouds,” she said softly. “Very high up today.” Amy stopped making the engine sound long enough to say, “Light.”
“Light,” Jennifer agreed.
Amy leaned toward it. Jennifer moved half a step closer, still well outside grabbing distance of the bulb, and let her inspect the shade. Amy stared, then turned her head with the abruptness of someone who had completed one important piece of business and found another. Her arm shot forward, no longer wing-shaped. “There.”
Jennifer followed the finger. “There?”
“There.”
The destination was the doorway. Jennifer carried her toward it, and Amy immediately resumed her engine, arms spreading again. She had not expected her pointing to work so precisely. At the doorway she pointed left. Jennifer turned left. Amy squealed and pointed right before the turn was complete. Jennifer pivoted back. Amy's delight broke into a laugh so sudden that she lost her engine entirely, then found it again as soon as she remembered she was flying.
Glenda had stopped talking. She sat with one leg folded beneath her, watching her daughter discover command. “You know what you've done now,” she told Jennifer.
Jennifer glanced at her. “I haven't done a thing.”
Amy pointed straight at Glenda. “Mama.”
“Captain says Mama,” Jennifer said, and crossed the room.
Amy flew toward Glenda with both wings out. At the last instant she abandoned aeroplane form and reached with both hands. Glenda leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “There you are, baby.” Amy accepted the kiss while remaining suspended in Jennifer's arms. Glenda held out her hands automatically, expecting the transfer, but Amy recoiled with an offended little twist. “No.” She shoved both arms sideways again. “Fly.”
“All right,” Glenda said, smiling. “No landing.”
Amy touched Glenda's shoulder, perhaps to establish that the visit had taken place, then pointed behind herself. Jennifer reversed three careful steps. Amy looked over one shoulder, saw that they were actually moving backward, and gave an astonished laugh. The aeroplane she understood had never done this in front of her. That did not trouble her. The important discovery was that Super Ames could.
Jennifer turned again and let Amy choose the next route. The choices were not really places yet. They were things: the curtain; the doorway; the empty armchair; the little brass hook on the wall that Amy had apparently noticed many times from below and wanted to inspect from this improbable new level. Each point became an instruction. Jennifer treated every one seriously. When Amy leaned left, Jennifer drifted left. When she held up one flat palm and said, “Stop,” Jennifer stopped in the middle of the room.
Amy looked around in satisfaction. “Stay.”
“We're hovering,” Jennifer said.
Glenda raised an eyebrow. “Are planes doing that now?”
“This one is.”
Amy, hearing only the endorsement that mattered, repeated, “Stay,” and Jennifer stayed. The engine noise continued despite the complete absence of movement. After several seconds Amy pointed at the bookcase. “Go.”
The flight went on long enough for its first routes to become traditions. Passing the edge of the curtain had made the fabric brush lightly over Amy's forearm, and the sensation startled a laugh out of her. The next time Jennifer went near that corner, Amy pointed insistently at the same place. “Again.” Jennifer did it again. On the third approach Amy was already laughing before the curtain touched her. She learned anticipation within minutes and demanded that it be fulfilled.
Tracey appeared at the threshold with the grave, damp-haired look of a child recently retrieved from some other activity. She was the same age and close enough to Amy in size that from a distance strangers sometimes searched their faces for the twin resemblance before noticing how quickly their expressions separated. Tracey watched Jennifer circling the room with Amy and said something that landed between a question and a protest. Amy replied with a burst of engine noise so emphatic that nobody could have mistaken which twin currently possessed the sky.
Glenda held out a hand to Tracey. “Your sister's flying.”
Tracey came closer, stared upward, then lifted her own arms to Glenda. Glenda picked her up. For perhaps three seconds the arrangement was peaceful: both girls elevated, both looking at one another, Amy still making her engine. Then Amy pointed at Tracey and announced, “There.”
Jennifer carried her over. Tracey reached out. Amy reached back. Their fingers touched and immediately began trying to seize one another's hands, which turned the supposed fly-by into a complicated midair negotiation. Jennifer stopped. Glenda stopped. Tracey said Amy's name; Amy said Tracey's, then withdrew one hand to resume a wing. Jennifer moved away again, and Amy twisted to keep watching her twin until the angle became inconvenient enough that she accepted the loss.
Before the room had settled into those rules, Amy discovered that being carried past something was not the same as seeing it from the floor. She directed Jennifer toward the dining table, where a glass of water and a folded newspaper had been left near one place. Jennifer stopped at a safe distance. Amy stared down at the newspaper, then at the glass. From below, the table had always been mostly legs and underside; now its top existed as a broad surface with things arranged upon it. She pointed to the water. “Drink.” Jennifer turned her toward Glenda. “Do we have clearance to refuel?” Glenda said, “You have clearance to give her a sip without letting her grab the glass.” Jennifer picked it up one-handed, bracing Amy more securely against her chest, and Amy drank with grave concentration. The moment the glass was back on the table, Amy pushed herself outward again, wings restored. Refuelling was over. She had never landed.
A minute later she found the window. Sunlight had been lying across one part of the floor all afternoon, but up in Jennifer's hands the window itself became available. Amy pointed, and Jennifer carried her near it. The glass reflected a faint double of both of them, Amy held outward with her arms spread. She stopped her engine. Outside, the familiar patch of yard looked flattened and farther away, and the sky occupied more of the world than it did from the rug. A bird crossed through it too quickly for Amy to name, only to track with her whole head. “Fly,” she said after it.
“That's right.” Jennifer did not compare the bird to her or explain why birds flew differently from planes. She waited.
Amy put one arm forward toward the sky and the other sideways, briefly inventing a form no aeroplane would have tolerated. “Me.”
“You too.”
She considered this, then went back to two wings and ordered, “Go.” Jennifer turned away from the window. The room seemed different again after even that brief look outside, as though they had returned from somewhere. Amy insisted on another pass by the window almost immediately. On the second visit she paid less attention to the yard and more to their reflection. Her face brightened when the shape in the glass moved exactly as she did. She flapped one arm. The reflected wing flapped. She flapped the other. Jennifer had to tighten her grip while Amy experimented with both, laughing hard enough to lose the engine noise. “Careful,” Jennifer murmured, and Amy became still, not chastened so much as interested in a new possibility. She stared at the reflected Jennifer and said her name.
“That's me.”
Amy pointed at her own reflection. “Ames.”
“That's Ames.”
Amy's finger came back to her chest. “Super.”
Jennifer's smile deepened. “Yes. Super Ames.” The word had not yet acquired anything more specific for Amy than the person currently flying. That seemed sufficient.
When Jennifer moved away, Amy twisted to watch the window recede behind them. She had not yet learned enough language to say that places could feel altered merely because one approached them from another height. Instead she demanded the effect again. “Window.” Jennifer made a broad turn, and Amy's engine resumed. They reached it from the opposite side this time. Amy greeted her reflected self with a pleased shout, then pointed away before they had properly stopped. She was beginning to understand that the room could be reordered by her choices. A place did not have to come next because it had come next before.
She tested that discovery with increasing deliberateness. She sent Jennifer toward the doorway, changed her mind halfway there, chose the window, then changed again and ordered “Mama.” Glenda looked up just in time to receive another airborne visit. Amy touched her hair, accepted a kiss on the palm, and said “Window” before Glenda had finished smiling. Jennifer obeyed. Halfway there Amy called, “Mama,” and Jennifer turned back. This second reversal made Amy laugh so violently that Jennifer had to stop and hold her closer until the fit passed. The delight was not really in Mama or window anymore. It was in knowing that the world moved when she told it to.
The game might have ended after that first burst if Amy had become restless, but she seemed to grow more intent as it continued. She started noticing what control could do. A point to one side no longer meant simply go there; it could mean go there slowly, or pass close, or stop just before reaching it. Jennifer read as much as she could from Amy's body and from the handful of words she had at her disposal. When Jennifer guessed wrong, Amy corrected her with increasing confidence. “No. That.” When Jennifer chose the wrong that, Amy kicked one foot in frustration, then pointed harder. “That.”
“Oh, that,” Jennifer said, seeing at last that Amy wanted the narrow strip of wall between the doorway and the shelf rather than the doorway itself. She carried her there. “You have to tell your pilot these things.”
Amy looked back at her with the open, puzzled face of a child confronting an adult who had clearly failed to understand the arrangement. She was the pilot. Jennifer was the means by which piloting happened. Amy's expression lasted only a second before the wall itself reclaimed her attention.
Jennifer did not use pilot again.
They made a circuit of the room at Amy's direction, then another that was almost the same except for a sudden deviation toward Glenda and an equally sudden reversal. The air acquired landmarks. The corner of the rug became a turn. The lamp became a mountain. The doorway was passed through once and immediately abandoned because the hall offered fewer interesting things at Amy's new height. The return to the room pleased her more than the departure had. She shrieked when the familiar sofa came back into view and pointed as though she had been away for days.
Jennifer's arms began to tire. She adjusted Amy closer to her body for a moment, flexing one hand, and Amy interpreted the change as an attempted landing. “No.”
“Not landing,” Jennifer assured her. “Just maintenance.”
Glenda snorted. “You've taught her that one too?”
“Apparently I'm learning it from her.”
Amy put her arms back out, satisfied. Jennifer shifted her grip again and resumed the slow flight. She did not swoop or toss Amy upward. Nothing about the game depended on speed. Its pleasure was in continuity, the impossible fact that Amy could simply remain in the air as long as Jennifer carried her. Sometimes Jennifer made a low rushing sound to accompany the engine. Sometimes she described a great distance in a voice too gentle to interrupt Amy's concentration. “Hundreds of miles now. Very far from the sofa.” Amy accepted the scale without question. When Jennifer said, “There's Mama, way down below,” Amy looked at Glenda from perhaps three feet away with delighted recognition, as if an ocean might genuinely separate them.
Glenda played her part. “Super Ames! You came all this way?”
Amy nodded fiercely. “Way.”
“That's a long trip.”
“Again.”
Jennifer circled away, crossed the room, and came back. The second arrival was somehow even funnier.
Eventually Amy's engine quieted. She rested for several breaths with her chin near Jennifer's wrist, eyes still tracking the room, and then said, “Down.” Jennifer did not ask whether she was sure. She lowered Amy carefully until both feet touched the rug. For an instant Amy remained with her hands on Jennifer's arms, adjusting to the ordinary proportions of the room. Then she let go and walked away.
That was the end of it, as naturally as if nothing remarkable had happened. Amy went back to the wooden dog. She pushed it beneath the coffee table and crawled after it. Tracey had been set down as well and was investigating a stack of plastic cups. Glenda resumed the conversation that had been repeatedly interrupted, and Jennifer sat back on the sofa, rolling one shoulder while she listened. Nobody named what had just occurred. Nobody tried to preserve it by asking Amy whether she had enjoyed flying. Two-year-olds had a way of making ceremonies ridiculous simply by moving on before the adults were ready.
For several minutes Amy seemed entirely occupied. She placed the dog on one of the cups. It fell. She tried again. Tracey stole a different cup and received a sharp complaint. Glenda intervened only enough to prevent the dispute from becoming physical, then let them settle into separate work. Jennifer had just begun telling Glenda something about a train journey when a small shadow crossed her knees.
Amy stood there again.
This time her arms were not raised immediately. She looked at Jennifer, took one breath, and produced the engine sound first. “Nnnnnnn.” Then both hands lifted.
Jennifer's entire face softened. “Oh,” she said, as though there could have been any doubt. “Super Ames needs another flight.”
Amy's arms stretched outward before Jennifer had even finished lifting her. Her feet left the rug, her body rose into the changed geometry of the room, and the engine grew louder as if it had merely been idling on the ground.