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Amy stood on the porch step with her arms spread before Jennifer had touched her. She had been outside long enough for one sock to work itself slightly lower than the other and for the knees of her trousers to collect a faint dusting from the yard. The afternoon was mild enough that the door had been left open behind them, and the house breathed out the small domestic sounds of people moving from room to room. Jennifer was leaning against the porch post, listening to Glenda say something from a chair beside the door, when Amy planted herself directly in front of her, made a loud engine noise, and said, “I need to fly now.”
There was no question of what she meant. Jennifer bent and lifted her. Amy's arms became wings automatically, not after reflection but as part of being picked up. Her chin rose. “Go round the tree first.”
“Round the tree first,” Jennifer repeated.
Amy had enough words now that she no longer needed to rely on the violent pointing of the previous summer, though she continued to point anyway. Jennifer stepped off the porch and into the yard, carrying her at a steady height. Amy's engine grew louder the farther they moved from the house. The tree was not large enough to make a dramatic circuit necessary, but Amy wanted the whole one. “All the way. Not this side. All the way round.” Jennifer obeyed, taking the longer arc while Amy watched bark and shadow slide past beneath her extended hand.
“Now under.”
“Under what?”
“That.” Amy pointed toward a low branch.
Jennifer stopped. “We can go under that one, but you have to keep your head down.”
Amy tucked her chin at once. Jennifer lowered her only slightly and carried her beneath the branch with far more clearance than Amy understood. Leaves passed overhead. Amy stared up through them, forgot her engine, and reached one hand toward the green. “I touched it.”
“You did.”
“Again.”
Jennifer backed up.
“No, not backwards.”
“You said again.”
“Go round.” Amy had developed enough authority to sound exasperated when an adult failed to infer the complete route. “Round the tree and under again.”
Jennifer glanced toward Glenda. “My orders are getting more complicated.”
Glenda had a mug balanced on one knee and made no effort to rescue her. “You taught her to give them.”
“I don't remember teaching that.”
Amy twisted in Jennifer's hands. “Round.”
Jennifer went round.
The second pass was faster only because Amy insisted that it should be. Jennifer lengthened her stride but did not jostle her, and Amy supplied all the drama herself, engine roaring, one shoulder dipping as if she were banking through an invisible current. Beneath the branch she ducked again, then shouted, “Higher!” as soon as they cleared it.
Jennifer raised her perhaps six inches. Amy's eyes widened. “Higher.”
“This is higher.”
“More higher.”
Jennifer lifted her another small amount, until Amy was close enough to Jennifer's own face that the illusion of altitude depended entirely on agreement. “This is the approved maximum.”
Amy looked down at the grass. “High.”
“Extremely.”
“Now low.”
Jennifer lowered her until Amy's hands were within reach of the tips of the grass. Amy immediately stretched toward it. “More low.”
“You're not mowing the lawn with your stomach.”
“More low, please.”
The please was strategic and transparent. Jennifer laughed and bent her knees enough to bring Amy closer without letting her body touch the ground. Amy dragged the fingers of one hand over the grass, catching nothing but the sensation. She squealed, then shouted, “High again!”
Jennifer straightened. Amy rose. “I think,” Jennifer said, “this aircraft has a very demanding altitude policy.”
Amy had no interest in policy. She was already pointing toward the edge of the yard. “Over there. To the red thing.”
The red thing was a child's pail left on its side near the fence. Jennifer carried her toward it. Amy ordered a stop several feet away, then a lower approach, then another stop. The pail had apparently become significant during the journey. “It's stuck.”
Jennifer looked at it. “Is it?”
“Yes. Super Ames has to get it.”
This was new. The pail had not been anything but a destination when they started. Now it required intervention. Jennifer did not ask what had trapped it or why. “All right. What does Super Ames do?”
Amy considered. Her face tightened with thought. “Go down.”
Jennifer lowered her. Amy reached. She could not quite get the handle. “Little more.”
Jennifer shifted a step. Amy seized the handle and made a triumphant sound entirely unlike an engine. Jennifer straightened with Amy still holding the pail. “Got it!”
“You got it.”
“Take it home.”
“Where's home?”
Amy pointed toward the porch.
Jennifer began walking that way.
“No.”
She stopped. “No?”
“We have to go the long way.”
Of course they did.
The long way required another circuit of the tree, an unnecessary turn toward the fence, a stretch along the side of the house, and a return toward the porch from the opposite direction. Amy carried the pail against her chest for part of it, which forced one wing to disappear, then discovered she could hold the handle in one hand and keep the other arm extended. Her aeroplane had become asymmetrical and did not care. When they reached the porch, Amy held the pail out to Glenda. “Saved it.”
Glenda accepted the pail with due gravity. “Thank goodness. I was worried about this one.”
Amy nodded. “It was stuck.”
“What got it stuck?”
Amy opened her mouth, paused, and looked back toward the yard as though the answer might be visible there. “The yard.”
“Dangerous place,” Glenda said.
Amy nodded again, satisfied that this had been understood, and held both arms out. “Go.”
Jennifer had barely turned before Amy gave the next instruction. “To Texas.”
Jennifer stopped in the middle of the yard. “Texas?”
“Yes.”
Glenda covered her mouth with one hand.
Jennifer looked around as though taking bearings. “All right. Which way is Texas?”
Amy pointed decisively toward the tree.
Jennifer went toward the tree.
“Not the tree,” Amy said.
“I thought Texas was that way.”
“It is. Go past it.”
Jennifer went past it. Amy's engine resumed, lower and steadier than before. She watched the fence pass, then the corner of the yard, then an old garden chair that had been left near the house. Every part of the route was known to her. None of that prevented it from being a journey to Texas. “Are we there?” Jennifer asked after a while.
“No.”
They walked another few yards.
“Now?”
“No.”
Jennifer crossed the yard again. Amy's brow furrowed. “You have to go far.”
“I'm going very far.”
“Farther.”
Jennifer made another loop. “We've crossed at least three countries.”
Amy looked at her. “No. Texas.”
“Texas only.”
“Yes.”
After another circuit Amy announced, “We're here.”
Jennifer stopped near the same porch from which they had departed. “Texas.”
Amy looked around. The porch, Glenda, the pail and the open doorway were all exactly where she had left them. She seemed pleased with the accuracy of the destination. “Hi, Mama. We're in Texas.”
Glenda lifted her mug. “I wondered where you went.”
“Far.”
“I can tell.”
Amy did not ask why Mama had also arrived in Texas without travelling. The geography existed to serve the flight, not the other way around.
She became more ambitious after that. The yard could now contain places at any distance. One corner was briefly “the ocean,” despite being dry grass and a stack of empty flowerpots. The narrow strip beside the porch became “the city,” though Amy could not say which city and did not need one. A patch of sun was “hot place.” The shadow under the tree was “night.” Jennifer moved through all of them without deciding what any of it meant. When Amy said, “It's night now,” Jennifer lowered her voice automatically. Amy whispered her engine for the length of the shade, then shouted it again when they emerged into sunlight.
Jennifer had once filled the empty parts of the game for her. The previous summer she had supplied clouds and distance because Amy had possessed only a few words with which to answer. Now, whenever Jennifer tried to add something, Amy was just as likely to replace it. Near the fence Jennifer said, “We must be over the mountains now,” and Amy immediately said, “No, this is the beach.” Jennifer accepted the correction. “The beach, then.” Amy looked down at the dry grass and decided, “There's water there.” Jennifer stepped around the water. “No, in it,” Amy said. “Planes go over water.” Jennifer stepped back into the patch she had avoided. Amy watched carefully until they had crossed the whole imaginary sea.
“What's on the other side?” Jennifer asked.
Amy looked ahead. The actual answer was the fence. “Grandma's.”
Jennifer did not ask which grandmother, where her house was, or why the journey had taken less than ten seconds. “All right.”
They arrived at the fence. Amy leaned forward and peered through the gaps as though something recognizable might appear beyond them. What she saw was only the neighboring stretch of ground, but she called, “Hello!” anyway, then waited. No answer came. “She's not home.”
“Should we wait?”
“No. We go back.” Amy pointed toward the porch, then changed her mind almost immediately. “No, first circles.”
“Circles around what?”
Amy scanned the yard and chose Glenda. “Mama.”
Jennifer carried her toward the porch. Glenda saw the intention developing and remained where she was, amused but wary. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Circles,” Amy told her.
“Oh, no.”
“One.” Jennifer began the first loop. Amy counted loudly and out of rhythm, reaching two before they had completed one. On the second circuit she leaned toward Glenda every time they passed her knees, laughing when Glenda reached up as though she might catch her. The third became mandatory because Amy had laughed hardest on the second and wanted to discover whether another lap improved it. Jennifer completed it. Amy shouted, “Again!”
“You said three.”
“I said circles.”
“I have been deceived by imprecise contracting.”
Glenda said, “She's two. You signed at your own risk.”
Amy did not understand either adult but enjoyed the sound of their laughter. She ordered one more circle and then, abruptly, “Stop by Mama.” Jennifer halted beside the chair. Amy remained horizontal in her arms while she spoke. “Mama, Bunny is over there.”
Glenda followed her point toward the bench, where the stuffed rabbit still lay unnoticed. “I see him.”
“Don't move him.”
“I won't.”
“I might go there.”
“Okay.”
“But not yet.”
“Okay.”
Amy regarded her for another second. “We're flying.”
“I noticed.”
Then, without landing or even shifting position, Amy told Jennifer, “Go.” The conversation had apparently been a scheduled midair stop. Jennifer carried her away.
At the far end of the yard Amy asked to hover again. She no longer needed Jennifer to suggest the word. “Stay in the air.” Jennifer stopped. “Don't go down.”
“I won't.”
“Don't go up.”
“All right.”
“Just stay.”
Jennifer stood still while Amy surveyed the yard. A breeze moved the loose ends of Amy's hair and stirred the grass below. She seemed to experience the stillness as a special kind of motion, something an ordinary person on the ground could not accomplish. Her legs dangled. One shoe kicked gently against Jennifer's forearm. After a while she whispered, “I'm still flying.”
“You are.”
Amy smiled. “Go backwards now.”
Jennifer turned her own body halfway. “Do you want to face backward or do you want me to walk backward?”
“Walk backwards.”
Jennifer sighed theatrically. “Of course you do.”
Amy watched her feet, then looked over Jennifer's shoulder to see the yard receding in the wrong direction. Jennifer took only a few steps. Amy immediately said, “More.”
“I need eyes in the back of my head.”
“I have eyes.”
“Yes, but you are looking at the sky.”
Amy twisted around. “I can look.”
So Jennifer proceeded in slow reverse while Amy solemnly served as lookout, announcing obstacles that were nowhere near them. “Tree!” she warned when it was several yards away. “Chair!” when the chair was behind the porch rail. “Mama!” when Glenda was safely seated. Each warning made Jennifer change course just enough to confirm Amy's usefulness. When Jennifer finally turned forward again, Amy seemed almost disappointed that the danger had ended.
The rules changed more quickly than they could be stated. Super Ames could stop in the middle of the air and converse. She could back up if Amy had missed something. She could make three circles around Glenda for no purpose beyond the fact that the third circle made Amy laugh harder than the first two. At one point Amy ordered, “Stay here,” while Jennifer stood beside the porch, then carried on a conversation with Glenda about the rescued pail.
“Mama, it was over there.”
“I saw.”
“It couldn't get out.”
“Good thing you came.”
“Jennifer helped.”
Jennifer said, “I thought Super Ames did it.”
Amy considered the distinction. “You carried me.”
“I did.”
“I saved it.”
“That seems fair.”
Amy resumed her engine without warning. “Go backwards.”
Jennifer walked backward.
“Faster.”
“Not while I'm walking backward.”
“A little faster.”
“A little.”
They retreated from the porch. Amy turned her head over her shoulder to watch Glenda getting farther away, fascinated by the reverse motion. “Stop.” Jennifer stopped. “Forward.” They returned. “Stop.” She stopped again. “Back.” Jennifer backed away. The experiment repeated until Glenda said, “She's going to have you doing shuttle service all afternoon.”
Amy objected at once. “Not shuttle. Plane.”
Jennifer's mouth twitched. “Sorry.”
The correction mattered. Amy had a precise idea of herself, even if nothing else about the aircraft obeyed aeronautics. When Jennifer later referred to landing, Amy accepted the word. When she called a pause a hover, Amy accepted that too. But plane was non-negotiable. Amy made wings. Amy made engine noise. Amy flew. That Jennifer's feet remained on the grass beneath her was merely the mechanism by which all of this occurred.
Near the side of the house they found a small stuffed rabbit lying on the low outdoor bench, where somebody had evidently carried it earlier and forgotten it. Amy spotted it from several yards away and pointed. “Bunny.”
Jennifer started toward it.
“Wait.” Amy's engine stopped.
Jennifer waited.
Amy stared at the rabbit, then lowered her voice. “Bunny's lost.”
“Is he?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He's by himself.”
Jennifer looked at the bench. “That is pretty serious.”
“Super Ames gets him.”
The idea settled into the game with no announcement. The pail had been an object rescued because Amy wanted to carry it; the rabbit became somebody in need. Jennifer let Amy direct the approach. “Slow,” Amy ordered. “He might be scared.” Jennifer slowed. “Lower.” Jennifer bent. Amy reached with both hands, temporarily sacrificing her wings, and gathered the rabbit to her chest. “It's okay,” she told it. “I got you.”
Jennifer did not supply a voice for the rabbit. She simply waited to learn where the story went next.
Amy held him under one arm and pointed toward the porch. “We take him home.”
“The long way?”
Amy thought about it. “No. He's scared.”
They went directly.
Glenda received the rabbit too, though Amy reclaimed him almost immediately after deciding he belonged on the porch step. She arranged him upright, told him to stay there, then turned back to Jennifer. “He can't fly.”
“Probably not.”
“I can.”
“Yes.”
Amy looked at the rabbit, then at Jennifer, and something like pity crossed her face. “Maybe later he can.”
Jennifer said, “Maybe.”
The rabbit's future aviation career was left unresolved.
Before the break, Amy found one last use for the open yard. She pointed toward the far fence and said, “That's very far away.” Jennifer agreed. Amy pointed back to the porch. “And that's very far too.” The two places were perhaps thirty yards apart, but in Amy's geography distance depended on where she happened to be looking. “Can we go from very far to very far?”
“We can try.”
Amy ordered a straight flight toward the fence, then changed it after only a few steps. “No, go by the tree first. Then the fence.” Jennifer altered course. Near the tree Amy added, “And under.” Jennifer ducked beneath the approved branch. “Now high.” Jennifer raised her. “Now the fence. But slow because it's far.”
Jennifer slowed. The contradiction did not trouble Amy. A far place could require slow travel and still be reached in seconds. When they arrived, Amy looked through the fence, then immediately pointed back. “Now very far home.”
Jennifer turned. “Straight there?”
Amy frowned at such poor planning. “No. Around Mama.”
Glenda heard this from the porch. “Why am I an air-traffic obstacle?”
“Because,” Amy said, which answered everything.
Jennifer made the return journey. Amy added instructions as they went, but she also remembered the ones already given. When Jennifer started to approach the porch from the wrong side, Amy caught it at once. “No, you have to go around Mama first.” Jennifer corrected the route. Amy made a pleased sound, not because she had caught Jennifer making a mistake but because the world had become reliable enough to obey an itinerary she had invented minutes before.
They circled Glenda once. Amy called, “Hello, Mama,” on the way past.
“Welcome back from very far.”
“We're not home yet.”
“I apologize.”
Amy pointed to the other side of the porch. “There.” Only when Jennifer reached the exact patch of ground Amy had chosen did she announce, “Home.” She looked back toward the fence with the satisfaction of somebody who had crossed a serious distance.
By then Jennifer had been carrying her long enough to feel it in both arms. Amy was older, heavier and more active than she had been the summer before, and she no longer remained content with gentle circuits of one room. Jennifer set her down on the porch for water. Amy protested only until the cup appeared. She drank, stood between Jennifer's knees while Jennifer rubbed one forearm, then climbed onto the step beside the rabbit. The break might have ended the game. Amy instead used it to plan.
When she asked to fly again, she had a route ready. “First the tree. Then under the branch. Then the fence, but don't touch it. Then where the red bucket was. Then Texas. Then night. Then Bunny. Then home.”
Jennifer stared at her. “In that order?”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
Amy looked out over the yard. “High after the tree. Low by the grass. Backwards by Mama.”
Glenda laughed into her mug. “You asked.”
Jennifer held out both hands. “All right, Super Ames. Let's see if I can pass the test.”
Amy climbed willingly into her arms, engine already starting.
They went around the tree. Jennifer nearly turned under the wrong branch and was corrected instantly. “No, the other one.” She found the other one. Amy ducked. “Now high.” Jennifer raised her. “Not that high.” Jennifer lowered her by an inch. “There.” At the fence Amy watched carefully to be sure Jennifer did not touch it. The place where the red pail had been was now only grass, but Amy announced, “This is where I saved it,” and Jennifer stopped long enough for the historical site to be acknowledged.
Texas required two loops because Jennifer declared arrival too soon and Amy rejected it. Night lay beneath the tree's shadow, where Amy again whispered her engine. Bunny's bench was visited even though Bunny himself was on the porch. “He was here,” Amy explained. Jennifer agreed. On the approach to Glenda, Amy remembered the reverse portion and ordered Jennifer to turn around. Jennifer walked backward for several careful steps while Amy craned her neck and laughed. Then came the grass. Jennifer lowered her. Amy brushed the tips with both hands this time, her fingers opening and closing as if the earth were a surface she could skim.
“Home now?” Jennifer asked.
Amy was quiet for long enough that Jennifer thought she might have forgotten the route. Then Amy pointed to the far side of the yard. “One more place.”
“That wasn't on the list.”
“One more.”
Jennifer carried her there.
It was nothing special: a patch near the porch where winter sun had warmed the ground and a few marigolds, stubborn and bright, remained in a pot somebody had not yet moved. Amy looked down at them. “Stop.” Jennifer stopped. Amy hovered over the flowers, studying the orange heads. She did not pick one. She reached down until her fingers almost touched, then withdrew them. “They're little suns.”
Jennifer looked at her, surprised not by the image but by the certainty with which Amy said it. “They are.”
“Don't fly on them.”
“I won't.”
Amy directed a wide turn around the pot. On the way back toward the porch she looked behind them twice to make sure the flowers remained untouched.
Jennifer set her down beside the stuffed rabbit at last. Amy's legs wobbled for one instant from the abrupt return to supporting her own weight, and she held Jennifer's wrist until they steadied. Then she sat on the step and gathered Bunny into her lap. Her cheeks were pink. Her hair had been stirred out of its neatness. She began recounting the flight almost immediately, not because anyone asked but because the places still existed for her in the order she had made them.
“We went Texas,” she told Glenda. “And night. And I saved the bucket because it was stuck. And Bunny was lost, but then he wasn't. And we went under the branch two times, but the first time Jennifer went wrong because I said the other way.”
Jennifer sat down one step below her. “That is a very selective record of events.”
Amy continued as though she had not spoken. “And the grass was down there, and then I went high, and Mama was little.”
“I was not little,” Glenda said.
“You were when I was high.”
Glenda accepted this correction. “All right. I was little when you were high.”
Amy paused to remember something else, then pointed across the yard. “And Grandma wasn't home.” Glenda glanced toward the fence, following the geography as best she could. “That's a shame.” Amy said, “We went all the way there.” Jennifer nodded. “Across the water.” Amy looked pleased that Jennifer had remembered. “And back.” The trip had been imaginary, but being remembered correctly mattered. Amy corrected Jennifer when she placed the beach after Texas instead of before it, then continued once the order was restored. Jennifer accepted the correction without defending her own memory. Amy seemed reassured by that and resumed the account at once.
Amy nodded. “And the flowers are suns but you can't land on them.” She stroked one of Bunny's ears flat, then looked out over the yard again. For her, the distances had not collapsed when Jennifer set her down. Texas remained somewhere beyond the tree. Night still occupied the shadow. The place beside the bench retained the fact of a rescue. None of it competed with the ordinary yard. Both versions fitted without difficulty.
Jennifer listened as Amy went through the route a second time, changing the order and adding things that had not happened, or perhaps had happened so completely in Amy's mind that the distinction meant nothing. She did not sort any of it. She did not remind Amy that Texas was the place beneath their feet, or that the rabbit had been sitting safely on a bench, or that the red pail had never really been trapped. She only sat with her while Amy described the enormous country contained between porch and fence, and when Amy reached the marigolds she became solemn again. “We didn't touch them,” she said.
“No,” Jennifer said. “We flew around.”
Amy smiled down at Bunny, satisfied. “Super Ames knows how.”