ST. AMY'S TALE
By Orson Scott Card
Mother could kill with her hands. Father could fly. These are miracles. But they were not miracles then. Mother Elouise taught me that there were no miracles then.
I am the child of Wreckers, born while the angel was in them. This is why I am called Saint Amy, though I perceive nothing in me that should make me holier than any other old woman. Yet Mother Elouise denied the angel in her, too, and it was no less there.
Sift your fingers through the soil, all you who read my words. Take your spades of iron and your picks of stone. Dig deep. You will find no ancient works of man hidden there. For the Wreckers passed through the world, and all the vanity was consumed in fire; all the pride broke in pieces when it was smitten by God's shining hand.
Elouise leaned on the rim of the computer keyboard. All around her the machinery was alive, the screens displaying information. Elouise felt nothing but weariness. She was leaning because, for a moment, she had felt a frightening vertigo. As if the world underneath the airplane had dissolved and slipped away into a rapidly receding star and she would never be able to land.
True enough, she thought. I'll never be able to land, not in the world I knew.
"Getting sentimental about the old computers?"
Elouise, startled, turned in her chair and faced her husband, Charlie. At that moment the airplane lurched, but like sailors accustomed to the shifting of the sea, they adjusted unconsciously and did not notice the imbalance.
"Is it noon already?" she asked.
"It's the mortal equivalent of noon. I'm too tired to fly this thing anymore, and it's a good thing Bill's at the controls."
"Hungry?"
Charlie shook his head. "But Amy probably is," he said.
"Voyeur," said Elouise.
Charlie liked to watch Elouise nurse their daughter. But despite her accusation, Elouise knew there was nothing sexual in it. Charlie liked the idea of Elouise being Amy's mother. He liked the way Amy's sucking resembled the sucking of a calf or a lamb or a puppy. He had said, "It's the best thing we kept from the
animals. The best thing we didn't throw away."
"Better than sex?" Elouise had asked. And Charlie had only smiled.
Amy was playing with a rag doll in the only large clear space in the airplane, near the exit door. "Mommy Mommy Mamommy Mommyo," Amy said. The child stood and reached to be picked up. Then she saw Charlie. "Daddy Addy Addy."
"Hi," Charlie said.
"Hi," Amy answered. "Ha-ee." She had only just learned to close the diphthong, and she exaggerated it. Amy played with the buttons on Elouise's shirt, trying to undo them.
"Greedy," Elouise said, laughing.
Charlie unbuttoned the shirt for her, and Amy seized on the nipple after only one false grab. She sucked noisily, tapping her hand gently against Elouise's breast as she ate.
"I'm glad we're so near finished," Elouise said. "She's too old to be nursing now."
"That's right. Throw the little bird out of the nest."
"Go to bed," Elouise said.
Amy recognized the phrase. She pulled away. "La-lo," she said.
"That's right. Daddy's going to sleep," Elouise said.
