Tales of Wonder by Jane Yolen Page A

the hole was all that came out. He reached for the girl and fainted.
    Three old women in black dresses found him in the morning. They pushed the tree off the tent, off Jeansen, and half carried, half dragged him down the mountainside. They found no girl.
    He would live, the doctor said through gold-and-plaster teeth, smiling proudly.
    Live . Jeansen turned the word over in his mind, bitterer than any tears. In Greek or in English, the word meant little to him now. Live . His handsome face unmarred by the fallen tree seemed to crack apart with the effort to keep from crying. He shaped the word with his lips but no sound passed them. Those beautiful, melodious words would never come again. His voice had leaked out of his neck with his blood.
    Camera moves in silently for a tight close-up. Only sounds are routine hospital noises; and mounting over them to an overpowering cacophony is a steady, harsh, rasping breathing, as credits roll .

Boris Chernevsky’s Hands
    Boris Chernevsky, son of the famous Flying Chernevskys and nephew to the galaxy’s second greatest juggler, woke up unevenly. That is to say, his left foot and right hand lagged behind in the morning rituals.
    Feet over the side of the bed, wiggling the recalcitrant left toes and moving the sluggish right shoulder, Boris thought about his previous night’s performance.
    â€œInept” had been Uncle Misha’s kindest criticism. In fact, most of what he had yelled was untranslatable, and Boris was glad that his own Russian was as fumbling as his fingers. It had not been a happy evening. He ran his slow hands through this thick blond hair and sighed, wondering—and not for the first time—if he had been adopted as an infant or exchanged in utero for a scholar’s clone. How else to explain his general awkwardness?
    He stood slowly, balancing gingerly because his left foot was now asleep, and practiced a few passes with imaginary na clubs. He had made his way to eight in the air and was starting an over-the-shoulder pass, when the clubs slipped and clattered to the floor. Even in his imagination he was a klutz.
    His uncle Misha said it was eye-and-ear coordination, that the sound of the clubs and the rhythm of their passing were what made the fine juggler. And his father said the same about flying: that one had to hear the trapeze and calculate its swing by both eye and ear. But Boris was not convinced.
    â€œIt’s in the hands,” he said disgustedly, looking down at his five-fingered disasters. They were big-knuckled and grained like wood. He flexed them and could feel the right moving just a fraction slower than the left. “It’s all in the hands. What I wouldn’t give for a better pair.”
    â€œAnd what would you give, Boris Chernevsky?” The accent was Russian, or rather Georgian. Boris looked up, expecting to see his uncle.
    There was no one in the trailer.
    Boris turned around twice and looked under his bed. Sometimes the circus little people played tricks, hiding in closets and making sounds like old clothes singing. Their minds moved in strange ways, and Boris was one of their favorite gulls. He was so easily fooled.
    â€œWould you, for example, give your soul?” The voice was less Georgian, more Siberian now. A touch of Tartar, but low and musical.
    â€œWhat’s a soul?” Boris asked, thinking that adopted children or clones probably weren’t allowed any anyway.
    â€œTwo centuries ago,” the voice said, and sighed with what sounded like a Muscovite gurgle, “everyone had a soul and no one wanted to sell. Today everyone is willing to sell, only no one seems to have one.”
    By this time, Boris had walked completely around the inside of the trailer, examining the underside of chairs, lifting the samovar lid. He was convinced he was beginning to go crazy. “From dropping so many imaginary na clubs on my head,” he told himself out loud. He sat down on one of the chairs