Breathless

were, for all that seemed impossible to become possible in a wink. Having given up long ago, having been old and withoutdreams even before her brutal childhood ended, she now found herself on the brink of an event potentially so momentous that it seemed to have the power to put her past in a new perspective, to diminish the memory of her suffering, and to open a door through which she could step and be transformed.
    Squeak. Quack. Squeak. Quack, quack, quack
.
    The word
wonder
was inadequate to describe the feeling—both emotion and sensation—that flowered in her more fully by the minute, and the right word no longer eluded her. But she feared that speaking it even to herself would jinx her, would ensure that what seemed to be momentous would turn out to be mundane.
    Squeak, squeak. Quack. Squeak, squeak. Quack
.
    Sitting on the footstool again, Cammy remained riveted by the animals’ hands as they squeezed the toys. “No, not like monkeys. There’s over a hundred species of monkeys, some with hands instead of paws, but not all. Those with hands don’t always have thumbs.”
    Grady rose from the arm of the chair behind Cammy and knelt beside the footstool on which she sat. “These guys have thumbs.”
    “Oh, yeah. Yeah, they sure do. And some monkeys have thumbs that help them hold things. But only capuchins and one or maybe two other species can pick up things between their thumb and forefinger.”
    Squeak. Quack. Squeak, squeak. Quack, quack
.
    One of the animals made soft chortling noises that seemed to express delight, and the two appeared to grin at each other.
    Making a timpani of the floor, Merlin galloped out of the room.
    “Of monkeys, only capuchins and—I think maybe—guenons can move the thumb around to touch a couple of the other fingers.”
    Grady counted, “One, two, three, four,” as he moved his right thumb to each finger on his hand.
    “I don’t know of any monkeys that have fully opposable and extendable thumbs, capable of such dexterity,” Cammy said. “A lot of monkeys can’t hold things with their thumb, they just press the object between their fingers and palm.”
    “Anyway,” Grady said, “these guys aren’t monkeys. They don’t look anything like monkeys.”
    “Definitely not monkeys,” she agreed. “Some lemurs have pretty flexible hands, but these hands aren’t like the hands of any lemur.”
    “What has hands like theirs?”
    “We do.”
    “Besides us.”
    “Nothing.”
    “There must be something.”
    “Yeah. There’s them.”
    Having made a selection from his toy box in the kitchen, the wolfhound thundered into the living room with a plush raccoon in his mouth.
    The animals on the sofa reacted to that ring-tailed treasure with interest.
    Hoping to tease them into a chase, Merlin bit the raccoon, and it produced a squeak identical to that made by the purple bunny.
    As if disappointed that the raccoon lacked a unique voice, the creatures returned to the examination of their toys.
    “Look at the way they handle those things,” Cammy said.
    “What way?”
    “The way they stroke the fabric.”
    “So?”
    “Look at that one, Grady. Look how it likes the feel of the duck’s rubber bill.”
    “Yeah, and Merlin loves to chew on it. So what?”
    “The other one. See? The way it keeps rubbing its thumb across the bunny’s nose? I bet there’s something else they share with us besides the shape and function of their hands. A richness of nerve endings in the fingertips. Did you know, compared to other species, the human sense of touch is highly refined, it’s unique on Earth?”
    “I didn’t know,” he admitted.
    “Now you know. Unique on Earth. Or it was.”
    As if tiring of the toy, one of the creatures tossed the purple bunny across the living room, where it bounced off the fireplace mantel and fell to the hearth.
    Merlin dropped his raccoon and scrambled after the rabbit.
    The second creature threw the duck to a far corner of the room.
    The wolfhound seized the rabbit, dropped it, and plunged after the duck.
    One of the animals began to pry up a sofa cushion, apparently to see what might be under it.
    The other had taken an interest in Cammy. It slid to the edge of the sofa and leaned forward, staring intently.
    At the centers of its beautiful golden eyes, the pupils were not black but a dark copper color.
    Merlin returned with the duck. He squeaked the toy twice, but neither of the creatures wanted to play.
    “Calling them ‘it’ doesn’t