Brother Odd

nonetheless elegant, as economical as the movements of an efficient machine.
        The word machine resonated in my mind, seemed important, seemed revealing, though I knew this could not be a machine. If this world could not produce such a biological structure as the one to which I now stood fearful witness-and it could not- then just as surely, human beings did not possess the knowledge to engineer and build a machine with this phenomenal dexterity.
        The storm-born thing flexed again. This newest kaleidoscopic wonder of bones suggested that, just as no two snowflakes in history have been alike, so no two of the thing's manifestations would produce the same pattern.
        My expectation was not merely that the glass would shatter, all eight bright panes at once, but also that every muntin would burst into splinters and that the frame would tear out of the wall, taking chunks of plaster with it, and that the thing would clamber into the school behind a cascade of debris.
        I wished that I had a hundred gallons of molten tar, an angry cross-eyed ferret, or at least a toaster.
        Abruptly, the apparition flexed away from the window, ceased to present a malevolent bony pattern. I thought it must be rearing back to throw itself through that barrier, but the attack did not come. This spawn of the storm became again just a pale blur, a trembling potential seen through frosted glass.
        A moment later, it seemed to return to the storm. No movement shadowed the window, and the eight panes were as lifeless as eight TV screens tuned to a dead channel.
        One square of glass remained cracked.
        I suppose I knew then how the heart in a rabbit's breast feels to the rabbit, how it feels like a leaping thing alive within, when the coyote is eye to eye and peels its lips back from teeth stained by years of blood.
        No keening rose in the storm. Only the wind huffed at the window and whistled through the keyhole in the door.
        Even to one accustomed to encounters with the supernatural, the aftermath of such an unlikely event sometimes includes equal measures of wonder and doubt. A fear that makes you shrink from the prospect of any further such experience is matched by a compulsion to see more and to understand.
        I felt compelled to unlock and open the door. I quashed that compulsion, did not lift a foot, did not raise a hand, just stood with my arms wrapped around myself, as if holding myself together, and took long shuddery breaths until Sister Clare Marie arrived and politely insisted that I remove my ski boots.

CHAPTER 16
        
        GAZING AT THE WINDOW, TRYING TO understand what I had seen and silently congratulating myself on the fact that I still had clean underwear, I didn't realize that Sister Clare Marie had entered the reception lounge. She circled around from behind me, coming between me and the window, as white and silent as an orbiting moon.
        In her habit, with her soft pink face, button nose, and slight overbite, she needed only a pair of long furry ears to call herself a rabbit and attend a costume party.
        "Child," she said, "you look as if you've seen a ghost."
        "Yes, Sister."
        "Are you all right?"
        "No, Sister."
        Twitching her nose, as though she detected a scent that alarmed her, she said, "Child?"
        I do not know why she calls me child. I have never heard her address anyone else that way, not even any of the children in the school.
        Because Sister Clare Marie was a sweet gentle person, I did not want to alarm her, especially considering that the threat had passed, at least for the moment, and considering as well that, being a nun, she didn't carry the hand grenades I would need before venturing again into the storm.
        "It's just the snow," I said.
        "The snow?"
        "The wind and cold and snow. I'm a desert boy, ma'am. I'm not used to weather like this. It's mean out there."
        "The weather isn't mean," she assured me with a smile. "The weather is glorious. The world is beautiful and glorious. Humanity can be mean, and turn away from what's good. But weather is a gift."
        "All right," I said.
        Sensing that I hadn't been convinced, she continued: "Blizzards dress the land in a clean habit, lightning and thunder make a music of celebration, wind blows away all that's stale, even floods raise up everything green. For cold there's hot. For dry