Duckling Ugly

convinced me you were worth the effort.'

'Aaron convinced you? But... I never met Aaron before.'

The old man raised his eyebrows. 'Well, Aaron knows of you, even if you do not know of him. And when you came through the mountains, it was he who was waiting with the monks for you.'

'The monks?'

'Not your concern. They found you, freezing to death in the rain, and they brought you here. That's all you need to know.'

I thought back to that rainy night. Was it yesterday? A week ago? How long had I been unconscious? 'My parents are proba­bly looking for me!'

'Let them look,' Abuelo said. 'They will not find you here. The earth itself conspires to keep this place hidden.' Then he added, 'Besides . . . do you truly believe they will search for long?'

I wanted to be furious at the question. I wanted to think my parents would tear the world apart trying to find me ... but did I really believe that? My father, who secretly thought I was the curse that brought him a life of failure? My mother, to whom I'd been such a burden for all these years? How long would they try to find me? How much did they truly want to?

I turned my eyes down to the black marble floor. 'I don't be­long here,' I told him. 'I might not belong out there, but I definitely don't belong here.'

'Perhaps this is true,' the old man said, 'but you are wel­come to linger awhile. Who knows, in time, you may see things differently, verdad?'

I didn't think so, but whether I belonged here or not, I couldn't deny the sense of acceptance I felt. 'Thank you,' I said. I would stay, I decided. At least until the ugularity of my face sucked away their acceptance, and poisoned them against me, as I knew it eventually would.

13 It's a beautiful life

I stayed in that little one-room cottage at the opposite end of the valley from Abuelo's mansion. When I had arrived, there was nothing in it but a bed, but each day someone else brought a single gift. The daily gifts were another one of Abuelo's rituals, I suppose. No one seemed to keep a calendar, so I marked the days by counting the things in my cottage. A table and chairs, a handblown glass oil lamp, a dresser.

Each morning I awoke to find Aaron sitting on my porch, waiting to take me to someone else's home for breakfast. I have to admit I liked that he was there, but all that attention from him made me self-conscious.

'Don't you have something better to do than babysit me?' I asked him on the third morning.

He shrugged. 'There's plenty of time to do the things I've got to do,' he said. 'Besides, it's not babysitting.'

I wondered whether it was his assigned chore to be my escort, or if he did it because he wanted to.

Time was spent differently here than in the outside world. Some people had generators to make electricity, but they rarely used them, which meant there were no televisions, or video games, or any of the usual things people use to occupy their time. You might think that would be horrible, but it wasn't. Or at least it wasn't in De Leon. People kept busy, each in their own way?and wherever I went, people invited me to be a part of whatever they were doing.

In Harmony's house, for instance, some of the women would get together and weave with her. She invited me in and taught me how to do it, creating that fine fabric for the clothes they wore. They sang while they wove, and taught me the songs so I could sing along. We worked the hand looms to the rhythm of the song. It wasn't exactly what you would call fun, but it was soothing, and satisfying in a way I can't explain. I sat there all day and hadn't re­alized that hours had passed until Harmony lit the lamps. I left that evening feeling like I'd accomplished something great.

I quickly learned that everyone had their place in De Leon?or I guess I should say everyone made their place. There were Claude and Willem?two craftsmen who carved furniture with so much love, you could just about feel their embrace when you sat in one of their rocking chairs. There was Haidy, who spent her days writing poetry, and her husband, Roland, who set it to music. Maxwell, the storyteller, would come to a different house each night and enter­tain better than the finest film, in return for being fed.

Even Aaron, the youngest of the men, at sixteen, had found his niche.

I asked him about it late one afternoon. We were sitting out by the small fishing pond, watching the early twilight sky change colors.

'What do you do all day?' I asked. 'I mean, when you're not being my personal social director. Do you go to school? I don't see a little red schoolhouse anywhere in the valley.'

'There is no school,' he told me. 'At least not the kind you're thinking about.'

'Well then, this must be heaven after all.'

'We learn from each other,' he explained. 'And what we can't teach, we can read up on in Abuelo's library. Abuelo even gives lectures on everything from philosophy to physics?what­ever his current interest is.'

'I guess when you've been around as long as he has, you be­come an expert in just about everything,' I said. 'But you still haven't answered my question. How do you fit in here?'

Aaron smiled. 'When I'm not your social director, I'm everyone else's,' he said. 'I'm in charge of what Abuelo calls 'purposeful amusement.' I create games and challenges. I set up things to do when everyone gathers in Abuelo's mansion, or for the picnics on Sunday afternoon.'

'So, then, you're a'?I tried to come up with the perfect word?'a recreologist.'

He looked at me funny, and his expression made me laugh.

'Recreologist,' he said, mulling it over. 'I like it. You're good with words.' He held eye contact with me, and it made me un­comfortable. What was it with these people? They were all gor­geous, and yet they could all stand to look at me. People simply didn't do that. Not even Momma, who could withstand my face better than anyone, was able to hold my gaze that long.

'Don't look at me like that!' I said, almost angry about it, be­cause it defied everything I knew about myself. 'Look at me like a normal person does, which is not looking at all!'

I stood up, knowing my face was getting red and blotchy. I stood at the edge of the little pond and dared to catch my reflec­tion off the surface. I saw myself for only a few moments?my tainted, awful image?then the water defended itself as it always did, clouding over so it didn't have to reflect the likes of me. I growled in frustration.

'I wouldn't worry about that,' Aaron said, seeing the sudden murkiness of the water. 'It doesn't mean anything.'

At that moment I wanted to throw him into the pond! 'How can you say it doesn't mean anything? How many other people here fog water just by looking into it?'

'Abuelo says once you see a person's soul, you no longer see the outside.'

'Abuelo's full of it!' I told him. 'I'd like you a whole lot bet­ter if you just admitted, like a normal person, that I'm ugly!'

'Fine,' Aaron said, getting miffed for the first time since I'd met him. 'You're ugly. You're totally, completely, and undeniably ugly. If it makes you happy, I'll shout it to all of De Leon.'

I still felt the flush in my face, but the reasons for it were changing. 'It doesn't make me happy,' I said quietly.

'Well,' he said, offering me the slightest grin, 'we'll have to find other ways to make you happy.'

I can't quite say what I felt for Aaron during those first days in De Leon. Was it gratitude? Respect? Awe? It certainly wasn't the same kind of hopeless longing I had felt for Gerardo, and it couldn't quite be love, because I barely knew him. I liked his at­tention, though, and the way he treated me. Most of the good-looking people I knew were terminally self-centered, but Aaron didn't seem to be that way. He was genuine, he was thoughtful, he was