370
L.
WOIWODE
the anonymous one that clung to him as he escaped from the
im–
provised tunnel, began to take on a human shape.
OWEN woke that night from a restless sleep. Had there been a
dream? His body was covered with cold sweat. The room was dark,
the blackness impenetrable, but after lying awake for a while Owen
was sure, judging from the texture of the air as much as from any–
thing else (he was so familiar with the room he could sense any
change in it), that he wasn't alone in the room. "Dad?" he said.
There was no response. "Dad?" Then he thought he heard the sound
of breathing. "Dad?" He held
his
breath to listen, but
his
ears filled
with the heavy, increasing beat of his own heart. Without the aid
of vision, it was impossible to locate the sound he believed he heard,
and its source seemed to change. First, it sounded like someone was
breathing directly above him,then that someone was breathing be–
side his right ear, then that someone was standing in the doorway,
breathing heavily there.
Owen sat up, or made the muscular equivalents that usually
resulted in sitting, and felt he was rising out of his body, weightless,
a being as infinite as the dark around him.
If
he were still lying on
the bed, asleep or awake, then this being rising out of him was a
person he didn't know. And in its infinitude, it encompassed the
room, responding to the breathing as ·though the breathing were in–
side it. Then,
in
a sudden switch, a jarring reversal that assured
him
he was awake, Owen felt miniature and solid, an eight-year-old
boy
in a large bed. He'd heard the springs in the chair beside
his
bed
readjust to someone's weight.
"Dadl"
"Don't be afraid. 1 didn't want to wake you."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You sound funny."
"I just wanted to sit with you for a while. Did 1 frighten you?"
"No," Owen said, too afraid to admit the truth.
"I'm sorry about that commotion 1 made. Got carried away."
Owen lay in silence, trying to identify the quality in
his
father's
voice.
"Maybe it's better you woke," his fa·ther said. "I can do out
