Charity and Tommy headed up the trail towards Ledson Marsh, Tommy calling out, “I walk into da woods, ho-kay?” She soon lost herself in the pleasure of walking under cool trees, Tommy sometimes holding her hand, sometimes skipping ahead and cartwheeling back.

She would have been at peace except that some discomfort nagged at her. Her face went red as she remembered Peter’s raw sexuality and her automatic fear that he would hurt her. Racist! The man who actually had raped her a year ago had been white with a handlebar moustache and a cockily arrogant look which still made her boil with helpless rage.

Underneath her fear and shame, did she feel … aroused? She’d had few love affairs and all with people of her color. She furtively thought about Peter as a lover. She stole a guilty glance at Tommy but of course he was oblivious.

Could a human even do that with a vampire? But there was that sweet girl Sally with that big woman who was clearly her girlfriend and the girlfriend was a vampire. What did they do together? She blushed deeper.

“Soon, Aunt Chatty?” Tommy’s voice drifted from up ahead. There was a grove with a single picnic table and he was sitting on it.

“Soon, my lamb.” She realized that to fly like Lavinia, Tommy would have to take off his clothes and get the sun on him. Would he stand there with a little boy erection, jerking and spasming like Peter? How could she watch that?

She still remembered one of her mother’s nameless boyfriends starting to lift her dress. She couldn’t have been more than five. Sasha Bernstein had slapped his hand away, saying “Cut that out, she’s too young,” like it was a big joke. The man had winked at Charity so that her mom couldn’t see and she’d run to grab her mother’s leg. Sasha had had pushed her away, saying “Cut that out,” in exactly the same tone of voice.

She didn’t want to see a naked boy with an erection! But she had promised to help him fly, she had given a little boy her word. It took a different courage than when she let the vampires in but she resolved to do whatever she had to.

Hugging the hillside, the trail crossed under power lines which hummed, turned a sharp switchback where it eroded into red powder and climbed on. Charity sweated and her white tennis shoes turned pure brown but she was going to do this thing for Tommy.

At last, a trail on the left led to Ledson Marsh. They came out from under the trees and found themselves in a high green bowl with a wet, verdant floor. Hills rose on every side. Peter had been right. This was a very special, isolated place. They might have been a thousand miles from any city. There was not another soul in sight, not a sound to be heard. High overhead a hawk circled.

There was no more delaying. Nobody else would see.

“Guess what, my little man,” she said, in her best wonderful secret voice.

“I go fwine? Wight heeyoh?” He jumped up and down.

“Right here, right now, absolutely.” She spied a faint trail leading deeper in where lush plants grew tall. “Actually, let’s go this way, just a little off the main path.”

“Ho-kay!” He scampered where she pointed. She followed, the scrape of shoes on dirt replaced by noiseless padding on spongey grass. Her jaw was tight. Real mothers see their little boys without clothes all the time, she reminded herself. It doesn’t mean anything wicked.

“I tum into da mawsh, dat ho-kay?” his high voice chirruped.

“Oh, don’t jump into any puddles, dear, you’ll get all wet!” She rounded a curve and found that the faint path ended at the edge of a sparkling pool. Tommy was as still as a supplicant waiting for a blessing, his hands by his sides, his head cocked to the right. Twenty feet out, the late-morning sun gleamed on a magnificent bird which had to be a great blue heron but which looked like the embodiment of an earth god.

Charity’s heart beat fast and her fingers tingled. After her Catholic grandmother had taken over the raising of her and just before her confirmation, she had felt the presence of God or an angel standing by her bed. She’d flung herself onto her knees, pouring out thanks that she didn’t have to live with her mother anymore and praying forgiveness for wishing Sasha would die.

She still treasured that presence of love, of a being beyond her senses who cherished her. Now, watching Tommy struck still at the edge of the marsh, she felt it again.

She saw nothing and the impression was fleeting but her heart hammered and her eyes filled with tears. Tommy, she understood, had not asked her if it was okay to enter the marsh. He had asked permission from some protective spirit of this place. She realized he had done the same thing (I walk into da woods, ho-kay?) when he entered the forest.

Sally Yan would have nearly seen her little cat-sized fairy. Tommy, although Charity could not know this, saw a great golden ball like the sun.

Then the tableau broke. Tommy pushed off pants, socks and shoes in one motion as only a child can and then struggled for half a minute to get his t-shirt over his head. Charity finally stepped forward and pulled it off, keeping kept her eyes firmly on the back of his head.

He flipped into the air like a leaf. “Yeee-heee-heeeeee!” His energy was sexual but it was the utterly innocent sexuality of a child who has never had adult sex forced on him. Yes, his little penis was as hard as a pencil; she saw that although she tried not to. But as he spun and fluttered in midair, crying, “Yook at me, I’m a ‘paceship!” she realized that there was nothing for her to be embarrassed about.

She couldn’t stop sobbing. Every child should have their sexuality be this this sweetly innocent. God damn the grownups who stole this magical experience from children!

“Why cwyin’, Aunt Chatty?” With a mastery that would have made Lavinia swear in amazement, Tommy zipped over to Charity and hovered like a little fairy, eyes in front of hers, small warm hands reaching out to stroke her hair.

“It’s, oh my little man, you’re such an angel, it’s nothing you’ve done wrong. Sometimes grownups cry even when they’re happy.” She sniffled and put on a smile. “Silly, huh?”

He cocked his head, thinking about it, then nodded gravely.

Charity laughed. “You go play, my little man. Be careful, don’t fly too high, but—”

“How high c’n I fwy?”

“Um, don’t go higher than the tops of the hills. Come down at once if you see anybody, okay?”

“Ho-kay!” And he zipped off like a pink bumblebee.

I must tell others about this, Charity realized, but who and how? She was fiercely protective of Tommy. Nobody was going to use him as a laboratory animal!

She didn’t know how to reach Sally or Lavinia but she did know how to reach Jesse and Walter. She thought of sweet vampire Walter, who would never harm a fly. If he could see the boy fly like a master, he might know what to do. She would call Walter and ask his advice.

“Watch, Aunt Chatty,” Tommy’s voice piped from far above. “You watchin’?”

Her heart stopped as he plummeted but he swung through a swift arc like a hummingbird and was high above her again before she could scream.

“Did you see?” he cried. “Did you, did you?‼”