Godiva felt another glance from him, a lancing warmth that spread behind her ribs. She tightened her arms over her chest, and glared down at the glittery teal polish on her toes peeking out of her sandals.
Rigo went on.
Between one moment and the next, as soon as he laid eyes on Hummingbird, Rabbit’s heart swelled to twice its size. Twice? Ten times! Rabbit had no idea what had happened to him. He hopped around banging into walls, and missing his meals. The other animals laughed at him and called him a drunken bum, and a hornswoggled fool, but he didn’t hear one word in fifty because all the real estate between his fuzzy ears, right down to his rascally heart, was taken up entirely with the miracle of Hummingbird.
“What’s so special about Hummingbird?” Coyote whined. “She’s too small.”
“She’s perfect,” Rabbit said.
“You can’t even see her proper,” Snake hissed. “She moves too fast.”
“You can see the rainbow sheen in her wings. You can see her grace when she touches a flower. You can hear the hum of her flight, like the hymn of summer.”
The other animals laughed at Rabbit, because he had changed so much. Instead of tricking them, he was clumsy. Instead of outrunning them, he was awkward. And because he was scruffy, rascally Rabbit, nobody believed the quick and beautiful Hummingbird would ever look at the likes of him.
Rigo paused again. E
very cell in Godiva had charged with electricity at the sound of his voice, as slow as that faraway river that she hadn’t seen since she was eighteen. She glowered down at her feet in their sandals. Hmm. She’d just gotten a pedicure two days ago, but what about next time? Maybe it was time to rotate back to hot pink?
The voice, slow as honey and smoky as hundred-year-old whiskey, went on.
But a miracle happened, and Hummingbird did look his way. Rabbit began to run again, and to groom his ears and tail, and to do everything he could to please Hummingbird.
Bill half-smothered a sigh, his legs spraddled out aggressively. Godiva caught herself feeling a zap of irritation, and told herself that Rigo deserved worse, ha ha! Was he trying to butter her up with that Hummingbird stuff? She suspected he meant her. No, she knew it.
But Rabbit, being Rabbit, couldn’t completely change his nature. Nor could he make himself smarter than he was. And so, one day, when he encountered a magic mirror, and looked into it expecting to see a fine, new Rabbit, and saw instead a hideous monster, he ran and hid. And when he had the courage to come out again, it was to find that Hummingbird had flown. And ever after Rabbit was alone, for he could never get Hummingbird back out of his heart and head.
Rigo paused, then when he spoke again his voice lightened. Godiva fought the instinct to look his way, to catch his expression as he went on:
Those old stories, at least the way my grandfather told them, always had a moral to them. I expect the moral here was that Rabbit, that sorry, sodden, stupid creature, who thought himself so clever, proved to be more stupid than all the other animals put together. Not for looking into that magic mirror, but for running and hiding after, instead of asking Hummingbird what she thought.
He sat back as the group clapped, some politely, others with more enthusiasm. Godiva tightened her arms across her chest, determined not to clap—to show any sign that she’d even listened.
As people began to offer polite compliments, Doris leaned over and said out of the side of her mouth, “I’m good at cookbooks, not symbolism, but I’d say you’re the hummingbird.”
Godiva snorted.
“And the monster represents the fact that he knows he was a jerk when he ditched you.”
“Took sixty-odd years to realize it,” Godiva muttered back. “Not what I call batting a thousand.”
Bird, on Godiva’s other side, was silent, her brow contracted.
“Why is he even here?” Godiva muttered.
“Because he’s read your books?” Bird suggested loyally, then frowned, perplexed. “Maybe he’s figured out you’re doing well, and if he’s anything like my horrible ex, he might try to shake you down for cash.”
Godiva turned to Doris. “What do you think?” she whispered.
“I . . . reserve judgment,” Doris murmured. “He doesn’t look like he intends evil. He’s not afraid of your gaze. Not the way he keeps looking your way. But it’s not creepy staring, it’s more like, well, like appeal.”
Godiva snorted. Of course Doris would look for the bright side, even if there wasn’t one.
The writers’ group began to quiet down for the next reader, and the conversation perforce ended.
Just as well. Godiva knew that Doris and Bird didn’t know anything more than she did. But she liked having them there. They’d listened to her story, and their sympathy for her and anger at him had been real. Not that that fixed anything.
She sank into a funk, letting the latest chapter of Steven’s sports novel flow overhead, then clapped hard at the end, feeling guilty that she hadn’t heard a word of it.