She knew the answer. She was caught between her own experience and Tweety’s. More and more she was drawn to the bright new focus of Tweety’s life. Yet if she gave in, she’d lose her own identity and be swept away, at least into momentary oblivion. She’d lose her own freedom, she thought. Yet what did that freedom mean to her, if it locked her out of the incomparable creaturehood focus of one space, one time? So, watching Tweety, and feeling with and through Tweety, Lydia realized that she herself felt homeless, between dimensions, and yet unwilling to give up her freedom. And all the while she felt Tweety become more greedily alive, growing fuller and more magnificent in flesh.

Oversoul Seven experienced Lydia’s and Tweety’s feelings at the same time, and he’d been trying to get through to Lydia since Tweety first fell down in the snow, only Lydia had been too distracted to listen. “Lydia,” he said, “you have to enter fully into your experience, which is Tweety’s. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Look at the backyard as Tweety does, with wonder, and your wonder will lead you where you want to go.”

But Tweety had made it to the door. Bianka let her in, and now Tweety sat inside by the wood stove, where the hot breath of the fire rushed out at her when Bianka opened the oven door to keep her daughter warm as she took off her wet clothes. Lydia, exhausted, found herself as fascinated and frightened by the fire as Tweety was; and she tried to hold on, and not lose herself in the heat of Tweety’s intense concentration.

Tweety felt heavy, bulky, and unpredictable.

Bianka said, “Now we’ll take your leggings off.”

“Look, sweetheart,” Josef said. His voice, always loud, thundered in Tweety’s ears. She started to scowl, but Josef held out a piece of bread and jam, and even if it was loud, his voice was yellow and warm and heavy like honey.

“You’re trying to bribe her for a kiss,” Bianka said.

“You bribe me,” Josef answered, grinning, “And not with bread and jam either.”

“Stop it now. This isn’t the time,” Bianka said, blushing and partly angry, because sometimes he just knew too much when you didn’t want him to.

While Bianka and Josef laughed, and Tweety began chattering agreeably enough as her snow clothes were removed, Lydia nearly panicked. She’d forgotten herself again, hypnotized by the domestic scene, the warm kitchen, the adults … The adults! Oh God, she’d done it again, she realized—fallen naturally into Tweety’s psychological world.

“That is the idea, after all,” Oversoul Seven said, finally getting through to her. “I’ve been trying to talk to you. It’s time now.”