"And then I caught a shadow following me," Petal said, "that everyone thought was my shadow but that turned out to be a boy named George."
"And then," Zinnia said, "actually between some of that and before the rest of it, I called to the dolphins and they came and frolicked with me, with all of us."'
Oh, Zinnia.
We stared at her, disappointed in her insistence in keeping on with her fiction, particularly since company had come to call.
She stared back at us, clearly disappointed in our unwillingness to go along with her fiction.
"What?" she said, continuing to stare.
It was odd, how wounded and innocent she looked at that moment.
"Oh, fine," Zinnia said when no one else spoke. "I'm sick of people not believing me, never having faith in me." She paused. "Zither!" she called.
Zither came trotting in.
What was Zinnia doing? we wondered. Was she going to pretend she could talk to one of the cats again?
It was such an old trick; tired, really.
The other cats meandered in, so when Zinnia headed for the front door, Zither by her side, there was a rather large troop of humans and cats trailing behind them.
Where was Zinnia going? we wondered. Was she so angry, angry over our perfectly reasonable and understandable behavior, she was going to run away from home? Or pretend to, like she pretended she could talk to cats and a few other animals?
We watched, rather curiously we will admit, as Zinnia and Zither stepped over the threshold and out a few steps onto the front lawn. In fact, we were so curious, we crowded behind closely, forming an arc around them.
So we were there to see it when Zinnia looked to the sky and nodded slightly. Suddenly there came the sound of thunder, and a greater variety of birds than we'd ever imagined existed filled the whole sky overhead.
Before we could take in what we were seeing, Zinnia leveled her gaze at the street in front of us and then at the woods around us, and she nodded her head again.
And then came all manner of animals imaginable: cats and dogs and bunnies, to be sure, but also larger animals, like lions and tigers and bears and giraffes and kangaroos and pandas and strange animals we didn't even have names for, all of them filling our entire lawn.
We would have been scared, but we were too busy being awed, even Petal.
We were suddenly sure that, if there'd been an ocean nearby, Zinnia could have summoned all the creatures of the sea as well.
"Wow," Georgia whispered in Rebecca's general direction. "When we warned you that you'd better not keep teasing Zinnia about her thinking she could talk to the cats, because who knew what might happen if she really could talk to them, I never imagined it would turn out like this."
Rebecca gulped.
The truth is, none of us had imagined this. None of us could have imagined this.
But we should have. We saw that now.
Zinnia was right. We'd never believed what she said, never had faith in her. But we should have. For in the final analysis, what were the options? Zinnia, our sister, had claimed she could communicate with animals. We thought this meant that she was either lying—and we'd never had any other evidence that Zinnia was a liar—or crazy—and we'd never had any other evidence that Zinnia was crazy. That left only one option, really: Zinnia was telling the truth, and she'd been telling the truth all along.
We should have believed her from the start.
We should have had faith.
"Do you believe me now?" she asked quietly without turning around.
We nodded silently. Even though she couldn't see us, we were sure she got the message.
"Does anyone want to check the loose stone in the drawing room?" Zinnia asked, her back still to us.
We shook our heads. We didn't. We knew what any note now would say: that we were a bunch of big fat idiots. Zinnia had had her power all her life, had always known it without needing to be told she had it. It had taken us that long to get wise.
"I'll admit," Zinnia admitted quietly, turning to face us at last, "I always knew I could do... things, but even I never knew I could do something so large."'
Then Zinnia turned, facing forward again, and nodded her head one more time.
All the animals on the lawn parted, creating a path, and one last animal proceeded down that path toward us.
"What is it?" Marcia asked.
"It looks like a horse," Petal said, staring at the snow-white creature, "with a great big horn on its head."
"I don't think it's a horse," Jackie said.
"It's a unicorn," Zinnia informed us in a hushed voice, "the last of its kind in the whole world."
On any other day prior to this one, we might not have believed Zinnia.
But on this day we did.
This really was wonder.
We watched as the unicorn swayed the last few steps to where Zinnia stood, and that's when we noticed the saddle across its back. To the riderless saddle was attached a satchel.
Saddle, satchel—we were tempted to try to say that five times fast but we refrained from doing so.
"Oh," Zinnia said mildly, reaching to take an item sticking out from the satchel, "the unicorn must be here to bring me my gift."'
On any other day, we might have doubted her certainty. But not on this one. We might have suggested going to the drawing room to look behind the loose stone so we could see if there was a new note there informing us that Zinnia's gift had arrived, congratulating her, and telling us all in general that there were now sixteen down and zero to go.
But we didn't need to do that. We knew what we were looking at.
We gathered closer around Zinnia to inspect the object she was holding in her hands. The way she held it, turning it this way and that—it was as though it weighed hardly anything at all. The object was a round glass ball sitting on a golden base. Attached to the top of the ball was a tiny circle, and attached to that was a metal hook.
"A Christmas ornament in the shape of a snow globe!" Zinnia said with glee. "I've always loved snow globes!"
It seemed an odd gift for a person to receive: a Christmas ornament in August.
But we didn't think any more of that as we gathered closer still, seeing what Zinnia was seeing: the pretty glass; the stone house within, which despite its miniature size somehow looked practically as big as a mansion but not quite and yet still slightly larger than our own home; the tower room, so similar to ours, jutting out from the top.
Zinnia shook the ornament then, making the glittery dust fly all around the sort-of mansion.
"Wait a second," Zinnia said, peering closer at the ornament. "It looks like there's a person waving his arms, leaning out of the tower window."'
Zinnia looked even closer.
We all did.
We knew that man, that tiny man who was waving his arms wildly at us.
"Daddy?" Zinnia said.
Zinnia's Zaniness Page 8