Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Prue) CaN Vee eal \ pee OC ey eee ee ete a —— |, PPE Pe eee ee eee ee PS es ee ee ee toss aside with a gesture, if it weren’t so pleasant just to burrow into it, to snuggle deeply within its confining warmth. | Avis smiled as she realized the truth; monotony was the one thing that — didn’t bore her. The sterility of excitement was the really jading routine, © after all. This quiet, uneventful feeling of restfulness seemed rich and fertile by comparison. Rich and fertile—creative—womb. The words linked. Back to the womb. Dark room, warm_bed, lying doubled up in the restful, nourishing_lethargy of fever. . . It wasn’t the womb, exactly; she hadn’t gone back that far, she knew. But it did remind her of the days when she was a little girl. Just a little girl with big round eyes, mirroring the curiosity that lay behind them. Just a little girl, living all alone in a huge old house, like a fairy princess in an enchanted castle, oe : : Of course her aunt and uncle had lived here too, and it wasn’t a really truly castle, and nobody else knew that she was a princess. Except Marvin Mason, that is. | : 3 - Marvin had lived next door and sometimes he’d come over and play with her. They would come up to her room and look out of the high window—the little round window that bordered on the sky. | , Marvin knew that she was a sure enough princess, and he knew that her room was an ivory tower. The window was an enchanted window, and when they stood on a chair and peeked out they could see the world behind the sky. Sometimes she wasn’t auite sure if Marvin Mason honest and truly saw - the world beyond the window; maybe he just said he did because he was stuck on her. oo et Le But he listened very quietly while she told him stories about that world. Sometimes she told him stories she had read in books, and other times she made them up out of her very own head. It was only later that the dreams came, and she told him zhose stories, too. That is, she always started to, but somehow the words would go wrong. She didn’t always know the words for what she saw in those dreams. They were very special dreams; they came only on those nights when Aunt May _ left the window open, and there was no moon. She would lie in the bed, all curled up in a little ball, and wait for the wind to come through the high, round window. It came quietly, and she would feel it on her forehead and neck, like fingers stroking. Cool, soft fingers, stroking her face; sooth- ing fingers that made her uncurl and stretch out so that the shadows could cover her body. Se : Even then she slept in the big bed, and the shadows would pour down. from the window in a path. She wasn’t asleep when the shadows came, so she knew they were real. They came on the breeze, from the window, and covered her up. Maybe it was the shadows that were cool and not the wind; maybe the shadows stroked her hair until she fell asleep. But she would sleep then, and the dreams always came. They followed the same path as the wind and the shadows; they poured down from the 76 eee | : : Comicbooks con