Sawed from a bolt of green chiffon, a mantle to cover cream chiffon, stenciled with flowers. Bold, red flowers blowing west, tilted toward the sun. This was the dream dress, a plan for a magic dress. She had finally found something she wanted. The knowledge brought her heart to her mouth and she could call her mother without audacity: "Mother, Howard's going to make me a dress."
"The farm magic dream dress," whispered Carol into her arm through her black hair. Lying in bed, she wept as love streamed up through the floor from the land below. Gravity had somehow reversed itself, and her feet floated above her head, and her hair floated above her feet until she saw stars as if planted in a black field. Only yesterday, there was no magic, there was no dream. And now there was. Carol thumbed the spot on the back of her leg where Mother had applied the iodine. There was a ringworm living in there. Jeffy, the neighbor boy, said it would climb to her brain and drive her insane. Daddy said if she lay on her stomach in the sun that it would die. But Carol liked the ringworm. Once she invited a butterfly to live in her ear and had cried when it refused. She thought that maybe the ringworm would give her practice at hosting better things. Now the iodine was stinging her leg. She hated to think what the ringworm felt.
