Page 54 of Born for Starlight

The priest inclined his head when Beatriz presented him. Father Tomás. He said he was glad I had come, quietly, in careful English. Then he went silent, but his smile made me feel totally welcome. The last two nuns did not stop for introductions. They had their hands full trying to stop the tide of excited children.

"I must tell you a thing." Beatriz tried to look grave. On her round, happy face it barely worked. "The peoples. The television peoples. They come at one. We could not stop this. The diocese, they want the photographs."

"Sister." I leaned in. "That gives us three hours before I have to share you. Let them come at one o’clock. This time is ours."

She looked at me like I'd passed a test.

"Then come," she said. She turned to the doors and called out something in Portuguese, and the children poured out.

I've stood in front of cameras my whole adult life. I've walked red carpets with a thousand people screaming my name. Nothing prepared me for sixty or seventy children hitting me at knee height all at once, all talking, all pulling, small hands grabbing my hands and my sleeves. One little boy wrapped himself around my leg and would not let go.

I'd only heard that sound once before, and I wished I had time to revel in it, but I was too consumed with the children.

They swept us inside to a big common room with a cement floor. The walls were covered in murals that the children had obviously painted. There was a lopsided Noah's ark. A garden. A yellow sun in every corner, because apparently one sun wasn’t enough.

The children sat down on the floor in a half circle, fast, like they'd done it a hundred times before. Then the sixty or seventy faces looked up at me and waited.

"They want to know if you will tell a story," Inês translated from near my elbow. "They argue about this for one week. Which story."

"Which story won?"

Inês asked them. The answer came back as a roar, and the roar had two sides.

"The princess," she said. "But also the dragon. It was, how do you say. A tie."

"Then we do both." I stood up in the middle of them. "I will tell them the story of the bravest princess in Brazil and the scariest dragon in the world. And I will need their help, because I do not speak dragon."

I didn't need much translating. That was the secret. I've made my living with my body and my face and my voice, and children are the best audience on earth, because they give you everything back. First I put on my imaginary crown, and the girls giggled. I swished my skirts, as I walked low amongst the children and waved. They all waved back. Then I turned in fear, panic clear on my face, as I backed into one of the walls, covering my face.

I ran back over to the front of the room and opened my arms up wide, and bugged out my eyes, and roared as loud as I could. Some of the children jumped. It was perfect. I stomped around the room, flapping my arms like I was flying, roaring and roaring until every child was shrieking.

All the while I yelled and asked where they were hiding the princess. Inês kept up beside me, less shy with every line. Beatriz sat on the floor with the children, as caught up in it as they were.

A boy in the second row shouted a question, bouncing on his knees with his hand up.

Inês translated. “What does the princess look like?”

I described her. Dark eyes. Long black hair almost to the floor, with a beautiful pink gown. Her crown was made with diamonds and emeralds.

A girl called out the next question, and I caught the whole thing. “Does the dragon breathe fire?”

"Sim, muito fogo," I said. I took an enormous breath and breathed terrible, silent fire all over the first two rows. The first two rows died dramatically. It took a full minute to revive them.

It was three questions later, mid-dragon, that I noticed Inês looking at me. Not translating. Just looking, with her head tipped.

The girl's question. Inês had never translated it.

I had understood it on my own.

Lucky guess, I told myself. Fogo, fuego, they're practically the same word. Portuguese is close to Spanish, and I'd picked up plenty of Spanish on sets in California. I let it go and turned back into a dragon, because thirty seconds of silence will kill you with this audience.

But I could feel Matthew's eyes on me from the back wall. When I glanced over, he wasn't smiling.

Then a five-year-old sneezed right in the middle of my dragon roar, the whole room fell apart laughing, and I forgot all about it.

The soccer field was a rectangle of packed red dirt behind the dormitory. The two goals were welded out of pipe. The nets were long gone. Someone had marked the boundary lines in whitewash, straight and careful.

I am not good at soccer. Okay, I’m really crappy at soccer. And most sports. The kids loved that.