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tale acquired dark moments of its own. It was discovered that Serena—for that was the name they
chose for her—had incapacities much greater than a simple loss of pigmentation. The doctor came
to examine her and diagnosed that she suffered, as well, from a congenital atrophy of the lower
limbs. Serena's natural functions would not be impaired—through ther­apy she would walk after a
fashion—but gone would be the running, jumping, leaping joys of normal childhood.
    The doctor's heart
ached when he had to offer news of this new disaster to Enoch, but Enoch only smiled
again.
    "It is a pity, of
course, but, then, what better household could a child who will suffer difficulty in getting
about be born into? We have no need of the world outside of this house."
    The doctor nodded
as he put his instruments back into his battered black bag. As he prepared to take his leave of
them, he pondered the fact that God, apparently, had prepared the child for the best life it
could hope for in this strange home.
     
    Serena was given a
room of her own when she was six. It was adorned with murals illuminating the stories of the
Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen. The colors were so pale as to be the merest breath of color.
Still, as a backdrop to the luminous child, they were crashingly vivid. The room was filled with
the plush toys of a bygone era. White rabbits, white elephants, white mice, and white ducks with
pale yellow bills. There were shelves filled with old-fashioned picture books of another
age.
    Enoch commissioned
a young artist and a young writer to create a small book telling the tale of "Serena, Moon Child"
in a gentle, loving, and fantastic way. One copy only was printed which made it, by far, the most
expen­sive of all children's books. Further adventures appeared every year until she was twelve.
It was in that year that she began to go blind.
    For the first and
only time, Enoch cried over the trials of his little fairy princess and wondered about the wisdom
of his marriage. Mary took the news with greater courage. Serena took it with the greatest
courage of all. She asked that a chair, with pillows piled high, be placed in the front window so
that she could see and store up visions of the world.
    The black children
of the neighborhood wondered about the magic child and were always silent when they passed by her
window. They would wave and smile at her and she would wave and smile in return. Sometimes, they
brought small gifts, deposited furtively on the doorstep. A ball, a rag doll, a small bag of
marbles. They were, in a way, offerings to a goddess.
    Sometimes the
children stood on the sidewalk and whis­pered their whispers to her, even though from that
dis­tance it would have been impossible for her to hear them. Somehow, they believed, she would
mysteriously know, and in some magical way, make their wishes come true.
    It took a full year
before her sight was completely gone.
    Serena feared the
velvet dark at first and regretted desperately that she could no longer read. She did, for a
time, become hypersensitive to the touch of anything upon her. The doctor feared a new
affliction. It passed away in time, though a great sensitivity of touch stayed in her
hands.
    Not long after she
went totally blind, Serena discov­ered, quite by chance, that she could read the slight
im­pressions left by type upon the page in the normal way of printing. Knowing the shapes of
letters, she was able to read the large typefaces, and then smaller ones, until her hands would
fly across the pages like tiny, white hum­mingbirds. Her hands moved so quickly, interpreting the
slightly engraved surface, that she saw nearly as well as someone with the gift of
sight.
    There was a second
gift that awaited her, that did not awaken until it was needed—a more awesome, almost terrible
gift.
    Serena's blindness
was a blow that shattered Enoch Pratt's entire fabric of fantasy. His marriage, his whole