She had a point. I couldn't argue. I never could, when she turned those
big green eyes of hers on me, full power. "Yeah," I said. "Only what
are we going to do with it?"
"What do your kind do with old bodies here?"
"Mostly we bury them."
"All right then."
That was unassailable feminine logic. All right. So I'd bury it.
That night, by the eerie light of the waning moon, I went at it with
Uncle John's pick and shovel and buried the old witch's body next to
Aunt Belle's rose bushes by the garage. My bright, new-incarnation
girl lounged around and chatted sociably. Everything still had quite a
dreamlike quality; the corpse was a final, nightmare touch. But even
so, I was beginning to wonder a bit about things; such things as,
specifically, where we went from there.
"Star-doll-baby--" well, hell, there are times when a man has to use
terms like that to communicate with the female--"you aren't going to
vanish all of a sudden and leave me now, are you? Ugh!" That was a
heavy shovel and thick clay. "What are our plans?"
"Sil-ly. I understand your custom now. We are going to be married,
of course. Then we shall see. There is no hurry. I have, by your
standards, plenty of time. I must assimilate and learn to understand
you and your fascinating life-form. We shall live together and be man
and wife. As I have said, your species and mine may derive much benefit
from this intermingling."
That, if I understood her correctly, sounded fine to me. It was
the best proposal I'd had yet. And surely it would have been poor
hospitality to a lonely little girl some light-years away from home
for me to have refused. "This is terribly sudden," I told her. "Uf!
That ought to be enough of a hole for as wizened up a little old body
as that ... yes, darling, I will marry you. Who's going to earn us a
living?"