The Gray House

TABAQUI

The days are wound tightly, like strings. Each tighter and higher than the one before it. I feel like I’m sitting on a string waiting for it to snap. When it finally happens I’ll be thrown far, far away, farther than can be imagined, while at the same time staying exactly where I am.

Waiting is unpleasant business, especially when compounded by this heat.

The sky is piercingly blue, and all day I suffer from its presence, longing for the night to come and deliver me from it. Sometimes I imagine dead birds tumbling down from this sky. Broken and drained of color. I even seem to smell them. I bet if we looked hard enough we’d find a pile of rotting sparrows.

I fight the heat by collecting no one’s things and sending out letters.

Sixty-four letters have now been sent to various celebrities, letters offering them the opportunity to take over the maintenance of the House, together with all of us in it. The first one to take the plunge will be provided with unlimited advice from me, in any field and at any time. I am also offering myself in a role of fortune-teller, astrologer, secretary, tamer of domestic animals, jack and master of all trades, shaman, talisman, and novelty desk ornament. So far no takers. I wasn’t expecting any, of course. It’s only sixty-four letters, after all. Not that many. But the fact that no one has responded at all, not even in jest, is troubling. It could be I haven’t been persuasive enough. My advanced age must be showing.

Before exiting the room I let everyone in front go ahead and drive into the hallway after them, looking down unassumingly. Even though I’m dying to see how what we’ve worked on through the night looks in the light of day.

The appreciative hollering of the pack makes me blush.

“Wow!” they yelp. “Oh wow! Look at that!”

I so like giving surprise gifts. It is deeply gratifying, and it’s a great pity that I only very rarely get the opportunity.

The blank walls the color of malted milk are no more.

We labored at the very boundaries of human endurance to remake them the way they’re supposed to be. Everything—yes, we did tend more toward monumental than detailed, but none of it was done haphazardly—every letter is decorated with great care. It probably could do with more drawings, but that would mean sacrificing quality in pursuit of quantity. Everyone has limits.

“Yay!” Mermaid shouts and runs ahead, swinging her tiny backpack.

Smoker is busy copying some deep thought or other off the walls into his diary. The bloated three-foot-high letters glisten like wet lozenges. Even I am struck by how imposing all of it looks. It’s not entirely clear what everything means, but that’s unimportant. Others will come to work on the empty spaces between the drawings and the letters, and in a couple of days—no, scratch that, in a couple of hours—we’re going to have important announcements, news, negotiations, poems, basically everything without which neither we nor our walls can function properly. We just gave it the first nudge.

Mermaid runs back and reports breathlessly that it gets even better.

“There are these six elephants trampling across, one after the other . . . and one of them is checkered. What’s that mean, do you think?”

Smoker doesn’t think it means anything. Sphinx suggests that it had been done simply to fill the space.

“Someone must have cut out a stencil.”

“Wait, is there by any chance this teeny-tiny aphid next to them?” Smoker says. “Next to the elephants, I mean. It should be green.”

Of course there isn’t. There is, however, a cute slumbering Lanthanosuchus with its little legs up in the air, but I don’t want to spoil it.

Mermaid dutifully sets off looking for the aphid. We’re moving along, already past the elephants, and everyone’s still searching for that aphid.

“Aw. A dead crocodile,” Mermaid says sadly.

And they all agree. It appears that no one among them is capable of telling a sleeping Lanthanosuchus from a dead crocodile.

“Now I understand why we couldn’t wake up Noble,” Ginger says. “And why he stinks of paint thinner.”

She adjusts Tubby’s panama hat and wheels him ahead.

We catch up with them near the Third, where there’s a significant crowd assembled. They’re all silent, staring at the wall. I push myself through—and get the same knock to my senses that all of them have just received. This area was too far away from mine, and I didn’t visit it last night.

They have left only rectangles outlined in black, with notes in the middle: Here was Antelope, by Leopard. Chalk, ochre, bronze paint. Surviving fragment of the diptych The Hunt.

Big letters snaking along the lower border of the empty frames say: STRANGER, BARE YOUR HEAD.

Ginger slowly pulls off Tubby’s panama.

I put on dark glasses and drive away. Mustang clangs, sending the passersby scattering, both those in a hurry to get to the canteen and those not in a hurry to get anywhere: they all readily jump away, because as Mustang is becoming heavier and less maneuverable every day I’m having a harder and harder time steering it, while the dark glasses interfere with my ability to recognize obstacles. I can’t take them off, the sunny weather ruins my mood, and they help mask all this sunniness. With them I can even pretend that the sky is overcast instead of bright blue, so I have been wearing them continuously for the last week, eager to deceive myself, and getting into accidents, but better a couple of accidents than the depression that will inevitably follow if I’m forced to live under the cloudless sky.

Someone with the same case of bad nerves as me has destroyed the master bell, probably figuring that it is not needed for ringing the classes anymore, and people wouldn’t miss meals. In that he was mistaken. Many do. They come late, or early. Breakfasts are the hardest hit. In the morning it’s almost exclusively Pheasants in the canteen, chomping on their grass, that is, salads. A sorry sight. I’ve never much cared about that bell—I don’t like any indicators of time passing. But while it was working it at least made the atmosphere in the canteen a bit more lively.

I drive up to the table and put on the napkin.

Smoker, across from me, is sipping his tea like it’s a cup of hemlock. Lary, next to him, is busy mangling a roll with a dull knife. That’s it. Four at the Rats’ table, three for the Birds, a solitary Hound shoveling food into a backpack. Only Pheasants are all duly present and accounted for, and the crunch of their morning carrots can be clearly heard across the room.

I make myself a sandwich to demonstrate to Lary how it’s done, but he doesn’t even look in my direction. Huffing and puffing and torturing the bread.

After my second sandwich Alexander comes running, wheeling Tubby in before him. Tubby’s miserable look tells me he’s not exactly thrilled with being here. Alexander parks the wheelchair at the table and starts loading food into the poor guy. Tubby’s suffering, and Alexander, usually so very attentive, seems not to notice. If the bell were still operational it would have been ringing by now, but it isn’t, so what’s the rush? I take a camp pot out of the backpack and roll it over to Alexander.

“Dump it all in there, leave the kid alone.”

Alexander is just in time to catch the pot, but drops the spoon.

“See,” I say. “You’re asleep on your feet, you shouldn’t be feeding people. And, by the way, he’s already helped himself to a roll this morning. I wouldn’t put it past him to choke now, what with this treatment. People croak left and right from that, you know.”

Tubby slurps mayo off his chin and hiccups softly, as if in support of my speech. Alexander turns the pot this way and that, apparently amazed at its capaciousness. He clearly wants to drop everything and run back under the shower. He’s spent the last three days in there. Hoping to wash the Alexanderness off himself?

“Move it,” I say. “Time’s a-wasting.”

Lary grumbles something to the effect that there’s too much noise coming from me. That I generally produce too much noise, and in the mornings especially.

“Put that in your notebook,” I tell Smoker. “He was always boisterous, and in the mornings especially.”

I observe Alexander filling up the pot, fold my napkin, and drive off. These boring breakfasts you can keep.

I’m barely out into the hallway when I realize that I do indeed produce too much noise. And the reason for that is the removal of a fairly bulky item, namely the camp pot, from the backpack. Something has shifted inside and clanks insistently now, something that it was safely pressing against. And besides, old Mustang also started creaking, unpleasantly resembling the phantom cart that always passes by the House around dawn, closer to the night that’s just ended than to the morning that’s about to start.

I’m at my wits’ end with that cart. Could be a hobo returning with the nightly haul of empties. Could be a wheeler risen from the grave where his wheelchair had been buried alongside him and is now rusted to hell from being underground for so long. Or maybe it’s a runaway wheelchair all by its lonesome, passing by the House like the Flying Dutchman, rattling the decaying bones of its former master.

Establishing which of these theories best describes the reality is impossible. In this narrow slot between night and morning the dreams are too sweet for me to climb out of bed, and even if I were to climb out I still wouldn’t see anything, because it drives by when it’s still dark. I decided to make a recording of the mysterious squeaking object and then listen to it when I’m awake. But no matter how many times I’ve left the recorder in the open window, I’ve never caught that obnoxious noise. The cassettes with the failed attempts I’ve stashed in a box and secreted in the pile of no one’s things.

And now it’s me who’s squeaking like that elusive object, be it a cart, the ghost of a wheeler, or the wheelchair sans ghost. And this means that Mustang is due for an oil change and a check of the fasteners. A tedious, dreary, wearisome business.

Anything interesting that’s happening in the House sooner or later gravitates either to the Crossroads or to the Coffeepot. If you’re not looking for something specific, the best strategy is to sit there and wait until whatever you need finds you. I’m not the only one to set up such ambushes. During the hours of the hunt, the territory of the Coffeepot is strictly divided among the people tracking this and that. We try not to infringe on each other’s turf, but stuff happens, so we’re mostly aware of what everyone else is collecting. From time to time the Coffeepot suffers from the plague of girls in search of confrontation, and then we have to depart swiftly lest we become the trophies.

We stake out the corner table by the wall, Mermaid and I, and wait. The banner on the Mustang is acid-yellow and smells of decaying sparrows. I have on the T-shirt emblazoned with pirates, as a warning, and I’m wearing sunglasses. They’re helping me cope with the sunny weather. Mermaid’s hair ensconces her and her chair in a kind of tent, cascading down to within a couple of inches of the floor. It mingles with ribbons, cords, and chains of tiny bells, and in the gaps of her vest I can see question marks. Only question marks, two dozen Whys all in a row. She is waiting too, patiently and silently, her hair drips beads of silver, and the question marks seem to flow like upturned droplets.

I very much wish myself luck now, while Mermaid is here. For her sake, not mine. My own good fortune has abandoned me lately, not surprisingly, since I’ve already caught a lot of things. It’s possible that every lucky day brought me closer to some kind of limit and now I’m bumping against it. This makes me nervous, and to calm myself down I take out the ream of paper and launch into the sixty-fifth variation on the theme of “A la recherche du Crazy Benefactor.” After the first dozen or so I stopped using the form letter, because I didn’t need to anymore, but also because something that’s been copied out is always less sincere, even when it’s exactly identical to something that’s been transcribed from memory.

Mermaid drinks her coffee and watches the door. As I fold my missive, she frowns suspiciously.

“Do you really believe something’s going to come out of this?”

“Well, to be completely honest,” I say as I put the file back into the backpack and take out an envelope, “no, not really. Things like that only happen once, if at all. The probability of history repeating itself is vanishingly small. But even the tiniest probability should not be ignored.”

“You mean it already has happened? When?”

I sigh. No one seems to be aware of the history of their own abode. And no one seems to care that they aren’t. It’s all moldy rubbish to them, they can’t spare a single minute to take a good sniff at it. Truly, not a single one among them has the capacity of becoming an archeologist, of deriving pleasure from digging and of rejoicing at the results.

“Once upon a time there lived a man,” I say. “And he was extremely rich and extremely ugly. Or maybe not exactly ugly, but afflicted with a disfiguring disease. We’ll never know now because he never posed for any pictures, and if somebody took one of him in secret he immediately would drag them into court. He lived holed up in his house, assembled a collection of antique musical instruments, and didn’t give a damn about anyone. He did write articles and send them to various magazines, signing them with the pen name ‘Tarantula,’ but they were almost never printed, because in them he mainly vented at the government and all the institutions and organizations he ever had to deal with, or, as he himself put it, ‘spit venom.’ And who’d want to print that, right? I think in ten years he only had one article accepted, and that about the antique musical instruments. All of his relatives couldn’t wait for him to croak to finally get their hands on his money. He knew that, of course, and that’s why he dug up this orphanage that was about to be shuttered because the building it was occupying was falling apart. He bought that building, financed the repairs, and endowed a trust that was supposed to maintain the orphanage after his death.”

I make a pause and with the end of my spoon trace an invisible spider on the tablecloth. As I was telling the story our table had acquired several more listeners. I don’t mind, anyone can listen if they wish.

“And he compiled a list of rules and regulations for those who were going to live in his house and receive his money. Except that it happened so long ago that many of those rules aren’t being observed anymore.”

“What were the rules?” Mermaid says impatiently. “Come on, you have to know. Tell us!”

“Well, there was one about having the building repaired at least every three years. And also cripples having a priority in admission; that started with him. They didn’t admit anyone who was unfit mentally, because he designed the program of studies himself, and it was very hard, you had to be smart to follow it. He even ran into some opposition there, they accused him of throwing such a lot of money at one crumbling orphanage, when he could have used it to build twenty more like it, and then barring the entrance to it for those who were the most disadvantaged.”

“Tabaqui!” Lizard says hotly. “How could you know stuff like that, and in such detail? You invented all this, admit it!”

“I admit. I was sitting here and inventing. Because I had nothing better to do than exercise my imagination.”

Lizard grabs my cup and unceremoniously takes a big swig.

“It’s too romantic,” he grumbles. “It never happens like this in real life. Even if there was something, you still wrapped all kinds of fluff around it.”

“But at least I’ve managed to touch you. See, you’re even gulping other people’s coffee, you’re so touched.”

Lizard returns the cup, looking at me accusingly.

“So it was all bullshit?”

He’s got incredibly bushy eyebrows, his forehead is hidden behind thick growth, and even his ears sport big tufts of coarse hair. He resembles a minor folkloric demon. You can almost spot the little horns. Angel, ever the effete pervert, keeps rolling his eyes behind Lizard’s back at his every word. Another chair has been occupied by Guppy, he of the interminably leaky nose and big ears, the biggest in the whole House, after mine, of course. I think it would have done old man Tarantula good to see all of us here.

“It must be the truth,” Mermaid says earnestly. “When Tabaqui’s making up something he always defends it to the last. He’d never confess that he’s invented something.”

Lizard turns his shaggy head this way and that.

“So what am I supposed to think now? He says he’s made it all up, you say he hasn’t.”

“Archives are for reading, children,” I say. “And history is for knowing, to the extent possible.”

Lizard frowns and falls silent. As do the rest of them. Pensive Mermaid drips question marks, they slide off one after the other and dissolve in the floorboards. My cup is empty, so I surreptitiously pull Mermaid’s closer, even though she never adds enough sugar.

Angel repositions the eyes that he kept rolled all the way up.

“I propose we install a totem pole at the Crossroads in honor of our patron saint,” he intones in his crystal-clear little voice. “Shame on us that the memory of the person to whom we owe so much is languishing forgotten.”

“You’d be honoring everyone all day and all night if you get the chance,” Lizard snarls, still looking suspiciously in my direction. “No archives could possibly have told him all the crap he just fed us.”

“But it did happen!” Angel exclaims. “And you have to agree, the cult of the spider is well established in the House since times immemorial. Take, for example, these widely known lines . . .”

Lizard’s irate howls drown out the widely known lines. Mermaid sticks fingers in her ears, and Guppy closes his eyes for some reason. I guess because two fingers are nowhere near enough to plug his ears. I follow his example and close mine too. When I open them again I’m looking at Horse.

He seems to be saying something, but I can’t hear a single word until Lizard stops howling and drives away from our table.

“. . . and he was kind to birds and beasts!” Angel finishes lovingly.

“. . . he said you were into useless trash.” Horse places a string of something indeterminate on the table before me. “You think you might need this?”

I snatch it, and there it is, the miracle. Rat skulls attached to a thin, bridle-like strap. I sweep off the shades to better see the long-awaited prize.

“Horse. Whose is it?”

“Heck if I know,” he says. “I found it in the shoe locker. I went there for the shoe polish, and it was right there, so I thought, what’s that crap?”

My hands are shaking as I untangle the strap. The skulls are seven, and only one of them has a fang broken, otherwise they’re in mint condition. The strap is decorated with dull copper studs and spikes, it’s rather beautiful even by itself. If this is not a magical object, I don’t know what is.

“What a monstrosity!” Angel exclaims. “What poor creatures had to suffer for this?”

“They’re rat skulls,” I grumble. “What were you doing in biology class, that’s what I’d like to know?”

Horse beams.

“So, if you need this, it’s yours. I’ve got no use for it.”

“Disgusting,” Angel whines. “So many rats dead, and for what? Ooh, could it be someone casting a hex on the Second?”

“Hey!” Horse crosses his fingers and looks around suspiciously. “Angel, you’d better, you know, watch it. I found this in our box, you know. So you mean it was us casting the hex, that what you saying?”

I bang my hand on the table, slightly splashing Mermaid’s coffee.

“Enough! Out, all of you. I need some time alone with the loot. Horse, thank you, I’m in your debt. Angel, thank you too. For keeping company.”

Angel, deeply offended, rolls his eyes so hard they’re pointing at the back of his head. Horse smirks, salutes me, and rolls the wheelchair with Angel, temporarily blinded, to the far side of the Coffeepot. Guppy stays in place, frozen, desperately hoping we’re going to forget he’s there.

I take out the box with the scale models of my collection and position them on the table. Mermaid drags her chair closer and we proceed to shift the models this way and that, trying to incorporate the rat skulls. It takes us a while. Guppy gets tired of the show and dozes off.

“No,” Mermaid says finally. “Doesn’t work. We need to figure out what it is first.”

I drape the strap over my neck. Then wrap it around my head. Then sling it around my waist.

“Definitely not around the neck. And not as a belt. And it’s supposed to latch to something right here, see this spot?”

“What if it really is a hex?” Mermaid says. “Then it’s not no one’s, but the owner is never going to admit it’s theirs.”

“Wherever did you see a hex like this? They’re not pierced, they’re not cracked, they’re perfectly whole little skulls in great condition!”

“How would I know what a proper hex is supposed to look like? I’ve never used them on anybody.”

“Then listen to those who do know, and you’ll never go wrong.”

Mermaid puts her head on her hands and stares at the models scattered across the table.

“There’s only one thing I’d like to know. Where do they come from, these experts on all things? Those who know everything about everything.”

“Not everything,” I say modestly. “‘A lot’ would be more correct. And they are in fact forged in the crucible of experience.”

“I see,” Mermaid says, nodding. “Except to acquire this much experience it would be necessary to live for a hundred years and make some pretty impossible acquaintances. So that’s what I’m trying to find out, where does it grow, this experience?”

“You’ll know when you’re older. Or not. Depending on your luck.”

“That’s the song I’ve been hearing all my life from all sides,” she scowls. “And surprisingly, the ones singing it to me are uniformly way older than I am. Not.”

I gather the cardboard toys and return them to the backpack.

“Let’s go. Nothing more is happening here. Lightning never strikes twice in one day. We can go check how it fits with the rest.”

Mermaid collects the cups and takes them to the counter. I fiddle with the ties on the backpack.

Time doesn’t flow the same way in the House as in the Outsides. This isn’t talked about, but there are those who manage to live to a ripe old age twice in what for others would feel like one measly month. The more often you fall through timeless holes the more you’ve lived, but only those who’ve lived here for a while know how to do that. That’s why the difference in age between old-timers and newbies is so drastic here. It doesn’t take a great feat of perceptiveness to see that. The greediest can Jump several times a month, and then trail several versions of their past after them. There probably isn’t anyone in the whole House greedier than I am, which means there’s no one here who’s lived through more loops than I have. It’s not something to be proud of, but still I’m proud. Greed this extraordinary is an accomplishment of sorts.

Mermaid returns and looks at me expectantly. I say that I’m ready, and we depart the Coffeepot leaving Guppy snoozing at the now-empty table.

Every time I pack and unpack the things I realize that this is a completely pointless endeavor. The actual contents of the backpack play almost no role in it, the important thing is the process itself. Take something out, smell it, put it aside. Take out, feel, put aside. And then when you try to stuff everything back it won’t fit. That’s an interesting but separate conundrum. And so on. It acquires an almost meditative quality.

It used to be called “One Bag Syndrome.” A very serious disease. As I observe its symptoms in myself, I don’t quite understand what could have caused it. There are no luggage restrictions, either by weight or by size, for the graduation. And still I fret immensely that the backpack obstinately refuses to accommodate the kite. I guess that’s the mind playing games. A distracting tactic. You huff and puff and count the loot, and gradually forget what it was you started the whole repacking over. Instead a lot of other things bubble up to the surface, because each item means time, events, and people compressed into a solid form and requiring a proper place among its own kin.

My backpack must be at least forty years old. No one makes them this sturdy anymore. Real leather patches, heavy brass buckles, ten pockets on the inside, five on the outside, and a dedicated knife holster. It’s not a backpack anymore, it’s a cave from “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” Twice I had it stolen, and both times I managed to return it, and I myself stole it so long ago there isn’t anyone left who remembers that it hasn’t always been mine.

I’m relating all that to Noble as the backpack disgorges its contents and I slap the deflated sides affectionately.

“See this pocket? There’s a safety-razor blade inside, coiled and ready. As soon as you pull on the zipper, out it jumps, and then it’s good-bye.”

“Good-bye what?”

“Good-bye, fingers. That’s how I got it back both times after the thefts. You look around the canteen, spot whoever has a bandaged arm, wheel over and tell them nicely, ‘Give it back, you dirty bastard.’ And they do. Because they know it would be worse for them if they didn’t.”

Noble peeks inside, intrigued.

“It’s a mystery to me how come you haven’t soaked it in poison. It doesn’t sound like you, giving a thief an even break.”

“Nah,” I say, putting back the woolen blanket and the mug with my initials on it. “One of the burglars was Lary. You realize, of course, how much whining ensued, now imagine what would’ve happened if it had been poisoned.”

The archival album with the cuttings and stickers goes on the bottom. The clay whistles nestle in the mug. The camp pot, the binoculars, the purple vest, the box of glass beads . . .

Noble drags the pillow closer to the pile, flops on it with his belly, and observes. For about a minute and a half. The next time I raise my head he’s already out cold. Feels like a door that’s been slammed in your face. You are talking to someone, and suddenly he’s gone.

I sigh and pull off his mirror glasses. The envelope with the stickers hasn’t gone inside the backpack yet. I go through the specimens. Pick out the two most appropriate for the occasion and peel them off. A large strawberry goes on one of the mirror lenses, and the other gets a cartoon boy with his pants down. I thread the glasses over his ears and lower the lenses back on his nose. Noble’s look takes a definite turn toward festiveness.

“My soul longs for music,” I say to Smoker. “But we don’t have anything that hasn’t been listened to hundreds of times. So, that calls for bright colors to liven up things.”

“You can decorate me,” Smoker suggests glumly. “Or start a fire.”

He’s flat on his back, staring at the ceiling and only occasionally gazing down at the world below. And that reluctantly, as if there’s something extremely important just about to happen up there. He probably dreamed of being a pilot when he was little. At least that’s the impression I’m getting.

“You know,” he says after a pause, “I would never in my life even dream of opening your backpack. Never.”

And falls silent. Sounds like a very definitive and somewhat threatening statement. Like I’ve spent the past several years imploring him to get a good rummage in there, and today is finally the day when he conveys to me his firm and unyielding refusal.

“Why’s that?” I ask.

Silence. Of a very meaningful kind. Likely in stern disapproval of my tamper-detecting devices. There isn’t anyone else I know who can be silent as meaningfully as Smoker. As exhaustively covering the entire issue.

I continue to pack, reverently listening to the ominous silence. Noble is still sleeping.

A deck of cards, spare bulbs for flashlights, compass, saltshaker, earplugs, feather for the hat, suspenders.

Yes, yes, I’m a philistine, I’m bloodthirsty and somewhat paranoid, and generally far from perfect. But I have my good moments when I’m nice and caring, and Smoker’s prosecutorial silence does not allow for that at all. Having had my fill of it I finally snap and declare that he’s being ridiculously unfair and prejudiced.

Smoker lifts his head lazily.

“Oh, really? I don’t think so.”

I open my mouth to present him with the authoritative proof of my point, and this is where Alexander enters. Seeing him sends my thoughts and words scattering, screaming.

Alexander sits down on the bed and smiles at us. He’s wearing the whitest pants and a white T-shirt. His freshly washed hair is brushed back. This is the first time since the day I’ve first seen him that he put on anything brighter than the color of a dirty mop. Or bared his forehead.

“What? Why are you staring like that?” he asks, shifting nervously back and forth on the edge of the bed.

“You’re a vision in white, Alexander,” I say. “Like a snowflake. What’s happening to you? Talk to me.”

He doesn’t really look like a snowflake. Rather a white knitting needle. Because today’s clothes fit him normally, while everything else until now hung like a sack. This fact is no less strange than the others. Like here’s someone who’s been hiding in a dark corner somewhere all his life, and suddenly shot out of there howling, dressed to the nines. On the other hand, if he’s shooting out it means he really needs to, and that’s that.

“Looks nice, actually,” I say, “just unusual. I promise I’ll get right on getting used to it.”

Noble’s already awake. He’s endured the shock stoically, as he has both the strawberry and the pantsless youth..

“Play something on the harmonica,” he says.

I can take a hint. He’s trying to get me to stop talking. But that’s part of being a true friend to your friends, not refusing a request even when it’s directed at shutting you up. So I take out the harmonica and play. Noble crawls closer to the bed rail, spreads himself across it, pulls out the guitar, and positions it on his belly.

It is easier for the harmonica to follow the guitar than the other way around. So at first we keep bungling it, unable to get in sync, hissing and swearing, but then it starts to take shape, and we’re happy with that, even though the sound is nothing special. In these matters the process itself is what’s important, just as in the packing, so we sink deeper and deeper into it and get thoroughly stuck. It’s not long before I feel a Howl coming up. I’m guessing Noble does too. He starts to hum and whistle. Things like that wind me up enormously, me and my Howl voices.

I tamp them down until I can’t anymore, and when that moment comes I drop the soaking-wet harmonica, screw up my eyes tightly, and screech, “Gangway down to the water! Circle the wagons! Artillery ready! Fire!”

Thus bringing our cooperative music making to an abrupt end. In the ringing silence that follows the Howl, I open my eyes and see Sphinx sitting on the nightstand.

“Again,” he says.

“Again,” I agree sadly.

Screams of all sorts have taken residence inside me lately. Some days, after an exhausting whirl around the House observing this and that, I’m overwhelmed by the desire to bark in a manly voice, “Women and children to the shelters!” What women? What children? The subconscious would not be pushed and is silent. It just wants to herd everyone into a shelter, and that’s it. I think it’s the first response area of the genetic memory. Or take the “artillery,” for example. Every time I hear it I immediately imagine these ancient catapults. With a depressing regularity. Generally when I need to scream I scream, I don’t bottle it in. Better to have a nice scream or two and be done with it than to be constantly on the edge. Except my screams make the pack nervous. They can’t seem to get accustomed to it.

“Whoever heard of a gangway being lowered to the water?” Noble asks in a dying whisper. He’s slightly on the greenish side, due to him being too close when I blew up.

“Exactly!” I say indignantly. “The subconscious really went rogue. And really needed to lower it in that fashion. And to circle all the wagons. Or we’d all be screwed.”

“And did you lower it?” Sphinx inquires.

“I did.”

“Wagons duly circled?”

“They are.”

“Thank goodness. We can relax until the next time.”

I wipe off the harmonica. An exceptionally stifling day. No air at all. Noble is prostrate under the guitar. He peeled off the lewd boy but left the strawberry, a scarlet patch over his eye. Smoker is still waiting for news from the ceiling. Alexander has split.

“Hey,” I say to Sphinx. “Have you seen Alexander and his amazing snow-white coat? Clean as a whistle and white as a daisy?”

He nods.

“And how do you like it?”

“I think he looks nice.”

“He even slicked back his hair. He’s behaving in an unusual manner. To say nothing of the fact that he always hated white. Pointedly so. So quit pretending that you don’t understand what I mean.”

“Could it be he’s trying to convey the message that he’s sick of cleaning up everybody’s messes?” Smoker offers without taking his eyes off the ceiling.

There’s that prosecutorial voice again. Implying an entire sea of issues that he chooses to leave untouched for the time being. Fortunately for us.

“No one’s making him do that,” I say. “Never has.”

Smoker smirks, without even a glance in my direction.

So I did lie on the second point, of course, but that was out of simple forgetfulness, not malice. This is not the first time today that I want to throttle Smoker. If this keeps up it’ll become a recurring theme.

“I had made him do that,” Sphinx says. “And I had made Noble, too. And Lary, when it comes to that. Only you got skipped over. For some reason.”

“I wonder why,” Smoker says smoothly.

“Me too. And Alexander’s image refresh does give us an opportunity to remedy that. How about today’s your turn to clean?”

Smoker finally deigns to turn over, bestowing his surly visage on us. On Sphinx, more accurately. Looks at him with a sort of perverted longing.

“Sure. If you can make me,” Smoker says. “The same way you made all of them back then. So that even Tabaqui would say that it never happened.”

A breathtakingly rude remark, so much so that my nose starts itching, and the areas of the brain responsible for talking and acting are telegraphing up new Howls, along the lines of “Traitors against the wall!” and “Take no prisoners!” I barely manage to subdue them.

Sphinx is looking straight at Smoker, and it’s unclear if he’s going to kill him right now or simply laugh. Just looking. He at Smoker, and Smoker back at him. The silence seems to drip in huge heavy drops.

“Goodness,” Noble says reverentially. “So much drama.”

I can’t hold on to an inappropriate and somewhat oily snigger, and it escapes.

Sphinx switches off the headlights and then puts them back on, directed at us. That’s the way the man blinks, what of it? The eyes are cheerful and a bit on the impish side. He would have laughed. Most likely. But on a day as hot as this one you can’t be sure of anything.

Alexander reappears and sits on his bed this time.

“Hello, polar explorer,” I say to him. “You’ve almost caused a conflict here. If there’s one thing we hate, it’s for things to be left unsaid. So if this is some sort of protest, just say so. Otherwise we have Smoker here speaking for you, and we’ve already learned by and by that he has a dust allergy.”

Alexander always looks terminally earnest. You almost start believing everything he says even before he’s said it. It is therefore a blessing that he says so little, because listening to really honest words is somewhat tiring.

“I hate the color white,” he says.

This tires me instantly and very deeply. The mental effort of it, I mean.

Alexander looks at us, obviously expecting that we’ve already understood everything, but since our faces display a profound lack of understanding, he adds, “I dreamed I was a dragon. I hovered above a city and singed its streets with the fire of my breathing. The city was empty, because of me there. And I . . . it scared me.”

I pull at the earring hard. It hurts, but also clears the mind. Both when I’m drunk and in cases like this, when I see things. Things like scarlet-winged lizards flitting between charred houses. Lizards that look like bonfires. Alexander said nothing about the color red, but I know. And I also know that when your true color is ripping you apart from the inside you can swathe yourself in a dozen layers of white, or black, and it won’t help a single bit. It’s like trying to mop a waterfall with a tissue.

“The white shirt isn’t going to save you,” Sphinx says, putting my thoughts into words.

Alexander’s stare is unblinking. I imagine that in another moment all the bones in his face are going to be exposed, and then the only thing for me to do would be to count them and go kill myself quietly. They’re almost out already. The bones, the gray skin, and the swampy puddles of the eyes, with tadpoles for pupils.

“But it wouldn’t hurt either,” he says uncertainly. “Besides, who knows?”

Sphinx doesn’t argue. Neither do I. Noble dives behind a magazine. Smoker yawns ostentatiously.

“It’s time, Sphinx. Time for you to bust the glass for us. Can’t you see what’s going on? Time to fly. This one’s already taking wing”—I nod at Alexander—“and the others are champing at the bit.”

“Bust it yourself,” Sphinx says. “I am not ten anymore. I forgot how it’s done.”

These words are the last straw. It’s as if this was the only hope I was holding on to. Even though it started as an old, half-forgotten in-joke.

“When I had a nightmare once and told about it, Sphinx said he was going to bite me if I didn’t shut up,” Smoker says casually. “I remember it very well.”

“I do too.” Sphinx nods. “I also remember that I promised it to Noble, not to you. You have a very selective memory, Smoker. It skews the events. Presents them in an unflattering light.”

“What if I dreamed I was a flying hippo?”

“It would mean you ate something nasty at dinner.”

“Why then for Alexander it has to mean that he needs to dress in white?”

“I don’t know,” Sphinx says. He climbs down from the nightstand and sits on the floor, leaning his bald pate against the bed. “And I’ve never said it had to mean that, if you noticed.”

Smoker laughs.

“Now this was a beautiful explanation. Exhaustive and succinct. I finally understand everything.”

His laugh is not exactly sane, but not completely mad either. Equal parts of both. He’s got a lot of laughing to do if he hopes to catch Noble in his best years, but it still grates. We all of us urgently need a breath of fresh air. While it’s still around. Because it’s quite possible that it won’t be around for long.

I put on the dark glasses, plunging the world into shadow, and ask Alexander to help me with strapping my backpack to Mustang.

As I drive up to the Crossroads I remember:

The Amadán-na-Breena changes his shape every two days. Sometimes he comes like a youngster, and then he’ll come like the worst of beasts, trying to give the touch he used to be. I heard it said of late he was shot, but I think myself it would be hard to shoot him.

I cross the Crossroads, mumbling this canonical nonsense, and come to a stop at the back wall. Between the stand with the busted television and the wall there’s a tall mirror, so dusty that many think it’s facing the wrong side out. Girls do divination with it sometimes. Rub small areas with their fingers and look at what’s reflected in them. In a tiny spot of the mirror even a fragment of your own face seems portentous.

I clear a small patch too. It’s been a long, long time since I looked myself in the eye. You’d think that experiments like this should not be attempted when depressed. But I suddenly realized that the days have been flying by too fast, so fast I might not get another chance to see myself in the divination mirror.

First I make a small circle above my eyes, from there trace a line down toward the nose, and finally my double is peeking out from the neat window like from a hole in the wall. Hasn’t aged a day. The same fourteen-year-old mug. I’m sure I’ll still have it on the day they bury me. I rub out the side spaces for the ears, and push the hair off them so they come out better. The double resembles Mickey Mouse now. A very sinister Mickey Mouse. It hits me square on: I’m old. The mirror still reflects the same me as five years ago, but something’s missing on the inside. And it shows. The familiar prankster isn’t there. If you think about it, it’s been bloody ages since I did something amusing. Brought pox on all houses. I can’t even remember the last time I got beat up.

“Hey, you,” I say to my double. “What’s this? You’re not growing up, by any chance? Drop it, or it’s over between us.”

The reflected Tabaqui bugs out his eyes. Scared, or mocking me. One or the other.

“What is it that’s written on their mugs? It says there: Graduation’s nigh! The sky is falling! We’re all gonna die!” I whisper. “And what does yours say? The exact same thing. Who the heck are you and what have you done to the guy who was there before?”

He blinks. Meaning: what do you mean, who am I?

“You are the Horror Creeping in the Night! The Predator Gnawing at the Enemy’s Entrails! The Sharpshooter! The Pox and Perdition!”

It doesn’t work. The double dutifully scowls and strikes an even scarier pose, but still it’s obvious how insignificant, hollow, and rotted he is.

“I wish I had a good dumbbell with me. Yeah, you heard that right. And stop ogling me.”

I take the marker from behind my ear and draw a toothy smile right on the mirror. And roll back quickly so I don’t see the double jumping out of it. And he doesn’t. He’s too late.

As I drive along I get to thinking how many things are too late for me now.

I still can’t play the flute or do card tricks. Or make the chili infusion properly. I’ve never been up on the roof, never sat on a chimney, and never dropped anything in it so it rattled all the way down. I’ve never climbed the oak. I’ve never picked up a swallow’s nest and eaten it. Never flew the biggest, scariest kite at dawn under the Pheasants’ windows. I couldn’t even read the message from the olden times by collecting all the no one’s things that exist in the House.

Burdened with these thoughts, I roll into the Coffeepot. With my shades on, of course.

A couple of Rats, a triple of Hounds, and Mermaid with Ginger in the far corner. They’ve got three cups on the table, which means they’re waiting for someone but the someone isn’t here yet. So it would not be unreasonable to assume that it’s me who they’re waiting for. I head directly for them, say, “Why, thank you,” and grab the cup.

Coffee with milk. So, not Sphinx but Noble. I push the shades up my forehead and drink. One more thing I still can’t do: avoid gulping, even when the ladies are present.

“Tabaqui, did you just have a fight with somebody?” Ginger asks, looking at me intently.

“A vicious one. Scary even to talk about. I can say only that I’ve ripped him another smile, but that’s all I can reveal without devolving into the grisly details.”

They exchange glances. Ginger has on the paisley shirt, my own find at the last week’s Change Tuesday. Mermaid’s wearing the gray vest, still exposing the question marks in its gaps. Two dozen Whys, eerily in sync with the general mood and atmosphere.

“Poor guy,” Mermaid says, probably meaning the victim.

Very warm and caring.

“Exactly,” I say, touched. “Poor, unfortunate, unenlightened, and dusty.”

“Is it the ficus tree at the Crossroads he’s talking about?” Ginger muses.

“I know! It’s your bear!” Mermaid gasps.

Ginger feels in the backpack that’s hanging off the back of her chair.

“The bear is right here with me. And since you mentioned it, it’s not dusty at all. Just old.”

I look at the window. Is it me, or did the sun really go away? The windows are always draped in the Coffeepot, and it’s already twilight outside, but I still imagine that the weather’s changing.

“Come on, come on,” I whisper. “Bring in the clouds, drop down the rain, water the trees, bathe the crows . . .”

“Magic,” Mermaid sighs respectfully. “I wish I could do that. Bring the storm.”

“The entire House has been trying for the past month,” Ginger scoffs. “If even one of them could really do it we’d already be flooded up to the roof.”

“Speaking of, where’ve you been lately? It’s doom and gloom in the dorm. As soon as you take your eyes off someone, bang, he’s asleep. No one to talk to. Humpback is up in the oak, Lary is down on the first, and now you have disappeared too.” I wipe off my nose and chin and tease the coffee puddle over the placemat. “Boring.”

“Needle’s been sewing the wedding dress,” Mermaid says, springing a surprise on me. “In our room, so that no one could see her. She and Lary are getting married as soon as . . . well, you know. As soon as they can. And I’m in charge of decorations. White beads all over, imagine that.”

“All over Lary?” I say, horrified.

Ginger snorts, spraying coffee, and bangs her feet against the floor.

“Of course not. All over the dress. She wants everything to be proper.”

I picture Lary at the altar, in his customary black leather, spearing the wedding band with his long pinkie fingernail, and almost faint.

“Yuck! Disgusting petty properism, that’s all I can say about this. Still, I’m going to give them my blessing. And a present. I think I’ll get them a richly illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra.”

Suddenly I feel desperately sad. As if Alexander and his realization of the inner self weren’t enough, now it’s Lary and his wedding. I come to the conclusion that I should be drinking something stronger than coffee, drinking and drowning my sorrows in that something. But the Coffeepot is the Coffeepot, it never stocks anything nerve-calming. However, I remember that Ginger used to carry a flask.

“This calls for a drink,” I say. “It’s not every day Lary makes a decision this momentous.”

“Today is not the day he’s made it,” Ginger demurs.

I give her a reproachful look and say, “Don’t tell me you’d begrudge me!”

The flask is passed over, accompanied by a look of deep offense. I pour out a little into the coffee cup. It’s Doom, just as I expected. I invented this pick-me-up myself. It’s unlikely that a dose as small as what I’ve managed to beg is going to have any effect, but better a little something than a big nothing. I raise the cup and, to my own surprise, my voice is trembling from all the tribulations.

“My friends! Time, our principal and primary enemy, is implacable. The years take their toll as they roll by. The old grow older, the young grow stronger. Little dragons leave the ancestral shells and cast their misty sights at the sky! Improvident Bandar-Logs enter into matrimony with no regard to the consequences! Cute little boys turn into mean surly youths with a pronounced tendency to snitching! Our own reflections disrespect our advanced age!”

“Oh wow,” Ginger says. “All this, and he hasn’t even had a drop yet.”

I feel Noble’s hand on my shoulder, and his crutch clangs against Mustang’s weights.

“That’s my coffee talking. Those of a thieving nature always get a high when acquiring something that isn’t theirs.”

“All right, but not to that extent!”

“The creaky bones ache, feeling the chilly breath of the grave,” I insist. “Recently proud men now permit the assorted riffraff to blatantly trample their self-respect. It pains me, pains me and frightens me, my friends! As does the fact of my nonparticipation in all these happenings . . . But Jackal is Jackal, he never grows up, And marry never will he! He’ll say good-bye to all of his friends, and forever nowhere he’ll be!”

I’m being patted from three different sides. Ginger is cradling my tear-stained head, saying, “Come on, Tabaqui, what’s with you, don’t cry . . .”

Noble says, “Stop soothing him, or he’ll never shut up.”

At the next table Viking is trying to wrestle the razor from Hybrid, while Hybrid’s bellowing, “No! No! Give it back! He’s right about everything! Everything, I tell you!”

In short, it’s quite a hubbub, but my own time has frozen in a little lump. And while a part of me is hamming up the unquenchable sorrow, this devious and cunning lump senses through the shirt the two warm bumps, positioned so frighteningly close to each other. Soft and firm at the same time. And if a man in the throes of agony would draw spasmodic gasps, no one would suspect that he is in fact desperately sniffing something. Because it’s quite likely that never again in my life will I have an opportunity to smell a girl this close, in direct contact, and it would be a crying shame that my nose is full of snot, except that if it weren’t for the snot she wouldn’t be pressing me to her breasts.

But I must have shifted wrong at some point, because Ginger pulls away abruptly and looks down at me like I’ve just bitten her. And goes red. Terribly red, the way gingers do, when you expect them to burst into flames at any moment. I must have gone red too. Ginger narrows her eyes. I close mine, waiting for the well-earned slap across the face, but before I do I have time to notice that our little pantomime didn’t escape Noble’s attention, while completely escaping Mermaid’s, who’s too busy being upset.

Still there’s no slap coming. This is a bit insulting. She can’t be pitying me, can she? I open my eyes. Ginger has traveled to faraway places. She’s fingering the wet shirt and looking in my direction, but not seeing me at all. Mermaid pushes a handkerchief at me.

I blow my nose loudly.

Ginger snaps out of her trance and says, “Tabaqui. It’s OK.”

And goes back to her chair. That’s it. Still, it would’ve been satisfying to receive the well-deserved thrashing. That would put me on the same level as all other full-blown smart alecks sniffing at other people’s girls.

Mermaid keeps petting my head and whispering that I am not at all old and that no one is planning to say good-bye to me and be forever nowhere.

“You silly child. You little naïf. That’s their destiny. And my destiny is to look at them receding in the distance and wave the wet hanky. It’s life, baby.”

Viking has disarmed Hybrid. Now all Hybrid can do is to stare at me with puffy eyes and transmit secretive signs and winks. Probably inviting me to join him in the hallway so we can hang ourselves together or something.

The Hound table is deep in a heated argument concerning whether it’s possible to get drunk from one sip, and if it is, what should be in the cup. Another minute, and they’re going to be driving over to check, so I take a hasty gulp of the Doom. Their inspections are always bad news.

Hound Rickshaw, having split right at the beginning of my attack of melancholy, now returns with Sphinx, Alexander, and Smoker in tow. If that’s how he’s been planning to intercede and save me, he’s way too late.

Alexander, still white as a polar mouse, dives behind the counter straight off. Sphinx joins us, grabbing a free chair on the way with his foot and plopping it down next to Mustang.

“There,” Noble says. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s one of the proud men who’s been permitting us to trample their self-respect. Sphinx, please stop permitting it, it interferes with Jackal’s nervous system.”

“Wait, what was that? Trample what now?”

“It’s not my quote. Self-respect. Assorted riffraff trampling it blatantly, and you tolerate it.”

“You snitch!” I fume. “Dirty stoolie!”

Noble smiles beatifically. It’s Mermaid who goes red instead of him. Smoker, ensconced in the corner, takes out his diary, maintaining his customary sour grimace.

“Time affects different people differently,” Gnome shrieks at the Hound table. “Just look around, and you’ll see . . . some grow up and change, and the others don’t. Why’s that? Tell me!”

“Crazy stuff,” Noble says and takes a nonchalant swig out of my cup.

“I found this strange tape in your nightstand,” Smoker informs me, bent over his daily toil. “With crunching sounds and some kind of snorting. And nothing else. Is that supposed to mean something?”

So he stumbled on one of those six tapes ruined by the pursuit of the elusive ghost cart. The last one that I didn’t bring over to the classroom. I try explaining it to Smoker. He keeps looking at me with the same “you can’t convince me and don’t even try” expression that’s really started to grate on me lately.

“Time is not a solid substance and can’t therefore act on some and not others,” Owl expounds in an edifying voice. “It’s fluid, one-directional, and not subject to outside influence.”

“Not subject to your influence, maybe,” Gnome says, pointing in our direction. “And those who do have influence over it would never say anything, and that’s why we think it doesn’t happen.”

“Wow, people sure hold entertaining opinions about us, don’t they,” I say in surprise. “Did you hear that? I’m blushing.”

“It’s your own fault.” Noble scowls. “That’s what you get for publicly hinting at exclusive abilities.”

“I was in mourning!”

“It didn’t have to be that ostentatious!”

I spy with my little eye that Sphinx, who’s been affecting boredom all this time, is suddenly no longer bored. He’s frozen, coiled like a spring, pupils dilated. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, but I do. I prick up my ears and sniff at the air intently, trying to determine if something’s changed in it.

Not obviously. It’s a bit less stifling than before, or maybe it only seems that way because I’ve simply gotten inured to it. The window drapes sway and snap back. And Alexander, having dropped off the cups, suddenly grabs the edge of the table, as if someone’s trying to pull him away.

“You missed the best bit,” Noble says to Sphinx.

“I’ve already gathered that.”

“And it’s you who’s at the bottom of his complexes, if you dig deep enough.”

“Tabaqui doesn’t grow up, because he knows the secret,” Owl says to Gnome, but loud enough so that everyone else can hear it too. “He’s just said so. ‘But Jackal is Jackal’ and so on.”

Alexander is staring at the window, all strung out under his white vestments, like an arrow that’s already chosen its target. Like something winged, cooped up uncomfortably in a closed jar. The gnawed fingers, now clenched on his own shoulders, elongate and darken before my very eyes, turning into talons. The sand-colored clouds of the Outsides cross his face, flashing the unfallen rain when they reach his eyes.

“Ow. Ow. Ow,” I mumble, not able to look away.

Tired, cross, and not a little scared, Smoker asks if he understood it correctly that my cassettes contain recordings of various night noises.

“They contain evidence of an otherworldly phenomenon,” I tell him patiently.

“You mean they don’t.”

“Which is the same thing. Ghosts cannot be captured on tape.”

And no Howls in my subconscious, not one. Leached out. Only a helpless grunt. The stuffy Coffeepot air, viscous with smoke, begins to luminesce faintly, setting the silhouettes of its inhabitants trembling. Mermaid retreats behind her hair, like a frightened bird. Ginger turns to stand up. The universe around us floats outward in spirals, like invisible waves from a stone thrown in water. Hound Rickshaw crosses the Coffeepot hobbling lamely, trying to outrun them.

“So the fact that there’s nothing there proves the existence of ghosts?”

Smoker’s voice is desperate and betrays his almost final conviction in my mental incompetence. When a person talks in this fashion he is definitely in need of being rescued, except I can’t decide who needs saving more: Smoker, who’s on the verge of desperate wailing, or Alexander, who’s on the verge of flying out the window, breaking both the glass and the bars outside. Because I definitely can’t get to both of them in time.

“I’ve had it! You are just trying to drive me insane, all of you!” Smoker shrieks, his pallid eyes bugging out.

He drives right at me, clearly intent on running me over. But at the same moment there’s another shriek, and something fiery-scarlet singes the ceiling, flying across the room with a blinding flash. All sounds fall away.

“Avast!” I yell, pushing away from the table, and to the disjointed accompaniment of the fading echo of my own “vast-vast-vast,” I keel over.

Disgustingly slowly. Judging by the clatter, Smoker’s wheelchair crashed into Mustang, weights and all. I am on my back, observing the curious crystal rain fanning out across the floor. The small beads hang in the air, suspended over the faster, bigger shards. I reach out with my hand, mesmerized, trying to catch one of them, but miss. Obviously, I comprehensively squandered my chance to get to Alexander, and obviously it was him I needed to rescue first and foremost while Smoker could wait, because it’s one thing when someone is cracking because of loneliness and it’s quite another thing when someone else turns into a dragon and scoots off. Having realized this, I attempt to climb out of the wheelchair and do at least something, which puts me straight under Smoker’s wheels. My universe is temporarily dark, boring, and stinking of soot.

When I come to, I’m under the table. How I arrived here is a mystery. Next to me is Owl, and there’s a muddy coffee rain dripping peacefully off our common roof. There’s also an ample goose egg on my forehead, spreading down over the eye. I feel it, remembering the glass rain, and gasp.

“You know what,” Owl says irritably, glasses flashing, “your pack is completely out of bounds. It’s an outrage what you’ve been up to lately.”

“Right. The guy had a fit. What were we supposed to do? It is a sometimes occurrence with epileptics.”

“A fit? Epileptics?” Owl cackles unpleasantly. “So that’s what you call it in the Fourth!”

I endeavor to explain to Owl where exactly he can stuff his indignation, preferably in written form and wrapped with razor wire.

“Screw you,” Owl mumbles as he extricates himself from under the table.

The coffee drops, now less frequent, plop on his scruff.

I wait for him to crawl away and then peek out myself. Legs, shards, water, clumps of foam. A couple of people are trying to tidy up, while the rest just prance around ogling the scenery. Hounds, Rats, even the girls. Must have forgotten that we’re in a state of war. The surviving part of the windowpane seems to be frosted over. The slightest touch, and it’ll come tumbling down too. There’s a gaping hole in the middle. Resembling a starfish. I stare at it, and then feel myself being lifted up by Black. He picks me up and carries me away, briskly striding through the throng of people and shoving those who don’t step aside. It’s good to be purposefully carried. You can just relax and go with the flow. At the Coffeepot entrance, a gaggle of gawkers serenades us with whistles and murmurs.

“Don’t cry,” Black keeps repeating to me.

“I’m trying.”

There’s no viscous luminescence anymore. The world is back to its regular shape, the sounds carry clearly and loudly, but something did change. Here and there the windows creak and slap, and the wind strolls down the hallways. The door to our room snaps to behind us with such force that even Black startles and my teeth clank.

The room is taken over by the pre-storm dusk and, when seen from the lofty height of Hound Daddy, looks surprisingly small. Sphinx, Blind, and Mermaid sit in a neat row, backs against the wardrobe. The dusty whirlwind rattles the windows and throws flying debris at them.

Black lowers me to the floor. I crawl over to our guys, trying and discarding on the way successive faces that may be relevant to the situation. The problem is, I don’t quite understand the situation. Was today the day we’ve been orphaned forevermore? Have we just lost the last of the dragons that don’t exist in nature? Does the glum expression on the faces of those assembled here imply silent mourning, and if so, should I kick the boisterousness up a bit to shake them out of that?

Blind shuffles aside, freeing some space between Sphinx and himself. Big enough to fit a rabbit. Miraculously, I manage to squeeze in, and immediately decide to abandon the boisterousness. I’ve already been plenty boisterous today. Let it be calm here now, and let the wind howl and tear up the Outsides. I’m tired, and my head hurts.

Black crouches down by the door. There’s something long, wrapped in a towel, on Sphinx’s knees, and it stinks of burned plastic. I peek under the towel, but even before I do I already know that it must be the rakes in there. And it is indeed them. Unattached, with fingers melted off, flashing the nakedness of the steel frame. Ugly. Very ugly.

“Leave it,” Sphinx says. “It’s trash now, nothing more.”

I lower the corner of the towel back. It’s an unpleasant feeling—touching something that’s died so recently.

“Did it hurt?” I ask, feeling stupid.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“What about Alexander?”

“Alexander is upstairs. Sleeping.”

The words come fast and clipped, and I understand that I shouldn’t be asking for clarification. Upstairs means on Humpback’s bunk, and why exactly he’s there and in what condition—insignificant details I’m not going to delve into. The important thing is he hasn’t flown away completely. I close my eyes and go limp, squeezed between the rib cages of Sphinx and Blind, trying to convince myself that sleeping in this fashion, like a piece of cheese between two graters, is exactly what I’ve always wanted. I don’t exactly fall asleep, of course, but crash into some kind of slumber. I have enough thoughts that need thinking, and the thinking of them is best done in this semiconscious state. So I think them.

With gold-braided rope, I have encircled the space that’s taken up by the collection. It looks like a small stage. The photographs of the Crossroads in the ancient times serve as a backdrop. In the gap between them I have this large white-and-blue plate, shining like the Moon. I’m not sure it was the right place to put it, but the arrangement holds a special attraction for me, combining as it were the Moon and the House, two of my favoritest natural phenomena.

In front of the boards with Crossroads landscapes I put stools of varying heights. The tallest of them supports the birdcage. It is also tall and very narrow, and frankly would feel cramped even for a budgie. A shorter stool holds some kind of crooked thing that no one could guess what it is. What it most resembles is a malignant tree growth that got cut off the tree, squashed flat, and fashioned into a tray. Who knows what for? It would be hard to call this dried knobbiness beautiful. If anything, it’s unsightly. When I was a kid it used to lie around the room the seniors called “bar.” I don’t know where this story came from, but among the squirts there was a persistent rumor that if it were ever pierced, the resulting hole would spew forth a torrent of foul, squelching slime that would engulf everything around it. The world would turn into a swamp. So even though we were mortally curious to find out what was inside the knobbiness, no one had dared to be the one to check. We just caressed the rough skin, listening to the swamp within, trying to determine if it threatened to gush out, excited by our touch. We did it when the seniors weren’t around, and even though we never dreamed of piercing it, just touching the swamp was terrifying enough. It could have been only pretending to be solid to throw us off guard while waiting for an opportune moment, for that one incautious poke of the clumsy finger.

The swamp is now part of my collection. It looks smaller and somehow darker than it did once, but it’s still waiting. In case any careless visitors get any bright ideas, I’ve stapled a piece of paper above it, saying Do not touch!

In fact the entire collection is bristling with exhortations, directional arrows, and road signs. Crossroads boards in particular. In the middle of the left board I’ve also hung a magnifying glass on a toilet chain. It can be used to study the photographs more closely. Next to it is the mailbox on a wooden leg. Painted pink, green, and red. The leg bears traces of rat teeth, but the top part is still quite presentable.

The boards, the mailbox, the cage, the swamp, the moon plate, the blue lantern with a hinged flap, also on a wooden leg like the mailbox, the chair with the stuffed crow glued to its back and nails pounded into the seat (and there’s a note hanging on the crow saying Hitchcock says hello!), the dog collar with bells (what’s that supposed to do, drive the dog crazy?), the box of assorted dried beetles, the bottle with a mysterious letter inside and sealed with red wax, the leaky boot of a gargantuan size, the sack of divining beans, the stop sign, mangled as if it’s been run over by a truck, the wide-brimmed black hat, three horseshoes, the twisted root that has common mandrake, male scratched into it, and the straw parasol, shedding profusely at any attempt to open it.

The objects can be broadly classified into ephemeral, magical, and natural. In the ephemeral I include the plate, the parasol, and the birdcage. In the magical, the chair with the crow, the beetles, the “common mandrake,” and the sack of beans. Everything else is natural, except maybe the swamp. Once I was driving around the collection playing the harmonica and discovered that near the stop sign the tune tended to become plaintive, while near the mailbox, jaunty and chirpy. Which obviously means that the mailbox had once been used as a birdhouse, and that the sign had encountered some rather sad circumstances.

It all started with the plate, the one playing the Moon. That was the day when an embassy of girls arrived and cut the cable, thus severing the communication channels between our side and theirs. When they left there were bundles of colored wires strewn on the floor. Everyone kept stumbling over them, so I was forced to hang them on the wall, because there was no other way to use them and I couldn’t very well throw them away.

While hanging the wires I climbed up on the wardrobe and found this cracked serving plate on top of it. Also a rusty sponge and a mummified cockroach. This upset me. I got to thinking about all the old junk that nobody needs, the completely useless stuff that doesn’t get tossed only because at first no one could be bothered to and then it kind of fades away, about all the things that people attract to themselves at a frightening rate wherever they appear. The longer you spend somewhere, the more there are things around you that need to be thrown out, but when you move to a new place you never take all that trash with you, which means that it belongs more to the place than to the people, because it never moves, and in each new place a person finds scraps of someone else, while transferring the possession of his own scraps to whoever moves into his previous place, and this goes on everywhere and all the time.

The longer I thought, the more it scared me, so in the end I lost my will to move and stayed there on the top of the wardrobe, in the company of the deceased cockroach and the dirty sponge, infinitely dear to my heart precisely because of their utter uselessness.

When Sphinx asked me what was the matter and I explained to him the horror of the situation, he called me a material fetishist.

“Sphinx, think about it,” I said. “They are more of this place than you and I could ever hope to be. No one will take them away from here. They have this huge advantage.”

“Would you like to become an old sponge, little human?”

Sphinx leaned against the wardrobe, offering his shoulders as a climbing-down aid, and I scrambled over them, bringing the cracked plate with me.

Noble asked me, in an evenly malicious voice, whatever it was I thought I needed with that busted dish.

“I’m going to share my bed with it,” I said. “Or put my earring in it every night.”

Noble said that my fetishism had long morphed into breathtaking egotism, and that it needed to be brought under control, even though he personally had no idea how that could be accomplished. That I preferred things to people and spent my days plotting to shovel crap on top of him and all the rest of them until they surrendered and stopped moving.

While he was speaking I wiped the dust off the plate, shined it, and placed it on the nightstand. It was even more beautiful than I’d thought. White with light-blue flowers and berries.

All the time I was busying myself with it, Sphinx was staring at it and frowning, as if he was also dead set against the unfortunate thing.

“What?” I snapped. “Yes, so it’s symbolic to me. Is that so hard to understand?”

“No, it’s not that. The thing I don’t understand,” Sphinx drawled thoughtfully, “is where did it come from. Has anyone seen this dish before? I haven’t. I can’t imagine how it ended up on top of our wardrobe. Now you, Tabaqui, do you remember it?”

I didn’t. Neither did Noble, Humpback, Lary, nor Blind. I spent the next two days driving around the House pushing the cracked white-and-blue plate into people’s faces, and not a single one of them recognized it. And then it turned out that the House was full of unexpectedly unrecognizable objects. That was the start of my personal quest and of the Hunt that the pack happily dismissed as insanity. After three days of the Hunt, I was chased off the common bed with all my loot. On the sixth day the collection was transferred to the empty classroom.

I wake up in a dark and stuffy place, racked by the Howls that have taken me over and shaking from oxygen deprivation. Someone not very bright has fashioned a sleep nest and shoved me inside. I’m sure they had only the best intentions in mind. You have to have a knack for building nests, it is even a science of sorts, because if you get it wrong it’s liable to collapse or smother you accidentally. But whoever’s built this poor imitation wasn’t bothered about details like that. So I emerge out of it sweaty and half-asphyxiated, and it folds in on itself even before I’m fully out, sending a couple of pillows tumbling on top of me.

Smoker is studying the ceiling. If it were him imprisoned in the nest instead of me, he’d have expired right there, quietly and peacefully.

Lary is making tea. Ginger is scraping off some stuff that got stuck to her bear. I ask where Alexander is.

“He went out,” Ginger says, turning her button-eyed beast to face me. “Feeling embarrassed, I guess.”

I see. A bashful type, our Alexander. Except when he isn’t. Then it’s advisable to be as far away from him as possible. Actually, I don’t think that way. I wouldn’t have missed my own role as an active participant in what has happened for anything. I climb back over the ruins of the nest. This way I can see Noble, sitting on the floor. A proud owner of a beautiful new shiner, he’s cradling Ginger’s flask and quietly getting piss drunk.

“They say you threw a homemade bomb that blew away half the Coffeepot,” Lary informs me. “Like, said a farewell speech and tossed it. I told them you never had any bombs, but they don’t believe me. They say I’m covering up for my own kind.”

“That’s nice, Lary. You should always cover up for your own kind. We’re one pack, after all. That’s serious business.”

He blinks.

“But there wasn’t any bomb, right?”

I feel the lump on my head. “Are you sure?”

Of course he’s not sure. He sniffles and scratches his chin. Or rather the place where chins are supposed to be located on people. His meditative state does not bode well for the prospects of us having tea in the foreseeable future, but it certainly improves his overall appearance.

“And Alexander got spooked and had a fit,” Lary says, visibly downcast.

“Was that a question or a statement?” I say.

He just sulks silently.

I lie on my belly and squint. The squares of the comforter stretch before me like a wavy chessboard. Like a runway for the stuff strewn on top. The glasses case is an armored car without doors or windows, the comb is a peeling, listing fence, my cap is a flying saucer with pins for portholes. A hauntingly beautiful and uninhabited little world. Well, not completely, as I set my fingers running across to liven it up. As they do, a primitive white contraption lowers itself to the surface, belching steam.

Ginger’s voice inquires if I’m all right.

“You seem to be unusually prostrate.”

I sit up and pull the cup closer.

“I just came back from the Blanket Country. A very peaceful place. It’s inhabited by a race of snakelike sentient beings. They’re pink, blind, and rather nimble. And there’s one collective conscience for every ten of them. The Snakers have this myth that their world has a lower counterpart, and on that lower level each Snaker has a double, only shorter and less mobile. Naturally, not everyone believes this nonsense. But there’s an even more extreme sect. Its members are convinced that a common conscience unifies not ten Snakers, but twenty, of which ten are from the netherworld. That’s widely considered heretical. The sect members also like to use forbidden stimulants in order to expand the boundaries of their universe, and have been mostly hunted down and eradicated by now, one way or another.”

Noble’s head emerges from the other side of the bed and positions its chin on the edge.

“I wonder why it is that your tales are always creepy, Tabaqui?”

“Because I’m a creep. And the sleep of my reason produces monsters. By the way, if you’re interested in serving as the Voice of God for the poor Twentiers, you can try addressing them. Bear in mind they’re deaf as well, though.”

Noble shudders and peers closely at his own fingers, which he’s brought together under his nose.

“How am I supposed to address them, then?”

“Tapping in Morse code. They’ll understand.”

“Listen to you,” Lary says indignantly. “You’re doing this to confuse me again, aren’t you?”

Noble’s eyes widen suddenly, Doom billowing up in them.

“You’re a bastard, Tabaqui, you know that? How can I tap anything for them unless I’m the conscience of the twenty? That would be against their religion.”

“So you’ll be a false Voice. It’s been known to happen.”

“You! It’s you who’s false! You just enjoy tormenting those poor . . .”

“Oh man,” Ginger moans. “I’m so sick of you! How can you stand it, being out of your heads most of the time?”

“It’s Tabaqui.” Noble tries to shift the blame, pointing at my fingers splayed over the blanket. “He’s a liar. He’s made himself into an idol for those . . . those . . .”

“Twentiers,” I prompt.

“Exactly.”

“It’s just them trying to confuse me,” Lary insists. “Always the same story. I don’t know why they have it in for me. I haven’t been here for ages. But as soon as I show up, there it is again.”

“Right! Let Lary address them,” Noble suggests, brightening up. “He would be quite consistent with their dogma. Lary, my friend, be a good man, tap out a message. Tell them that they have got it pretty close, if you don’t count the half-baked freaks like Tabaqui and me here, and that we fully support their thirst for knowledge.”

“You know, I almost believe in the bomb now,” Lary complains to aloof Smoker. “Or should I say I believe in it more and more.”

“So? You can believe in whatever you want,” Smoker says, looking at the unfortunate Log out of the corner of one annoyed eye. “Do you even know Morse code?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Then why don’t you just say so to Noble? He’d stop pestering you.”

“Slaving for them, making them tea . . . And this is what I get . . .”

“They are ungrateful beasts,” Smoker agrees. “Ungrateful, unintelligible, and unpleasant.”

“That would be us,” Noble translates for me. “Everything he’s just said was about us. You heard the words he said, didn’t you, Tabaqui?”

“No, unintelligible—that was about you personally. And unpleasant too. Look at that shiner. It definitely interferes with the pleasantness of your visage. Very much. Where’d you get it?”

“A shock wave from the blast,” Noble leers drunkenly.

“Liars,” Smoker continues, going down his dispassionate list. “Windbags . . .”

“And where, if I may ask, is Sphinx?” I say quickly. “Where’s he been gallivanting while I am forced to suffer this indignity and abuse?”

“We both are, Tabaqui, we both are,” Noble points out. “Sphinx is at the funeral. I think he’ll be some time. If they are doing everything properly . . . They’ve put them in a box wrapped in black velvet . . .”

I realize that he’s talking about the burned rakes, and feel embarrassed for my initial scare. Then I feel wronged for not having been invited.

“Encased them in wax . . .”

“What for?”

“To make sure,” Noble says. “Don’t you get it? Blind didn’t want them to be scavenged for souvenirs.”

“And also they are all absolutely mad,” Smoker says, bringing to a close the full account of our distinctive features.

Smoker fairly reeks of watches. He’s been hiding one somewhere on his person ever since returning from the Sepulcher. I’ll get to it. Sooner or later I always do. When he’s out taking a shower, for example. That thought calms me down a little. But only a little, because at present the watch is perfectly intact and leaches the life out of me slowly by the mere fact of its existence. I can’t live in the proximity of watches, they are killing me, but just try and explain this simple fact to Smoker. He is convinced I’m faking it. Faking! Me! I look at him meaningfully and reproachfully, but he keeps sipping his tea without a care in the world. I guess the cup is in the way, shielding him from my reproach.

Noble scratches forlornly at the blanket with his finger. His soul clearly hungers for the dialogue with the deaf-and-mute Twentiers.

“Tried it every which way for them,” Lary mumbles. “Bring this in, take that out . . .”

Enter the dragon, quietly and unassumingly. No eyes of flame, no burbling as it came, none of that. Tiptoes in, keeping close to the wall like the least mouse in the whole world. And he comes bearing us a huge egg. Must be a tribute, for all the tumult he made us undergo. Passes it on to me and holes up in his bed.

I unwrap the egg-shaped pack. It contains unevenly cut slices of cabbage pie.

“Cool! Is that from the wake?”

Alexander startles.

“Relax,” I say to him. “It was really fun, actually. Look at Noble. He tumbled down from his crutches and is drinking himself silly now, under the guise of his disability. If you hadn’t provided him with an excuse he’d be ashamed. So, breathe easier.”

“I’m not drinking,” Noble counters. “It’s medicine.”

“My point exactly.”

Alexander is still miserable and concealed. Horrible thing, moral scruples.

“So it was Alexander who did it, then?” Lary says hopefully, clutching the can of tea leaves to his chest. His lips move with a newfound purpose. “Threw the bomb, or whatever it was back there in the Coffeepot.”

“No,” I say. “He didn’t throw anything. All he did was try to fly away.”

The wind howls between the double panes. Ginger dons blue glasses.

“The weather’s changing,” she says.

The wind moans and bangs at the windows for the rest of the day. I change cold packs at regular intervals and generally take care of my lump. Sphinx’s eyelashes are gone and his cheeks are seared, so he’s walking around slathered with burn cream. The overall impression is unusually bright. Noble continues his journey into the bottle. The girls have left, to protect Needle and her wedding dress from the evil eyes of malicious loiterers.

Instead of them we receive a visit from Black. He’s exchanging banter with Smoker about their favorite painters. Even without listening closely, it’s obvious that this topic is a struggle for Black. He’s suffering, but soldiering on. Must be imagining that as soon as he’s out the door we’d all fall apart, done in by assorted vicious ailments. Or, conversely, worrying about Smoker’s psychological state in our continued presence.

Blind is doing his best to play Alexander’s replacement. The water boils over, the cold packs get lost, and when he does find them they’ve been thoroughly trampled—by him. When he tries to repair Mustang his finger gets caught in the works, and I end up lovingly tucked in with Tubby’s much-pissed-on blankie. To quote Sphinx, “Where would we be without you?”

I’m the only one to drive out to dinner, after Smoker’s feeble protestations that he’s going to join me.

The Coffeepot is still besieged by the curious throngs. I stop by to listen to the scuttlebutt and find out that apparently Alexander doused himself with kerosene, protesting the graduation, lit himself, and jumped out of the window. I liked it better when it was a bomb.

At the doors to the canteen, Monkey catches up with me.

“Hey! Did you know Lary went into the Outsides with the Flyers? Said he needed something out there urgently.”

The frightening news makes me put on the brakes. Lary in the Outsides! Apocalypse! He’s going to get whacked before he goes around the nearest corner. Or lost, admiring his own shadow. And if he manages to return, he’d be covered in Syndrome from head to toe.

I say to Monkey, “Sure. Of course we know. Thanks.”

And drive on.

In the canteen, under probing stares, I prepare mounds and mounds of sandwiches that I need to bring back. I spread this and that, shake some salt on them, and fold the pieces together. Continuously fretting about that idiot Lary. In a leather getup like his, an inhabitant of the Outsides is supposed to roar past on a Harley, not perambulate with his mouth agape. As he is, Lary would provoke an irresistible desire to beat him up in any sane male under the age of forty. And I’d just bet that the whole risky business is about something like a ghastly-colored tie for the wedding.

Smoker arrives, towing Tubby after him. I am busy for a while spooning oatmeal into Tubby’s mouth, and then it’s suddenly the end of dinner. I leave Tubby unfilled and try to satiate myself with whatever I can before it’s all carted away. I can feel for Blind, in a way. It’s hard being Alexander if you’ve never been him before. Tubby blinks pathetically over his bib, opening and closing the empty mouth in hopeless expectation of more food. I slap the fork down and inquire of Smoker if his vacation is quite over while I’m struggling here with pangs of both hunger and guilt, and if it is, would he be so kind as to maybe help me out? Smoker doesn’t argue, to my surprise, and takes Tubby’s spoon. His style of feeding is exceedingly slow. The oatmeal is delivered in minuscule portions, but it is at least something, and I can return to unhurried mastication.

One by one the entire canteen crew assembles around us. Hovering and throwing meaningful glances in the direction of the clock. I shove the sandwiches into the bag, pat Tubby, filled to the brim with the oatmeal he hasn’t swallowed yet, say “Step on it!” to Smoker, and make a dash for the exit. I am probably the least stable when there is an increasing number of unseen watch dials crowding around.

When we arrive at the door Smoker hesitates, as if undecided whether he wants to enter or not. I can see he’s not really thrilled about it, but on the other hand it’s not like he has any choice.

He puts his hand on the knob and says, looking away, “You know, I’ve been there too. In the Coffeepot, with you. It was the first time I’ve actually seen something extraordinary happen, instead of listening to you tell a story.”

“Oh. So, how was it?” I say, intrigued. “Are you still bored?”

“No.” He lowers his eyelashes, so it’s impossible to tell what his eyes reflect now. “Not anymore. But tell me this. What I saw . . . Did it really happen?”

“That depends on what you saw.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. For some reason. I haven’t figured it out for myself yet.”

I sigh.

“None of us wants to talk about it. I thought that’s what was driving you nuts.”

“No,” he says, sounding surprised. “Quite the contrary. I’d be mad if you started debating it. I think. I’m not sure. But even you haven’t said anything.”

“And good for me,” I say. “Alexander wishes to sink through the floor as it is.”

Smoker nods and opens the door.

Sometimes I get this curious impression that he’s one of us. Rarely, though.

I wonder what would you do if your roommate, bedmate, tablemate, and mate of every other kind suddenly woke you up in the middle of the night with a hoarse cry of “There you are! Finally I’ve found you!”

In the Outsides it’s customary to call for paramedics in cases like that, but we’re not in the Outsides, so I speedily crawl away from him, put a pillow between us, and start deliberating whether it’s time to cry “Help!” yet or if it could wait for a little while longer.

“I found you,” Noble insists, tugging at the pillow. “You’re not going to wiggle out this time. I know who you are.”

He looks like he’s totally round the bend.

I tell him that I had no intention of wiggling, and that luckily for both of us I also happen to know who I am.

“And now that we’ve established who both of us are, and know everything about each other that’s possible to know, what say you we get some sleep? It’s dark. Everyone’s sleeping. Look. So, hush-a-bye . . .”

“I want to go back,” Noble says. “Back here, but earlier, and I want everything to be different. I mean, the same, but with me in it.”

“And it is very stupid of you.”

“I’ve made my choice.”

Amazing how they all consider these words to be a final argument. Like it’s a spell against which I’m helpless. I’d have laughed if I didn’t want to cry.

“Think,” I say with a sigh. “Think carefully, and come another time.”

His fingers clamp on my wrist with such force that I’m afraid it’ll break.

“No! Please!” he says. “I might not find you another time. Even once was hard enough.”

The guy’s crazy, I tell you.

“Hold it!” I say. “Wake up, baby. I’m here all day, every day. There’s no need to go searching.”

I push the pillow aside, sit up, and give him a slight fillip on the bridge of his nose between the eyebrows. Very lightly, in fact I barely touch him, but Noble reels back as if I whacked him with one of the weights from Mustang’s footboard, and almost falls on his back. He closes his eyes. Opens them. Stares at me like he’s never seen me before.

“Damn you,” he says. “You hurt me.”

“And you woke me up. Now we’re even, and can go back to sleep satisfied. Sweet dreams.”

I fluff the pillow and close my eyes, painfully aware that peaceful sleep is not likely in the cards.

And I’m right. Noble doesn’t back down.

“You are him,” he says. “You can’t fool me.”

I sit up again.

“Of course I can fool you. Easily. Anytime I want.”

The lights of the two tiny wall lamps make his eyes look like black vortices. Windows into a bottomless blackness.

“You can’t do this. I found you. I asked you. You must help me now.”

What wonderful arrogance!

For the next half hour I am busy assembling everything that’s necessary into the spare backpack.

Then we crawl. Slowly, because of the need for stealth. Finally we’re in the anteroom, wheelchairs and flashlights at the ready. I free Mustang of the weights, to save on clang and clatter. I don’t have the master backpack with me, so there’s no chance of it overturning. I’m not sleepy anymore. I’m alert and perky, and wouldn’t say no to a nice snack, because the first thing that catches up with me when I’m perky is hunger, with everything else switching on later.

Noble is quiet and exceedingly polite. Very helpful and not at all annoying. And good on him, because I’m not in the mood for explanations.

The journey is short, since our destination is the classroom. A midnight visit to the beloved collection, you might say. Once inside I open the spare backpack and take out the three items I’m going to require. The chain with watch gears hanging off it. Those that live in old watches, not the modern ones with batteries inside. It goes over the neck. Also I hold a notepad in my hands and a pencil in my teeth. Now I’m ready.

Noble gnaws at his fingernails, studying the collection with a haunted look on his face, like it was me luring him out here and not the other way around. Fingers the strap with rat skulls that I have hanging on the birdcage, takes it off, and turns it this way and that.

“A delicate specimen,” I warn him, extracting the pencil from my mouth. “Possibly a hex. I wouldn’t touch it if I were you.”

He hangs the skulls back. With a fleeting smile that immediately trips my hunting instincts.

“All right, what is it? What did you just understand about them? I saw it, ’fess up!”

Noble shrugs. Leans to the side, fishes the wide-brimmed black hat out of the pile of no one’s things, and winds the strap around its crown. The skulls line up in a circle. Noble clicks the copper buckles that obviously were designed to be latched to this very hat and carefully places it on the seat of the chair with the stuffed crow.

There is nothing left for me to do but to gasp slowly.

What’s been simply a hat has now become the most meaningful item in the entire collection.

“Wow! Thank you,” I say. “You know, I had this impression for a moment that you were going to put it on.”

Noble looks at me blankly.

“It’s not my hat,” he says after a long silence.

I look at the hat. Then at him.

“Of course not,” I say.

Then open up the notepad and clear my throat.

“So. You have made your stupid choice and you don’t want to think it over.”

He nods.

“You are aware that your memory is a part of you? And not an insignificant part. Those who return could become somebody quite different from who they were before. And not experience some of the things they have experienced on the previous loop. Which would make the next loop itself different as well.”

“I know,” Noble says. “You’re wasting your time. I will not reconsider.”

“You are of the Forest,” I say. “It’s in your blood. You shall not find rest until you join with it.”

“I know,” he says. “But she is not there.”

“Your love has consumed you. And the first thing it devours is reason, mind you. Speaking of love . . . Are you sure that when you become a different you, you’ll still love the same person that you love today? Absolutely sure?”

“Of course.”

And he smiles. The smile of a maniac. Or of someone in love. Which is the same thing, come to think of it. His love has eaten him alive, stripped him to the bones, and still he smiles at me. This smile overpowers all. To hell with tradition, with the rituals, and everything else, including the questionnaire. I’ve never neglected to go through it before. Ten questions must be asked and answered, and I’ve asked them of everyone, but Noble will get not a single question more. He is the Little Mermaid who came to exchange her tail for the useless legs, and gave up her voice too, and if the Sea Witch asked her for something else, anything else, she would’ve given it to her as well. Lovers and maniacs are all the same, they rush in where anyone else would fear to tread, and arguing with them is a fool’s errand.

He has no idea what it is he’s just asked for. That’s his problem. He believes that his love is so strong that it’ll catch up with him on every loop. Let him believe. Who am I to tell him otherwise?

“All right,” I say. “You have convinced me.”

I unclasp one gear from the chain and place it into his open palm.

He looks at me “fuzzy,” then takes my hand and kisses it. And this, horrible as it is, transforms me into Master of Time for a moment. Standing at death’s door, standing there for so long now that it’s become something of a habit, because the he-me is ridiculously old. It’s impossible to live for that long, only to exist. And I hate doing that, which is why the damn old man is so inaccessible—he’s almost always in hibernation that’s stretched into eternity. A curt nod—he doesn’t waste time on words, a nod is usually more attention than we allow ourselves to bestow on anyone—and I return into the dear old precious adorable sweetie me, who’s unable to hide a disgusting giggle.

Noble staggers like I’ve just slapped him.

“Come on,” I say. “No reason to be embarrassed. I promise not to remind you of what we did tonight. At least not too often.”