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EXPLORATIONS

An Episode from the Master’s Youth …… 2

Quelch …… 19

Explorations …… 52

The Man from Odense …… 81

Budgies …… 106

The Tomorrow Fish …… 131

Chapman …… 170

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An Episode from the Master’s Youth

Most people don’t realize that the Master is an orphan. Ambassador Chang and his wife

the fortune-teller were not the Master’s true parents, and in fact did not legally adopt him until he

was already an adult. He keeps their portrait in his study, even into his old age. No one can ever

know the Master’s true feelings, of course, but he seems to love them as parents. I spoke with

him several years ago in that study, in January, with a roaring blizzard outside and a roaring fire

within, and he explained the portrait in great detail. His servant at the time, an elderly Irishman

named Ben, brought us tea and biscuits. The Master declined to have his photo taken but told me

he would be sitting for a portrait the next week. He was small, maybe five-five, and seemed

robust, though I hear he has shrunken in the years since. One imagines that the Master will never

die, but just grow smaller and smaller, until we can no longer see him and he kicks around atoms

like soccer balls, until even they become like great planets to him. The Master as infinitely-

shrinking asymptote allows him to explore realms of metaphysics unknown to us. That, anyway,

is a theory postulated by a fellow journalist. But let’s leave that for another time. The night I

interviewed the Master in his study, he seemed vigorous and unknowable and that’s the way I

like to remember him. He sat in his papazan and I sat on an ottoman sort of thing, chairs befitting

our respective statuses. I was interviewing him for the magazine Cowhead Mailbox.

“My mother hated photographs,” the Master said, indicating the portrait. “She claimed

that she couldn’t see the faces in them. She didn’t want a picture of her family with blank faces.

So every year, we sat for a painter. Father hated it, but his love for mother overpowered

everything.

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“See my father’s golden coat? The red seal on his lapel? Does that look familiar? It’s the

seal of the Red Dragons. Only the elite, only the geniuses and polymaths, are chosen to wear the

seal. My father was no genius, but sometimes exceptions are made. In his case it was for bravery.

“Years ago, you see, before the war—before he became Ambassador Chang—my father

was merely Secretary Chang. He had no further aspirations. He met a few people, shook a few

hands, and was content with that. A decent living for a simple bachelor. But one summer, he was

assigned to look after an orphanage full of refugees. The place was a country estate, way out past

the moorland. No access by car. A helicopter dropped off my father in his brown suit and white

hat, and a gaggle of nuns ran out to greet him. He had to get mud on his alligator shoes—he

always mentioned that. The young Secretary had never really gotten dirty before. And now at the

orphanage, he saw things he never thought he’d see. Burnt babies, children missing limbs. Boys

and girls with hollow eyes, expressions forever vacant. He saw children who had never known

joy.

“My father was there to glean information from these children, information that might

help solve the problems of their war-ravaged nations. But after a few days, he tossed the

paperwork in the incinerator. He started helping in the garden. A dozen nuns and one priest lived

there, grew their own food, awaited orders, did the best they could. My father became one of

them. He slept in a cell like a monk. He let his beard grow.

“He converted one of the churns into an ice-cream maker. None of the children had ever

tasted ice cream, and the nuns hadn’t had it in years. Everyone loved him. He made particular

friends with a boy named Hoder, who had been blinded by poison gas, and who loved to cling to

my father’s leg.

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“That August, when my father got word of the quarantine strafe, he assumed that

everyone would be evacuated. Even when the small helicopter arrived—the same one that had

dropped him off four months earlier—he assumed others would be coming. ‘How large are the

other transports?’ he asked the pilot as they took off. ‘What other transports, sir?’ the pilot said.

‘Why, the ones for all those children down there! And the nuns and the priest! They’re directly in

the strafe zone!’ But the pilot looked confused. ‘There’s no other transports, sir.’ And my father

saw immediately what was happening: the government was strafing the whole area, in order to

make a firewall, and they didn’t have time for evacuations, especially for disfigured foreigners

and forgotten old nuns. He was strapped in, fifty feet above the ground and rising, but he yanked

off the seatbelt and leapt out. He landed in a hay bale. The pilot circled overhead a few times,

cursing, and then flew away.

“My father had a broken ankle, but that didn’t matter. He gathered everyone together and

explained the situation. The orphanage would be incinerated, along with the grounds and

everything else, and they had to flee. He guessed they had forty-eight hours to do it. Little Hoder

clung to him and cried.

“Many of the children couldn’t walk, and the priest was feeble. So my father spent that

day building sleds out of plywood—the healthy children would have to pull the lame ones. They

packed a few supplies and, with Hoder hanging from my father’s back, they started across the

moorland at night. They tripped and fell in the brambles. Wolves howled in the distance. The

older children showed the younger ones how to band together and soldier through. Just before

dawn the sky lit up behind them and my father knew the orphanage had been hit. They had

barely made it out.

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“Three days later they came trudging into town: a bunch a scraggly children, a dozen

nuns, one priest, and my father, who had deserted his post by leaping out of that helicopter. The

government was none too happy. They whisked everyone away and tried to keep it quiet. My

father wrote a book about it, of course, and that was the beginning of his political rise. He was

soon elected Ambassador.

“Even though he wasn’t a polymath like da Vinci or Thomas Jefferson, or a singular

genius like Beethoven, his valor in the face of tyranny earned him a membership. And that is

where the seal on his jacket came from.”

At this point Ben, the servant, entered with our refreshment. There was a slight tremble in

his hand; he served everything with great solemnity. The fire threw shadows on the wall of

books around us.

“Let me guess,” I said when Ben had gone. “You turned out to be one of the orphans, and

the Ambassador raised you.”

The Master smiled. “Goodness, no,” he said. “This was all decades before I was born.”

Trendy party, upper East side. I lurk by the snack table with a martini, cramming stuffed

mushrooms into my mouth. Some of my fellow journalists advised me to be here. Important

connections, they said. It would unwise to miss this one. I keep checking the time.

The split-level walkup is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with hipster pop intellectuals. Men

with beards and fedoras, women with jeans under their dresses and glasses they don’t need.

Bookshelves filled with Hunter S. Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk. Framed Quentin Tarantino

poster in the bathroom.

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I run into an old friend: Dolores, an elderly woman who used to model. I know her

through some colleagues. She’s one of these prunes with red lipstick and white gloves.

Damn punks don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, she says. Gin sloshes in her

glass.

Come again? I say. She sloshes the glass some more, and I add: Nice to see you, Dolores.

Oh, those pretentious pricks, she says, pointing to some men in the corner. They wouldn’t

know greatness if it slapped them in their pimply bearded faces. They wouldn’t know subtlety,

they wouldn’t know art or elegance or grace.

Is that right?

They don’t understand what it means to be someone like him. That every day, he’s

walking a tightrope. They don’t know the discipline, the honor of it. He’s greater than any of

them will ever be.

I realize she’s talking about the Master. Do you know him, Dolores? I ask.

Know him! I knew him when he was seventeen years old. Saw him ride a bicycle upside

down with his nose on the handlebars and feet in the air. He could hold his breath for over forty-

five minutes. One fall he raised a litter of wolverines in his barn.

Did you know him before he was the Master?

Wrinkles pucker around her lips. He’s always been the Master, honey, she says.

She turns for another drink, and I survey the party. Half the people stare into their

phones. The rest stare at a giant TV screen on which men in shorts chase a ball. When the ball

does a certain thing, everyone screams. Outside, a siren goes by.

You don’t look like you want to be here, Dolores says.

They told me I ought to be.

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Who told you?

I don’t know, I say. A lot of people.

What people?

They made it sound pretty important.

Listen, she says. Nobody knows anything. Everybody goes around pretending like they

know something, because they think everybody else knows something, but really nobody knows

nothing. Just remember that.

A moment later, some of the bearded hipsters pass by, and Dolores says: You couldn’t

even lick the dirt off his boots.

They stop and circle around us. Flannel, stretched ears. Let me ask you this, lady: what’s

he a master of?

Dolores blinks. What’s he a master of?

That’s right. What is he a master of.

There’s a pause, and then Dolores gives one shrill laugh, like a goose honking, as though

the question is too absurd to answer.

One night my wife, who was pregnant at the time, sent me to the corner store for one of

her weird cravings. I darted down there in my bathrobe, not paying much attention to the lobby

of our building or to anything else, and was already on my way back up with bags of candy and

chips when I noticed the elevator man. He was new. His name tag said Hoder.

He wore dark glasses and a cane rested against his knees. He asked me what floor I

wanted. Sure, a blind man could do the job. You just had to know where the buttons were.

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I stood behind him as we went up. Wrinkles criss-crossed the back of his neck. There was

something damp and green about him. I could almost smell the moorland, the country estate. The

homemade ice cream. The scorched retinas. The darkness.

I wanted to reach out and touch him, but feared he would turn to dust at the slightest

poke. Besides, it wasn’t really him. It couldn’t have been. Those strafings took place over a

hundred years ago. Nobody could be that old.

Back inside, I told my wife about it, but I couldn’t get the words right. There was

something else—some feeling I couldn’t put my finger on. It was the damnedest thing, I said.

Well, she said, Hoder is an unusual name.

I hung around the elevators all week, but never saw him again. The other attendant, some

redhead kid, seemed to work twenty-four hours a day. My wife got worried about me: Why are

you going up and down the elevators so much? Then she suspected I was having an affair.

Look, I said. It’s this Hoder. I want to get to the bottom of this.

There’s nothing to get to, she said. You’ve got to stop thinking about the Master and all

his stories. They’ve changed you.

Yes, you’re right, I said. But later that week I couldn’t help myself, and stopped at the

main desk in the lobby. A fat woman sat there watching a tiny black-and-white TV.

When will Hoder be back? I asked.

Excuse me?

The elevator man. Hoder. What’s his schedule?

The woman muted the TV. Was there a problem? Did he say something to you?

No, no—I just wanted to speak with him. I think he, uh, used to be friends with my

father.

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I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Hoder quit last week. I think the task was a bit much for him, at his

age.

I don’t suppose you have any contact info.

That’s against policy, sir.

I figured. Thanks anyway.

After that, life picked up. The baby came, I got a bunch of freelance gigs, we moved out

of the apartment and into a bungalow near the Village. Everything was fine. But there’s one

secret I’ve kept from my wife all this time. When our son was born, she wanted to name him

after her father—but I’m the one who filled out the birth certificate. She was too busy cooing at

the baby. She thinks I wrote Richard. We call him little Richie. The truth will come out

someday—maybe when it’s time to enroll for school? Maybe before then? And we will see if

this is an offence my wife considers divorce-worthy. And in that moment I will say to her what I

say now: It was something I had to do. It was something I had to do.

The Master is still alive, of course. Sometimes I refer to him in the present tense and

sometimes in the past tense, because he seems like a person from another time. He’s out there

somewhere. He’s got to be pushing a hundred by now. Despite my colleague’s shrinking

asymptote theory, I believe the Master is still alive because of a woman—specifically, because of

the Baroness Greta Vandermeyer. He won’t die until their relationship is resolved.

He won’t speak about her, except to say that he considers her a close friend. I did plenty

of research about them. It was tough finding anything that people don’t already know. She was in

the tabloids years ago, riding giraffes across Africa with some Hollywood stars. She hiked alone

across Antarctica with snowshoes and a portable igloo. Her barony is in Moldova, but she keeps

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homes in Lesotho, Fairbanks, Paris, Cordoba, and Westport. There are rumors she has a pet tiger,

but she’s actually allergic to cats. (The Master keeps no animals.)

She met the Master a year after his accident, when old Giuseppe was serving as his valet.

Some urban planners had flown the Master in to Burundi as a consultant, and, as fate would have

it, the infamous Lavender Revolution took place that same weekend. The Baroness was on the

streets with the rebels. Molotov cocktails, staccato gunfire. The Master, though familiar with the

political situation, hadn’t anticipated this. He and Giuseppe, along with the terrified urban

planners, had to hunker down in an office building.

The idea of the Master, so tiny and soft-spoken, wearing his robes, sitting cross-legged

with perfect posture in a basement while bombs dropped around him, is endlessly fascinating to

me. Of course, it’s possible the Master panicked along with everyone else. I wasn’t there. But

somehow I can’t picture that. I think of the Master like Christ, sleeping soundly below deck

while the storm raged outside.

The difference, of course, was that the Master could not calm this particular storm. The

revolution was in full swing. When the office building got blasted and troops came surging in,

the Master did as he was told. Hands on head, stand in corner. Only the Baroness recognized

him. “Wait,” she said in Swahili. “These aren’t ordinary citizens.” She pulled the Master and

Giuseppe from the group, and took them away in her Jeep. She didn’t save his life exactly—I’m

confident the Master would have survived on his own—but she certainly made things easier.

Naturally, they fell in love.

At first glance, the Master and Greta seemed an awkward match: she is six-two and

buxom, he is tiny and hairless. But they couldn’t stay away from each other. She took him to

Paris, where he amazed her by knowing the back alleys of her neighborhood better than she did.

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At her castle in Moldova, the Master saw her library, and fell even more deeply in love. They

stayed there for some time, before sailing around the world on Greta’s yacht. Later they had

some adventures in the Andes with Giuseppe.

Eventually they had to split up. The Baroness moved to Siberia, to help with a restoration

project at a nunnery; the Master had his own mysterious agendas. They went months without

seeing each other. Greta wrote dozens of letters, many of them fiery and poetic, others strangely

utilitarian. As a reporter, I gained access to some of them—with the stipulation that I not

reproduce them. Someday they’ll be collected in a book.

The Master set about painting her portrait from memory. It took him six months. The

likeness is incredible. It hangs today in the Menil Collection, in Texas, but originally the Master

had it delivered to Greta’s castle. He knew she wasn’t there, and that it would be waiting for her

when she returned.

At some point, the Master decided to surprise her at her lodge in Fairbanks. That’s where

he caught her with the trapper, in flagrante, as he walked into the billiards room. They were

actually on top of the table. The green felt had ripped. I got all this information from the trapper

himself, one Earl Duggins, many years later. He was a real Natty Bumppo type. I could see the

visceral animal appeal. Duggins recalled the Baroness with an obvious fondness, a twinkle in his

eye, but he seemed more reverent toward the Master.

“When he walked in,” Duggins told me, “I figured, hell, this is it. I started recitin prayers,

you know. I didn’t know what he was capable of. But he just stood there. Took it all in, and then

turned away and went out to the porch. Greta, now, she jumps up and starts screamin and runs

out there, half-naked and all, and I’m creepin along behind to see what’ll happen. That Master

fella, he don’t say nothin. Not one word. Just stands there at the porch rail gazin off at the

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mountains. Greta’s screamin louder and louder, and I realize it’s him she’s cussin, that Master,

and boy let me tell you, she let him have it. I never heard such language from a woman before or

since. She cussed him and his momma and everythin else she could think of. Lookin back now, I

can see she felt guilty about the whole thing. That was her way of lettin it out. Reckon I did, too.

I knew who she was. Knew all about it. But hell, it was huntin season, and we’d been out there

draggin moose around in the goddamn snow, and one thing led to another. It wasn’t nothin to

either of us. Just a way to keep warm. But I reckon you can’t tell that to him.”

The Master returned home, and a predictable chain of events occurred. Greta went back

to her castle, saw the portrait waiting for her, burst into tears, and then begged the Master to

forgive her and take her back. He could not do it. He told Giuseppe to deny her at the door. Now,

despite their respective sizes, it was the Master who seemed larger.

No one will ever know the workings of his mind, or what he did during the years of

seclusion that followed. Some people say he wrote novels under different pen names, and that

most of the recent canon is actually by him. I’ve found no evidence of this. But at some point, he

had a change of heart, or perhaps he felt enough time had gone by. He sought out the Baroness,

only to find that she had married someone else, some wealthy, oatmeal-faced American.

By the time they divorced, the Master had disappeared into India, to study with a

maharishi, and Greta couldn’t find him. They kept up this pattern for years. Sometimes they

found each other and enjoyed months of bliss together—but something always bubbled to the

surface. Imagine the eruptions that occur in any relationship, and then imagine them between

these two.

The Baroness ended up having a daughter with one of her husbands, but the Master

remains childless. It’s been several years since they’ve seen each other. When asked about her,

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the Master will smile and say, “Yes, we are good friends.” I don’t know what more, if anything,

he hopes to get out of their relationship—Greta is far past child-bearing age, and whatever

physical allure she had must be long gone. Still, there’s something. I think the Master lives for

her. Maybe it’s just chivalry: ladies first, even to the grave. Or maybe he still hopes for some

confirmation, for a signal that she is his, for some communication between the two of them that

only they will understand.

That night in his study, when I was interviewing the Master for Cowhead Mailbox, I

asked him how he came by his powers. It seemed such a simple question, but no one ever asked

it. The Master closed his eyes for a moment.

“I don’t have any powers,” he said. “But I understand what you’re asking. You want to

know how I became the way I am. That I cannot answer. It’s like asking a fish why he swims.”

I felt shame in wasting his time with such a trivial question, and bowed my head. But he

waved me off, saying, “Now, now. Don’t worry. It’s perfectly reasonable. Most people are too

afraid to ask. And while I can’t answer as you’d like me to, I can provide an anecdote that might

help you understand certain things.”

I sat forward on the ottoman.

“As a youth,” the Master said, “long before I met my parents, I spent a lot of time in

Tuscany. I lived on the outskirts of a village there, as a vagabond, sleeping in fields, taking fruit

from orchards. The townspeople loved me. I was nine or ten years old, a boy from nowhere,

without a name, and people called me Mother Nature’s Son. I carried a satchel with a few

instruments: guitar, ukulele, mandolin. In the evenings, I sat on wagons and played songs for

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people. Sometimes they drank and danced around fires, other times they sat and swayed back

and forth like daisies in the wind.

“Farmers let me sleep in their barns. Women made me pies. No one wanted me to grow

up. I was everyone’s child. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting a different life.

“One summer afternoon, I was sitting in a field with my mandolin, entertaining some

children around my age. Everything was golden. Happy faces, clapping hands. Freckles.

Butterflies. Girls filled their aprons with blackberries. We were all singing.

“In the distance, on top of a hill, a little boy came running. He stumbled down the path,

through the trees, and across the field to where I sat. A feeling of dread came over me. I knew

this boy was bringing bad news. He ran up to us and stood there panting, dust swirling around his

ankles. The children grew quiet.

“ ‘Master,’ the boy said—it was the first time anyone had called me that, and yet it felt

totally natural. ‘You’re needed at the Green Lagoon,’ he said. ‘Hurry.’

“He didn’t have to say any more. ‘Au revoir, children,’ I said, slinging the mandolin on

my back, and ran with this messenger boy across the field, through the trees, up the hill. Neither

of us spoke.

“The Green Lagoon was a place where people jumped from a high cliff into deep water.

It was easy to dive in, but difficult to climb out. Some people called it Suicide Lagoon, because

of its popularity as a final resting spot for angst-ridden teenagers. I knew this was what had

happened: some poor soul had tried to kill himself, and the villagers wanted me to intervene.

“When we arrived, a crowd of people stood weeping and wringing their hands. They

parted for me, so that I could look over the edge. An old man grabbed my cloak and said, ‘They

both jumped. They tied themselves together. Maybe they’re still alive. You can save them. You

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can untie them. You can convince them to live. They look up to you. You make them happy. Tell

them we don’t care if they get married—we take back everything we said. We just want them to

live!’

“I understood the situation: young lovers whose families were enemies. ‘I’ll do my best,’

I said, and, placing my mandolin on a rock, I took a deep breath and dove in.

“It took me a few seconds to get my bearings. The lagoon was much deeper than I’d

thought. I shot down to the bottom, through shafts of green light, and came to a hall of floating

corpses, their ankles tied to rocks, skin covered with algae, eyeballs eaten by fish, frozen in

postures of facsimile life. Some had been there for years, maybe decades. Regular swimmers

never came this far down.

“I swam through the bodies until I found the two star-crossed lovers. The woman was

still alive. She was dark-skinned and beautiful and she looked at me with huge eyes—she

couldn’t believe I was down there. The boy was already dead. His hands floated listlessly. A

rope connected them at the waist, and their feet were tied to boulders. Bubbles came out of the

woman’s mouth.

“I could have easily untied her, brought her to the surface. But she begged me not to. She

begged me with her eyes. She had wanted this. And I took a moment to look around that silent

green chamber, a forest of human kelp, anchored by stones—a place so beautiful, so serene, that

in order to view it, you had to give your own life. You had to become part of the forest too. I was

one of the few—maybe the only one—who got a chance to wander through it and lived to tell.

“I thought about all those young people who’d wanted to die. Somehow, I understood.

This was their passion, their bravery. It was their destiny. And when I turned back to the dark-

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haired girl, the last of her bubbles had gone and she floated with her arms above her head, like a

dancer, one who will dance forever beside her true love.

“When I emerged alone, everyone knew. They waited along the path as I climbed back

up. I stood before them, dripping, and said: ‘There’s nothing I could do. They wanted to die.’

The women started wailing, and I picked up my mandolin and went back down the hill.

“All the other children were still in the field, laughing and eating blackberries and

chasing each other. They cheered when they saw me coming. They had no idea what had

happened. They swarmed around me, pulling my robe, asking me to sing more songs. ‘You’re all

wet,’ someone said. ‘Did you go for a swim?’ ‘Yes, I went for a swim.’ And I noticed that, even

though we were the same age, these children didn’t treat me like a fellow child—but they didn’t

treat me like an adult either. They treated me like something else. I began to feel like they were

my children, just as those floating bodies had been my children, and suddenly I had all these

living and dead children I didn’t know what to do with.

“The sun was still out, and some people showed up from another village, who didn’t

know anything about the tragedy, and they wanted to hear music. So I sat down and played a

bunch of sad songs—but sad songs with pleasant melodies, so the people could dance. The

sunset turned everything orange. And I knew then that I was different, and not just a vagabond,

and that I wouldn’t be called Mother Nature’s Son anymore, and that nothing was going to be the

same ever again.”

I sat there trembling. I double-checked to make sure I got everything on tape. The Master

had just given me something rare and valuable—something I could make a career on. Never had

he revealed so much about himself.

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(Needless to say, the heavily-censored article that appeared in Cowhead Mailbox does not

represent my original vision. I accepted writing credit along with the editorial team, collected my

paycheck, and washed my hands of it.)

Why had he chosen me, someone he knew only peripherally? Maybe he didn’t grasp the

worth of what he’d given me. Then I realized: the Master didn’t have any friends. He sat there

with his hands crossed in his lap and a tranquil expression on his face. An unopened letter lay on

the mantle. Snow fluttered at the window.

In the hall, a grandfather clock struck eleven times. “I have to go, if I’m to catch my

train,” I said, feeling horribly awkward. I felt like a thief who had stolen something in plain

sight.

“Very well,” the Master said.

“Thank you for your time.”

The Master nodded sagaciously.

The train station was half a mile away. On the way out I spoke with old Ben, the valet,

the Irishman who doesn’t drink. There was something noble and burning in his eyes. He was

meticulously shaven, wearing a tie, and had a sort of regal redness to his jowls in this colder-

than-normal January. He offered me a coffee for the road, which I declined. I might have said

yes to a whiskey, but I knew the Master kept no alcohol on the premises. I stood for a moment in

the kitchen.

“Ben,” I said, “how do you like living way out here, away from everything?”

“I enjoy it very much, sir.”

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“Have you no family of your own?”

“Not to speak of, sir.”

“Not to speak of? I’m a journalist, you know.”

“Yes sir.”

“I’m naturally curious about people.”

“That’s to be expected, sir.”

“Don’t you have anything interesting to tell me?”

“What would you like to know, sir?”

“Well—were you in the war?”

“Yes sir, I was.”

It occurred to me that I didn’t even know which war he meant, and it seemed beyond

impolite to ask now.

“All right,” I said. “I won’t bother you any more. Good night, Ben.”

“Good night, sir,” he said, shutting the door behind me, and I turned and walked into the

snow.

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Quelch

Quelch walked into Governor Dudley’s office unshaved and hungover. Still buttoning his

shirt. Mismatched shoes. “Where have you been!” roared the Governor.

“Reckon I had a bit much last night,” Quelch said.

“Get yourself together,” Dudley said. Scattered papers on his desk. Quills, inkpot.

Frazzled office-boy trying to keep up. Someone had thrown an egg at the window. “I need you to

serve as Lieutenant on the Charles,” Dudley said.

“Is that right, then?” Quelch said.

“You’re goddamn right it’s right. Plowman here’s the captain.”

An ancient mariner stood beside the desk. Nasty beard, milky eyes. Seemed barely able

to hold his pipe. “He’s gonna pilot the boat?” Quelch said.

“What did I just say?”

“I thought he was a statue, like.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“You know, like taxidermy, and that.”

Another office-boy rushed in with news that the Colonial Legislature had just voted to cut

the Governor’s salary in half. Dudley crumpled the paper into a ball. “I’ll apply directly to the

Crown, then,” he said. “Office-boy! Take dictation: To Her Majesty Queen Anne, your humblest

servant implores you—”

“I’ve spilled the inkpot again,” the boy said.

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“Goddamn it—out of here, both of you!” Dudley flung the empty pot, and the office-boys

scurried like mice. Dudley stood with his fists on the desk, taking deep breaths. His wig hung

around his shoulders.

“We’re at war with France,” he said. “And Spain. And the Dutch. Indians are attacking

from the west. Pirates roam the Atlantic. And my own Senate just voted to cut my pay. My

wife’s a tiresome strumpet, too, but that’s neither here nor there. What I need from you, Quelch,

is to serve as Lieutenant under Plowman here, and go out there and blow apart every French and

Spanish ship you see. Blast them straight to Hell. Do it for the Queen, if you like, or do it

because you want to watch them die, but do it regardless—and you’ll be compensated in gold.”

The captain still hadn’t moved or spoken. He smelled like mothballs. He had lesions on

his hands.

“And you want me to go with this bloke here?” Quelch said.

“I’ve outfitted the Charles with a crew of fifty. She weighs eighty tons and has twelve

cannons. She’ll blow away anything in the water. Sail tomorrow. Do the job.”

“Right, then,” Quelch said.

Another egg hit the window.

On the ship he recognized some men: the slow-witted twins John and Dennis Carter; a

philosopher called Erasmus Peterson; the notorious rake Nick Dunbar. He boarded alongside

Little Johnny Templeton, who was fifteen but looked nine, and had already sailed around the tip

of South America and back. Quelch had seen him around for years.

“You’re saltier than most of these old sailors,” he said.

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“I was born on the water,” Little Johnny Templeton said. “You know how some blokes

have to find their sea legs? I always have to find my land legs. Earth don’t feel right to me—it’s

too still.”

The sun set over the bay. Red sky. Good spirits all around. After playing cards below

deck, Quelch went up to get some air. Other ships bobbed on the glassy water beside the

Charles. Stars above.

The Quartermaster approached: meaty hands, thick neck, anchor tattooed on the side of

his bald head. “Lieutenant,” he said.

“Quartermaster,” Quelch said.

“I have matters of the utmost urgency to discuss with you.”

“Well, let’s hear it, then.”

The Quartermaster looked around. “Our captain is useless.”

“Step away from the grave, yeah?”

“Half a step,” the Quartermaster said. “He’s barely coherent. I don’t think he’ll survive

the expedition.”

“Ought to be home in bed?”

“With a priest at his side.”

“Well, but he’s a token, innit? A figurehead, like? I mean, you’re the one steering the

boat.”

“We need a new figurehead. We need a new token.”

Quelch spat in the water. Voices from other ships floated across the bay. “I’m second in

command,” he said.

“Not anymore,” the Quartermaster said. “You’re first.”

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“How do you reckon that?”

“Tomorrow, once we clear the bay, Plowman goes overboard. We take this ship where it

belongs—to South America, where the pickings are easy. You’re the new captain.”

“Seems like you’re the captain, if you’re giving me orders.”

The Quartermaster’s teeth glinted in the dark. “That’s right. Maybe I am. But you’re the

figurehead we need, Lieutenant.”

Quelch scratched his head. “What about the crew?”

“Gold-seeking ruffians who will go anywhere.”

“Right enough,” Quelch said. “And you’re sure about this South American bit? Good

prospects? Clear skies, and that?”

“Trust me,” the Quartermaster said.

The next day they bound Plowman hand and foot, and walked him down the plank. His

toes hung over the edge. Water churned below. Plowman made smacking sounds with his mouth,

like an old dog. Quelch couldn’t tell if he comprehended his situation.

Little Johnny Templeton had volunteered to push him over, and now held a spear pointed

at the captain’s back, waiting for orders.

“Should we put a ball in him first?” someone said.

“Why waste lead?” said Nick Dunbar, the rake, leaning against the rail, cleaning his teeth

with a splinter.

“What about you, Erasmus? You’re a philosopher.”

Erasmus Peterson stepped forward, leather-bound journal in his hands. Wild eyebrows,

fierce blue eyes. “Can the man feel pain? Is his spirit already dead, though his heart continues to

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beat? Would a watery death be welcome? Would an ignoble bullet, a sphere of lead culled from

some deep inland mine, be a torturous insult to one who spent his life avoiding the terrestrial?

Some say the greatest death lies in a shark’s mouth: the terror, the grandeur, the primal

connection with a beast unchanged for eons. A certain purity accompanies that kind of death, a

purity unreachable through the soulless mechanisms of guillotine or gun. We must decide if

convenience, or misplaced notions of mercy, outweigh those sentiments. Ultimately, the

dilemma has no answer.”

Everyone looked at Quelch. Quelch looked at the Quartermaster. The Quartermaster

pretended to study his maps.

“Ah, just shove him in,” someone said, and Little Johnny Templeton jabbed the spear in

his back, and the captain went over.

Just past Florida, they encountered a fellow British ship, heading north to Massachusetts.

The Quartermaster looked through his telescope and said, “That’s the Willibald. We’ll have to

stop and exchange formalities.”

“Reckon we can’t just wave as we go by?” Quelch said.

“You’re the captain,” the Quartermaster said.

Quelch went down to the deck as the ships drew abreast of each other. A square-jawed

leatherface leaned out from the Willibald, and called across the water: “The Charles! Why, that’s

Plowman’s ship! How is the old boy?”

“Not well, I’m afraid,” Quelch said. “I’m acting captain.”

“My God—is everything all right?”

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“Quite right, I reckon,” Quelch said. He recalled the lesions on Plowman’s hands. “He’s

just got a bit of disease, like.”

The leatherface’s pipe dropped from his mouth. “What sort of disease?”

“Well, it’s, you know—I think he’s got a bit of water in the lungs.”

“Is he awake? I’d like to come over and give my regards.”

“No,” Quelch said. “No, he’s—he’s—he’s not, at the moment.”

“Nevertheless,” the leatherface said, “I’ll send over my surgeon, and let him take a look.

He has a bag full of medicines. It can’t do any harm.”

“No!” Quelch said, and laughed awkwardly. “He’s in quarantine, like. High chance of

contagion. In fact, our whole ship is most likely infected.”

The leatherface and his men drew back from the railing. Some of them pulled scarves

over their noses. “Well,” the leatherface said. “Where you headed?”

“Just around, you know, for like, Spanish galleons, and that.”

“Not three days ago,” the leatherface said, “we sunk the largest vessel in the Caribbean

Armada.”

“Now, that’s impressive,” Quelch said, and meant it.

“Give Plowman my regards,” the leatherface said. He saluted, and the Willibald pulled

away, and soon was just a speck on the northern horizon.

Quelch turned to find the Carter twins, Dennis and John, whose mouths always hung

open, who struggled with basic orders, who signed their names with X’s—Dennis and John, now

standing before him with terror in their eyes.

“You mean—there’s a plague on the ship?”

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Quelch spotted the Isadora just north of Brazil. She was a fat merchant ship that had

almost made it to safety. “She’s flying the Portuguese flag,” Quelch said. “We’re only authorized

to kill to Spanish.”

“And French,” the Quartermaster said.

“Right. And French. But that’s it.”

“What about the Dutch?”

“I disremember about the Dutch.”

“Let’s take her,” the Quartermaster said. “She’s carrying enough loot to make us all

rich.”

“That’s why we came here, I reckon,” Quelch said.

They advanced on the Isadora, which slowed to meet them—probably hoping for an

escort to the coast. At a hundred yards, Quelch ordered a cannon shot to take out their masts and

rigging. Then he, the Quartermaster, Nick Dunbar, and a dozen others rowed across the water in

dinghies. As they approached, the Portuguese merchants sprayed them with grapeshot. One of

the men behind Quelch lost an eye, but a few well-placed shots from Nick Dunbar’s pistol

scattered the merchants, and Quelch was able to board easily with ropes and hooks.

The crew stood with hands raised. Their captain, disheveled and sweaty, with a long

black mustache, said in English: “Do you not represent our ally Queen Anne? Or has their been a

coup at Westminster?”

“We are Englishmen,” the Quartermaster said. “But we represent only ourselves, not any

queen.”

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The others went below deck to search for treasure. Little Johnny Templeton walked

among the merchants, feinting at them with his bayonet, making them flinch, and then laughing

like a devil. Quelch oversaw as chests were carried up and lowered into the dinghies.

The Portuguese captain said: “Your royal court in London will pay back every last coin.”

Nick Dunbar stuck his pistol under the captain’s chin, forcing him to look straight up. His

throat worked up and down beneath the barrel. “What’s the policy here?” Nick asked.

“No need to kill anybody,” Quelch said.

“No?”

“Nah. We got the gold already, like.”

“Whatever you say,” Nick said. Then, to the captain: “Este é seu dia de sorte, meu

amigo.”

Rowing back, Little Johnny Templeton said, “We gonna sink them? Put a cannonball

through the hull?”

“What for?” Quelch said. “Reckon they’re not going anywhere without a mast.”

“Someone will pick them up,” the Quartermaster said.

“Quite right. And we’ll be, you know—long gone.”

The Quartermaster set up a table on deck, where he could dole out scoops of gold, and

the men lined up to collect their winnings. Those who had boarded the Isadora got double, and

the man who lost an eye got triple. Quelch sat there to keep things honest.

He decided on an experiment: he filled a whiskey bottle with water and pretended to get

stinking drunk. He slouched in his chair, slurred his words. The Quartermaster even remarked:

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“Way to celebrate, eh, Quelch? Bottoms up, old boy.” Quelch grinned and gave a convincing

hiccup.

For every fourth sailor, the Quartermaster took a scoop of coins for himself. Then it

became every other sailor. By the end of the line, he was taking a scoop for every scoop he gave

out. Soon the treasure was gone, each man had his share, and they all began singing as the sun

set. Quelch stumbled off to his quarters. He lay in his hammock, hands behind his head, and

thought for a long time.

They came upon the Calabuco at dusk, and kept their distance until they could tell what

kind of ship she was. “Another merchant,” the Quartermaster said, looking through his telescope.

“Let’s take her.”

They used the same strategy as before: blow away the masts, then row across in dinghies.

This time, no one fired grapeshot at them. No sound of any kind came from the Calabuco. When

Quelch climbed aboard, an empty deck greeted him.

“Sons of bitches are hiding down there,” the Quartermaster said.

Nick Dunbar drew both pistols. “It’s ferreting time,” he said.

The Calabuco had extinguished all her lamps, and the moon was just a sliver. They

would have to explore an unknown ship, in the dark, with assassins around every corner.

“Reckon we ought to go back?” Quelch said.

Little Johnny Templeton snorted. “This is the fun part.”

With guns drawn, Quelch went downstairs. He immediately ran into someone who

smelled foreign, not one of his own crew, and he fired into his belly. Gunshots erupted around

him. The jingle of coins, money. Someone tackled him from behind. A knife sank into his leg

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and he screamed. Somehow he crawled back on deck, where his own men were fleeing with bags

of treasure. Quelch noticed a lifeboat beside him, and cut the rope. Then he dived into the ocean

after it.

Rowing back to the Charles, he passed a man in the water—the Quartermaster,

swimming methodically despite the bags of gold tied to his waist. “Blimey,” Quelch said.

“You’re a brave one. Get up here before a shark bites your willy off.”

“I would’ve made it,” the Quartermaster said, grabbing the side of the boat.

“I’ve no doubt,” Quelch said. “But this way’s a bit easier, innit?”

“Did you get any loot?”

“I was lucky to get out of there with my life, mate.”

“Did you at least kill any of those bastards?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Now, come on—hand up those bags and we’ll get you aboard.”

The Quartermaster tossed the sacks into the boat, where they landed with a wet thud.

Then he reached out a hand. Instead of pulling him up, Quelch brought the butt of his pistol

down onto the Quartermaster’s skull, once, twice, three times. The Quartermaster’s hands

slipped away and he disappeared into the black water. Quelch kept rowing all the way back to

the Charles.

Three men, including the Quartermaster, didn’t return from the Calabuco. Quelch divided

their gold evenly amongst the crew.

“With this much loot,” Nick Dunbar said, “we should put in to Brazil for a bit. Enjoy

some women and wine.”

“Capital idea,” Quelch said.

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He acted as Quartermaster himself now, taking the rudder and consulting all the maps

and charts. He steered them toward the coast, imagining palm trees and spiced rum and golden

women. The day before they arrived, they intercepted two ships travelling side by side: the San

Pablo and the San Francisco.

“Not sure how to take two at once,” Quelch said.

Erasmus Peterson stood nearby, his eyebrows like two animals that had gone to sleep on

his forehead. “Sink one, accept the loss,” he said. “And then take the other one.”

“Seems a right waste,” Quelch said, and went down to the cannons, where he found John

and Dennis Carter playing checkers, waiting for orders. Their blonde hair fell in their eyes as

they leaned over the board.

“Can you blokes rig up a double shot?” Quelch asked. “Like, two balls that fly in

different directions? We need to blast both ships at the same time.”

“We can do that,” John and Dennis said, and started packing gunpowder.

When everything was ready, Quelch ordered them to fire. Two cannonballs exploded

from the Charles, sailing across the morning sky. Quelch knew immediately that they were too

low, their trajectory was off. Each one smashed into a hull, and within minutes both the San

Pablo and the San Francisco were crippled, lopsided in the water and sinking fast, while dozens

of Portuguese ran around the deck shouting. Neither ship seemed to have a lifeboat.

“Bad shot,” John Carter said.

“We can try again,” Dennis said.

“Reckon you’ve done enough,” Quelch said.

He stood at the rail surveying the damage. Whatever loot they had was gone, headed for

the ocean floor, useless to everyone. Men flailed in the water. Beside Quelch, Erasmus smoked

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his pipe. “I told you,” he said. “When you try to save everyone, you save no one. Just like the

bear and the fish.”

“Bear and fish? What’s all that?”

“The bear drops his fish for a fatter one in the river. But the fatter one was just a

reflection of the one he’d already caught. He loses both.”

Soon the ships disappeared completely, and the water was filled with screaming men,

some clinging to wooden boards. Little Johnny Templeton fired his pistol at them.

“Stop that,” Quelch said. “We’ve got to rescue them.”

“Are you kidding?” Little Johnny Templeton said.

“Nope,” Quelch said. “Drop anchor. Let them swim to us, like.”

He and a few others got into dinghies and paddled around, plucking men out of the sea.

Within an hour, a hundred refugees stood on the deck of the Charles, soaked, shivering, and

unarmed. Most were confused: why had a British warship attacked, and then rescued them?

Quelch paced before the captives. “Right,” he said. “Now, you know, we only wanted the

gold, like. Not your lives. Tomorrow we land at Brazil. You’re free to go, once we get there.”

Then he turned to Nick Dunbar and said, “Translate.”

Nick did, and the men began shouting, until Nick jabbed his pistol into someone’s belly.

“They want to know if we’re pirates, or what.”

“Well,” Quelch said, “no, not exactly—it’s—we’re Englishmen—maybe, at times, we—

you know—”

“Tell them we are disciples of Machiavelli,” Erasmus said.

Nick continued chatting with the men, even drawing a few laughs. But he kept his pistol

out the whole time. Finally the men sat down on deck, and when night fell, Quelch organized a

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rotating guard to watch over them. He slept poorly, anticipating a revolt. But in the morning, as

they approached the harbor at Olinda, every man was accounted for, and no violence had taken

place. Little Johnny Templeton pouted and said, “Can’t we at least take their ears?”

“What for?” Quelch asked.

“Some places give you five quid per ear. And you can always make them into a

necklace.”

Quelch shook his head. “Reckon they’re worth more than five quid to their current

owners.”

When they arrived at the harbor, Quelch went forward to meet the overseer—a fat man in

shirt sleeves, with quill and ledger at the ready. He asked the ship’s dimensions, its cargo, the

purpose of its voyage. Nick Dunbar did most of the talking. Behind them, palm trees waved in

the breeze, and horse-drawn carts zipped back and forth. Nick turned to Quelch and asked,

“What about all these captives?”

“What about them?”

“With all due respect, captain,” Nick said. “We can’t just coast in here with a hundred

unarmed Portuguese sailors. It don’t look right.”

“We rescued them from the French.”

“They’ll say otherwise, as soon as they leave the ship.”

Quelch waved a hand. “They’re confused, like. Been drifting for days when we found

them. Don’t know which end is up. Sun-stroke, and that.”

Nick cocked an eyebrow, grinned, and reported this to the overseer, who scribbled in his

book. Soon everyone had disembarked, and Quelch found himself alone on the Charles. He

stared into the water for a long time before turning and walking down the dock.

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In a tavern, Quelch sat in a corner, sipping rum, while the people around him laughed,

danced, got into fistfights. Callipygous women sashayed back and forth. Someone played a

bongo. Little Johnny Templeton ran by, up to some mischief.

Quelch patronized a local woman—the one with the cheapest rates, who had a squishy,

bell-shaped body—and then went back downstairs. He’d never understood Nick Dunbar’s

penchant for lingering. Nick would lounge in bed all day, surrounded by three or four women.

When he finally clomped in, shirt unbuttoned, and ordered a steak at the bar, Quelch walked

over.

“I’m curious,” he said. “How can you spend entire days wrapped up with these whores,

like?”

“I make them laugh,” Nick said through a full mouth.

“Anybody with enough gold can make them laugh.”

“It’s not like that,” Nick said. “It’s different.”

He finished his steak, left a coin on the bar, and went back upstairs.

Erasmus seemed to have found a conversation partner: a round-faced, sweaty man with a

long black mustache—the captain of the Isadora! The man whose ship they had wrecked. The

man held at gunpoint by Nick Dunbar. The man they’d left stranded at sea.

Erasmus hadn’t rowed over in the dinghies, and had never met him. Now they were deep

in conversation. Quelch hovered behind them, cap pulled low and collar turned up, and listened.

“I see you’re a philosopher like me,” Erasmus said. “How long have you been here in

South America?”

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“I’ve only just arrived,” the man said. “My ship was destroyed by pirates. Luckily, a

man-o-war swooped in and saved us, or we would’ve died at sea. But we lost all the cargo,

which was medical supplies for the colony, as well as much gold, and worst of all, my beloved

Isadora, which I built with my own hands.”

“Damned rascals,” Erasmus said.

“They posed as Englishmen, with whom we are friendly at the moment.”

“You can’t trust anyone these days.”

“Isadora was named for my wife,” the captain said, “who died in childbirth back in

Lisbon. The medical supplies were meant to help women here avoid the same fate. Now I’ve lost

my family, my ship, my dream.”

“It’s a rough life,” Erasmus said. “In difficult times, I turn to the writings of Sun Tzu.

Pragmatism. Chin up. Face the world with a stiff upper lip.”

“I have only one thing left,” the man said. He took a piece of paper from his coat and

unfolded it. “This map.”

Quelch, pretending to study some graffiti on the wall, leaned in.

“Have you ever heard of El Dorado?” the man said.

“I thought Pizzaro and his lot debunked that myth a hundred and fifty years ago,”

Erasmus said.

“It’s not a literal city of gold,” the man said. “It’s a Native temple, stocked with centuries

of treasure, like the Egyptian pyramids. My plan, after I’d delivered those medical supplies, was

to find it. Now my crew is scattered and destitute.”

“Where’d you get this map?”

“From a dying man, who knew he would never make the trip.”

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Erasmus sat back. “I could join you,” he said. “My cartography and geography skills are

impeccable. Together, we could find it.”

“The interior is dangerous,” the man said. “We need guides, donkeys… I have nothing.”

“I happen to have some gold,” Erasmus said. “And I know a few men.”

Quelch snorted into his rum, and then coughed, and clapped Erasmus on the back as

though he had just walked up. “’Rasmus, old boy, how’s that, then?”

“Captain Quelch,” Erasmus said. “Perfect timing. I have some interesting news for you.

Let me introduce my friend—”

The Portuguese captain flung his chair aside and stood up. Drinks crashed. “You,” he

said, pointing at Quelch. “I remember you.”

Quelch took a step back. He went for his pistol, but his hand got caught in his sleeve.

“Wait,” he said.

“I know you,” the man said, breaking into a grin. “You saved my life!” He lurched across

the clearing and wrapped Quelch in both arms. “You stopped that brigand from shooting me.”

“Reckon so, yeah,” Quelch said.

The man put his hands on Quelch’s shoulders and looked him in the eye. “I wouldn’t be

here if not for you. Of course, if not for you, I would still have my Isadora. So for that, I give

you this.” His fist smashed into Quelch’s nose. “And this. And this. And this.”

When Quelch woke up, Erasmus and the man were looking down at him. He was on a

straw bed somewhere. His head felt like a wagon had rolled over it. Nick Dunbar leaned in the

corner, smoking.

“What’s all this?”

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“Rodrigo here has a map,” Erasmus said. “He and Mr. Dunbar have made amends. We’ve

hired a guide. We’re going to El Dorado.”

“Is that right?”

“Get dressed, sir, and join us.”

The room spun, and Quelch lay back. “Right, then,” he said.

The insects had held a conference, apparently, wherein they decided to wait at the

jungle’s edge and swarm, the different species casting aside their grudges and teaming up to feast

on the five men who now rode single-file into the forest. Only the guide, Xicao, seemed

unconcerned. He was a dark-skinned Indian who knew several languages but rarely spoke. No

one told Quelch which tribe he came from, and Quelch didn’t ask.

He sat on a donkey that farted as it walked. Everything around him was alive and

crawling. Spiders the size of his hand. Birds louder than a symphony. Something bit his neck,

and he reached back and grabbed a squirmy black bug with a thousand legs.

Quelch rode behind Erasmus, who followed Rodrigo, who followed Xicao. Nick Dunbar

brought up the rear. Three extra donkeys trailed behind, tied to ropes. Whenever Quelch looked

back, Nick winked.

They veered off the path, into dense jungle.

“Isn’t this a bit risky, like?” Quelch said. “Suppose something happens to the guide—

then what?”

Xicao laughed. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” he said.

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That evening it rained—a relief from insects, but a misery of its own. They camped on

wet ground, ate soggy rations with no fire. Nocturnal rustlings kept Quelch awake all night. In

the morning, one of the donkeys was gone. No blood, nothing. Just gone.

They went deeper. Erasmus and Rodrigo talked philosophy. Quelch bounced along,

soaked and itchy, dreaming of a flask. Behind him, Nick Dunbar said, “What the hell is that?”

Everyone stopped. A brown creature hung upside down from a branch.

“It’s a sloth,” Xicao said.

Nick drew his pistol. “They good to eat?”

“It would be unwise to call attention to ourselves,” Xicao said.

Nick spun the pistol on his finger, stuck it back in his holster.

On the third day, they came to a chasm. The jungle grew right up to the edge. A river

flowed at the bottom. Xicao dismounted, said, “Wait here,” and started walking along the rim,

searching for a way down.

“Is this on the map, like?” Quelch said.

“Yes,” Rodrigo said. “But there should be a bridge.”

An hour later, Xicao returned and said the bridge was out. They could try going down on

donkeys, but it was dangerous. “Even I have never done it,” he said.

“I crossed an ocean for this,” Rodrigo said. “I guess I can cross this canyon.”

He tried pulling his donkey down a steep rock, but she flattened her ears and balked.

When she finally moved forward, her hooves slipped on loose gravel, and she went sliding down,

braying the whole way, and tumbled over the edge. She spun downward through the void,

growing smaller and smaller until she exploded on the rocks below.

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“Fucking Christ,” Quelch said.

Rodrigo limped back up, his ankle red and swollen. “We’re down to one spare donkey,”

he said.

“Can we go around the canyon somehow?” Erasmus asked.

“There’s a passage to the south,” Xicao said. “But those lands are not safe. The Tupi

people live there. They will capture and eat all of us.”

“Bloody hell,” Quelch said. “I’ve got enough gold already, like.”

“I’m beginning to think the same thing,” Erasmus said.

Rodrigo sat down, put his face in his hands. “I’ve failed. My Isadora is gone, and my life,

my dream. Here I sit in this godforsaken land, with no money, no prospects, with outlaws who

would rob me in a heartbeat, who in fact have already robbed me, and yet I go with them because

I have nothing else. I should have leapt over the edge with that donkey.”

“Now, now,” Erasmus said, clapping his back. “The only true failure is not trying.”

The next day, on the way back, Nick Dunbar said, “Look at this!” and Quelch turned

around. Nick held a brightly-colored frog in his hands: blue and red, with yellow stripes. It

looked like a carnival toy. “It don’t even squirm,” Nick said. “You ever seen anything like it?”

Xicao strode back and slapped the frog away. “Idiot,” he said. “Wash your hands

immediately. Did any of that slime get under your nails?”

Nick drew his pistol and fired. Xicao collapsed, clutching his belly, and died a minute

later with his back against a tree, smearing blood onto palm fronds.

“Goddamn it, Dunbar, what have you done!” Erasmus said.

“No man lays his hands on me,” Nick said.

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“He was trying to help you. Those frogs are poisonous!”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“You’ll be seeing it later tonight, I guarantee.”

“Reckon we can find the way back now?” Quelch asked.

Rodrigo unfolded his paper. “I still have the map. But let’s hurry. All that talk of

cannibals….”

Nick Dunbar snorted. “What a lot of cowards this has turned out to be.”

Erasmus studied him from beneath the hedges of his eyebrows. “You should think about

your eternal soul tonight, if you have one, Nicholas Dunbar, and ponder what it means to be a

man upon this Earth: what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve failed to accomplish, what you

might have done, if you had time. Be absolutely frank with yourself. Most men don’t get the

opportunity to know their final hours. Death comes for us suddenly, Mr. Dunbar—and so it will

seem to you when the moment arrives—but right now, this minute, you still have time to

contemplate. What a waste not to do so.”

“It takes more than a rainbow-colored toad to kill me,” Nick said.

But the next day he looked awful: waxy skin, circles under his eyes. He threw up his

breakfast. This time when Quelch looked back, Nick didn’t wink—he just trudged with his head

down, not even bothering to slap insects. Sweat soaked his clothes. Quelch and Erasmus helped

him the last mile into Olinda, and carried him into the tavern. The women swooped downstairs,

crying and fretting over him, and put him straight to bed. They gave him whiskey and a steak.

But it wasn’t enough. That night he spit blood, and in the morning he was dead.

The women commenced a wailing that carried up and down the streets. Quelch and

Erasmus sat outside, on a bench.

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“You’d think it was Christ himself who died,” Erasmus said.

Little Johnny Templeton walked up, rubbing his eyes. His shirt was torn, pants smeared

with mud. “Captain Quelch,” he said. “Glad I found you. The crew has been wondering: When

do you plan to shove off again?”

“Soon, like,” Quelch said.

“Good. Because I just woke up beside a dead man in a hayloft, and I think I might have

killed him.”

“Right, then,” Quelch said.

East of Antigua, the Charles passed a loaded-down freighter whose crew, spoiled by

months in the Caribbean, didn’t even realize they were being attacked. When Quelch, Little

Johnny Templeton, and the others climbed aboard, the merchants asked what was wrong—could

they do anything to help?

“Just stand there and be quiet, like,” Quelch said.

“Is this the Royal Inspection? Checking for smuggling?”

“Something like that,” Quelch said.

The Carter boys emerged from below deck, and said the ship had no money, but several

tons of sugar cane.

“Not much good to us,” Quelch said.

The merchants realized what was happening—one of them charged at Quelch with a

knife. Then a gunshot rang out, the man went sprawling, and Little Johnny Templeton blew

smoke from his pistol. “Didn’t have time to ask permission,” he said.

“Well done,” Quelch said.

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“Can I have his ears?

“Go ahead.”

The merchants stood like helpless cattle as Quelch climbed back into his dinghy. Once he

started rowing, they fired a few shots, but Little Johnny Templeton fired back until they were out

of range. To mock them, he held up his trophy of human flesh.

Back on the Charles, Erasmus said: “No loot?”

“Just the ears of a dead man,” Quelch said.

“You don’t look well,” Erasmus said.

“I don’t feel all that well,” Quelch said.

One night, under a full moon, they crossed paths with the Ghost Bird, a slaver headed for

Carolina. The ships drew alongside each other. The other captain, barefoot and snaggletoothed,

came out to talk.

“Keeping us safe from the Spanish, I presume?” he said.

“Exactly,” Quelch said.

“Good. I once got chased down by the Armada. Bastards boarded my ship and took all

the slaves, close to eight hundred head.”

“The Spanish are thieves, reckon,” Quelch said.

“They have no concern for other people’s property.”

“How many you carrying this time?”

“Same number. Around eight hundred. Probably a hundred will be dead when we haul

them out, but it’s still a decent score.”

“You have them all crammed down there, like?”

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“Sure,” the captain said. “They’re just animals.”

“You get them at a market?”

“The big one, in Morocco. I don’t inspect them or anything—I just transport them. They

smell like goddamn farm animals. Jimbo here does all the hard work.”

Quelch noticed a second man, tall and burly, standing in shadow.

“Yeah, Jimbo actually drags them out of the jungle for us. After that, it’s

easy.”

“Is that right?” Quelch said.

The burly shadow blew out smoke. “I started with rhinos,” he said. “Then elephants, and

finally lions. I thought that was the top. Until I discovered hunting humans. Nothing beats

hunting human beings. Especially when I can’t kill them—I have to trap them. That’s the

ultimate challenge.”

“I thought you said they were animals, like,” Quelch said.

“They are most definitely men,” the hunter said.

The captain laughed. “Baboons, I say! Well, then. Keep up the good work, there,

Charles.”

“Likewise,” Quelch said.

As the Ghost Bird disappeared into the night, Little Johnny Templeton ran up and said,

“We gonna blast them, captain?”

“We can’t. They have eight hundred people chained below deck. It would be awful.”

“But that’s why I wanted to do it!”

“Now what would that do for you?” Quelch said.

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Little Johnny Templeton had a faraway look in his eyes. “Give me something to think

about at night,” he said.

“Let’s hope you never become a captain,” Quelch said.

They glided into Boston in early spring. Nip in the air. Gulls squawking. The British

harbormaster slapped his ledger against his knee and said, “The Charles! We feared the worst for

you. Reports said Captain Plowman was ill.”

“Plowman got a disease, like,” Quelch said. “Poison frog, and that. I’m acting captain.”

“In that case, I’ll need you to answer some questions.”

Quelch pressed a bag of gold into the man’s belly. “How’s that, then?”

“That’s fine, I reckon,” the harbormaster said, and Quelch walked down the wharf, into

Boston.

Quelch bought a suit of clothes, including hat, shoes, and overcoat. He rented a room

from an old Puritan lady at the edge of town, out past Fox Hill, away from all the sailors and

taverns. Nobody would find him. He sat by the fire and considered his next move: to the western

frontier? Back across the Atlantic? Africa? China?

One night, someone pounded at the door. Quelch opened it, half-finished bottle of

whiskey in one hand. The constable and his deputy stood there, with the Puritan lady peeking

over their shoulders.

“You Quelch?”

“What’s all this, then?”

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“You’re under arrest in the name of Queen Anne.” The constable pushed his way in and

grabbed Quelch’s wrists. The bottle dropped on Quelch’s foot, and he screeched as it rolled

under the bed, leaving a trail of whiskey.

“How’s that, now?” Quelch said.

“You’re accused of attacking and sinking nine vessels belonging to the Portuguese, with

whom we are friendly at the moment.”

“Nine! We never sank nine!”

“Come along, Quelch,” the constable said.

They took him across town, to the jailhouse. Erasmus Peterson and the Carter boys were

already there. The constable shoved Quelch inside, and came back an hour later with Little

Johnny Templeton, who suddenly looked nine years old, tears streaming down his face as they

locked the bars behind him. “I didn’t do nothing, sir,” he said.

“Let the judge decide,” the constable said, walking away.

A moment later, Little Johnny Templeton’s true face returned—the face of a devil.

“Where’s everybody else?”

“It seems most of our crew dispersed,” Erasmus said. “And we were fools not to have

done the same.”

Quelch sat down in the straw. The five of them shared a stone floor and one lousy

mattress. A hole in the corner served as toilet, and a rat the size of a dog blinked from a crevice

in the wall.

“What about you two?” Quelch asked the Carter boys.

“We told our mama everything,” Dennis said.

“Why the hell’d you do that?” Little Johnny Templeton shrieked.

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“We always tell our mama everything.”

“You stupid sons of bitches! Goddamn you and your mama.”

On the mattress, Erasmus sighed. “Fighting amongst ourselves won’t help. We’ll be tried

for piracy, though I expect a pardon based on my standing as public intellectual.”

“What about us?” Quelch said.

“May you swallow the hemlock with dignity,” Erasmus said.

A week later, the deputy came and led the Carter boys away. Shuffling down the hall,

they started bawling: “Don’t hang us yet! Let us say goodbye to our mama!”

“This is your trial, you damned imbecils, not your execution,” the deputy said.

“Might I get a bit of tobacco?” Erasmus asked.

The deputy turned back, reached into his coat, and gave Erasmus a pipe and pouch. “A

man in your position ought to have a smoke, I’d say.”

“You’re a true Englishman,” Erasmus said. When the deputy had gone, he turned to

Quelch. “This further strengthens my conviction that I’ll be set free. Notice how he mentioned

my ‘position.’”

“Not sure that’s quite what he meant,” Quelch said.

Erasmus just smiled. Quelch paced all day, while the old philosopher smoked his pipe

and Little Johnny Templeton lay in the corner looking like a burning fuse about to explode.

“That stick of dynamite up your arse won’t help you,” Erasmus said.

“Mind your own business, you worn-out old badger,” Little Johnny Templeton said.

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That afternoon, when the sky through the window had turned grey, the Carter boys

returned, blubbering like children. Their faces were red and snotty. “We’re gonna hang next

week,” they said.

“You confessed everything, didn’t you?” Erasmus said.

“Yes,” they bawled.

Little Johnny Templeton rolled over and faced the wall.

“I’m acting captain,” Quelch said. “I gave the orders. They should pardon you, and I’ll

take the blame, like.”

“Far too late for that, I’m afraid,” Erasmus said.

When the sun rose, the rat retreated back to its crevice, and the deputy returned—this

time for Little Johnny Templeton, who went limp and had to be dragged out of the cell and down

the hall. He only weighed about ninety-five pounds. Quelch waited all day for him to come back,

but he never did. The moon rose in the window.

“What do you reckon happened?” Quelch said.

“They burned that demon child, most likely,” Erasmus said.

The next day, they fetched Erasmus, and when he returned in the evening, his eyes were

hollow beneath the large brows. He slumped onto his mattress. “I’m to hang, as well,” he said.

“Didn’t they recognize you?” Quelch asked.

“Indeed,” Erasmus said. “I invoked the Magna Carta and they laughed in my face. It

seems colonial justice isn’t the same as back home.”

“Did you tell them about your books, and that?”

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Erasmus waved a hand. “People born in America have no sense of philosophy, no sense

of art. It’s a terrible omen for the future. But I don’t blame these poor provincial saps. There’s no

time for contemplation when your primary goal is survival.”

“But didn’t you have tea with the Queen, once?” Quelch said.

“And gave her a signed copy of my first treatise,” Erasmus said. “But that’s no alibi.

Friends of queens go to the gallows all the time. Walter Raleigh, for example.”

“Right,” Quelch said.

Finally, Quelch’s turn. The deputy took him to a room and sat him in a chair facing four

men. His hands were chained together.

He recognized Governor Dudley, who had bags under his eyes, and whose wig sat

lopsided on his head. He’d aged a decade since Quelch had seen him last.

“Morning, governor,” Quelch said.

“Shut up, Quelch. Now, goddamn it, I told you to go out there and blow away the

Spanish. You went after the Portuguese instead. Maybe thirty years ago, you would’ve gotten

away with it, but Queen Anne is friends with their king, and probably more than friends, if you

know what I mean. You steal from them, it’s like stealing from the Crown. Get it?”

The second man huffed and crossed his arms. He was fat and pink with the face of a

baby. “Forget the Crown,” he said. “You’ve stolen from me, Lieutenant Quelch. From me

personally.”

“Sorry, who are you?” Quelch said.

The faces loomed around him with expressions of disbelief. Quelch imagined stuffing

apples into their open mouths.

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“Who am I?” the fat man said. “I am Charles Hobby, owner of the vessel you stole and

took to Brazil. The ship is named after me, for God’s sake!”

“Oh, right, then. I always wondered who it was named for.”

The fat man turned to the others. “Is it possible he’s not fit to stand trial?”

“He’s fit,” Governor Dudley said. “He’s just a damned fool, and if we declared fools

unfit, half the world would qualify. Now, then, prosecutor—go ahead.”

The third man, the prosecutor, was younger than the others. He wore a black wig and

more frills than the rest. He had a square jaw and an aura of self-righteousness about him. He

inhaled, as though he was about to perform some hideous but utterly necessary task.

“Where’s Plowman?” he said.

“At the bottom of the Atlantic,” Quelch said.

“You murdered him.”

“No,” Quelch said. “He got a disease, like. Fever, and that.”

“And the Portuguese ships you robbed?”

“We thought they were Spanish, like.”

“Even when you saw the Portuguese flag.”

“By then we had already blasted them.”

“So rather than admit your mistake, rescue your allies, and save their vessel, you instead

plunder it and leave those men to die?”

“Well,” Quelch said. “It’s not—you know—I never wanted to kill anybody.”

“That’s no excuse,” the prosecutor said.

“Things just got out of hand, like. It all started with that Quartermaster. I let him run over

me.”

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“Why bother coming back to Boston?”

“That’s the puzzler, like,” Quelch said. “Reckon I should’ve found an island somewhere.

But most of the crew live up here, and, well, you can always go home again, right?”

“Wrong,” the prosecutor said. “You’re charged with piracy, robbery, and low treason.

How do you plead?”

“Treason!” Quelch said.

“Low, rather than high, because you didn’t attack British ships, but those of our allies.

That’s as lenient as I can get, Lieutenant. How do you plead?”

“Innocent,” Quelch said.

“Do you have any statement to make in your own defense? Your fellow crewmen have

made some impassioned pleas.”

“Well—you know—it’s like—I reckon not.” Quelch hung his head.

Outside, a church bell rang twice.

“Thank you, prosecutor,” Governor Dudley said. “Now we just need a verdict. Judge

Sewall?”

The fourth man, the only one without a wig, the only one who hadn’t spoken. He sat with

chin in hand, eyes half-shut as though daydreaming.

“Judge?” Governor Dudley said.

The judge sighed. “You don’t know this, Mr. Quelch, but you and I have met before.”

“Is that right?” Quelch said.

“Years ago, in London. It was a rainy day, and I was carrying a bundle of packages. I

slipped on the street. My parcels went flying. There I was, a pathetic old man, struggling to

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gather my things in the rain. You came along and helped me, Mr. Quelch. You lifted my

packages and helped me carry them home. Do you remember?”

“You sure that was me?”

“The man’s face has been imprinted on my mind all these years, and it’s your face, Mr.

Quelch. I don’t forget random acts of kindness.”

“Reckon it could’ve been me,” Quelch said. “Stumbling home from the pub, like.”

The other men—Governor Dudley, Charles Hobby, the prosecutor—gaped at the judge.

“You know this man, Your Honor?”

“Only in the manner I’ve just described.”

A minute of silence passed. Finally the judge said, “Ten years ago, in Salem Town, I

signed the death orders for two dozen people accused of witchcraft. One of them was a homeless

beggar whom I am certain did no wrong. Another was a man who refused to enter a plea. I’m

now convinced that most, if not all, of these people were innocent. Thus it’s with great hesitation

that I hand down the death verdict today. If any of you can give me a good reason to spare

Quelch’s life, I’ll do it.”

No one spoke. Quelch gulped.

“Jonathan Quelch, former Lieutenant, frequent scoundrel, occasional Good Samaritan, I

sentence you to death by hanging, in retribution of the crimes mentioned here today. May God

have mercy on your soul.”

On the way out, Quelch turned back and asked: “Whatever happened to our cabin boy—

Little Johnny Templeton?”

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“He’s just that, a boy,” the judge said. “Without the corruption of you lot, he might have

a chance to be decent. I’ve released him back into society, with hopes that he will grow into a

productive citizen.”

A jeering mob gathered around the scaffold. Blue sky, no clouds. Governor Dudley stood

to the side while the hangman placed nooses around necks. Quelch went first. The hangman

breathed in his ear while tightening the rope. He smelled like Quelch’s father, warm and rich.

“Easy now, lad,” he said.

Erasmus came next. He nodded to Quelch as the hangman fitted the noose. As soon as it

was done, he leapt from the scaffolding. A gasp went up from the crowd. The wood groaned

under the rope as Erasmus swung back and forth, those monstrous eyebrows covering his eyes

like a death shroud. No final words.

After that, Quelch stopped paying attention. The Carter boys were brought out, and asked

if they had anything to say. They bawled something about repentance and Jesus and their mama.

Quelch didn’t mind. The longer they talked, the longer he could enjoy this afternoon sun.

He scanned the crowd, looking for anyone he knew. All the people wore masks of hate—

even the old women, the spinsters. They shook their fists and howled when the Carter boys

dropped to their deaths. They wanted blood. And yet—no one had stolen from them. No one had

wronged them in any way. If an arbitrary line were drawn, and Portugal declared the enemy—if

the good queen had a falling out, say, with her Portuguese lover—then Quelch would be

innocent, and where would these people’s anger go? What would they do with it?

In the front row, a child with slicked-over hair winked at Quelch. It was Little Johnny

Templeton, in a jacket and shorts like a schoolboy. He smiled—a knowing smile that made

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Quelch shudder. Maybe it was best to leave this world if people like Little Johnny Templeton

were allowed to roam free in it.

Then the hangman was beside him, asking if he had any last words, and the hangman’s

voice was so soft, so empathetic, it had to be the voice of a pudgy middle-aged family man.

“Any last words, lad?”

Quelch started to speak, but then shook his head, closed his eyes. No point in all that.

What could he say? He was Quelch. He was gonna hang.

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Explorations

It was a time of shifting alliances. Bluetooth, Forkbeard, Thorkel the Tall. Power seemed

to change hands with the weather. Denmark was trying to define itself: its borders, its religion,

its national identity. England was first an enemy, then a friend. Pirates terrorized the North Sea.

Plagues floated over the land like invisible clouds.

These things made Ketil nervous. He grew up on the beach, watching for approaching

ships, dreading what they might bring. His father went a-viking to Dublin one summer and never

came back. One by one, his brothers—stout, vicious Northmen all—headed south, along the

Miklagard trail, to become Varangians. Neither did they return.

He’d always been different: squeamish with an axe, reluctant to take a woman by force.

Far more interested in the sea than in battlefield glory. While the others went pillaging, he

walked the beach, collected driftwood. He built his own boats. They called him Butterfly, or

Little Fish—favored by Njord, god of the ocean.

One winter’s night, at the age of fifteen, he found himself holed up in a tavern while a

storm raged outside. Old sailors filled the place. The room was thick with smoke. Ketil, blonde

and slender, sat by the fire as two men swapped tales of their adventures.

“I encountered the Suomi,” one man said. “On my way to Holmgard. They’re a strange

people. They have slanted eyes.”

“I saw one cut down,” the other man said. “His blood was blue. I swear it. That’s why the

Suomi keep to the North—most of the time, they’ll wave from a distance and never approach.

They can’t go South. Their blood can’t take it.”

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“Have you sailed West?” the first man said. His friend sat up, finished his drink, and

poured another. The question seemed to be some kind of code.

“You mean beyond Dublin?”

The first man laughed.

“I’ve been to Iceland,” the second man said.

“My friend,” said the first, “I’ve been to Vinland.”

“Horse shit. There is no Vinland.”

“I’ve set foot there, old boy. I’ve seen the wild grapes.”

“Next you’ll tell me you saw a Monopod.”

The first man laughed. “I don’t know about a Monopod. But Vinland is real. I spent a

summer there with Leif.”

Ketil spoke up: “Leif the Lucky?”

“That’s the one,” the first man said. “Kindest captain I’ve ever known. We had a crew of

sixty. Tried to set up a village there—Leif wanted everyone baptized. But the Skraelings drove

us back.”

“Skraelings?”

“The poor wretches who live there. Men, I suppose. I don’t know what you’d call them.

Half-man, half-troll. Savage creatures.”

“Now I know you’re talking nonsense,” the second man said.

The first shook his head. “Have it your way,” he said.

They kept drinking. Men told stories of sea serpents, or trolls they’d spotted in the

mountains. Ketil absorbed everything. Finally the rain let up, and he stumbled outside and

wandered through the fog. He stopped at his mother’s, hoping for a side of lamb. Instead he

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found a gaggle of teenage girls: his niece and her friends, giggling, pink-faced, braiding each

other’s hair.

“Anything to eat?” he asked.

“You missed supper,” his niece said.

“A crust of bread? Anything?” He went through the pantry and found an old loaf and

some garlic.

The girls stared at him. They were buxom, nubile, and, aside from some pouting now and

then, fairly submissive. Any of them would make a fine wife. He knew all their fathers—most of

them had decent dowries. They knew how to cook.

“Is there any cheese?” he said.

“No.”

“Leftover soup?”

“Get out of here,” his niece said, flinging a shoe at him. “You’re bothering us. Get a

woman of your own!”

Ketil ducked back into the night. The idea of waking up beside one of those milkfed

pigtailed girls every morning made him sad. He trudged home to his shack on the beach and ate

his bread and garlic while listening to the waves. Sea-dragons, Monopods, Suomi warriors, and

Skraelings swam through his brain in a swirl of colors as he fell asleep.

That summer his brother returned from Miklagard. No one had expected to see him again.

Ketil was lying in bed when his niece burst into his shack, screaming the news. He jumped up

and ran across the beach, through the fields, to his brother’s house. A crowd had already

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gathered. His brother sat with a child on each knee, and half the village surrounding him. His

wife—who thought she’d been widowed—was beaming.

Ketil broke through the crowd and embraced his brother, but they didn’t get a chance to

talk until later that night, when the neighbors had drifted away and the children gone to bed.

Ketil, his brother, and his brother’s wife sat by the fire with a groaning old dog.

“I can’t tell you how good this feels,” his brother said. “Sitting in my home, kids asleep

in their beds, hound at my feet.”

“Thanks to Odin for protecting you,” his wife said. “Have you made any sacrifices since

you landed?”

“You haven’t turned Kristian, I see.”

His wife seemed confused. “Why would I do that?”

“It’s spreading everywhere. Our ways are dying out. The whole world is going crazy with

Kristianity.”

“Is the Krist a powerful god?” Ketil asked. “I make sacrifices to Njord, but I can offer

things to him, too, if it’s worthwhile.”

His brother laughed. “There are no gods. Of any kind.”

“What?” his wife said.

“You must have gotten knocked in the head,” Ketil said.

“That I did,” his brother said. “Several times. But I’m not punch-drunk. My brain works

just fine. And I’m telling you: all this talk about gods is a load of shit.”

Ketil and the wife looked at each other. “You’re talking dangerous,” she said.

“Forget the gods,” Ketil said. “Tell me about Miklagard.”

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“All right,” he said, and began describing something out of a dream: a glowing jewel, a

city larger than anything they could imagine, with towers and castles and people of every sort,

Kristians, Muslims, Jews, Africans, bizarre animals, exotic foods.

“Seems worth the journey, to see such things,” Ketil said.

“I would never do it again,” his brother said.

He mentioned storms, river pirates, portages, treachery, marauding cannibals, white-

water rapids, ambushes, political upheaval. “Too many people,” he said. “The Earth might look

empty sometimes, but there’s always another army just over the hill. Another king trying to

conquer. Another group trying to prove whose god is strongest.”

“You’ve changed,” Ketil said.

“I suppose I have.”

“I want to see these things. I want to make the journey.”

“No,” his brother said. “I lost two brothers down there, and I’ll not lose a third. You have

the viking spirit? Fine. It runs in our family. But take it West, Little Fish. Take it across the wide

ocean—not down a narrow river crammed with people trying to kill each other.”

Ketil went swimming that night, something he did to clear his mind. Fish brushed his legs

as he kicked through the black water. If his brother’s tales were true—strange animals, men the

color of coal—then perhaps that old sailor’s were, too. Maybe there really were sea-dragons.

Maybe there were Skraelings.

He had no trouble finding a ship—most of the sailors knew him already. A tall, slender

man named Thorfin was putting together a crew for Iceland, and Ketil volunteered. A fortnight

later, he found himself on a longboat, one of twenty-five that fanned out as they rowed past

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England, around the Orknies, into the open sea. Thorfin’s ship led the way, and the others

followed.

Ketil sat on a chest containing his belongings. Beside him sat a dark-haired youth named

Krok, who claimed to have visited Iceland before. “Volcano island is no big deal,” he said. “It’s

Vinland I’m after.”

“Does Vinland exist?” Ketil asked.

“My father was killed there,” the youth said.

They rowed all day and slept in their seats at night. Ketil grew accustomed to opening his

eyes and finding himself already rowing.

One morning he woke to Krok shaking him and pointing overboard: beneath them was a

creature larger than all twenty-five ships combined, swimming just below the surface. The dawn

light made it glow with strange colors. When the sun rose, and the other men began waking up, it

turned downward and disappeared.

“What do you figure that was?” Ketil said.

“A bad sign,” Krok said.

That night the sea grew choppy, and the boats dipped and fell at wild angles. Rain pelted

their faces. Ketil opened his chest and removed his amulet of Njord: “Spare us, master of the

deep,” he said, “and we will build a monument to your glory in Iceland.”

Krok smacked the wooden carving from his hand, and it went spinning into the ocean.

“You’ll doom us all with that idol,” he said. “You should be praying to Krist.”

“You pray to your god, and I’ll pray to mine,” Ketil said. “There’s no need to throw away

my amulet, which I carved myself out of driftwood.”

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“Krist allows no other gods,” Krok said, just as a wave slammed into the boat. Ketil

coughed and sputtered. He couldn’t see anything. Men shouted from the other ships.

“Njord,” Ketil said. “Ignore this fool who denies your power!”

“Krist,” Krok said. “Forgive this heathen who worships false gods!”

In a flash of lightning, Ketil saw a boat capsized, and men in the water. All he could do

was hold on. The next day seven of the twenty-five ships had disappeared. No trace whatsoever.

Just gone.

Morale was low, but Thorfin pushed them on to the Faroes, where they could rest. That

night, sitting around fires on the rocky beach, Ketil said: “Well, who saved us? Njord or Krist?

And who condemned those other men?”

“We have no way of knowing,” Krok said.

“Is there any way to find out?”

Krok looked at the stars. “I guess we’ll all find out someday.”

In Iceland, Thorfin invited sixty men to a banquet in the great hall. Ketil was surprised to

be chosen—but then remembered how many men had died in the storm. He had someone else’s

spot.

That night, in the hall, Leif the Lucky himself sat at the main table, flanked by his

brothers. They all had red beards. “I’ve only heard legends about these people,” Ketil whispered

to Krok.

“My father sailed with them,” Krok said. “They’re glorified outlaws, nothing more.”

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Over a supper of boiled seal and oysters, Thorfin and Leif debated the pros and cons of

another expedition to Vinland. Thorfin gestured to the sixty men he’d invited, and said: “I

already have a crew.”

Leif raised one red eyebrow. “You underestimate the land. Vinland is not a place to go

skipping into. We nearly starved, the first winter. Only a few lucky elk scores kept us alive.”

“I have a year’s supply of rations.”

“They’ll be gone in a month,” Leif said.

A dark look came over Thorfin’s face. “You think I can’t manage it?”

“Correct,” Leif said. His brothers laughed.

“You should’ve gone farther South,” Thorfin said, sitting back. “That’s why your

settlement failed. The soil’s too rocky up here. Winter’s too harsh. I won’t make the same

mistake.”

“What about the Skraelings?”

“I’ve handled the English,” Thorfin said. “And the Swedes. I guess I can handle these

savages. Besides,” he said, “I plan to trade with them.”

“I wouldn’t advise that,” Leif said.

“What—is their race so barbaric they can’t trade?”

“They didn’t seem too interested in trading.”

“I plan to try, regardless.”

“No one’s stopping you,” Leif said. He raised his cup, and his brothers did the same. “To

Thorfin, and his new enterprise in Vinland. May you have great success.”

They seemed to be mocking him, but Thorfin drained his cup anyway. “May Odin guide

us—and perhaps Loki, too. We’ll need his wiles in dealing with those wretches.”

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Leif pounded his fist. “No gods but Krist will be mentioned at my table,” he said. “Unless

it’s to decry them as false gods. You do believe in Krist, don’t you, Thorfin?”

Thorfin gulped. “I’d be a fool to deny his power.”

Leif smiled. “You might be a fool, anyway,” he said.

The journey to Vinland was nothing compared to what they’d already done. Ketil rowed

hard, eager to see the legendary shore, but when they arrived, he was disappointed. It was just

hills and rocks and forest. Thorfin’s ships rounded the coast, passing the spot where Leif’s

settlement had been, and kept going south.

“Maybe there won’t be any Skraelings this way,” Ketil said.

“I hope there are,” Krok said. “I plan to kill at least one.”

Ketil nearly dropped his oar. “You’ve come here seeking war?”

“I seek vengeance for my father. And with Krist on my side, I’ll get it.”

“How do you know which one killed your father?”

Krok shrugged. “One’s as good as the next.”

Ketil considered telling Thorfin about this—it seemed at odds with the plan to trade—but

they had too much work to do. Once they landed, they went straight into the forest and began

felling trees. Thorfin organized them into groups: those who dragged the logs back, those who

stripped the bark. By dusk, they had the foundations of a longhouse set up—albeit without the

roof. They slept with their boots on, swords at their sides, in case of ambush.

Something about this land agreed with Ketil—the smell of it, perhaps. Each day, he lost

himself in the work of gathering trees. By the end of a week, three longhouses and a smokehouse

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sat on the beach, surrounded by a wall of sharpened points. Thorfin surveyed it with his hands on

his hips. “It’s crude, men. But we’re safe now.”

They opened a barrel of ale and sang loud songs into the night. But the lack of women

made them grumpy, and two men got into a brawl and stabbed each other. One collapsed

instantly, while the other sat down and kept drinking, only to die sitting up, still clutching his

cup. The next morning, Ketil helped drag the bodies into the woods. They buried them beside a

boulder.

Returning to the beach, Ketil stopped short. Outside the fortress, speaking with Thorfin,

was a group of people: short, dark-skinned, naked to the waist, with tangled hair on their heads.

Skraelings.

Ketil approached with his mouth hanging open. Thorfin communicated with gestures and

grunts, while the Skraelings talked amongst each other in a language that flowed like water.

They had broad faces, eyes spaced far apart. They carried spears and hatchets, but seemed most

interested in Thorfin’s sword. He displayed it, the sun glinting off the blade, but allowed no other

man to touch it. The Skraelings offered skins, pottery, baskets of dried mushrooms. But Thorfin

would not part with his weapon.

“Never trade your sword,” he said. “Let every man hear me. Right now these Skraelings

are armed with sticks and stones—Odin help us if they get their hands on our steel.”

Krok nudged Ketil in the ribs. “His devotion to those false gods will be our undoing.”

The Skraelings left on good terms: their leader and Thorfin gripped arms, and looked into

each other’s eyes as a sign of honesty. Then the strange men melted into the forest, leaving Ketil

amazed. “The legends are true,” he said.

“What do you suppose they are?” Krok asked. “Descendants of trolls?”

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“They looked like plain men to me,” Ketil said.

The next week, Ketil, Krok, and a few others went out hunting. So far they’d eaten

nothing but fish and dried rations, which were disappearing quickly—just as Leif had predicted.

Krok walked with a javelin ready at his shoulder. “I can’t wait to bite into some fresh venison,”

he said.

“I wonder if Vinland deer taste different than our deer back home,” Ketil said.

These words had barely escaped their mouths when, as if on cue, the forest came alive

around them. Skraelings emerged like phantoms: dark, silent, low to the ground. One of them

held a spear at his shoulder, just like Krok did. The two groups stared at each other. A bad

feeling swelled in Ketil’s gut.

“Remember, we’re here to trade,” he said. “Not get massacred.”

The Skraelings spoke among themselves. Some of them had rabbits slung over their

shoulders. They kept walking forward.

“Tell them to stay back,” Krok said. “Or I’ll fling this javelin straight through one of

them, I swear to Krist.”

“Just relax,” Ketil said. “Thorfin found a way to communicate. So can we.”

Krok spat. “Thorfin’s another pagan, just like these pagans. He’d have us burn in hell

with them.”

Still moving forward, the Skraeling leader said something, and Krok responded with a

shriek. He hurled his javelin straight through the leader’s neck. The Skraelings erupted like a

flock of birds. They swarmed onto the Northmen, swinging and hacking. Ketil dropped to his

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knees and crawled out of the fray, where he crouched beside some bushes. He had never killed

anyone and didn’t want to start now.

Krok took a spear through the chest, and the others were stabbed, slashed, and scalped

until the entire party lay unmoving on the forest floor. Only one Skraeling—the leader—was

wounded. His neck spurted blood as his tribesmen knelt over him, humming.

Two Skraelings approached Ketil. After some deliberation, they bound him hand and

foot, and tied him to a stick like a dead animal. They buried their leader and marked his grave

with stones. The Norsemen they left on beds of bloody leaves, staring blankly up at the treetops.

Then they started walking.

Ketil swung back and forth on the stick. His captors took him deep into the woods, up

and down hills, across streams where they stepped on rocks, in and out of dappled sunlight. He

decided he should have fought and died back there—his fate now would be even worse. He

recalled his brother’s stories about cannibals on the road to Miklargard. Probably the same thing

awaited him now.

They arrived at a camp of sorts—a circle of wigwams with a fire pit at the center. Brown-

skinned children ran around with dogs. Dozens of Skraelings surrounded Ketil, speaking rapidly

in their watery language. Someone cut the ropes that bound him, and he crashed to the ground.

Women came forward and touched his hair. They led him to a wigwam and placed a bowl of

porridge before him. Children peeked in through the flap, giggling.

He realized they weren’t going to kill him. Maybe he could slip away later, if they left

him unattended. Trying to re-trace the route in his mind, he realized something else: he had no

idea how to get back.

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The next morning, a young man entered the wigwam and sat down across from him. He

wore buckskin pants and had large, expressive eyes. A stream of words came out of his mouth,

and when Ketil didn’t respond, he laughed.

“Azban,” he said, pointing to himself.

Ketil touched his own chest and said, “Ketil.”

The man seemed delighted. He spread his arms, as if encompassing the whole village,

and said, “Wabanaki.”

It took Ketil a while to understand—these people called themselves Wabanaki. Not

Skraelings. The man pointed to certain objects—boots, hair, a jug of water—and gave the names

for them. He peppered Ketil with questions. And though Ketil couldn’t answer, he began to

understand: this man wanted to know why the Danes were here, what they wanted, what their

plans were. Ketil tried to pantomime his answers, but nothing made sense.

Eventually the young man stood up, smiled, and exited through the flap. Ketil tried to

follow. Two guards with feathers in their hair pushed him back inside. They said something that

Ketil understood perfectly, even though he knew none of their words: “You’re not going

anywhere.”

The weather changed quickly. A wind came down from the North, bringing not just cold

air, but a certain smell—the same smell Ketil had noticed while chopping trees. The forest

seemed to change colors overnight. Ketil’s guards conceded to let him walk, but if he went too

far from the camp, they turned him back with long spears. He didn’t resist.

During their rambles, the men spoke to each other, and Ketil picked up certain words:

tree, river, fish. They gathered berries and nuts as they walked. One day they saw, high in a tree,

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a creature about the size of a dog, with a mask on its face and a ringed tail. “Azban,” they said—

the name of the man who had visited Ketil’s wigwam.

Soon the entire tribe packed up and moved inland for winter. They carried wigwams on

their backs, along with pottery and a few babies. Young men took the heaviest loads. They

walked for days, rising at dawn and sleeping only a few hours each night on the cold forest floor.

Dogs trailed behind. Azban gave Ketil, who was taller than anyone in the tribe, a bearskin cloak

that hung past his knees.

At last they came to a clearing with several longhouses on it, similar to the ones Ketil and

his kinsmen had built. Rather than logs, these structures were made of hundreds of thin sticks,

burnt and sharpened and sealed with mulch. They had stood empty since last winter. The tribe

swept them out, then erected a few wigwams and cleaned up the fire pit. The first snow fell and

twenty or thirty men left on a hunting trip, leaving Ketil behind with the women and children. He

didn’t understand why any of this was happening—why hadn’t they killed him along with Krok

and the others?

His guards lingered around the central wigwam, where an old grandmother tended a

cauldron. Mushrooms and tubers hung on strings. Young women sat inside weaving baskets, and

the guards liked to flirt with them. They got easily bored, though, and wandered off, leaving

Ketil sitting there. The more it snowed, the less he wanted to be any place else.

Slowly, he began to understand what people around him were saying. Cup, dog, feather,

snow. Verbs and sentences emerged out of the flowing water. He quickly realized that the

women did nothing but gossip: who slept with whom, who wanted to marry whom. They spoke

openly and frankly about men, thinking Ketil couldn’t follow. They were no different than his

niece and her friends plotting and scheming back in Denmark.

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One of the girls didn’t say much, and Ketil gathered that she was unmarried. She had

thick, luxurious hair, and a faraway expression that he somehow identified with. She smiled

during the women’s stories, but never spoke, just weaved and weaved, her hands always moving.

He found himself thinking about her at night—what dreams, what feelings did she have?

One day, the old grandmother told a joke, and Ketil laughed without thinking. Everyone

stared at him. The grandmother leaned down with her wrinkled face and black eyes and said,

“Can you understand me?”

“Sometimes,” Ketil said—the first words he ever spoke in their language.

The women gasped. Some were horrified, others delighted, but all agreed to shoo him out

of the wigwam. Apparently they no longer deemed him a risk to run away. “I never asked to be

here,” he yelled in Danish.

The hunting party returned with two bucks and a moose. Everyone celebrated. Bonfire,

singing, dancing. The food would last all winter. Ketil ate his fill, and then watched the gyrations

from the shadows. Although their songs were different, these people, in their celebration of

something so basic, were not so unlike his own.

Azban approached him. “I heard you can talk now.”

“A little,” Ketil said.

“Then perhaps we can finally have our chat,” he said, sitting down. “Why are you here?”

Ketil was dumbfounded. “That’s what I want to know! Why have you kept me alive?”

Azban smiled. Though he looked Ketil’s age, something in his eyes was much older.

“There are two reasons,” he said. “One, because we hope for a ransom. Second, and most

important to me, is because you have a strong Manitou.”

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“Manitou?”

“Your spirit. Your soul. The thing that lives inside you. That’s why you couldn’t kill any

of us that day in the woods—your Manitou wouldn’t allow it.”

“That’s why you spared me?”

“That, and the ransom. Will anyone come searching for you?”

“I doubt it,” Ketil said.

“Your countrymen don’t care about you?”

“My countrymen have probably killed each other by now.”

“I see,” Azban said. “Well, you can spend the winter with us, obviously. After that—

perhaps we’ll return to your fort and see what’s left. But tell me: why did your people come

here? What are you seeking?”

“I really don’t know,” Ketil said.

“If I traveled all the way across the ocean,” Azban said, “I’d want to know why I was

doing it.”

When the fire burned low and the singing died down, everyone gathered around the old

grandmother. She sat on a log, her black eyes tilted up to the stars. Everything was silent—as if

the animals had stopped their nighttime wanderings to listen—and when the old woman spoke,

her voice was low and dangerous, like something borne on the wind.

“This year we have newcomers,” she said. “Not just the usual babies, but a Kavdlunat

from across the sea. One who has refused to kill our men, but instead has traveled with us and

learned our tongue. Tonight I will tell him how our people came to be, so that he may understand

our ways.

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“Long ago, longer than a thousand generations, in a time before this one, the earth was

empty and dark. Black water churned beneath a vacant sky. And the Gichi-Manitou, the Great

Spirit, the being without gender or form, the ancient one with no beginning or end, decided, in its

loneliness, to create a world full of life.

“First it summoned the turtle, who had been waiting underwater for eternity. When its

great shell emerged, Gichi-Manitou built mountains and valleys on top of it—knowing that the

turtle, with its slow rhythms and ponderous movements, would keep the land stable.

“Exhausted after such work, Gichi-Manitou lay down and fell asleep. Strange creatures

appeared in its dreams: rabbits with floppy ears, walruses with tusks, moose with antlers, fish

with scales. When it awoke, it proceeded to make all the animals it had seen, and the earth was

filled with life.

“Next Gichi-Manitou stacked boulders into the shapes of people, and blew the breath of

life into them. These monsters lumbered around, clumsy, smashing dents into the earth with each

step. They flattened trees and stepped on animals. They had no concern for the earth, for the

ever-patient turtle, the one who endures. Gichi-Manitou saw that they would destroy everything

it had created. So with lightning bolts it blasted them apart. Rain filled the craters they had made,

giving us lakes.

“Soon, Gichi-Manitou decided to try again. This time, it hurled lightning onto a rocky

beach—not far from here, in the Dawn Lands. From the smoking crater rose a being made of

sand, called Gluskap, the father of all Wabanaki, and of other tribes too. Being made of earth,

Gluskap was inclined to treat it kindly. Flowers bloomed in his footsteps. Fruit ripened under his

touch. Rather than shoot animals, he instead shot arrows into trees, turning them into men and

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women. These became the Wabanaki. Gluskap taught us how to care for the land, how to use its

resources, to take only what we need, and to tread softly upon the old turtle’s back.

“But from the same smoking crater, back on the beach in the Dawn Lands, rose another

being—Malsumis, the brother of Gluskap. While Gluskap sought to reconcile man and nature,

teaching them to live in harmony, Malsumis wanted the opposite. He lingered among the

animals, spreading awful stories about human beings, making the creatures either fearful or

angry. Most of them decided to run away from humans on sight. Others resolved to eat as many

humans as they could. To those who wanted to fight, Malsumis gave out weapons: stingers for

wasps, poison for snakes, fangs for the wolverine. Malsumis took the rivers and valleys,

organized by Gichi-Manitou in straight lines, and twisted them up, making them ragged and

broken. Now humans would have to fight against the land in order to live upon it. But because

Malsumis had harmed no living thing, Gichi-Manitou was forced to spare him, and his spirit

lurks even today in the hearts of certain beasts—and sometimes in the hearts of men.”

When the story ended, Azban turned to Ketil and said: “That’s just one version. There are

others. Gluskap is everything to us. He exists inside every Wabanaki person. He is our

connection to the Great Spirit.”

Ketil sat back. There was much to think about.

“I saw a creature,” he said. “With a mask on its face, and a ringed tail. They called it by

your name.”

Azban laughed. “Yes, I’m named for that trickster. The clever one. I’m adept at

languages, you see—I broker treaties with other tribes. That’s how I got my name. And that’s

why I was chosen to speak to you first. Everyone thought I might be able to decipher your

language. It sounds like rocks breaking against each other.”

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“You’ve mentioned other tribes,” Ketil said. “How far does the forest go?”

“You could walk all day, every day, for the rest of your life, and never come to the end,”

Azban said.

A few men approached and snatched up Azban to take part in a dance. They lurched

around the circle, throwing their heads back and howling. Across the fire sat the girl—hair

braided, hands in her lap, eyes big and solemn. Typically, at a party like this, Ketil would have

drunk several horns of ale, and spoken to whatever woman he wanted. But he had no ale. He

would have to do it sober.

He walked over and sat beside her. “My name is Ketil.”

She smiled, and something tightened inside his chest. He had no idea what to say next.

“Did you really come from across the sea?” the girl asked.

Ketil nodded.

“Are you going to stay with us?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She touched his hair, the way the children had done when he first arrived at camp. “Do

all your people have yellow hair?”

“My brother’s was red.”

She raised her eyebrows as though skeptical. “How long does it take to cross the sea?”

“Many weeks,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”

“Are more of your people coming?”

“I doubt it. Most of my people don’t believe this land exists.”

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She kept touching his hair, so he reached up to touch hers. They sat there stroking each

other’s hair. A smell emanated from her, rich and smoky—the same smell he had noticed in the

forest. Other people watched, but he didn’t care. “How old are you?” he asked.

“Fifteen.”

“Where are your parents?”

“The underwater demons took them. Many years ago.”

“I’m intimate with the sea,” Ketil said. “What demons are these?”

“River folk,” the girl said. “The evil ones who tip kayaks and drag people under. They

lurk in the reeds, and in deep water. If you see one, you can be sure you’ll drown soon. My

mother spotted one the morning before she went fishing.”

“I didn’t know your people made boats. I’m a boat-maker, myself.”

“The Wabanaki make the best in the world.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said. “I’ve seen galleys that could hold five hundred men or more.

Warships with streaming flags and dragons’ heads.”

The girl smiled. “Ours hold one person only.”

“Just like the ones I used to make back home.”

The fire crackled.

“Why did you come here?” the girl asked.

“I think—I wanted to see the world,” Ketil said.

The girl leaned forward. Her face got closer and closer until it blocked out everything

else. Her hair hung around them like a curtain. “What do you see now?” she said. Her lips were

soft and warm, her breath like pine needles in the forest. Everything went spinning away. Ketil

wrapped her in his arms, dizzier than if he’d drunk a whole cask of ale, and they rolled around on

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the ground. He had no sense of time. It might have been a moment or an hour later when they

were ripped apart. A pair of hands flung him backward, and he scrambled up to find the old

grandmother, along with Azban, standing between them.

Azban’s eyes blazed. “This is how you treat our women?”

“Now, now,” the grandmother said. “I see what’s going on here.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Ketil said.

Azban stood chest to chest with him. “You’re right—we should’ve killed you that day.”

“Talaz,” the grandmother said. “Girl, do you want to marry this Kavdlunat?”

“What?” Ketil and Azban said at the same time.

The girl stood with her hands folded before her. She wore the same faraway look Ketil

had noticed in the wigwam. “Grandmother,” she said. “This boy came here for me. The water

took my parents, and now the water has brought me a husband. He sought the world, and he has

found it in me.”

“Well?” the grandmother said, turning to Ketil.

The night before the ceremony, Azban and a few others tied Ketil’s hair into a ponytail,

and then shaved underneath it—around his ears, his neck. “This is your sign of commitment,”

Azban said. “Keep it clean just as you keep your marriage clean.”

“Are you sure the tribe will accept this?” Ketil said. “I’ve only been here a few months.”

“If Grandmother approves, we all approve,” Azban said. “Besides: that girl, Talaz, has

always been a strange one. If she says the ocean sent you, maybe she’s right.”

The ritual itself was simple. They stood before the tribe, and the grandmother asked if

they accepted each other. Talaz presented Ketil with a wooden box, engraved with images of

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fish. Apparently it was something she’d kept for years, ever since her parents died. Ketil had

nothing to give, which embarrassed him—he would have gladly offered his sword, or any of the

bone carvings he’d made back home—but everyone seemed to understand. He had come here

with nothing, and was starting a new life.

Snow fluttered onto them as they stood there. Talaz wore a long brown cloak, and

mistletoe in her hair. She kept her eyes on Ketil the entire time. He felt the world spinning away

again, and longed to carry her into a wigwam, where they could be alone.

Later, with the tribe outside singing and dancing, they lay wrapped in furs, her scent

enveloping him. “Your hair,” he breathed into her ear. “Your hair is like a handful of earth.” He

put his face in it. “The whole world is here,” he said.

In the spring he built a kayak, using moosehide, birch, clay, and twine. Azban and the

others offered advice, but Ketil was a natural—his vessel floated as well as anyone’s. They

invited him on their fishing trip. He left behind Talaz, whose belly had grown round and tight,

and embarked from a clear lagoon along with twenty other kayaks.

They paddled upriver, first along a wide expanse, but then veering into channels that

twisted and turned through the forest. The water ran fast and cold. In some places Ketil could see

clear to the bottom, thirty or forty feet down. Speckled fish darted by. Rowing felt like an old

friend: when he took up his oar and cut his first stroke, something warm and familiar spread

through him. Memories flooded in: the journey across the ocean, the leviathan, surviving the

storm.

The men didn’t say much. They dragged nets, cast lines. For sturgeon they threw spears.

Each night they stopped and made a fire on the riverbank, grilling some of what they’d caught.

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Ketil rolled into his furs and inhaled the smell of the forest. Azban told stories of Gluskap and

Malsumis and other ancient beings, including monsters and giants said to still roam the woods.

In the mornings the men washed themselves meticulously, no matter how cold it was. Mist hung

over the water and they skimmed through it in silence.

On the return trip, Azban brought his boat alongside Ketil’s. “Would you like to visit

your people’s fort?”

“What?” Ketil said.

“It’s nearby,” he said. “We’re approaching from the other direction. We can make a

detour, if you want.”

“All right,” Ketil said.

At a certain bend in the river, they dragged their kayaks onto the bank and covered them

with brush. A few men stayed back, while Ketil and the rest crept through the forest, toward the

coast. They passed the stumps of trees cut by Danes. Finally they came to a rocky beach, and the

remains of Ketil’s old camp. The wall of sharpened logs was gone. Only one longhouse

remained, and it had gaps in the ceiling. Birds flew in and out. Ketil poked around the place,

hoping to find a cup, a helmet—anything.

“Where did your people go?” Azban asked.

“They weren’t prepared,” Ketil said.

His heart was heavy as he walked back to the river. On the way home, he ignored the

men’s singing—they were louder now, having caught plenty of fish—and instead thought about

Denmark. He would never see it again. His mother, brother, his home village, those silly girls.

He would never speak Danish again, or hear it spoken. Never study runes again, never hear the

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gallop of horses, never roam the fields, never listen to gossip about kings and dynasties and wars

and intrigue—all the things he had formerly despised….

Why did he end up here, while so many around him died? And to whom should he pray

now—Njord, or this Gluskap character? What was he? Where did he belong?

When he returned, proud of the sturgeon tied to his boat, he found something to be even

prouder about: Talaz greeted him with a baby boy.

One winter passed, and then another. The boy—Namas, the Little Fish, just like his

father—had Ketil’s small mouth and aquiline nose, but everything else was his mother’s. Thick

hair, dark skin, wide-spaced brown eyes. Somehow, unexpectedly, he was the most beautiful and

interesting thing Ketil had ever seen.

One day in mid-summer, someone ran into the village, out of breath. Ketil glanced up

from the kayak he was building. The messenger stood with his hands on his knees and gasped:

“The Kavdlunat are back.”

The tribe gathered around to hear. Ketil dropped his tools and sat down. His heart raced,

his hands shook. Apparently some ships had been spotted off the coast—long ships with dragon

heads, carrying white men.

Azban and the others turned to him. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I don’t know,” Ketil said.

“Have they come back for you?”

“No,” Ketil said.

“Do they want revenge for the men we killed?”

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“I doubt it.”

“What do they want?”

“I don’t know,” he said again.

“We should kill them all,” someone said. “Before they strike us. We could easily ambush

them.”

“No!” Ketil said.

Azban raised an eyebrow. “Can we be sure where your loyalty is?”

Ketil stood up, towering over his friend. “My loyalty is with my wife and son,” he said.

“I’m Wabanaki now. Don’t insult me again.”

“Fair enough,” Azban said. “Then maybe you can go talk to these newcomers.”

Ketil nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

He emerged from the woods with his hands up. Half a dozen Danes with swords greeted

him outside the fort. Behind them stood another thirty or forty, including several women. They

had rebuilt part of the wall, and fixed the longhouse roof. Meat was roasting. A familiar tongue

touched his ears:

“I am Toke, son of Halldor, and I come only in peace, seeking no recourse for prior blood

feuds, and representing the banner of almighty Krist our lord. Can you understand a word I’m

saying?”

Ketil tried not to burst out laughing. In Wabanaki, he said, “I am a Dane like you, if only

you could see it.”

The leader was short and burly. He glanced at his lieutenants. “Who in God’s name are

you? You’re no Skraeling if I’ve ever seen one.”

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“I was left here,” he said in Danish. Everyone gasped. The men lowered their swords. “I

was lost in the forest. The Wabanaki found me. I’ve lived with them for three years. I have a

wife and son here.”

One man drew back in disgust. “You fathered a Skraeling baby?”

“I am a Skraeling,” Ketil said.

“Were you part of Thorfin’s group?” the leader asked. “That bumbling pagan. My brother

Krok was on that journey—did you know him?”

“No,” Ketil said.

“Their mission was doomed because Thorfin denied Krist. Ours will be different. The

lord rewards his faithful.”

“At least you brought some women,” Ketil said.

Another man spoke up. “You know about the Skraelings, eh?”

“I am a Skraeling,” Ketil repeated.

“Are they willing to trade? Are they hostile?”

“We’re nomads,” Ketil said. “We live one place in summer, another in winter. We don’t

grow crops. We hunt and fish. We gather nuts and berries. We know the secret pathways of the

land.”

“Have you told the Skraelings about Krist?” the leader asked.

“They have their own Krist, called Gluskap.”

The leader nodded. “Perhaps their gods hold sway in their lands. I won’t deny that. But I

still plan to stake out a small claim for Krist here in Vinland. Wherever the flock goes, so goes

the shepherd.”

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“This confirms that I am a Dane no more,” Ketil said. He stepped away from the men,

toward the forest, holding up his hands. “Good luck on your settlement. I’ll tell the Wabanaki

that you come in peace, and that all blood feuds have been forgotten.”

“You’re a strange case,” the leader said. “I hope to see more of you. Let me know if

you’re tired of life in the forest—we have three boats leaving next week for Iceland.”

Ketil stopped short.

“Your Skraeling wife and child can come too, provided they renounce pagan gods and

accept Krist.”

Ketil stood there. Behind the leader, dozens of curious Danes peered at him. “I’ll think

about that,” he said in Wabanaki, and took off.

In the night, he told Talaz about it: “We can visit my homeland. I can see my family

again—you can meet my brother. I’ll show you Iceland, the volcano island, where we can sit in

hot springs. You can see the fjords of Norway, the dales of England, monasteries in Ireland, the

Baltic Sea, the black forests of Germany. Namas can meet his grandparents. You can learn my

language, as I’ve learned yours. We can be children of the world.”

Talaz patted his head. “Go back to sleep, Little Fish.”

“I’m awake,” Ketil said. “Do you hear me? I can go home again.”

“The Dawn Lands are your home,” she said.

“Don’t you want to see the world?”

“You said the world was inside of me,” Talaz said.

Ketil sat back. “I’m confused. You don’t want to go?”

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“This is my home,” she said. “Everything I need is here. I’d be miserable in your land,

where I would know nothing, and be an outcast, lonely and mute, away from my family, away

from the forest. I’m happy here.”

“It doesn’t have to be permanent. We can stay for a year, and then take another ship back.

Now that people know about Vinland, more and more ships will be coming.”

“I know how those journeys go. People don’t always come back.”

“I’m favored by Njord,” he said. “Our passage will be safe.”

She had that faraway look again. “Go, if you have to,” she said. She placed a hand on

their sleeping son. “But Namas stays with me.”

“Krist, Odin, and Thor,” Ketil said, kicking a pot. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

“You’re Wabanaki now. We let you into the tribe. Will you abandon us? Will you leave

me here with a child? What would happen to me? The village whore, who bore the offspring of

the Kavdlunat?” Her voice was low and steady, as menacing as the grandmother’s had been the

night of the story.

“And was admission to the tribe a prison sentence? Might I come and go as I please, and

visit my family, without all this scandal?”

“A Wabanaki’s home is the Dawn Lands. We’re born here, we die here. A true Wabanaki

has no desire to leave the forest.”

“But I also have the viking spirit,” Ketil said.

“You must do what you feel is right, then,” Talaz said.

Ketil stomped out of the wigwam, cursing, and went into the woods to think. A full moon

floated above. He walked deep into the forest. He could return home, embrace his brother, be a

Dane again—and leave behind his wife and son. Or he could stay in Vinland, where he had built

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a life for himself—but never leave it again. His mother would wonder for decades what became

of him. If he left, he would regret it. If he stayed, he would regret it.

Something grunted in a tree, and he looked up to see a masked creature—the Azban. The

trickster. Its ringed tail flicked back and forth. It made a sound like laughter. Of course. The

whole thing was a joke. Ketil understood now: it didn’t matter which choice he made. There was

no point to anything. He wasn’t even sure if right and wrong existed.

“Well, joker,” Ketil said. “What should I do?”

The creature kept laughing.

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The Man From Odense

Hans Christian Andersen, twenty-five, unknown writer, actor, singer, and drifter, arrived

at our estate this morning. I watched from my upstairs window as he came down the lane: a tall,

awkward man, with enormous hands and feet, carrying everything he owned on his back. I was

there when Papa received him. He possesses a fine singing voice, as he demonstrated to Papa and

me, but doesn’t amount to much as a dancer. He’s worked with theatre companies, he said, and

even published his own play, but still relies on benefactors to support him. He gets by however

he can. One of his friends in Copenhagen suggested he come here to the Voigt estate.

Papa, as usual, offered to accommodate him in the guest house out back. Papa has always

had a soft spot for struggling artists—perhaps because he himself never showed any talent in

those areas.

“Riborg,” he said to me, “show our new guest his quarters.” Then, turning back to Hans:

“You’ll find all the peace and quiet you need to complete your work.” My father, the short,

rotund, cigar-chomping capitalist, stood with one hand on Hans’s back, beaming at the lad. “The

only thing I require is that you join the family for dinner each night to report on your work’s

progress. My daughter here will help you get settled.”

They shook hands again, and then Papa disappeared to transact some business across

town. I led Hans through the parlor and out to the courtyard, where he tripped on the

cobblestones.

“Be careful,” I said. His feet are long, twice that of a normal man’s, and jut out at strange

angles. He offered me a toothy smile.

“Are you your father’s only daughter?” he asked.

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“I am. My brother Christian also lives here, but he’s out hunting today.”

“Christian? Why, that’s my middle name.”

“So it is,” I said.

We stood looking at each other. Some feeling emanated from him: halting, diffident, but

also prescient, as though he knew something I didn’t. I curtsied and left him to unpack.

A post came late this afternoon, only a few minutes ago, saying that Alfred will be

attending dinner tonight after all. My fiancé, like my father, is a relentless businessman whose

financial obligations often keep him away. Usually I don’t mind his absence, but tonight I am

relieved that he will be here. I don’t want this new stranger getting any ideas.

An intriguing repast tonight.

I arrived home just in time to be served, and trudged to the table in the muddy clothes I’d

been wearing all day. A new visitor sat smiling at me. Long, lean, and fair, he held forth on

various subjects, mainly theatre and art, while daintily maneuvering his silverware with long,

creamy fingers. He’s appeared in a few small productions in Copenhagen, he said, but hopes to

compose his masterwork here in Lyn. He winked when he said this. Papa loves him, of course.

Since Mama died, philanthropy has not only filled Papa’s time, but satisfied his altruistic urges.

He ordered one of our lambs sacrificed as though a prodigal son had returned. Mama wouldn’t

have approved—she never touched meat—but the mutton was excellent, and I said so.

“Ah, but you probably prefer gamier meats,” Hans said. “I understand you were out

hunting today.”

I choked, and quickly drank some wine. No one knew that I hadn’t gone hunting, but had

merely walked all day through the woods, along the river, listening to the birds, my mind full of

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daydreams.

“That’s right, son,” Papa said. “Did you snag a hart as you’d intended?”

“I did,” I said, swallowing. “A rather stout one, too, but on the way home I passed some

poor starving heathens, and couldn’t help but give it away.”

“Always a generous lad,” Papa said.

Alfred, my sister’s fiancé, snorted. “That’s not generosity, it’s foolishness.” He pointed

his fork at me across the table. “Do you expect to run the business someday by giving everything

away?”

Alfred is of medium height, with medium-length hair, medium shoulders, medium build.

I’ve never seen him wear a color other than black or gray. His flat brown eyes process things

methodically and without surprise. There are times when I want to swing a shovel at him.

“My father’s philanthropy is my example,” I said.

Alfred grunted and went back to his plate. He wanted to argue that Papa was foolish too,

but couldn’t do so with the recipient of Papa’s charity sitting right there at the table. Hans, for his

part, grinned and continued to eat. He finished three full plates and dessert. I noticed him

watching my sister—and who wouldn’t? She is a nubile young thing—and when Alfred and

Papa fell into a drunken discussion about the economic viability of windmills, the three of us,

Riborg, Hans, and I, seemed like children at the adults’ table.

“What is your masterpiece going to be?” I asked Hans.

“A play, I believe,” he said. “Or perhaps poems. I can’t dictate what the Muse will send

me.”

“Maybe the countryside around Lyn will serve as inspiration,” Riborg said. Her cheeks

glowed, sweat stood on her forehead. She had dipped into the port.

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She studied Hans intently, with a look I’d never seen her give to Alfred. I felt jealous

somehow, and my appetite fluttered away like a bird, despite my day’s long ramblings and the

quality of the mutton.

“Your estate here should be inspiration enough,” Hans said. “As long as I see you

regularly. You Voigts are an unusually handsome family.”

He glanced at me as he said this, but I knew the comment was intended for my sister. It

was the only way Hans could compliment her with her fiancé sitting nearby. Alfred, of course,

didn’t even notice, engrossed as he was by Papa’s financial talk. Hans might have proposed an

elopement right there at the table.

I retired early, citing exhaustion from my phantom hunt, and clomped upstairs while

everyone was still drinking coffee. I had the servants draw me a hot bath. Now I lie stretched

across my bed with the moon shining through the window onto my page. I can’t sleep.

Tomorrow I must visit that accursed factory and make some horrid, inane observations.

During my hike today I stumbled into some mud and, despite the bath, I keep finding

traces of it on me, behind my ears, smudged between my toes, hardened in my hair. As though

I’ll never get it off.

I dragged myself from bed early this morning, before the day grew too hot, so I could

walk through the orchard in the mist. Last night’s port left my skull pounding and my body

exhausted. No more drinking!

How many times have I said that before?

Orchards are best in the summer, I think, when they are cool and leafy and the apples are

but tiny buds, and not plunking down on top of your head. One might imagine, walking through

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such a grove, that a candy house sits around the next corner. Or a castle, or a witch, or some

other wonder. Strolling through the orchard alone, I can pretend that my life is not truly mine,

and that anything could happen at any moment.

But the orchard doesn’t extend forever into faerie world. It ends with our property, and

beyond it lie only fallow fields and muddy paths and the river, rushing over boulders like a

messenger. And I am still Riborg. And I already know what will happen on any given day: I will

do as I please, being my father’s only daughter, until Alfred summons me, and then I will visit

him at his office in town, and listen to him prattle on about industry and real estate, and perhaps I

will grant him a kiss or two before returning home.

But today something did happen. As I walked through the orchard (perhaps twirling a bit,

with arms outstretched, the way a proper faerie should), I ran right into our new lodger, Hans. I

gave a little yelp. He stood in the fog, tall and spindly, rather like a tree himself. His face

hovered above the mist like an alien moon.

“Good heavens,” I said. “What are you doing out here so early?”

“The Muse doesn’t always come to me,” he said. “Sometimes I must seek it out.”

“It?” I said. “Isn’t your muse a She?”

“The Muse can take whatever form it wants.”

Sunlight came through the trees. Everything was silent—even the birds had stopped their

morning business to listen.

When I spoke again, my voice came out a whisper. “What are you really doing here? Are

you really an artist—or are you just another freeloader, taking advantage of my father’s good

faith?”

Hans didn’t move. I blinked, and for a moment he was gone: I was face to face with a

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tree trunk whose swirl resembled a gawky face. But then the tree stepped forward, out of the

shadows, and I saw that Hans was indeed human, and had a thick overcoat buttoned down to his

knees, though the day was already growing warm. “My dear Riborg,” he said, leaning close.

“One day, all of Europe will celebrate me. Banquets will be held in my honor. The Pope shall

attend my funeral. I’m a drifter, yes, but I am also an artist—and my plan is to stay here in Lyn

until I complete my masterpiece. In fact, I refuse to leave without having done so.”

He hovered inches from my face, close enough for a kiss. “Riborg,” he said softly, as

though testing out my name on his lips. And then he lurched suddenly away. The fog lent his

otherwise graceless form a bit of style. He melted into the orchard, his footsteps crunching back

toward the estate. For some reason I felt shaken up and now, writing this in my room with jittery

hands, I can’t say why.

Spent the morning at Papa’s factory—the one I am to inherit. God, I can’t imagine a more

horrid fate. Dank, crowded rooms packed with workers who grunt and swear and pollute the air

with their vulgar stories and their flatulence. Papa made his fortune overseeing such work,

though he didn’t toil on the floor himself. Seeing those pathetic, soot-faced wretches depresses

me beyond belief. Having to supervise such a place, to pace its corridors daily, to inspect

machinery, to calculate numbers and talk merchants into buying, to remain in Lyn forever…

such a future is dreary indeed.

I couldn’t bear to stay there past noon, and—though Papa would scold me if he found

out—when the workers took their midday break, I left the premises and went to the tavern. The

barkeep knows Papa, but I didn’t care. At that moment I needed a shadowy table where I could

sip a brew in peace.

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Just outside, I encountered our new lodger, Hans. He seemed to be walking aimlessly. He

wore funny, patched-together trousers and a long overcoat, though the day had grown quite

warm. He smiled when he saw me.

“I didn’t realize how tall you are,” I said. I’d only seen him seated at the dinner table, but

here on the street he stood a full head above me.

“Strange, isn’t it,” he said. “Both my parents were rather short people. Yet I fear I may

still be growing.”

“Blessing or curse?” I said, gesturing to the tavern’s low doorway.

“That remains to be seen,” Hans said.

Inside, we ordered beers and sat in a corner, beside a window overlooking the town. It

was a fine day, I admit—sunny and warm—but I couldn’t enjoy it, with the specter of that

damned factory lingering over my head. “I’ve half a mind to burn it down,” I said. “But Papa

would only use the insurance money to build another, and nothing would change.”

Hans leaned forward. “What do you want to do?”

“That’s the problem,” I said. “If I had a skill, a natural skill, or a passion for something,

Papa would certainly allow me to pursue it. But I don’t. I crave only to walk through fields all

day, observing birds. Sometimes I feel like I’m not fit for this earth.”

“I understand,” Hans said. “You’re an dreamer, like me. But you mustn’t care what

society thinks. You have to do what pleases you, no matter what. On your deathbed, you won’t

regret doing things that brought you happiness.”

“So you’re a philosopher as well.”

Hans sat back. A shadow crossed his face, as though I’d offended him. “Don’t belittle

me,” he said in a voice suddenly ominous.

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“No, no,” I sighed, and drained my beer. “I envy you, that’s all.” A warmth crept up my

neck at this admission and I looked out the window to avoid his gaze. In the street, a young boy

and his dog ushered a herd of goats toward the river.

“Would you rather be that boy?” Hans asked. “Live the pastoral life?”

I shrugged.

Hans reached across the table and grabbed my wrist, a gesture unexpectedly intimate. His

fingers were cool and soft, the fingers of a pianist. “I’ve traveled across Denmark since I was

that boy’s age,” he said, “and I can tell you this: You never know what tomorrow may bring.”

When I stood up I realized I was drunk. Rather than go back to the factory, I stumbled

through the woods behind it, into a meadow, and plopped down beside this boulder where I now

sit. Hans has gone back to the estate, presumably to work on his play, or his poetry. A flock of

birds just erupted from the trees behind me, black against the clear sky, beholden to no man. My

wrist burns as though someone has dipped it in flames.

Hans approached me today in the parlor, where I sat sketching, and made an odd request.

I hadn’t seen him since our encounter in the orchard three days ago. He stood before me like a

toy soldier, heels together, hands hidden behind his back. “How goes the work?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer, but swung his hands around to reveal bunches of uncut daisies. Earth

still clung to their scraggly roots. He dipped low and said: “Might I see you—officially?”

What was I supposed to say to this?

My pencil, still fresh and sharp, hovered above the paper. “And just what does that mean,

‘officially’?”

“Alone,” he said, and seeing that I wasn’t going to accept the flowers, placed them on the

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windowsill beside me. “The two of us, alone, by arrangement.”

“Haven’t you seen me alone before? When I showed you to your quarters? And in the

orchard? Aren’t you seeing me right now?”

“Yes,” he said. And nothing more.

“I am engaged,” I said.

He gave a little bow. “Respectfully,” he said. “Your beauty entrances me. I wish only to

see you, to be in your presence, to learn what goes on inside your mind. I would never seek to

compromise your virtue.”

My face grew hot. “You audacity astounds, Mr. Andersen.”

“That’s not a rejection,” he said.

“Very well. Meet me tomorrow at noon at Berend Lake. If you are even one minute late, I

shall be gone. Now, if you’ll excuse me—” I gathered my sketchbook and retreated upstairs.

I sent word to Papa, thru a servant, that I was feeling ill and would not take dinner

tonight. “Female symptoms,” I said, which keeps both him and Alfred from inquiring further. I

can’t face either of them. If my fiancé discovered a secret meeting with Hans, no matter how

innocent, he would kill him—and then call off our wedding. My reputation around Lyn would be

ruined, and Papa would take it awfully hard, and poor Hans would be lucky to escape with his

life….

Poor Hans, indeed! Where does he get the nerve?

Rain clouds are forming outside and my loins are twitching. Our lodger’s request, if not

the man himself, has gotten me stirred up inside. His reference to my lingering chastity is of

course accurate, despite Alfred’s attempts in recent months to rectify that situation. Alfred with

his hairy arms and discolored teeth and cigar breath. The mere thought repulses me. Nor does

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Hans offer much in the way of attraction. How I wish Mama was here to counsel me! What does

a woman do when every day her body throbs and aches, but no man possesses the least bit of

allure? Does one become a whore, hoping with each new encounter that she will be fulfilled? Or

does she give up and take the opposite route, to the nunnery?

Neither will help me tonight.

It’s pouring now—our hardest rainfall of the year. Thunder, lightning. The perfect night

for blowing out the candle and nestling under the covers and using my own fingers to work

myself into a sticky bliss. And then sleep. And then a deep breath, and another day.

How can I describe last night’s events?

I missed dinner, and returned home from my wanderings beneath rumbling clouds just in

time to avoid a good soaking. As I passed beneath the stone arch into our estate, I noticed, in

Riborg’s upstairs window, her candle winking out. The whole house, it seemed, was asleep.

But as I opened my bedroom door, a figure emerged from the shadows. Hans. He said

nothing, but took me in his arms, mashed his mouth against mine, and pushed me into the room.

I scarcely knew what to do. I had never been kissed before, save by Mama when I was a boy.

Now this tall, hairless man, whose skinny arms had grown suddenly forceful, used his tongue to

separate my teeth and invade my mouth, an invasion I realized I had been yearning for my entire

life. I kissed him back. We breathed into each other’s nostrils. I kicked the door shut behind us,

and rather than stop to light a candle, I ripped open the curtains to let the lightning illuminate us.

His hands were everywhere. We tore the clothes from each other’s bodies. He knelt before me,

his knees on that cold stone floor, and I closed my eyes rather than witness the sin I was allowing

to happen. He threw me face down on the bed.

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Afterwards, he held me like a child.

Stroking my hair, he said: “You are the most delectable thing I have ever seen.”

He slipped out before dawn, the rain having left a glowing sheen on everything outside.

Only when sunlight filled the window did I notice the bloodstain on my bed, dark and jagged,

with one side trailing off like the neck of a swan.

This morning at breakfast—which neither Christian nor Hans attended—Papa asked

where I was going, and I told him that, before she’d died, Mama had showed me a secret root

that would relieve a woman’s monthly pains. I was going to the woods to find it. He cocked an

eyebrow and said: “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

Oh, Papa! If only I’d done something that could get me in trouble.

The lake at first seemed like a bad idea; last night’s rain left the bank soggy and

untenable. But when Hans arrived, he had a thick woolen blanket which he spread on the ground.

He’d also brought some bread and cheese—though, lamentably, no wine. One benefit of the

weather was that no one else would find us. Only a fool—or two fools, as it were—would picnic

at the lake today.

Hans’s eyes were red and his face ragged, as though he hadn’t slept. “Did the Muse visit

you last night?” I asked.

He looked sheepish. “One never knows when it will descend. You look radiant.”

I wore my lavender dress and carried a parasol, as I’ve heard women in France do.

Something about the formality of Hans’s request made me want to dress up for him. “Well,” I

said, and batted my eyelashes, “you want to pick through my mind? Here I am. What would you

like to know?”

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“First let’s eat,” he said. He unwrapped the bread and cheese and crammed handfuls of

them into his mouth. He made snorting, smacking sounds as he ate. How a self-proclaimed artist

can be so uncouth, I’ll never know.

Finally he lay on one elbow and said: “Why are you marrying that lout?”

“That’s what you want to know?”

“Of course! What else? The man has no vision, no style. No one is worthy of your

beauty, it’s true, but of all men to choose, you picked that?”

“I suppose you think you’re good enough?”

Hans laughed. “Riborg, I am well aware of how I look—awkward, clumsy, like an ugly

duck.”

“I might have said an ostrich,” I said.

“Yes, yes, an ostrich! But doesn’t an ostrich beat a hairy ape?” He took my hand, and I

let him. “Forget Alfred. I want to concentrate on you. Your rosy cheeks—your golden hair—

Riborg, you gorgeous, exquisite creature….” He leaned closer and closer as he spoke. His breath

was rich with bread and cheese—certainly better than the rank smoke I was used to. I closed my

eyes and let him press, ever so gently, his lips upon mine.

I hurried home soon after, leaving Hans sitting there smiling. I’m now in my room

awaiting dinner.

What have I gotten myself into?

I stayed at the factory all day today, open to close, and didn’t mind a bit. How could I

have criticized those workers before? They are the salt of the earth, humble laborers, seeking

only an honest living, a hot meal in their bellies, a loving spouse at home. What more could

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anyone want? Several of them asked why I was smiling. I didn’t even know I was. “Oh, he’s got

himself a little woman,” someone said. The men laughed. Let them. Yes, what Hans and I did

defies the Church, and it must be kept a secret, of course, but now I see how men, how Papa,

Alfred, any of these coarse laborers, I see how they are able to rise each day, confronted with a

life of unceasing toil: it is because they have something to look forward to. They have love,

physical love.

Thus I tarried, to extend my anticipation. I took the long route home. I shambled into

dinner nonchalantly and took my place beside Hans as though interested only in the food. Hans,

too, played his part admirably. He was holding forth on poetry, Marlowe and Blake and Snorri

Sturluson, and scarcely glanced my way as I sat down. I let my knee linger against his.

“I have nothing against poetry,” Alfred was saying, “but what about practicality? A poem

may be beautiful, just as a cloud is beautiful, but neither can put food on my table.”

“Too true,” Hans said. “Which is why I am a drifter. Men must choose their devotions. At

the expense of a lavish table, I’ve chosen beautiful things.”

Alfred narrowed his eyes. “Yet here you are—you have a lavish table.”

“My dear son-in-law,” said Papa, red-faced and jowly, “what would the world be without

poetry and art and music? A dreadful place indeed, I think.”

Alfred grunted into his plate.

“And you, son,” Papa said. “Is the factory all in good order?”

A glint came into Alfred’s eye. He knows I hate the place, even if Papa is blinded to it.

“Yes, Christian,” he said. “How are things over there?”

“As well as ever,” I said.

“Aren’t you going hunting again?” he said. “After all, we never got that hart you

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promised.”

“Sometime soon,” I said.

Hans addressed me for the first time tonight. “I’ve never been hunting, myself. Perhaps I

could come along? Maybe I’d get lucky and snag a hart too.”

The blood pounded in my veins. “That would be fine,” I said.

Dinner ended in typical fashion. Riborg escorted Alfred to his carriage, Papa retired to

the study, and I went to my room, hoping for a return visit from Hans. I am still waiting. All I

can think about are his long fingers caressing my neck, the length of him stretched beside me, the

taste of his skin. The house is silent. Come to me.

This evening I did something I’ve never done, not for Alfred nor anyone else.

Hans and I met again, this time out back, behind the well, where no servants would find

us. It was a warm, thick day, buzzing with insects. The last gasp of summer, one final heat wave

before autumn arrives. My trysts with Hans have likewise grown more heated—last week he

kissed me more passionately than ever, and groped over my dress like a blind man. Alfred has

done the same thing many times. These men become animals at the mere touch of female flesh!

Hans, for all his clumsy feminine ways, is more similar to my Alfred than either of them would

like to admit.

Yet today I went a step farther.

Perhaps it was the humidity, the birds and the bees. Or maybe it was Hans’s persistence,

his gentle coaxing. In any case, when he began to grope—his mouth floundering around mine

like a trout—rather than pull back as I’ve always done and remind him that, despite our

tomfoolery, I am still engaged, I opened my dress and revealed to him my breasts. No other

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person has ever seen them. Hans froze. They are dainty things, my bosoms, so white you can see

the blue veins running beneath the skin. I’ve never felt strongly about them one way or the other.

But after a momentary stunned silence, Hans dove forward, kissing and sucking like an infant.

This is what men long to do?

“Please,” Hans groaned. He tried to maneuver himself on top of me. “Please let me have

you….”

“No,” I said, and pushed him back.

He looked like a child whose favorite toy had been taken away. “Riborg,” he said in a

throaty voice. “I am in agony over you.”

“I’ve given you a rare treat,” I said.

“It’s not enough.”

I buttoned up. “It shall have to be. Now I must go.”

I ran through the trees, back to the house. Hans called after me, “I’m not giving up! I love

you!”

I laughed.

Nighttime has brought no relief to the heat—in fact, it seems even worse. A fat orange

moon hangs outside. This summer is nearing its end. I can tell by the way the birds sing, the way

the grass moves in the wind. Like a fever about to break.

He came to me last night in a frenzy. I’d never seen him in such a state—even more

intense than our first time. Perhaps it was the heat, so late in the year, that stirred his blood. He

tore the clothes from me, attacked me as though releasing some pent-up tension. It hurt, I won’t

deny it. Afterwards, as he lay panting beside me, he seemed relieved, as though rid of something

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that had been burdening him.

“Where did that come from?” I asked.

Hans only smiled.

“I have a gift for you,” I said. I presented him with a pair of oversized, finely polished

shoes, hewn from the finest Scandinavian oak. I ordered them some weeks ago. He examined

them in the dim light. “Now you won’t have to wear those old boots anymore,” I said.

He slid his gigantic feet into them. “My father was a shoemaker,” he said, “and yet I

never had a pair as fine as this. Christian, you are indeed something special.”

I beamed. These last weeks have been bliss. Each day I spend at the factory, each night in

bed with Hans. No one suspects us. I could carry on this way forever—me overseeing the

workers, Hans staying home to write his plays. We might grow old together. Eventually Papa

will die, Riborg will marry her piggish Alfred. We will have the estate to ourselves. The town

will view us as two old bachelors, pathetic souls overlooked by love. At night we will smile in

each other’s arms for what the townspeople don’t know.

I asked him what our punishment would be if we were caught.

“Labor camp,” he yawned. “Or worse.”

“Worse? Denmark doesn’t burn people anymore.”

“No—but we could be exiled.”

“Exile I could handle,” I said. “As long as we’re together.” I stroked his face. “Isn’t it

funny that we share the name Christian, yet what we are doing isn’t very Christian at all?”

“I believe Christ smiles upon any kind of love,” Hans said.

“Even prostitution? Incest? What we’ve done, what we continue to do? God has

expressly forbidden it.”

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Hans sat back, crossed his arms behind his head. “My grandmother worked in a lunatic

asylum,” he said. “In Odense. I visited there quite often as a child. I remember one of the inmates

who thought he was a Christian martyr. The man was an absolute hedonist. He would eat, drink,

smoke, sleep with anything. He had a long beard and white robes. He claimed that God put us

here to enjoy ourselves, and that any kind of asceticism, any kind of denial, was the work of

Satan.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“No?” Hans said. “I rather like the idea. Of course, that man died in a pool of his own

filth, in one of the back rooms….”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because only the moment matters,” he said, tapping a finger against my chest with each

word. “Nothing else. Only the moment.” He then slipped into his new shoes and left.

It is now dawn and I must leave for the factory in an hour.

Trouble.

Alfred flew up the lane this evening, after dinner, on a black stallion with great flaring

nostrils like demon. His face was purple, the ends of his mustache quivered. I met him outside,

knowing something was wrong. He swung down and thrust a finger under my nose.

“Did you think you could keep it from me?” he said. My guts trembled like jelly.

“Keep what?”

“Don’t act any dumber than you are,” he said. “I knew you were a silly, idle wench—but

who would have guessed you were a jezebel, too?”

“Alfred, please explain yourself!”

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“All of Lyn knows about you and that damned prissy poet. Secret meetings under trees,

alongside the river—”

“We never went to the river,” I said.

Alfred’s voice was low and frightening. “He comes here not only to take advantage of

your father’s charity, but to make a cuckold of me as well. Your brother seems to be the only one

who has escaped his malice.”

I stood before him with the breeze blowing my dress around my ankles. What could I

say?

“I’ll kill him,” Alfred said.

“You will do no such thing! I am betrothed to you. Think of this as a summer fling, one

last affair before I become a dowdy old housewife.”

His breath exploded like dragon smoke in my face. “One last affair? How many have

there been?”

“None, none at all! My virtue is intact, I swear before God.”

Alfred stood with fists clenched at his sides. “I fear, dearest Riborg, that you shall have to

prove that fact to me, and very soon, if your young poet wants to stay alive.” He mounted the

stallion again. “I carry my musket at all times,” he said. “If I see that cur’s face anywhere, I’ll

blast it right off his shoulders. That is a promise.”

And he galloped down the lane with hooves leaving brisk touches of autumn in their

wake.

I fled indoors, past Papa, who stood at the window with a glass of brandy and a cigar.

“What was that all about?” he asked. “Lovers’ spat?”

I went through the house, out back, to Hans’s quarters. The door was unlocked, but he

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wasn’t there. Oh God, I prayed he wouldn’t come walking up the lane in one of his ramblings

just as Alfred stormed past on his horse!

Christian. Perhaps Christian knew where he was.

I hardly see my brother anymore, now that he’s accepted his role as factory overseer and

spends every daylight hour there. He and Hans barely know each other. They speak at dinner like

distant strangers. Their temperaments are too different, I suppose, for them to ever be close

friends. Still, Christian might have seen our lodger somewhere.

I nearly burst unannounced into his room, but checked myself in the hall. Certainly there

are moments when I would not want my brother bursting in on me. Instead I took a deep breath

and knocked.

“What is it?” Christian called.

I didn’t want to upset Papa by shouting, so I just knocked again.

A moment later my brother appeared, shirtless and sweaty, his hair disheveled as though

he’d just gotten out of bed. “What is it?” he said again—a trace of annoyance in his voice.

I stepped into the room. There was a queer smell, something sharp and pungent that I

couldn’t place. “What were you doing in here?”

“Exercising.”

The curtains were open, but no candles had been lit. “In the dark?” I said.

“Riborg, what do you want?” he said.

My brother’s private doings are no one’s business but his own. I cleared my throat. “Our

lodger, Hans—have you seen him?”

“No,” he said. “Not—well—not since—that is, no.”

Weariness washed over me, so that I almost swooned on Christian’s bed. “There’s

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trouble,” I said. “Alfred wants to kill poor Hans. He’s convinced that Hans and I have had an

affair, and is consumed by jealousy. Alfred is quite a serious man. He’s not joking. If he sees

Hans, he will shoot him.”

Christian looked stricken. “Where did Alfred get such a notion?”

“Well,” I said. My brother, despite being older than me, is innocent as a fawn. He’s never

had an affair with a woman. How could I explain such a thing to him? “You may not be aware of

this, Christian, but our tenant has quite the honeyed tongue. I suspect he’s had dalliances across

Denmark.”

“Do you mean to say—?”

“I’m saying nothing. But if you see Hans, do warn him. He talked his way into this

situation, but I doubt this time he can talk his way out.”

I exited as gracefully as possible. On the way out, I noticed a large pair of wooden shoes,

too big for Christian, in the corner. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now as I sit in the

parlor transcribing the night’s events, those shoes seem very odd to me. Very odd indeed.

I sit on the bed sobbing. This page will likely be made illegible by my falling tears. I

haven’t cried this way since Mama died. But not even her passing shattered my heart the way

Hans did tonight.

We had just completed the act—yet another of our illicit deeds—and lay glistening in

each other’s arms, when someone pounded at the door. Hans dived under the blankets. Fear shot

through me. I opened the door to see Riborg, face ashen as a corpse’s. My sister burst into the

room, and may have sat upon Hans at any moment. But she was too agitated to sit. And with

good reason—her brutish fiancé has threatened Hans’s life.

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As soon as Riborg departed, he poked his head out and grinned. “Now this would make a

good story for my play,” he said.

A sick feeling bubbled in my stomach. “But why,” I asked, “why would Alfred think

such a thing?”

Hans merely looked at me. His grin remained, but it had lost all humor, and now

resembled a skeleton’s leer. It was as though he expected me to know something.

“You’ve had relations with Riborg,” I said.

Hans waved one of his long hands. “Relations,” he repeated. “A few stolen kisses here

and there. Some saccharine words, no more than test runs for the dialogue in my play. I wouldn’t

call it—”

“Your play,” I said. “Your life is a play. Nothing you’ve told me is real. You’re a

charlatan.”

The grin disappeared, replaced by something akin to panic. But was it genuine? Was

anything he told me this summer?

He slipped quickly into trousers, jacket, shoes. The shoes I bought him. I stood in the

middle of the room naked, ashamed suddenly, not wanting him to look at my body. I moved

toward the bed, to cover myself, but he grabbed me by both shoulders and looked into my eyes.

The scent of our sex, so recently completed, hovered between us. It sickened me—yet still I felt

the hint of arousal.

“Christian,” he said, his breath cold in my face, “whatever happens—whatever has

happened—you must know this: I love you.”

I almost spit in his face. But then he was gone, and the wooden door thudded shut behind

him, and I collapsed on the bed sobbing, and now, with the full moon outside and a bitter autumn

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wind knifing through the place, I sit cursing myself, wondering how I could have been such a

damned fool.

Alfred’s inner chamber is like the throne room of a king: stag’s heads mounted on the

walls, high-backed chair overlooking the window, deep four-poster bed. It was here that he

carried me today, eased me onto the velvet folds, and surrounded by the musky scent of that

canopy, had his way with me. He flapped the bloodstained sheet proudly afterwards, but I

begged him not to display it through the window, and he obliged by merely draping it over his

chair. I now sit wrapped within it, the stain dried and brown after all these hours. Alfred’s hairy,

barrel-shaped chest rises and falls on the bed. The act hurt just as I thought it would, but also

gave more pleasure than I’d expected. Something about being taken, being held down and

entered without pretense of tenderness, excited me. In fact it was I who encouraged Alfred to do

it again, much to his delight. I daresay I wore him out.

Surely Papa has figured out why I didn’t come home. But how—how did I end up here

tonight?

I rose at dawn this morning and went into town, to Alfred’s office, where we might speak

more rationally than we had the previous evening. He always gets there early, despite whatever

drama is unfolding—nothing interferes with business. A light flickered in the window as I

approached. He was there, all right.

But before I could enter, someone stepped from the shadows beside the building. “Are

you serious?” I said. “Again? Is this how you always operate?”

“Not always,” Hans said.

“Do you know Alfred wants to kill you? This is his office; he’s just on the other side of

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that wall.”

“I know where I am,” Hans said. “I’ve been waiting for you. Riborg, I would rather

Alfred kill me than to go on living another day without you.”

I laughed, though it sounded more like a dog’s bark in the still morning. “You don’t

know what you’re saying.”

“I’d make a fine husband,” he said. “I can provide you with gold and riches—”

“Riches? You can scarcely feed yourself.”

“Don’t forget what I told you in the orchard. Europe will celebrate me. All I want is to

celebrate you. To make you my queen. To love you unceasingly, forever. Marry me, sweetest.”

A single tear ran down his cheek.

For a moment—just a moment—I felt pity for this poor clumsy man. But then something

changed. A flash in his eye, the hint of a smirk on his lips. I realized he was acting, and probably

always had been. “You’re a thespian,” I said.

He backed away, though the single tear remained. “If you won’t marry me, I’ll leave. I

have friends in Germany.”

“But you vowed to stay in Lyn until you completed a great work of art.”

He melted into the shadows until just his head remained, floating like an apparition.

“Don’t you know, Riborg, that I already have?”

When I emerged from my room—illness, I told Papa, a stomach flu, harbinger perhaps of

the winter yet to come—Hans had already gone. He’d thrown his bag over his shoulder in the

early morning and said he was going to Germany, to some benefactors there who might better

encourage his artistic spirit. Papa was enraged. Called Hans an ungrateful cur and cursed him

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down the lane.

He gave the family this news at dinner, a somber affair for me, though my sister seems to

have stumbled upon some unexpected joy. Riborg doted on Alfred like I have never seen.

Throughout the meal, she stayed close by his shoulder like a dog that didn’t want to leave its

master’s side. Her cheeks glowed red as though she had worked in the fields all day. Alfred too,

for his part, was more magnanimous than usual.

“The poor bastard doesn’t know which end is up,” he said, referring to Hans. “The best

we can do is pray he doesn’t freeze to death on some lonely road, on the way to Germany.”

At these words my heart clenched as though a giant hand were crushing it.

“He never once showed me his work,” Papa said. “Never tried to earn his keep. I suspect

he didn’t do anything. Just lounged around here.”

“Christian, be glad he’s gone,” Alfred said. “His indolence didn’t contaminate you yet,

but it surely would have. That man is a plague.”

“I never saw him much anyway,” I said. At this Riborg caught my eye. For a moment we

looked at each other. Then she blinked rapidly and looked away.

I haven’t told anyone that I am leaving too. Not for Germany. Not for anywhere in

Europe. I’ve booked passage on a ship to America. New York City. Papa will be disappointed—

perhaps even devastated—but I cannot stay here in Lyn. How could I? How could I return to that

accursed factory, face those workers who will immediately notice my gloominess and ask what’s

happened to my “little woman”? How can I enjoy the fields and the birds anymore? How can I

do anything knowing he’s out there, only a few hundred miles south, cajoling his way into some

other poor soul’s boudoir? No—there must be an ocean between us.

How can a person be in love with someone and hate him at the same time?

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I walked a long time today. Along the river, over the cobblestone bridge, through forests

and fields. Until the sun was just an orange streak in the west, and the first stars appeared, and

the evening turned bitter. I pulled my coat tight. I kept my head down. I rolled a cigarette and

smoked it down to nothing. I imagined, clopping gracelessly beside me the whole way, a pair of

enormous wooden shoes.

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Budgies

Well now, has that budgie bird of yours learned to say anything besides hello?

Not yet, Aunt Aggie.

Have you been teaching it?

I’ve been reading my vocabulary words out loud before bed. She doesn’t seem to get

most of them.

Maybe if you let her out of the cage for a bit.

I tried that last week—closed the doors and let her fly around the kitchen. She flew into

the window and knocked herself out cold. I ran over and scooped her up. Thought she was dead

for a minute. Then she ruffled her feathers and went right back to hello.

Hello.

That was her, Aunt Aggie. Did you hear?

I heard.

Hello.

There she is again!

I hear it, child, for the love of Pete, I hear it. Day and night. Hello, hello, hello. The

damned thing never shuts up.

Stephen said that in South America, the jungles are filled with these talking birds. They

speak their own language down there, of course. He had to teach this one to say hello in English.

So it’s Stephen now, is it? What happened to Captain Heynes?

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His subordinates call him Captain Heynes. He said I’m a friend, and friends call him by

his Christian name.

And when is your friend coming back for his bird?

He’s not, Aunt Aggie. It was a gift. Don’t roll your eyes!

How long do you think a tropical bird can survive in England, child?

Stephen said as long as we keep her warm, and give her enough food, she could live

twenty or thirty years.

Brilliant. Another three decades of Hello, hello. If only your parents could see what I put

up with. Not only do you go around with the likes of Stephen Heynes, you bring his foreign birds

into our home. God knows what diseases you’ve exposed us to.

There’s no disease, Aunt Aggie. These birds are quite common down south.

So why couldn’t he leave them there?

Because all pi—that is, all southern seamen carry birds in cages. It’s one of their

trademarks.

Someday you’ll learn, child, not to associate with men like Heynes. I just hope you don’t

have to learn the hard way.

He’s dashing.

I’m sure he is. They usually are.

Hello.

There she is again!

I hear it—and now who’s that coming up the lane? Look out: it’s the Vicar.

That’s his robes and vestments, sure enough. And he’s walking fast, with his head down.

You think he’s on the trail again, Aunt Aggie?

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He’s a bloodhound, child.

I’d better take Priscilla out back.

That’s the bird’s name? Priscilla?

Stephen said all pi—all southern seaman give their birds names that start with P.

How uniform of them. Must be part of the code, or something. Yes, you’d better take her

out to the privy, lest the Vicar starts grilling you about—

Too late, Aunt Aggie, he’s here!

Why, hello, Father, and what brings you down our country lane?

Morning, Agatha. I was over at the Bingham estate, baptizing their newborn, and figured

I would drop in and see how you ladies are doing. Morning to you too, Clare.

Father.

Would you like some tea? It’s a bit early, but I can put the kettle on….

No, no, quite all right. I’m wondering, are there any services I can do for you? Any

guidance I might offer? Confession, perhaps?

We confess our sins at Sunday mass along with everyone else.

Yes, yes… it’s just that I haven’t seen young Clare at mass in some time.

I’ve been busy, Father.

Not too busy for God, I hope.

Father, would you like to sit down? Care for a biscuit?

I’m fine, thanks.

Was there anything else we could do for you?

Well… since I’m here, I might as well ask: have either of you had any contact with

Captain Stephen Heynes?

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Hmph. We don’t consort with men like that. You know his reputation as well as I do.

And you, Clare?

Stephen’s a good man. There’s not a shred of evidence against him. He paid for that new

grammar school in Bristol, you know.

Stephen, eh? You’ve know him, then?

Certainly I do.

And where do you think he got the money to build that school?

If he captured it from some dirty Moorish vessel, what do I care?

He steals from your fellow Britons too. Someday I hope to prove it. But if you’ve not

seen him lately….

We haven’t.

Then I’ll be on my way. Good day, ladies.

Good day.

Good day.

Hello.

Pardon me?

I said Good day—that’s all.

Strange. It sounded like Hello.

That was a cough.

I see. All right, ladies, I hope to see you at—

Hello.

What was that?

What was what?

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Hello.

That!

It’s nothing.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Young Clare—are you sure there’s nothing to tell me? You won’t get in any trouble.

Remember, God sees all, even if you don’t confess it.

If God sees it, maybe you should ask Him.

You know, it’s a pity your parents are dead—you could use a strong male figure around

here. Get rid of that sass in an instant. You do an admirable job, Agatha, but there’s no

replacement for a girl’s father.

I know, Father.

I’ll be off, then. Clare, if you change your mind, and decide you want to tell me anything,

you know where to find me.

Goodbye, then.

Goodbye!

Hello.

Right then, let’s get straight to it. Prosecutor, what charges do you bring?

The charges are innumerable, Your Honour, but for the purposes of this hearing, I will

mention only three. The first is deliberate destruction of a British military ship. The second is the

torture and mutilation of British sailors. And the third is the attack and robbery of several British

consulates in the Caribbean.

Can you point out the accused for us today?

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Yes, Your Honour—it’s him, Stephen Heynes, also called Stephen Carless. The man with

the grin.

And how do you plead today, Mr. Heynes?

Your Honour, the only ships I’ve taken are from the Barbary Coast, and the only men

I’ve killed are the Mohammedans who filled them. I’ve done a service to both God and England

by sending all those heathens to hell.

The time will come for your defense, Mr. Heynes. Right now we need your plea. What is

your plea?

Not guilty, Your Honour.

Of all charges?

Unless defending English pride is one of them, yes.

Very well. Does the prosecution have any witnesses?

Several, Your Honour, all of whom were sworn in by the bailiff. Here is the first one.

State your name, please, and your relationship with Mr. Heynes.

Bill Willoughby, Your Honour, also called Willy Willoughby. I have no relationship with

Captain Heynes—in fact, this is the first time I’ve seen him up close. Before today, I only saw

him across the water.

Describe your experience for us.

Well, sir—that is, Your Honour—I served twenty-five years in Her Majesty’s Royal

Navy. I’ve fought the Spanish, the Moroccans—even native tribes in the South Seas. But never

did I expect to be rammed in the North Atlantic by a fellow British ship.

What happened?

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Well, we saw the ship coming, just a little schooner, double-masted but light and fast.

Looked to be British or Dutch made. Coming straight for us, but didn’t have half the artillery we

did, so we weren’t worried. The funny thing is, she showed no flag. Even the Berbers have

enough decency to fly their crescent moon—or, at the very least, a white banner to show they

mean no harm. Even pirates, brigands that they are, have enough gumption to raise the Jolly

Roger.

Kindly stick to the facts, Mr. Willoughby.

Yes, Your Honour. Fact is, we didn’t notice the spike on his ship’s prow until it was too

late. We tried to turn, but she gouged us. We went down without firing a shot. Almost two

hundred men went into the water that night, Your Honour. Only a dozen came out.

You’re certain it was Heynes?

Absolutely certain. See, once I was in the water, I tried swimming over to his ship—the

Adventurer. The letters were painted across the side. Everyone knows whose ship it is. I thought

the whole thing was an accident, and maybe they would pull us aboard. But Heynes laughed. He

looked down at us and laughed. I clung to a board for two days, watching my friends get picked

off by sharks, until an American whaler picked us up.

You only saw Heynes from afar. How do you know it was him?

It was his ship, sir. I know that much.

All right. You may step down. Prosecutor, you have other witnesses?

I do, Your Honour. Here they are. Bailiff, could you help guide these men? They’re

shuffling across the room now. As you can see, Your Honour, these men have been mutilated:

their eyes, tongues, and hands removed. Captain Heynes has a reputation for disfiguring his

captives in this manner.

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This is a grotesque spectacle, Prosecutor. How can we know it was Heynes who did it?

These injuries are designed specifically to keep the victims from identifying their

tormentors. These men cannot see, cannot speak, cannot even point. But they can hear. So: You

men! You poor sailors. Do you know who did this to you? As you can see, Your Honour, they

are nodding.

Indeed.

Now, you men: was it Captain Stephen Heynes who did this? Ah, yes, nodding again.

This testimony is far from ideal, Your Honour, but when accompanied by Mr. Heynes’s sizable

reputation, it seems quite damning.

Bailiff, please lead these men away. And see if you can give them a stipend from the

public funds. Now then. Any more witnesses?

One more, Your Honour. Magistrate John Tower. Public official on the island of Jamaica.

Mr. Tower, what is your relationship to Captain Heynes?

My relationship is that he attacked our consulate, looted our treasury, killed our men,

raped our women, and set fire to the whole town. And showed no remorse.

You’re sure it was him?

As sure as I’m sitting here right now. That’s him—that’s the man who locked me in a

cellar while he pillaged all of Kingston. I was close enough to count his nose hairs.

How did you manage to survive, Mr. Tower?

Honestly, I think he forgot about me. Some villagers released me the next day, after he’d

gone. I traveled all the way from Kingston to testify at this trial. That’s how strongly I feel about

it.

Do you have anything to add?

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Yes: as magistrate, I recommend the death sentence.

Thank you, Mr. Tower. Leave the sentencing to me. That will be all.

The prosecution has no more witnesses, Your Honour.

Very well. Let’s proceed to the defense. Mr. Heynes, do you have any witnesses?

No, Your Honour.

None?

None, Your Honour.

Do you have any remarks?

None that I haven’t already stated, Your Honour.

Are you saying that you have no defense whatsoever? How do you expect—

Excuse me, Your Honour?

Yes, Bailiff?

There’s a package for you.

A package?

This small brown box. It just arrived. It’s labeled Urgent.

Very well, bring it forward. Now, what do you suppose this could be? Let’s see, it’s

wrapped up tight. Help me with the string, Bailiff. That’s a boy. Now open it…. Well, what in

God’s name is that?

It’s a bird, sir.

I can see that, Bailiff. But it’s like no bird I’ve ever seen.

It’s a budgie, sir. One of those talking birds from the South Seas. It’s—I think it’s meant

to be a gift, sir.

What a creature! Look at the colors! The beak, the talons! Magnificent!

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Sir, the court is waiting….

Ah, yes. In light of this new evidence—that is, the lack of evidence—I must say—Willy

Willoughby never got a clean look at his attacker—those blind men can’t be trusted for accuracy,

no matter how honest their intentions—and the offenses against Mr. Tower took place half a

world away—therefore, I pronounce Captain Stephen Heynes, also called Stephen Carless, not

guilty of the accusations laid before him today.

Thank you, Your Honour.

No need to thank me. Justice is served. What a pretty budgie. Court adjourned.

Morning, gatekeeper.

Morning there, Vicar. What brings you to the cemetery so early?

Just paying respects to some dear departed friends.

That’s good of you. Not enough people remember the dead. There’s far too many days

when the cemetery gets no visitors at all.

Part of my job is remembering the dead—in that regard, you and I have a lot in common.

I suppose you’re right, Father, but there’s plenty of days when I forget about them

myself. Spend enough time in a graveyard and it becomes normal like anything else. I walk

around here, looking at the trees and the clouds, and try to remember that these tombs are filled

with people, real people like you and me, who used to walk around up here with us. It’s very

strange.

What book do you have there?

This? It’s St. Augustine’s Confessions.

Fascinating. Are you seeking spiritual guidance?

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Well, I don’t know, Father. As much as the next man, I suppose. I’m more interested in—

oh, but I don’t want to keep you from your errand.

Not at all, gatekeeper. I don’t get to discuss theological works with laymen very often.

What’s your interest?

I’m interested in why certain people sin—not just anyone. Not men who are driven by

hunger. Not men who steal out of necessity, or kill in self-defense. But those who steal when

they are already rich. Those who kill just for sport. I don’t understand it.

You’re thinking of Augustine and the pears?

Exactly. Augustine came from a rich family. Every day he ate pears. Then he stole some

from a neighbor’s orchard, and realized they weren’t as good as the ones he already had. So why

steal them at all?

You have a strong moral compass, gatekeeper. As did Augustine, who acknowledged

what he did, and learned from it. Maybe that’s why sin exists—in order to teach us.

That may be right, Father. It just seems like we should know these lessons already.

Human beings are flawed creatures. “For Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts

are restless til they rest in Thee.” It’s futile to contemplate why people sin. All we can do is try to

save the ones who can be saved.

Fair enough, Father. But I’ll leave the saving to you, and I’ll keep walking around here

contemplating, even if it does no good.

To each his own, my good man. Before we part, let me ask you a final question. I’m on a

case of sorts. Doing a bit of sleuthing. Have you had any unusual visitors lately? In particular,

any seamen?

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Funny you should ask—not a fortnight ago, Stephen Carless came by with a load of

packages.

Stephen Carless, also called Stephen Heynes?

Yes, that’s the one. It was late in the evening, and I was just about to lock the gate, but he

begged me to let him in. He had all kinds of flowers and trinkets for his family’s graves.

Heynes has no family. None whatsoever.

Is that so? Well, I didn’t follow him to see which grave he visited. Maybe it was an old

friend of his.

Was he alone?

A young girl was with him.

Can you describe her?

Well, Father, to an old curmudgeon like me, she was a real beauty. Dark hair, dark eyes.

Slender, with a kind of faraway look to her. There was something kind of—I don’t know—

fatalistic about her.

What was she doing with Heynes?

I didn’t ask.

All right. I’m going to pay my respects now, but I might poke around the cemetery for a

while, if that’s allowable.

It’s a public space, Father. I’ll be up here reading, as usual, if you need anything.

Boatswain!

Yes, Captain Heynes?

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Drop anchor and gather the remaining crew on deck. First Mate Simmons is dead, so

you’ll be taking over his duties until I find a replacement.

Yes sir.

Good. Now, as for you, Captain Best….

Untie me this instant and I’ll grant pardons for every man on this ship.

Is that so? Even for poor Simmons, my First Mate, who you stabbed and left for shark’s

bait?

Nothing can bring back your dead. But you still have a chance to save yourselves.

Fascinating, Captain Best. You, who sit bound with ropes, outnumbered, and with a

musket ball in your shoulder—you are offering me a pardon? Do you not recognize your

situation?

I recognize that even if you kill me, the English navy will hunt you down.

Hunt me down? They know exactly where to find me. I walk the streets of Bristol in

broad daylight.

Your luck won’t last forever, Heynes. No matter how many people you buy off with

those green birds.

On that count, we agree—no one’s luck lasts forever. But it seems that mine will last a bit

longer than yours, Captain, and that ought to be your immediate concern.

You go straight to hell.

Captain Heynes!

Yes, boatswain?

Anchor is down, and here’s the crew—what’s left of us, anyway. What now?

Bring me ten taper candles.

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The candles? Again? Are you going to use them on Captain Best?

You know exactly what they’re for.

But Captain, if we need information, maybe I could coax it out of him. I’m pretty good at

cajoling—

This isn’t for information, boatswain. This is for fun. Now get those candles and don’t

make me say it again.

What in God’s name are you up to, Heynes?

My dear fellow Captain, you will soon find out. In the meantime, let me give you an

analogy. Think of a virgin girl. Think of those parts which have never been touched. How the

girl cries out when someone finally touches them. The blood, the ecstasy. The point where

pleasure and pain meet, and become one.

You’re out of your damned mind, Heynes.

Now imagine yourself as the virgin. What parts of you have never been touched? Never

been exposed? Where can we find the blood, the ecstasy?

Sir, the candles.

Thank you, boatswain. Now give me Captain Best’s hand. Oh, Captain, there’s no point

in struggling. That will only make it worse. Come on.

Sir, are you sure we have to do this? We could just slit his throat like the others.

Boatswain, one more contrary remark from you, and you will join First Mate Simmons

on the ocean floor. Now hold his wrist up.

God damn you, Heynes.

I’m sure He will someday, Captain Best. But not today. Now then: you may have thought

I wanted to bugger you, based on my virgin analogy. But buggery is not my interest. There’s

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another part of you that’s never been touched, but which we are about to explore. The underside

of your fingernails.

I’ve got him steady, Captain. Let’s get it over with.

Good, boatswain. Here it comes.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Heynes, you son of a bitch!

Yes, cry out, Captain Best. I see the blood, but where is the ecstasy? Let’s try the middle

finger next.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh! God damn you, you son of a bitching bastard!

And now the thumb.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

Boatswain, start lighting the candles. I’ll shove the rest of them in.

Yes sir. He’s not even screaming now, sir. His eyes have rolled back.

He’ll come around, don’t worry. They tend to wake up again when the flames reach their

fingertips.

He looks like a Christmas tree, all lit up like that.

Ugliest Christmas tree I’ve ever seen. His fingers are burnt black.

He’s starting to come around….

Well, Heynes? Is that the best you’ve got?

Recalcitrant to the end, Captain Best. I almost respect you—but ultimately I have no

respect for officers of the law. Poor deluded saps who trade their souls for a few cheap medals

and a pension.

At least we have souls to trade, you worthless dog.

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If your tongue wasn’t so amusing to me, I would’ve cut it out long ago. Now, boatswain,

bring me a rope.

A rope?

That’s right, a rope. I notice that Captain Best’s musket wound is strategically located. If

the fingernail experiment wasn’t enough for you, good Captain, perhaps this one will be.

I swear to God, if I ever run into you somewhere….

You won’t.

Sir, the rope.

Ah, thank you, boatswain. Now help me coil it around his neck. Not too tight— leave a

little slack. Two or three loops should do. There you go. Now take hold of your end.

What’s this madness, Heynes, you lunatic?

Now, boatswain, give it a good pull. I’m pulling my end too.

Heynes, you—huphfmmm—gaarghfff—

Look, boatswain! See how the blood spurts straight out of his wound! He’s like a

fountain.

His eyes are bugging out, sir. His face is purple.

Give it another pull.

I think he’s saying something, sir.

What’s that, Captain Best? Changed our tune, now, have we?

Kill me… kill me, Heynes....

Keep pulling, boatswain.

Captain, hasn’t he had enough?

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Oh, Christ, you youngsters are so sensitive these days. Very well. Let him go. But we’re

not killing him. That would be far too lenient. I want his suffering to be prolonged.

What should we do, sir?

Fear not, boatswain. I have a plan.

Where have you been, child? I asked you to sweep out the hearth.

Sorry, Aunt Aggie. I was out at the privy.

Again? That’s the fourth time this morning. Are you all right?

Yes, just a little shaky… a little nauseous.

What’s the matter?

Nothing… why are you looking at me like that, Auntie?

Don’t lie to me, child.

Lie about what?

Clare.

All right, Auntie. Fine. I haven’t bled in two months. Is that what you want to hear?

I want to hear the truth only. How did you get into this mess?

How do you think?

I mean, who’s the fellow? Please don’t tell me it’s Stephen Heynes.

He’s the only man I’ve ever known, so unless the Good Lord did it, I guess it’s his.

God save us all. What will you do now?

Don’t worry, Aunt Aggie. Stephen will be back for me. He promised to take me to the

southern isles. We’ll have a family there.

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How naïve are you, child? Heynes isn’t coming back here—or, if he is, it’s not so he can

sweep you up and carry you off. It’s so he can bribe more judges and beadles with his budgie

birds.

What should I do, Auntie?

Sit down a minute first. We can talk about it. Is there anything else I should know about

you and Heynes?

I—I helped him with something.

That’s obvious.

No, I mean—something else. He asked me to hide some things for him.

What sorts of things?

Bags. Packages. Things he didn’t want the authorities to find. We drove over to the

cemetery in his buggy, which was jammed full of stuff. I told him he could stash it inside the

mausoleum.

What! Our family’s burial chamber! The resting place of your poor parents, the future

resting place of you and me!

I know, Aunt Aggie. But even with Stephen’s loot stored there, we’ll have room for one

more person. I don’t plan to be buried there, myself.

Of course, I forgot—you’ll die on some south sea island after a long, blissful marriage to

Heynes. Correct?

That’s the idea, Auntie.

But there’s still room to wedge poor old Aunt Agatha’s corpse in there, amongst all the

moneybags. Splendid. What’s in these packages that you’ve defiled our legacy with?

Money, as you’ve said—gold, mostly. But I found another bag full of ears.

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Ears?

Yes. The ears of men.

Child, don’t you see what kind of person Heynes is? You want to marry someone who

docks the ears of other men? What will he do to you someday, if you displease him?

Well, the ears are brown and black, so I figure they came from Moors. In which case, he

should present them to the Vicar for commendation.

Moors or no, I wouldn’t marry anyone—much less carry their bastard child—who

collects human ears in a sack.

Well, then: what should I do?

It’s a tough question. Would it be Christian to carry this scoundrel’s illegitimate baby?

Not to mention the censure we would get from the town. Or would it be Christian to consider

other options?

You mean hide everything for the next seven months, and then leave it on the orphanage

doorstep?

Ah, my poor, artless niece. I mean going out to the woods, finding the right mixture of

herbs and mushrooms, and boiling yourself a cup of pennyroyal tea. Flush that devil-baby right

out of you.

But isn’t that taking a life—the same thing you condemn Heynes for doing?

It’s a dilemma. Is the life of a grown man equal to the life of an infant who can’t survive

outside the womb?

Maybe we should go ask the Vicar.

And reveal to him your true relationship with Heynes? No, child, this is something for us

to decide. For you to decide, ultimately.

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I don’t know what to do, Auntie. I don’t want to choose.

You might have thought of that before entertaining that villain.

Could we really have a screaming baby around here?

We can have anything, child. Now, now. Come here. Don’t cry. I drank a cup of

pennyroyal tea, myself, when I was not much older than you.

Do you regret it?

Some days I do, some days I don’t. And that’s the honest truth.

Will you walk out to the woods with me? We can find those herbs, even if I don’t end up

using them. Just to keep our options open.

Of course, child. Let me get my shawl.

Hello there! I say, doctor. Hold up a moment.

Yes, Father. I can see you’re out of breath. Is everything all right?

Forgive me. I’m just curious: who are these poor wretches you’re leading along the road?

They’re witnesses from the trial of Stephen Heynes, or Stephen Carless, whatever he’s

called. I’m taking them back to the asylum, where they live.

Blind witnesses, doctor?

I know, it sounds strange. They’re mute as well. And you can see their hands have been

removed. All they could do in court was nod. The Judge ended up dismissing their testimony.

How ghastly. Did Heynes do this to them?

That’s the general consensus, but no one is able to prove it. Heynes covers his tracks too

well. And he gives everyone those budgie birds.

Are these men baptized, doctor?

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I couldn’t say, Father. Feel free to ask them yourself. As I said, they can nod.

All right. Well then, you, sir: have you been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son,

and the Holy Ghost? You have? And you, sir? And you? This is heartening, doctor. They all

seem to be saying yes.

They were good Christian men before Heynes got hold of them. I guess that hasn’t

changed.

All except one—this fellow at the end. You, sir: have you not been baptized? No? I can

perform the ceremony right here, right now. I have a vial of holy water in my pocket. Just a few

sprinkles will do. It will only take a moment.

He’s refusing, Father.

But my good man, don’t you care about your soul? I don’t need to tell you how delicate

and fleeting our human bodies are. You’ve learned that for yourself.

This one has always been a bit stubborn. Sometimes he tries to grab the nurses with his

stumps. We find him wandering the halls, moaning from deep in his throat. All these men are

abject, but this one seems worse than the others.

What’s his name, doctor?

We don’t know their names. They have no way of telling us. In the asylum, we refer to

them by their patient numbers.

Surely there’s a reason this man refuses Christ. Sir, are you a Jew? A Mohammedan? A

Hindoo?

He’s English like you and me, Father.

Well, I suppose an Englishman could also be a Mohammedan. But that doesn’t seem to

be the case. Sir, do you follow any god at all? No? Were you always an unbeliever?

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Father, I’ve really got to get these men back to the asylum.

Just one moment. Sir, did you abandon God because of what happened to you? You did?

Are you not familiar with the book of Job? You are? Do you feel God was justified in what He

allowed to happen? No? Do you feel that Lucifer had the upper hand? Do you wonder why God

made a bet with Lucifer in the first place? Doesn’t it seem, I don’t know, a little unbecoming of

God? Do you believe in the story’s veracity at all? Do you agree with the premise that this life is

merely a test? Do you struggle with the problem of theodicy?

Father, he’s not answering anymore.

I see. Well, you’d better be on your way. Tell me, doctor: do you think Heynes will ever

be convicted of his crimes?

I’m a physician, not versed in legal matters. But it seems unlikely, Father. Rumor has it

he sailed south immediately after the trial. We may never see him again around here.

Makes you wonder what the point is, doesn’t it?

The point?

Never mind, doctor. It’s best not to worry too much about these things. Keep up the good

work.

Boatswain!

What? Who’s there?

It’s me, the cook. Are you sleeping down here?

Not with the ship tossing about like this. What’s going on?

It’s quite a nasty storm. All hands on deck. Batten the hatches, furl the sails. Captain

Heynes wants everyone to help.

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Let me get my boots on.

Hurry up.

I’m coming, I’m coming. My God, you were right—we’re being pummeled. And is that

Captain Heynes there, at the prow’s edge? Has he lost his mind?

He’s taunting Captain Best. They’re shouting at each other.

Even through the rain?

Look closely, boatswain. Squint. You see Captain Best there, on his rocky outcropping?

He’s still cursing Captain Heynes.

I don’t blame him. His face is all purple and swollen, and his shirt’s soaked with blood.

He won’t last a week on that sandbar. No shade, no water.

This storm is the best thing to happen to him. If he can collect rainwater, he might last a

bit longer. Still, it’s no fate I would want.

We can’t worry about him anymore. Here, help me pull this halyard. Watch your footing!

One wrong step and you’ll go over the edge.

Lord, I’m just a cook—I didn’t sign on for this!

We all signed up for it. Come now, you’ll be fine. Get these yards down and secured, and

then we can take cover and ride this thing out. Look out for waves—they’re crashing all over the

place.

Boatswain, I’m going to be sick.

Who knew you were so green? It’s like you’ve never been to sea before. Well, go on, get

it up. Don’t worry about the mess; the ocean will take care of that. Now grab that halyard.

Here comes a wave!

Hang on, cook! Did you survive?

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I’m all right—soaked, but all right. Boatswain?

I’m here, cook.

Where’s Captain Heynes?

He was just at the prow—now he’s gone.

The wave took him.

So it did, cook. Here, lie on your belly. Let’s crawl to the edge. Throw the rope over—

maybe we can still save him. Do you see anything down there?

Just a black, swirling abyss. Wait—there’s the Captain’s hat!

Here comes another wave. Grab onto my sleeve.

Let’s get back in the cabin. There’s nothing we can do here.

Come on.

All right—we’re safe, as long as this tub keeps floating. Boatswain, do you realize you’re

in charge now? The First Mate’s dead, the Captain’s dead.

I suppose I am. Do you think the others will accept my authority?

They know the code. Until we reach land, you’re in charge. After that, we’ll need to settle

the matter of who inherits this vessel.

I already know who gets it, cook. Captain Heynes told me some time ago. He left it to

some lassy in the countryside. God knows why. He was a fickle man.

That’s one way of putting it. Do you imagine he’s still alive down there, wrestling with

sharks? How long does it take a man to drown?

Maybe he swam back to the sandbar. Picture he and Captain Best sharing that tiny strip

of land. One of them would eat the other.

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You know, boatswain, since you’re the captain now, you should take over his quarters.

The writing table, the fancy hammock—whatever he has in there, it’s yours.

I’ve never been in there. Heynes never let us see his private space.

Let’s take a look now, while the others are still cowering.

All right. There’s the door, to the left. Here we are. Now let’s see what he kept in here.

Oh, my god.

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Jesus Christ, look at all these birds.

And sacks of bird seed piled in the corner. No ship’s log, no papers—not even a bottle of

whiskey. Just these damned—

Hello.

These damned—

Hello.

These goddamn budgies!

They’re all yours now, boatswain—that is, Captain. What will you do with them?

You know what, cook? They’ve been in those cages too long. Keeping winged creatures

locked up is one of the worst tortures I can think of. So I know what we’ll do. As soon as this

storm passes, we’ll head south. Someplace warm. Someplace where we can let these budgies fly

away, spread their wings, live as they were meant to live. What do you think, cook?

Sounds like a fine idea to me, sir.

Hello.

Nicholas T. Brown

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The Tomorrow Fish

That spring, the great chieftain Nergui Khan showed up at my doorstep and ordered me to

join his summer campaign. But I’m an engineer, I told him—a thinker, a planner, not a warrior.

Whenever his horsemen stormed into the Capitol, fresh off some victory, I drew the shades in my

apartment and sat inside with my cat, waiting for them to pass. They didn’t seem like heroes to

me. More like school bullies whose violence now had the cloak of legitimacy. I had no business

riding with them. I told the Khan as much.

From his horse, looking down at me with his leopard-skin cape flung back, he said:

“There’s a place for engineers on the frontier, too.”

Also: “Your place is where I say it is.”

So I packed a bag, and gave my cat to the old woman next door, and abandoned the

projects I had been working on, and set off across the plains with the Khan and his army.

We traveled across a great rolling steppe—the land was vast, empty. Clouds floated by,

grass bent in the wind. My heart slowed to a pace the Capitol would never have allowed. I

carried a leather-bound journal, but its pages were still blank—the plains smelled like something

I couldn’t describe.

I rode a docile old mare called Acorn, and stayed toward the back, alongside Laka, the

horse doctor, with only the rear guard behind us. Laka was old and brown; a few wispy hairs

blew around his bald head. He mumbled prayers all day as we rode. “It’s up to Tengri and the

spirits whether we live or die,” he said.

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“I don’t believe in any gods,” I told him.

“They don’t believe in you, either,” he said.

The soldiers surprised me—they were far more civilized than I’d given them credit for.

At night, around the fires, they played chess on blankets, using pieces of ivory which they had

acquired on their journeys. One soldier in particular could not be beaten. Several men tried and

he dispatched them methodically. At some point they began glancing at me, where I sat on the

far side of the fire by myself. “Maybe the engineer wants to try,” someone said.

“That’s all right,” I said.

But they all started chanting and stomping, clamoring for me to take part, and I was

obliged to go sit at the blanket, across from the champion. He looked to be around my age—that

is, forty or so—with small hands and quick eyes. The pieces were already assembled. He made

the first move.

Tentatively I responded. We exchanged five or six moves, circling around each other. I

flashed some bait and he took it. After that, it was easy. When he placed his king on its side, he

gave me a deep bow. We shook hands. Then I went back to my side of the fire. Despite my win,

the men didn’t gain any new respect for me—nor did they lose any for their champion. I had

done what I was expected to do.

The land grew more and more desolate. Finally, on the tenth day out, the Khan left his

position up front, and came back to speak with me.

“We’re entering Petcheneg country. Do you know their tongue?”

“Is that why you brought me here?”

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“No,” the Khan said. “But if something happens, maybe you’ll be able to talk your way

out. Are you armed?”

“I’ve never used a sword in my life.”

“Take this one,” he said, handing me a rusty scabbard with a handle sticking out. I took it

awkwardly, and tied it to Acorn’s saddle. The Khan stroked his wispy mustache as I fumbled

with the ropes.

“I suppose you regret bringing me out here,” I said.

“It’s no great loss to me. You yourself said you were only the third-best engineer in the

Capitol. If you die, I’ll go get the second-best.”

Then he trotted back to the front.

Late in the afternoon, beneath a blustery sky, we heard shouts from the rear guard. Two

soldiers came racing up with arrows in their horses’ thighs. Laka got to work immediately—he

knew special methods for extracting arrows. He took out his tools and hovered over the wounds

so that I couldn’t see what he was doing. The horses bellowed. Then the soldiers blew into their

horns, and the whole army stopped and turned around. The rear guard became the front guard. I

was now at the front lines.

The Khan, along with his top lieutenants, rushed forward, stopping beside me. He

ordered groups of men to his left and right. The army began to fan out. “You’ve brought me

here to be slaughtered,” I said.

The Khan turned to his son, a boy of twenty, who was taller than his father, but had the

same faraway, unknowable eyes. He rode a black gelding and carried a long thin sword of the

eastern style. “Gerel here will protect you,” the Khan said. “If you are slaughtered, then my son

will be slaughtered with you.”

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Small comfort, I thought—but said nothing. The Khan rode away, over a rise, leaving the

boy Gerel and his troop of twenty to watch over the horse doctor and me. They formed a circle

around us. Gerel wore a green silk robe under his coat, and it flapped out behind him as he kept

watch. There was faint shouting in the distance.

“You always stay behind?” I asked Laka.

“They can’t afford to lose me,” he said. “I’m the best doctor in the empire.”

“I’m an engineer,” I said. “Why did the Khan bring me out here?”

“He has his reasons,” Laka said.

More wounded horses came in, and Laka worked steadily. One of them had a lance

through the neck. When he pulled it out, blood sprayed like a fountain, and the horse collapsed

and died within moments. It lay twitching in a lake of dark red. Its owner took off his helmet and

sat down in the blood, weeping. “I had that horse fourteen years,” he said. No one told him to get

up.

After the fifth horse, Gerel said: “We move now.”

The entire troop responded, like a flock of birds. I motioned to the weeping soldier, and

helped him climb onto Acorn with me. We trotted south, away from the battle, with our heads

ducked low, until we came to a small depression. Once again Gerel’s men formed a circle around

us. There we sat.

When a stray detachment of Petchenegs appeared, I yelled in their language: “Stop!

We’re merely travelers! You don’t know what you’re doing!” But I hadn’t spoken their tongue in

years, nor heard it spoken, and the words probably came out wrong. The Petchenegs rushed

forward, and burst through our circle with wild eyes and painted horses and javelins held over

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their shoulders. They wore leather tunics with their arms bare to the shoulders. Two of Gerel’s

men went down before we could react.

The soldier who sat behind me stopped weeping, stood upright on Acorn’s rump, and

leapt onto another horse, knocking its rider to the ground. Then he turned the horse back against

its comrades. His face was purple with anger—his grief transformed into rage.

Everything happened in a flurry. The prince Gerel drew his sword with a ceremonial

flourish began slaying Petchenegs who charged him. In the chaos, I noticed Laka, the old doctor,

cowering under a saddle in the dirt. Horses stomped around him. His leg was broken at the

shin—gruesome yellow bone stuck out. He had tied a rag around his thigh. He looked up at me

with eyes as big as a rabbit’s.

A burly Petcheneg walked over and kicked the saddle away. Without thinking, I dived off

Acorn’s back, ran forward, and pushed him into the path of an oncoming horse. After it passed,

he lay face down and didn’t move.

“Well done,” said a voice behind me. I turned around. Gerel stood there, green silk

flapping under his coat, sword resting on his shoulder. His face was a hieroglyph. There might

have been a smile. Two last Petchenegs approached, and he stepped around me and finished

them with a few efficient swipes. Suddenly everything was quiet, we were standing among a

mess of bodies, both man and horse, and the flies were already starting to gather. The weeping

soldier staggered forward, draped his arms around my neck, and began weeping again.

We took a moment to collect ourselves. Twelve of us remained, including Laka, who lay

muttering with his eyes closed. His wound was difficult to look at. Gerel knelt beside him and

said: “You can live if you’ll let me take that leg off.”

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He held his sword close to Laka for him to inspect. “This is the sharpest sword in the

Empire,” he said. “Sharper even than the executioner’s blade. I can have that leg off in one

stroke.”

“Do it,” Laka said.

Gerel stood up and ordered the men to start a fire. Everyone began pulling up fistfuls of

dry grass, wadding them into balls, and sparking their flints beneath them. The prince collected a

few javelins, all stained red, and bound them together with a dead man’s bootlaces. In a few

moments we had a makeshift torch.

Two men held Laka’s arms, and Gerel did just as he’d promised, removing the leg on the

first blow. Laka screamed as though in anger rather than pain. He spewed curses into the sky. It

was a clean cut—there wasn’t much blood because of the tourniquet.

“Now seal it,” Gerel said, and the two men held the torch against the raw stump. Laka

bellowed some long vowels with his neck thrown back. The end of his leg turned black and

crispy like an overcooked chicken. After weeks of jerky and millet paste, I found the smell

surprisingly mouth-watering, and chided myself inwardly for it.

When Laka regained his senses, he sat up and told the men how to wrap his bandages.

“Tighter,” he said, wincing. “Go on, do it, that’s right, do it!”

Gerel stood back and wiped his blade clean. By his expression, you’d think nothing had

happened. He sheathed the sword and mounted his horse.

I helped Laka drink some water. “You’re really taking this like a man,” I said.

“Bring me the leg,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Find my leg and bring it here,” he said. “I want to save it.”

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I went picking among the corpses and found the leg lying where someone had tossed it.

Laka’s boot was still laced all the way up his ankle. That seemed odd. It was heavier than I

expected. An awful stink was rising from the place.

“We move now,” Gerel said again.

I gave the leg to its owner, who stashed it in a satchel with his medical supplies. Then,

with the help of the weeping solder, I lifted him onto Acorn’s back. The weeping soldier had

already found a new horse. This time when we emerged, the Khan’s army was there to meet us,

galloping in a cloud of dust from the east, whooping in victory, pointing their spears toward the

sky. The soldiers had lost only a few from their ranks. The air was thick with men’s tales of how

they killed Petchenegs, and narrowly avoided being killed themselves. The Khan rode at the

front, his fur collar stained red. A young soldier approached him with a head—grey face, bloody

neck, eyes turned upward as though beseeching the gods. The soldier held it by a clump of

tangled hair.

“Their general,” the Khan said, poking the forehead with one finger. “Good work, young

one.”

That night the soldiers opened a keg of ale, which they had carried all the way from the

Capitol for this very occasion. The Petchenegs had been vanquished. The Empire was safe. We

were alone on the plains beneath a map of stars that unfurled above us, and the men sang and

danced as though they had never been born and would never die, but existed only in this

moment.

I sat beside Laka—the true pain was only beginning for him. He lay fluttering in and out

of sleep, groaning, twitching his blackened stump. He awoke drenched in sweat, and I helped

him sit up and drink a little water. He refused the ale, saying it would slow his recovery.

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Later, the Khan approached and sat down beside us. For the first time he seemed normal:

middle-aged, slightly pudgy, with long whiskers on either side of his mouth. He might have been

a street merchant back home. With both hands he offered me something white and polished—a

bowl of ivory, filled with liquid that sloshed as I took it. I realized it was a skull. The top had

been cut open.

“My son Gerel told me about your bravery,” the Khan said. “Diving forward, unarmed,

and saving our horse doctor. You’ve proven yourself to the men. Now drink from this

Petcheneg’s skull, knowing they would’ve done the same to us if they had won today.”

The ale was thick and bitter, but I choked it down. “Now,” I said, “can you tell me why

you’ve dragged me away from my home, across this frontier?”

“I told you,” the Khan said. “I need an engineer in these parts.”

“An engineer for what? There’s nothing out here!” As if to illustrate my point, a lonely

wind moaned through the camp.

“All in good time,” the Khan said, and stood up to rejoin his lieutenants.

We pushed onward, through the grasslands, farther than many of the soldiers had ever

gone. It was a lonely, barren country. At night, around the fires, the men shivered in fear—not of

Petchenegs, but of the evil spirits that howled up and down the plains.

One day we saw a tower on the horizon. “That is the westernmost point in my empire,”

the Khan said. “The Citadel.”

We entered the town slowly: a collection of sparse brown buildings with dust blowing

through the alleyways. The great tower loomed over everything. Cobblestone streets weaved in

every direction. Dried fish dangled in open-air shacks, alongside fruit and spices. The

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townspeople stopped bartering in mid-sentence as the army marched through. For the first time, I

knew what it was like to be part of a conquering force. The people’s faces pulsated with a mix of

curiosity, fear, adulation, and revulsion.

A procession gathered behind us—mostly children at first, and then beggars, and dogs,

and finally the business people and washer women, the traders and hunters and laborers. A mass

of people followed the Khan to the edge of town, where he came to a deep blue lagoon

surrounded by rocks. Suddenly I understood: this outpost, this Citadel, was an oasis. That’s how

they managed to survive out here.

People lined the streets to pay tribute, which the Khan refused, saying: “We have just

taken Petcheneg gold and sent it back east, for the benefit of the empire. Keep your few coins,

and prosper, and give me instead sons whom I might recruit for my army.”

He let a peasant wash his feet, and drank from a bowl of hot mare’s milk without going

through his taste-tester.

“You may regret that later tonight,” his lieutenant said.

“I have faith in my people,” the Khan said. “Especially those who guard the borders.

Without them, anyone might penetrate into the heart of our country, where our women and

children sleep.”

He led me through the gardens, where brightly-colored flowers hung from stalks. “These

I have obtained on my journeys,” the Khan said, rubbing a velvet petal between thumb and

forefinger. “Only the hardiest plants can survive up here.”

We walked up a winding staircase to the top of the Citadel. Through a window, grass

stretched away to the horizon. Mountains shimmered in the distance.

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“In my plunder,” the Khan said, “I came across some ancient writings. Reams of paper

untouched for centuries. I had a scribe translate them for me. They are the journals of the

Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. Do you know of him?”

“I know nothing about foreign kings,” I said.

“You know of the Great Wall.?”

“Well—of course.”

“Qin Shi Huang built the Wall,” the Khan said. “To protect him from our ancestors, the

ancient Khans, and to establish the borders of his kingdom. Previous emperors had foolishly tried

to expand, but Qin Shi Huang disagreed with expansion. He felt that it spread disunity and chaos

in the empire. He wanted to stop expanding, and just govern what he already had.”

“Sounds wise,” I said.

“So it will be with my kingdom,” the Khan said. He turned from the window and smiled.

“This is our final expansion point. We shall go no farther. Unlike most Khans, I don’t want to

rule the entire world. I’ve done nothing to deserve that. Each people, each country should follow

its own leaders. I want to do what Qin Shi Huang did. Draw a line in the sand, an ultimate

border; concern myself with domestic problems, instead of warfare. I’m getting old, you know.

Soldiering can’t last forever. When I was young, I wanted to die on the battlefield—but now that

I’m old, I’d much rather die in a brothel.”

“Of course,” I said.

“So you see now why I’ve brought you here.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“I need a wall,” the Khan said. “Or a trench. Or a system of trap doors beneath the

ground. I need fortification, engineer. And I need you to build it for me.”

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“Then I can go home?”

“Not only that. If you build it well enough, I’ll erect a statue of you to watch over it.”

“I already know the answer,” I said.

The soldiers went their separate ways—mostly to brothels, if they could find them. I

spent the night in the room provided for me by the Khan. The next day, I walked the cobblestone

streets, through the markets, past the lagoon, around the dusty perimeter of the town. I wanted to

make sure my plan was feasible.

That evening I met with the Khan again, this time in his garden. Soldiers with pikes stood

aside to let me enter. We walked among his strange flowers.

“Well?” he said. “Can you do it? Or shall I cut off your head and have you buried in the

desert, and send for a better engineer?”

“Perhaps you can hear the plan first, and then decide.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

“There isn’t enough material to build a wall,” I said. “You might pull up soil, and build

one out of the Earth itself, and surround it with rocks. But it would take years to build, and it

would be easily destroyed by invaders.”

“What about my idea of secret trap doors?” he said, spreading his arms. “Only a certain

path would take you safely through them, and only we would know the key.”

I paused, and glanced at him.

“All right,” he said. “Go on, then.”

“It’s very simple,” I said. “We dig from the spring, the oasis, and create a moat around

the city. That water flows from some underground river, deep in the earth. We—”

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“How do you know that?” the Khan said.

“I suspect it starts in the mountains, in caves, and it accumulates underground and rushes

along beneath us, until, for whatever reason, it springs to the surface here, which is why a town

was built here in the first place. The ancients used this spot long before your Citadel was erected.

I’m speculating, of course.”

“I see I’ve brought the right engineer,” the Khan said. “And it’s our Citadel.”

“Yes,” I said. “Ours.”

“I have an even grander vision,” the Khan said. “We stock the moat with exotic man-

eating fish.”

“Man-eating fish?”

“I send you south, to Burma, along a safe trade route, and you return with living

specimens to stock the moat.”

“That sounds—ambitious,” I said.

“I know you’ll make the right decisions,” the Khan said.

That night, rather than go back to my room, I walked the streets. People lingered in

doorways, hung out of windows. Music drifted from somewhere. Two drunken oafs pummeled

each other in an alleyway. I went into a tavern, ordered the thinnest ale they had, and sat in the

corner. Familiar faces soon loomed before me: the weeping soldier, and the young boy who had

brought in the Petcheneg head. “You there!” they said, plopping down on either side of me. They

sloshed horns of ale, laughed in my face. They made me lock arms with them and down our

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drinks at the same time, like we were old friends. That’s what happens, I realized, when you go

through battle with someone.

“I never told you my name,” the weeping soldier said. “It’s Wazi.”

“Wazi the weeper,” I said.

“If a man can’t weep over his best companion of fourteen years, he’s no man in my

opinion,” the weeper said.

“Are you here to be the governor?” the young boy asked.

“I’m an engineer,” I said. “The Khan brought me here to build defenses for the city. I’ll

be leaving soon, to Burma, for supplies.”

“I’ve never been to Burma,” Wazi the weeper said. “If the Khan’s putting together a

caravan, maybe I could join.”

“Me too,” the boy said.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose I could put in a word for you.”

“That’s the spirit!” Wazi said, and clapped me on the back so hard I coughed. He yanked

on a barmaid’s arm, and got her to bring three more horns of ale. They made me lock arms again,

and drink the whole thing. I sat there clutching my belly.

“Now it’s brothel time,” Wazi said. “There’s a good one up the street. They have a blue-

eyed girl from the Baltic I’ve been waiting to see.”

He stood up, plunked his helmet on sideways. “You coming?”

“Not this time, I’m afraid,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I’m tired,” I said.

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“Suit yourself,” Wazi said, and stumbled away. The boy stayed beside me—too young

for such debauchery, I supposed, although he was certainly was drinking his share. He glanced at

me.

“You don’t like brothels?” he said.

“I’ve never been to one,” I confessed.

“He doesn’t like them either,” the boy said, pointing across the tavern. Against the wall,

in the shadows, arms crossed over his chest, sat Gerel the prince. Green silk hung down behind

him. He surveyed the room, looking everywhere and nowhere at once.

“I’ve never seen the prince enter a brothel, or take a drink that wasn’t ceremonial,” the

boy said. “He’s different than the rest of us.”

“If he’s not drinking,” I asked, “why is he here?”

“To watch over us, I think,” the boy said. “He cares about us the way a deity would.”

“And you—aren’t you interested in brothels?”

The boy stared at me for a moment. Maybe he hadn’t heard me? Then he looked over his

shoulder, making sure no one was watching—the prince’s attention was elsewhere—and

removed his helmet. Long hair spilled down. He was a girl.

I coughed and sputtered into my empty horn. The girl flashed a grin, then tucked her hair

back under the helmet. She gulped her drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“No one else knows?” I said.

“My brother back home,” she said. “He was too sick to join, so I took his place.”

“If the Khan found out….”

“He’d give me a medal of honor,” the girl said. “After all, I killed the Petcheneg general.”

“You truly killed him? Or you just found the head afterwards?”

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The girl made a face. “I killed him and a dozen others. I grew up learning how to fight,

engineer.”

“I guess you would be valuable on a trip to Burma,” I said.

“I’d be valuable anywhere,” she said.

One cool morning the next week, in the shadow of the tower, our expedition prepared

itself. Horses, weapons, ropes, sacks of food. A few dogs and children slinked around. I stood

beside the Khan, stroking the neck of my gentle and trusty Acorn. To my surprise, the Khan had

appointed Prince Gerel to lead us.

“But don’t you need your son around here?” I asked.

“With the Petchenegs defeated, we’re safe for the time being,” the Khan said. “But the

road is filled with bandits. You’ll need Gerel’s protection.”

Just before we set out, I noticed Laka the horse doctor standing among the children and

dogs, leaning on a crutch. His face was filled with color and vitality. I trotted over to say

farewell.

“You look well enough to ride with us,” I said.

“I’m a dog master now,” he said, stroking the dogs that circled around him. “No use on a

battlefield. I’ll live out my days here with these mongrels.”

My face must have shown something, because he said, “Don’t feel sorry for me. The

Great Tengri has set a different path for everyone.”

“Do you still have your leg?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll show it to you when you return.”

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We set out across the steppe once again. Gerel and his troops—the ones who’d protected

me against the Petchenegs—rode at the front. Some of the Khan’s top lieutenants joined us, men

who were decades older than Gerel and had never been to Burma. I followed them, along with

Wazi the weeper and Aja, the young girl in disguise. Another soldier rode with us: the one who

had beaten everyone in chess. Behind us came a few merchants from the town, riding mules.

Then our pack animals, another dozen soldiers, and some dogs who decided to follow.

The first night was clear. Stars emerged one at a time like millions of pinpricks across the

sky. After eating, the chess-playing soldier unfolded his board, and some of the merchants

challenged him. They were used to bartering, dealing with weights and measures, and they

figured they could beat someone who merely killed for a living. But the soldier’s moves were too

decisive. The merchants found themselves faced with impossible choices. Nobody managed to

beat him.

Finally, one of the Khan’s lieutenants challenged him. Everyone gathered around. The

lieutenant opened with a bold sequence, but the soldier kept his composure, allowed the

lieutenant to burn himself out, and finally broke through for the win. The lieutenant walked away

shaking his head.

One of the merchants turned to me. “Why don’t you challenge him? You’re an engineer.”

“I already beat him,” I said.

The air got more humid as we went south. The path, which had been used by traders for

centuries, went through rocky outcroppings, along narrow ledges, and down into a grassland that

felt richer and deeper than the one back home. We passed through fields of flowers. Strange

birdsongs called from the distance.

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On the tenth day, we came to a crossroads. One path veered east, disappearing in the tall

grass—the other continued south.

“I wonder where that path leads,” Wazi said.

Prince Gerel, who happened to be within earshot, turned back and said, “It goes to the far

coast of China—the end of the known world.”

Those were the first words I’d heard Gerel speak since we left.

“Have you been there?” Wazi asked.

Gerel squinted at us. “How else would I know what’s there?” he said.

Eventually the chess-player beat everyone in the group, including young Aja, who had

never played before, but who managed to last longer than anyone else, thanks to beginners’ luck.

“Well done,” the soldier said, shaking Aja’s hand. Now that I knew her true identity, it seemed

incredulous that no one else did. Her tiny hands and feet, her narrow shoulders: it was so

obvious. But they slapped her back and teased her, the same as everyone else.

“Now there’s only one left,” the soldier said, glancing across the fire. Prince Gerel sat in

front of his tent, cleaning his sword.

The chess-player approached with his board. “You’re the only one who hasn’t challenged

me,” he said.

Gerel’s face was a stone wall. “All right,” he said. “Sit down.”

They started playing. The soldier moved his pieces tentatively, taking a long time

between each turn. The prince moved quickly, seemingly without forethought. Sometimes he

moved a piece before the soldier had set his own piece down.

“Not much deliberation, eh?” the soldier said, taking Gerel’s rook.

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“Sometimes the answer is right in front of you,” Gerel said, taking the soldier’s queen.

The soldier stared at the board. He was backed into a corner with no way out. He bowed

his head, lay down his king, and then folded up the board and walked away. Gerel went back to

cleaning his sword.

Naturally, whispers began circulating: the engineer should play the prince. We had both

beaten the soldier—which of us was truly the better player? Of course, no one approached Gerel

with this suggestion. People tended to give him a wide berth. But as the days passed, and the

grassland rolled steadily under our feet, it kept popping into my brain. Could a lowly engineer

possibly be a match for a military prodigy?

One day a long caravan passed us, heading north. Dark-skinned men rode at the front, on

top of elephants. The creatures were huge, with tiny red eyes and long white tusks. Our largest

horses were like dogs beside them. But the beasts were docile, following the men’s orders

exactly, and they marched past without a disturbance.

Gerel and the lieutenants spoke with the caravan’s leaders. They were headed to the same

crossroads we had passed the week before, their final destination some port in China. A train of

people followed, including women and children, horses, oxen, wagons. The caravan stretched far

into the distance. More elephants brought up the rear.

“Have you had any trouble with bandits?” one of our lieutenants asked.

The dark-skinned men laughed. “Not with these babies,” he said, slapping the elephant’s

hide. “No one will attack an elephant.”

I spurred Acorn forward, until I was beside them. “Are you carrying any sea creatures

with you?” I asked.

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Our lieutenant gave me a sharp look. “We’re in the middle of a damned prairie. What are

you talking about?”

“The purpose of this mission is to bring back marine life for the Khan’s moat,” I said.

“You’re not one of his inner confidants, as I am. You’re just here for security.”

The lieutenant’s face turned purple, but he said nothing. The dark-skinned traveler, to my

surprise, said: “Oh yes. We have eels in boxes. Very expensive. Let’s pray to Krishna we don’t

have to drink their water before we arrive.”

They led me back to an elephant carrying only cargo—open-air boxes filled with water,

barred on top, with eels thrashing about inside them. “Fascinating,” I said.

Later that evening, after the caravan had passed by, the lieutenant approached me as I sat

outside my tent. I was scribbling in my journal the dimensions of the eel boxes. The lieutenant

snatched the book away and threw it in the dust. “What’s the meaning of this!” I said.

“Don’t ever disrespect me in front of foreigners again. I was out defending the frontier

while you sat in the Capitol with your books and papers. You’re lucky I didn’t pummel you on

the spot.”

“If there’s any pummeling done, it will be done by me,” a voice said. We both looked up.

Gerel stood there, cloak open to reveal his sword handle. The green silk flapped behind him.

“Now leave this man alone,” he said. “Go back to the others.”

The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “I was serving your father a decade before you were

born.”

“And, by following my orders, you continue to serve.”

The lieutenant gave a short bow, and then stalked away. Gerel turned back to me. He

studied me with his expressionless face. A long moment passed.

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“You know,” I said, “they want us to play chess together.”

“Who does?”

“Everyone.”

“Is that right?” The barest hint of a smile crossed Gerel’s stone face. “Very well. Set up

the board.”

Once again, everyone gathered before the prince’s tent. I sat across from him. The chess-

player set up his board for us.

“Who makes the first move?” I said. “We’re both undefeated.”

“The prince always gets the first move,” Gerel said.

A long, slender hand emerged from his sleeve of green silk, and he advanced one of his

pawns. I responded, and before I could blink, he had already made his next move. That was his

gambit—his strategy for unnerving opponents. I did the same thing, and the game quickly

became a bloodbath. We took each other’s most valuable pieces, until only the two kings were

left, circling each other, flanked by a handful of useless pawns. Neither of us could get close

enough to end it. After an hour of circling, the chess-player, who squatted beside the board, said:

“Looks like a stalemate to me.”

Gerel sat back, impassive. “So be it,” he said. “Well done, engineer.”

The land grew lush around us. Broad, leafy trees began to appear. Barefoot people ran

along the road, pulling rickshaws loaded with sacks. The foliage on either side stood taller than

our horses, and sometimes naked children peeked out and watched us pass.

“There must be a village nearby,” Wazi the weeper said.

“Are we in Burma already?” Aja asked.

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“Not yet,” said the chess-player, who had made the journey before. “The Burmese jungle

is much thicker than this, thicker than you could possibly imagine.”

For a while, the road ran parallel to a wide, murky, slow-moving river. A few skiffs

floated by, piloted by men with long poles. They waved as they passed.

“Why don’t we take the river?” I asked. “Seems much faster and easier.”

“We’re horsemen,” Wazi said. “Not sailors.”

Clouds formed that afternoon, and by evening a low rumble was building up. The air was

thick, the moon and stars were blocked out. We pitched our camp on the highest ground we

could find, away from the river, and ate our food quickly. Then we sat in our respective tents and

waited for the downpour.

I couldn’t sleep. Something uneasy had lodged in my brain, something I couldn’t put my

finger on. Something unresolved. I tossed and turned, waiting for the storm to arrive. Then it hit

me: Gerel. The stalemate. We had to finish it.

The chess-player had left his board with me—out of negligence rather than generosity.

Now I took it, slipped out of my tent, and crossed our campsite in the dark. I rustled the flap of

Gerel’s tent, and he poked his face out.

“What is it, engineer?”

“We need to finish our game,” I said.

Inside his tent, I set up the board. Gerel sat across from me in his green robe. I assumed

he would go first, but when I looked up, he was watching me instead of the game. My heart

started pounding.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“To find exotic fish for your father,” I said.

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“No,” he said. “Why are you here. In my tent.”

I gestured vaguely. “The game….”

Gerel leaned forward, inches from my face, and said: “What game?”

A rushing noise filled my ears. The prince’s face hovered right in front of mine. My

palms started sweating. I couldn’t tell if the storm was outside, or within me. Gerel kissed my

mouth. He tasted like the plains, like the open sky. He swept the board aside and pushed me

back. My hands acted of their own accord, without orders from me, and they pulled Gerel’s robe

off his shoulders. The sight took my breath: smooth, lean, hard. He lay on top of me, touching

me, doing things to me.

I gasped in his ear: “I’ve never done this before.”

“I know,” he said, and smiled—a true smile, the first I’d ever seen on him. “The prince

always makes the first move,” he said.

Rain exploded above us. Our bodies found each other, knew what to do. Few words were

spoken. We lay together all night, and just before dawn, as I shimmied into my clothes, I asked:

“Can anyone know about this?”

Gerel shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said.

But I told no one. Riding the next day alongside Wazi and Aja, I was scarcely present. I

dwelt in a reverie of Gerel’s arms around me. He rode at the front, as usual, and said nothing out

of the ordinary. The sun beat down on us. Every minute I expected to wake up in my tent, rain

pounding outside, and learn the whole thing had been a dream.

When the troop stopped suddenly, in the middle of the road, I had to shake myself out of

the daze. Something was happening up ahead.

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The horses balked, showing the whites of their eyes. They refused to go past a certain

point. “What’s going on?” Aja said, craning her neck.

I trotted to the front, beside Gerel. In the middle of the road sat the biggest snake I had

ever seen. Longer than a man, thick as an elephant trunk. Half its body lay coiled behind it, the

other half stood upright, weaving like a hypnotist’s charm. A hood curled around its head.

“Tengri and the spirits,” one of the lieutenants said.

Gerel dismounted and drew his sword.

“Be careful,” the chess-player said. “If that thing bites you, you’ll be dead by noon.”

The snake let out a low-pitched moan, almost a growl, and everyone jumped back. Gerel

took a step forward. The next moment he swung his blade, and the snake’s head went flying into

the brush, while its body jerked and writhed, and then finally lay still.

Wazi the weeper clapped his hands. “He’s our prince for a reason,” he said.

I went to Gerel’s tent again the next night. This time I allowed myself more freedom: I

rubbed my hands up and down his body, his muscular shoulders, his sweaty back, while he

moved within me. He smelled like something sharp, metallic. He nuzzled my face and kissed my

neck. He displayed a tenderness I never knew he possessed. It was like I’d been hungry my

whole life and never knew it, and now that I’d gotten a taste of nectar, I couldn’t get enough. I

wanted to try everything.

“Is this normal?” I whispered in his ear. “Is this what people do?”

“Most of our company would be disgusted,” Gerel said. “But I’m the prince. No one will

defy me.”

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Still, I kept it to myself. At night, while the merchants sat up drinking and singing, I lay

in my tent waiting for them to pass out. Even when the singing stopped, I waited another hour for

the snoring. Then I tiptoed over. Being caught in the act seemed like the worst humiliation I

could think of.

One night, exhausted by the day’s travels, I fell asleep before the merchants did. I woke

up in dark silence to Gerel’s hands on my chest. He kissed my torso, down to my navel, and then

farther. He had come to me. He wanted me as I wanted him.

“We could live together,” I said. “When we get home. We could share a bed, share a life.

I don’t care what people think.”

He smiled. “I am your first,” he said, “but you are not mine. Far from it. I’ve taken what I

wanted from an early age. These feelings of yours will pass.”

“But I’m twenty years older than you,” I said.

“That’s what makes this so enticing.”

“So this is just something to fill the time during our journey?” I said. “This is—this is

nothing to you?”

“Relax, engineer,” he said. “I know you think for a living, but you can’t overthink this.”

The jungle began to appear. What I had previously known of humidity was like a sack of

dry bone chalk compared to this. Everyone rode in a lather, including the horses, even though we

plodded slowly. Birds everywhere. The trail narrowed, became a single-file path with tangled

branches forming a canopy overhead. One early morning, just as we started out, when the mist

still hung over everything, a flash of orange slinked away through the trees. The biggest cat I had

ever seen, nearly as big as a horse, looked back at me with eyes like dinner plates.

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It crept away, but afterwards the merchants lived in fear. Even the prince, or a skilled

warrior like Wazi the weeper, was no match for a creature like that. We kept the fires burning all

night, and tied our pack animals together with ropes, so none of them could get singled out.

Despite this, nobody slept well. Rustlings and strange noises from the forest kept us on edge. I

had to go without Gerel for several days. I’d gone forty years without him—without anyone—

but now these days seemed to stretch forever. I couldn’t wait to arrive at the town.

We soon did. Carved out of the jungle, built alongside the river, a bustling city emerged.

Stone homes lined the hillside. Laundry flapped on lines. Children ran down wide, hard-packed

streets, weaving between rickshaws. Women carried jugs on top of their heads. Elephants

dragged lumber up the hill, with men on top who lashed their hides with whips. Strange

languages floated by. A stone temple loomed over everything, its broad steps occupied by

beggars. Aside from the climate, it didn’t seem all that different than our Capitol back home.

I hadn’t expected a king’s reception, exactly, but nor did I consider that no one would

know who Prince Gerel was, and no one would care. We might have been visitors from any land.

No trumpets, no red carpets. We zigzagged through the streets until we found an inn. The

proprietor came out to meet us: a paunchy man who spoke our language through a thick accent.

“I don’t know if this is the right place for you,” he said, eyeing our ragged party. “You

can sleep for free along the river, if you can find a spot.”

Gerel tossed a bag of gold at the man’s feet. He picked it up, looked inside, sniffed it, and

broke into a grin. “My apologies,” he said. “I think we have just enough vacancy for you.”

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For the time being, I forgot about Gerel’s attentions, and focused on finding the Khan’s

fish. The next morning, after spending the night at the inn—a night without a visit from Gerel—I

wandered the streets alone, scanning the markets. Vendors hawked fruits and grains. Live

chickens hung upside down, their feet bound, blinking stolidly, waiting to die. Finally I found

someone selling live eels—they thrashed around in shallow containers. A few strange-looking

prawns scuttled along the bottom of another container.

“Do you have anything bigger?” I asked.

“Like what?” the vendor said.

“Something that will grow to be huge,” I said. “Enormous.”

“How many people are you looking to feed?”

“This isn’t for food,” I said. “I want to keep it alive. Raise it.”

The vendor lifted his eyebrows.

“I want something dangerous. Man-eating.”

“What in the name of Krishna are you plotting?”

“It’s for my personal collection,” I said. “I have money.”

The vendor cocked his head, as though judging me. “Come back this evening,” he said. “I

can show you a few things.”

I showed up later, just as he was closing his shop. The sky was red and purple; farmers

walked home with scythes over their shoulders. A random cow wandered by. The vendor

sprinkled food into his eel containers, then rolled shut his canvas doorway.

“You again,” he said. “All right. You want man-eating sea creatures? Follow me.”

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He led me through back alleys, behind the temple, to a row of doorways on a dead-end

street. He rapped on one of the doors. A white-haired woman let us in, and then hobbled back to

a bubbling cauldron. The room was dim and dusty. “What is it?” she said over her shoulder.

“My friend here wants to see the creatures,” the vendor said.

“So let him see them.”

The vendor motioned for me to follow. We went through a bead curtain, into a cool, dark

chamber where glass tanks lined the walls. Different types of animals swam in each one.

I put my nose against the first one. Tiny green fish darted around, their little teeth like

needles. “These don’t look very dangerous,” I said.

“A pack of those will skeletonize an elephant in ten minutes,” the vendor said.

I moved on. “What about these?” I said, pointing to some others.

“Those are poisonous. One bite will paralyze a swimmer, so the fish can eat at its

leisure.”

I strolled around, examining each tank. Against the back wall, in deep shadow, lay a

white blob that didn’t move. “What’s this?” I said.

“That’s not for sale.”

“What is it?”

“That’s the ma ne pyan,” he said. “The tomorrow fish. Very rare. They breed in deep in

ocean trenches, but they can live in fresh water too. Only a few have ever been caught.”

“Is it asleep?”

“It can sleep for years,” the vendor said. “And it grows to fit its container. In this tank, it

will stay this size. But in the ocean, way down there in the dark, it will grow and grow until it’s

the size of a ship.”

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“What does it eat?”

Inside, the blob shifted slightly. Eyes, mouth, and tail were impossible to determine. “It

eats whatever it wants,” the vendor said.

“But what do you feed it?”

The vendor shook his head. “I told you—it’s not for sale.”

“I represent the great chieftain Nergui Khan,” I said. “I have enough money to buy your

entire town, temple included. Everything is for sale.”

The vendor stroked his chin. He glanced toward the bead curtain, as though considering

the white-haired woman. “All right. Make me an offer.”

That night, flush with success, I joined some of the soldiers in a tavern. This time,

everyone drank wine. Women danced. On a stage, musicians coaxed melodies out of instruments

I had never seen. People smoked from hookahs. Wazi, Aja, and I sat right in the middle of the

room, at a large table, and shared wine with strangers. Gerel and his lieutenants stood against the

wall, observing.

I was dreaming about Gerel’s hands on me, and how I might manage to see him later,

when the fight broke out. I don’t know how it started. The chess-player was standing at the bar,

talking to a woman, and someone smashed a bottle over his head. Our soldiers jumped to his

defense. The table was overturned, wine splashed my shirt. Wazi the weeper held someone by

the collar and bashed him repeatedly in the face. Even tiny Aja threw herself into the fray. The

musicians kept playing for a minute, until the place devolved into chaos, and then they took up

their instruments as weapons.

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I found the chess-player on the floor, bleeding, and dragged him behind the bar to safety.

Shards of glass stuck out of his head. When I peeked over the bar, things had gotten worse.

Swords were drawn—including Gerel’s. The prince moved through the room, shouting, “People

of the Khan! Get out of here! Go back to the inn!” But no one seemed to be listening.

One of the locals challenged Gerel with a rusty dagger. Gerel sneered, and pushed the

man away, but he bounced back and ran his blade straight into Gerel’s chest, up to the hilt.

For me, everything went silent. The edges of my vision turned white and fuzzy. The

prince sank to his knees, and one of his lieutenants picked him up, slung him over a shoulder,

and ran out. The fighting continued.

“We have to go,” I said to the chess-player. “Can you walk?”

“I think so,” he said, gripping his head, and together we staggered into the street. A fat

orange moon hung overhead. We made our way back to the inn, and found Gerel in the foyer,

lying on a sofa, surrounded by his lieutenants. His breaths were shallow.

“What happened?” someone said.

“I didn’t know she was married,” the chess-player said.

The top lieutenant whirled around. “The prince is dying because of your dumb lust? I’ll

send you out with him!”

“It’s not his fault,” I said. “These locals are rough. Everyone was drunk.”

The lieutenant stuck a finger under my nose. “You’ve undermined me once already on

this trip, engineer,” he said, dragging out the last word. “Now stay out of it.”

“Look,” another lieutenant said.

Gerel’s breathing suddenly got rapid. His eyes fluttered. My own stomach lurched into

my throat.

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“If these are his final moments, let me be alone with him,” I said.

The lieutenants looked at me like I was crazy.

“We fought alongside him for decades. We practically raised him on the battlefield.

You’ve known him for a few weeks, and you think you’re somebody special. You’re not.”

“I have the Khan’s favor,” I said.

“The Khan isn’t here,” they said.

As we argued, Gerel’s chest stopped moving. By the time Wazi the weeper and Aja

showed up, bruised and disheveled, the prince was dead.

We buried him the next day by the river. Since we had no priest, one of the merchants,

whose grandfather had been a great shaman, performed the last rites. Gerel’s body was wrapped

in a white shroud, and several items placed in the grave with him: boots, jewelry, a small bag of

rations, and finally his sword, the finest I’d ever seen, which he would use again in the

afterlife—according to the legend, anyway.

The merchant invoked Father Sky and Mother Earth, as well as the spirits and ancestors,

before sprinkling dirt onto the shroud. Then the soldiers stepped forward and filled in the grave.

Wazi the weeper stood beside me, weeping again. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said

through his tears. “Prince Gerel bested fighters ten times greater than that whelp. If I knew who

did it, I’d go kill him myself.”

My body, it seemed, had been drained of all its vitality. I couldn’t even summon a

teardrop. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “That won’t bring him back.”

Gerel’s green robe had been cast aside, forgotten. I walked down the riverbank, pulled it

out of the mud, scraped it off, and crammed it into my satchel.

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The trip home was like a funeral march—one that lasted weeks. As we headed north,

back through the jungle, no one spoke. We plodded single file down the narrow road, branches

scratching at us from both sides, and pitched our camp each night with great weariness—not of

the body, but of the soul. The lieutenants took the lead. But without Gerel, we were a snake that

had lost it head.

Wazi the weeper cried silent tears as he rode. His face displayed what everyone else was

thinking: our hope was gone, the most beautiful and elegant among us had been cut down in the

most ignoble way, the future of the empire was destroyed. All of us had been collectively

punched in the gut.

I’d purchased an elephant to haul the tomorrow fish. The crate sat on the elephant’s back,

sloshing with water, and occasionally I climbed up to check on it. The white blob sat at the

bottom, shifting in its sleep. Each day I sprinkled beef or chicken crumbles into the water, and

later that evening they were gone. The elephant ate jungle foliage as we walked. It was old and

sad—just like me—and its trunk brushed the ground as though searching for something it

couldn’t name.

At night, no one drank ale. The merchants didn’t sing. And, thankfully, the chess-player

retired his board. When it got dark, we simply went to sleep. We had to tie the elephant to our

pack animals, and it could have dragged them all away if it wanted to, but this was a docile old

beast, broken after decades of labor. It wanted to rest even more than we did.

If a giant orange cat dragged me away during the night, I wouldn’t have screamed. It

would have been a welcome relief. Each morning I awoke disappointed that it hadn’t happened.

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The jungle faded away, and we traveled through grasslands again. The river reappeared,

slow and muddy, flowing against us now with its traffic of skiffs and barges. Rainclouds formed

and we trudged through the downpour. Who cared if lightning struck us? Who cared if bandits

slaughtered us all?

We passed the crossroads. We passed the rocky outcroppings. One evening, the sky

streaked with red in the west, we spotted the Citadel on the horizon. Under other circumstances,

this might have elicited a cheer. Now it just made my heart sink further. I imagined the Khan,

awaiting our return, ignorant of the terrible news we carried.

The top lieutenant trotted back to me, where I plodded along beside the elephant. “You

will inform the Khan what happened,” he said.

“Why me?”

“The whole thing is your fault,” he said, sneering. “This expedition was because of you—

to get your precious fish.”

“The Khan ordered it,” I said. “You think I wanted this?”

“Nevertheless,” the lieutenant said, and trotted away.

At dawn we arrived, but couldn’t enter the town—the moat had already been finished. It

surrounded the perimeter, fifty feet wide and three times as deep. Water flowed through it. At a

glance, I could tell it had been made according to my exact specifications.

“By Tengri,” Wazi said. “Look at that. No Petchenegs could possibly sack this place

now.”

“No, but they could lay siege to it,” I said. “Starve us out. That’s something I hadn’t

thought of.”

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Wazi clapped my back. “We grow our own food here,” he said.

A warning arrow landed at our feet, and after some deliberation with the sentries on the

other side, a drawbridge was extended. This, too, had been made in accordance with my plans. It

groaned a little under the elephant, but held up. We entered the town a triumphal procession.

Crowds gathered as we made our way to the tower. They gaped at the elephant, and

followed us all the way to the gates of the Khan’s private gardens. There we stopped, and

without ceremony our company disbanded. The merchants went their separate ways. Wazi and

Aja wandered off without saying goodbye. The lieutenants, fearful of the Khan’s wrath,

evaporated like smoke. Along with the elephant, I passed into the gardens, where the Khan stood

waiting among his flowers, hands behind his back like a strolling philosopher.

“My loyal engineer,” he said. “Welcome back. How was the journey? You look even

skinnier, if that’s possible.”

“My lord,” I said, stammering. “I—I found a monster for your moat. A leviathan that will

grow to fit its container. No man, nor any troop of men, would dare try to swim across, with this

beast lurking beneath the surface.”

“The creature survived the trip overland in that box?”

“It’s a hardy animal,” I said.

The Khan climbed onto the elephant and looked inside. “Well done,” he said, stepping

down. “And yet something troubles you.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

“What is it?” the Khan asked.

I sat down, right there beside the elephant, in between the rows of flowers, and hung my

head. A moment later, the Khan sat beside me. I looked into his face, and saw that he already

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knew. His long whiskers hung down either side of his mouth. The cheeks drooped, the eyes

clouded with pain. Of course he knew: if Gerel had been alive, he would have been here with

me.

“Is it true?” the Khan said.

“No one saw it coming. A lucky thrust, the kind of attack Prince Gerel had blocked

thousands of times. It was a fluke. It was—”

I ran out of words.

“My only son,” the Khan said, rocking back and forth. Never had I seen him look so old:

a defeated warrior, an elderly man alone on the frontier. He stood up, brushed himself off.

“Throw the creature into the moat,” he said. “Let it start to grow. What does it eat?”

“Anything,” I said.

“I want it to develop a taste for human flesh,” the Khan said.

I was exhausted, but couldn’t sleep. After dumping the fish, I wandered the town with the

elephant until we found a shady spot behind some crumbling buildings. The beast sank slowly to

its knees, flapped its great ears, rolled onto its side, and went to sleep. I sat there beside it.

Somehow, I had become its keeper.

That afternoon, Laka hobbled by, surrounded by dogs. He moved on his crutch like he

had been doing it his whole life. The mongrels kept their distance, but the old horse doctor

approached me with a cackle. “Look at you,” he said. “Back from Burma. Was the trip

everything you bargained for?”

“And then some,” I said.

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“You should’ve seen the effort that went into this moat. The Khan started work the day

you left. Excavating, digging, shaping. It’s a wonder of the world, let me tell you. And now

we’re secure.”

“It’s certainly impressive,” I said.

“Wish I could’ve done my part to help,” Laka said. “Tengri has a plan for us all, I

suppose, and it’s my destiny to care for these stray mutts. But all the same, I feel useless. I can’t

dig, I can’t work, I can’t ride.”

“Before I left, you told me not to pity you.”

“I know,” Laka said, shaking his head. “Perhaps my first one-legged summer changed my

mind. Fall will be here soon. We’ll see how I fare then.”

“There’s one thing you can do to help,” I said. “Do you still have your other leg?”

That night I walked along the edge of the moat, carrying a glass case filled with

formaldehyde. Inside floated Laka’s leg, yellow and shriveled but still perfectly formed, with all

five toes and toenails—even the individual hairs remained. It had been flawlessly preserved.

Gerel had removed the leg. Gerel’s blade had touched it. Perhaps some remnants of Gerel, some

flecks of spit, some atoms, had been sealed into the container as well. Maybe, when I threw it

into the moat, the tomorrow fish would eat these particles, absorb them into itself, and it would

be Gerel, in a sense, who was patrolling his father’s Citadel, even after his death.

Unexpectedly, I ran into the Khan himself, pacing along the moat in the moonlight. No

bodyguards, no entourage. His leopard-skin cape hung around his shoulders. A cool breeze lifted

his hair.

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He spoke without looking up, as though he’d seen me long before I saw him. “Don’t try

to stop me, engineer,” he said. “As your Khan, I command you. That’s an order.”

“Stop you?” I said.

The Khan leaned over the black water. “My son sacrificed himself for the protection of

the empire. The least I can do is the same thing. This creature needs to acquire the taste of human

flesh. I will be the first volunteer. The fish will learn by devouring me, and then it will become

fearsome, and word will travel, and the Petchenegs—or any other army—will know better than

to attack us. My own posterity is gone, but I can still perform one last service for the posterity of

the empire.”

“But I’ve obtained human flesh,” I said. I held up the case of formaldehyde. “Old Laka

volunteered. This will be enough to whet the monster’s appetite. No need for suicide, my lord.”

The Khan stared at me. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you, engineer?”

“No,” I said. “I’m making it up as I go. I never wanted to be pulled away from my home,

from my studies. I never planned on any of this. I loved the prince too—more than you’ll ever

know. Now we have to chin up and do the best we can. Not take the cowardly way out.”

No one had addressed the Khan this way in decades—maybe ever. He might have taken

my head at any moment. Instead he leaned away from the water, placed his hands behind his

back, and let out a long sigh. Stars glimmered above us.

“Tell me,” he said. “How did my son look when he died?”

“Peaceful,” I said. “And yet—inscrutable. No one could tell what was going on behind

those eyes. He didn’t scream or cry, or dishonor himself in any way. He just—died.”

“And this tomorrow fish—what’s to stop it from swimming into the lagoon, up the

underground river, away from this place?”

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“The grate,” I said. “Remember? My plans included a grate.”

The Khan smiled. “If you’re the empire’s third-best engineer, I wonder what the best

could’ve done.”

“Things have changed,” I said. “I’m the best now.”

“I’ll have that statue built by the new year,” the Khan said. “A statue of a thinker, rather

than a warrior. That will show the western tribes that our empire was built on intelligence and

reason, rather than senseless killing. It will show them that we want to trade, not fight. It will

mark the beginning of something new.”

“Build a statue of Gerel instead,” I said. “Make him the thinker. Let his memory reign in

this place. My destiny is to be forgotten—and I don’t mind. Tengri has a different path for each

of us.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the gods.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I said.

The Khan put his arm around me. He smelled like old leather, like a horse’s bridle. “You

want to go home, don’t you? Fall is almost here, but there’s still time to make it before winter.

The Petchenegs are vanquished; the journey should be easy.”

Home. I hadn’t thought of home in a long time. “Will you be coming too?” I asked.

“I need to stay here for the winter,” he said. “To manage things. A Khan doesn’t always

have the liberty to enjoy the fruits of his empire.”

I opened the glass case, and dumped Laka’s leg into the moat with a splash. It bobbed on

the surface. A few moments later, a white shape, much larger than the thing I had carried across

the continent, rose out of the murk, silently took the leg into its maw, and disappeared again.

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Wazi the weeper found me the next day, where I sat in the shade along with Laka and his

dogs. The old doctor was telling me stories of his youth—of a time when the empire was not the

sprawling thing it had become, when the Capitol was just a cluster of shacks, and most of the

Khan’s people lived in tents. In just one generation, Laka said, our people had congealed into

something that would have been unrecognizable to his grandfather. He didn’t know what the

future held.

“I know what it doesn’t hold,” Wazi said, approaching with a staff held over his shoulder.

Young Aja walked beside him. They had cleaned themselves up, their faces bright and ruddy,

and they wore fresh cloaks. I thought of Gerel’s silk robe, still languishing at the bottom of my

satchel.

“What doesn’t it hold?” Laka asked.

“Us,” Wazi said. “We’ve been granted leave from the lieutenants. We’ve done our duty.

Now we’re going back south, to the crossroads, and this time we’re taking the other path. We

want to see the end of the known world.”

“Is that right?” I said to Aja. “You, who killed a dozen Petchenegs? Now you’re quitting

the army?”

“There’s more to life than fighting,” she said. “Things are different now.” She reached

out and took hold of Wazi’s hand, and I saw that she had revealed herself to him, and some

understanding now existed between them.

“Times are certainly changing,” Laka said, “when skilled fighters like yourselves

exchange their swords for staffs, and leave their military duties to wander the earth.”

“Come with us, engineer,” Wazi said. “We need someone smart. Someone who can help

us along the way.”

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I had nothing back home—no reason to return. The thought of going back to my studies,

my ephemeral projects, seemed beyond pointless. “But who will care for this animal?” I said—

across the field, the elephant stood under a banyan tree, munching grass.

Laka smiled, laughed his old man’s laugh that whistled through his teeth. “I think you

know the answer to that already,” he said.

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Chapman

1.

Chapman, in the schoolhouse, stares through the open window at the orchards. On a

distant hill, branches move in the breeze as though a gentle hand is guiding them.

No movement without purpose. Even if Chapman doesn’t know what that purpose is.

The schoolmaster’s rod slams down on his desk, and Chapman nearly jumps out of his

seat. Everyone in class is looking at him. The schoolmaster’s oversize nose with its tufts of black

hair sticking out of each nostril swings down toward Chapman’s face. The mouth opens to reveal

his rotted tooth. “Perhaps, Mr. Chapman, you think you can find the sum out in those fields?”

On the blackboard, a math problem. Chapman scratches an answer onto his slate and the

schoolmaster sighs, goes back to the front. “You forgot to carry the two,” he says. On the board,

he works the problem out to its end. “How will you ever be able to transact business if you can’t

make computations? How will you keep yourself from being cheated? I know your father, Mr.

Chapman. Do you think, when he takes his crops to market, that he doesn’t know the exact

amount he should receive?”

Chapman blinks a few times.

“How will you make money?” the schoolmaster asks.

“I don’t care about money,” Chapman says.

Outside, children pour into the late afternoon sun. Someone shoves Chapman from

behind. “Hey, big eyes!”

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Chapman turns back.

“Where’d you get those eyes, hoot-owl? They’re the size of dinner plates!”

“And you’re skinnier than a scarecrow. I thought your old man was a farmer. Don’t you

have enough food?”

“Leave him alone!” Nancy Tannehill—brown hair, blue eyes, freckles—stands between

them. “Look at your own snub nose. You’ve got no right to talk!”

The boys lean back, thumbs hooked in pockets. “Let’s go,” they laugh. “Leave these two

lovebirds alone.”

“We’re not lovebirds,” Nancy calls. Then, quietly: “Where you going, John?”

“Out to the orchard.”

“What for?”

Chapman kicks a pebble with his toe. “Sit under a tree, read my Bible.”

“Can I come? Will you read to me?”

On the hill, his back against a trunk, Chapman reads from the book of Matthew:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about what you will eat or drink, or what you will wear. Is

life not more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds:

they neither sow nor reap nor store away into barns, and yet your Father in Heaven feeds them.

Are you not more valuable than they?”

“Is that why you don’t wear shoes?” Nancy asks.

Chapman holds his finger on the page.

“You’re not poor,” she says. “I know your father can afford shoes. But you won’t wear

them.”

“They cramp my feet,” Chapman says.

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“Let me feel them,” Nancy says. Lying on the grass beside him, hair splayed like pine

straw, she twists around to examine his soles. Her tiny hands rub them up and down, a sensation

Chapman has never felt. “They’re like leather,” she says. “They’re harder than any shoe.”

Chapman smiles.

“You’re a strange boy, John Chapman,” Nancy says. She weaves blades of grass into a

design. Chapman lets an ant climb up his arm.

“I had the dream again last night,” he says.

Nancy sits up. “Tell me.”

“My mother in bed, coughing blood. Choking on her own blood. Begging me to help her.

Blood coming out of her nose.”

Nancy squeezes his hand, looks into his eyes, says nothing.

The sun drops behind the hill and darkness falls over the orchard as though someone

covered it with a blanket.

Chapman gets to his feet. “We should go,” he says.

The schoolmaster’s gelding is tied outside Chapman’s house. Autumn’s first chill slices

through the air. Chapman steps through the dark like a cat and peers through the window, where,

by light of a candle, his father and the schoolmaster sit talking.

“It’s not that he’s incapable,” the schoolmaster says. “He just doesn’t apply himself. He’s

a daydreamer.”

Father smokes his pipe, strokes his beard.

“And he’s a good lad,” the schoolmaster says. “I don’t mean to imply that he’s not. I just

worry about his future, is all.”

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Father exhales. “Perhaps Johnny isn’t cut out for school. He’s more of an outdoorsman.

Quite a talented horticulturalist—an arborman if I’ve ever seen one. In fact”—he leans forward

and says something too low for Chapman to hear.

The schoolmaster snorts. “He communicates with trees? Listen, sir, I graduated second in

my class from William and Mary, and if you think for a second I’ll believe—”

“And I fought with General Washington,” Father says menacingly. “While you were

nestled by the fire with your books, I was freezing my balls off at Valley Forge. So watch what

you say when you enter my home.”

The schoolmaster stands up. “I came here out of concern for the boy. I can see that my

efforts were misplaced. Goodnight, sir.”

Chapman flattens himself against the wall as the schoolmaster brushes past. Halter bells

jingle as the gelding trots away down the road. Chapman can’t go inside now—his father will

know he’s been eavesdropping. Instead he walks around to the barn. By starlight coming through

the slats, he finds his brother Nat stretched out on the hay, pants around his ankles, jerking

himself furiously.

“Nat,” Chapman says.

“Hold on,” his brother says, and continues, until he makes a gruff noise. Then he wipes

himself on a piece of sackcloth, buttons his pants, and sits up.

“Why do you do that?” Chapman asks.

“Gotta do something.”

“You’re eleven years old,” Chapman says.

“What, you think it’s wrong?”

Chapman leans in the doorframe. “I don’t know.”

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“Well, it’s not. I don’t care what your Bible says.”

“The Bible doesn’t say anything about it, as far as I know.”

Nat stands up and claps him on the shoulder—with the same hand, Chapman thinks, the

same hand he was just using. “You’re not normal, brother,” Nat says. “Those big eyes of yours

see too well in the dark.”

Together they walk back to the house. Father hasn’t moved from his spot. “How do the

orchards look, son?” he says as they enter.

“Overdue,” Chapman says. “Those apples will drop and rot soon, if nobody gets them.”

The old man tamps down more tobacco. “How would you like to quit school this fall and

help out with the harvest?”

“Yes,” Chapman says.

“I’ll have to ask Mr. Gordon about it. I’m sure he could use the help.”

“What about me?” Nat says. “Can I drop out too?”

“A noble effort,” the old man says. “But you have to finish primary, at least. When

you’re Johnny’s age, then we’ll see.”

That night, lying on the top bunk as Nat snores beneath him, Chapman has another

dream—not the usual one, not his mother’s death. This time he dreams of Nancy Tannehill in the

woods, rubbing his feet, and then his calves, his knees, his thighs—and then—

He awakens violently to a sticky mess in his sheets. Falling back into sleep, he imagines

Nancy as his wife, and the two of them, accompanied by a gaggle of children, armed with

ladders, harvesting the orchards together, as a family.

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Chapman moves his ladder in a circle around the tree, and drops fruit into a sack. Voices

carry through the woods. Songs of the Revolution, still lodged in men’s minds nearly twenty

years later. Songs of freedom, expansion, of endless possibility. The other pickers also speak of

lands to the west—Ohio, Indiana, Illinois.

Old Gordon walks by and comments on Chapman’s bare feet. “Jesus, son, it’s getting

nippy out here. You’ll get frostbit.”

“Not me,” he says.

Gordon sighs. “Well, I have some bad news, John. A few of my investments this year

didn’t pan out.”

Chapman blinks a few times.

“I can’t pay your wages just yet. Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated—but not before the

New Year. I’m sorry, John.”

Chapman nods. The money itself means nothing, but he had planned to use it on a ring

for Nancy Tannehill. He even chose one from the selection over at the silversmith’s. Now he’ll

have to wait until spring.

That evening he walks with her up the hill, under a pink and orange sky. Nancy runs her

hand along the wooden fence. A flock of geese floats past, heading south for winter. “How are

things at school?” Chapman asks.

“There’s a new boy from Finland,” she says. “His name’s Kai.”

“Finland. That’s a long way off. Wonder how he ended up here.”

Nancy balances on top of the fence with her arms outstretched. “You won’t be back, will

you? Even after the harvest. You’re never setting foot in that schoolhouse again.”

“I can’t say.”

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She jumps down. “Can you plant me an apple tree? In my backyard? Just one. I’d like to

have my own apples.”

“You won’t get apples with just one. Apple trees don’t self-pollinate. You need at least

two in order to get fruit.”

“Well, two, then,” she says, skipping ahead.

“In the spring,” Chapman says, and thinks: The spring. It will happen in the spring. Until

then I will wait. I will hibernate. I am a bear.

On Christmas day, Father gives Nat a new knife, and Chapman a tattered copy of The

Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. “That book has seen better days,” Father says, “but I thought

you might be interested.” He and Nat eat quail while Chapman chomps roasted chestnuts. Snow

keeps them indoors. At night, Chapman studies the book and can scarcely believe what he reads:

according to Swedenborg, the Second Coming has already arrived. We are living in the

aftermath. There will be no Armageddon. Everyone, regardless of religion, can go to heaven.

It’s early April, first spring thaw, by the time Chapman gets paid. Old Gordon delivers it

up to the front porch. Twenty-five dollars. Chapman could have sworn the other pickers got

twice as much. He tries to remember the rate per bushel and how many bushels he collected, but

can’t. Gordon rides away and Chapman goes straight to the silversmith. The original ring he

wanted is gone, but he finds another, slightly tarnished one, forks over twenty-two of his twenty-

five dollars, and starts down the road to the Tannehill house.

Nancy lives down a muddy lane with a stone wall on one side. A crow perches at the far

end as Chapman approaches. He kicks through slushy snow, jostles the ring in his pocket.

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At the house, no one answers. It’s Saturday, and Mr. Tannehill is likely out with his

horses, but Chapman can’t imagine where Nancy and her mother might be on a grey day like

this.

He strolls around back to survey the yard. Where would Nancy like her apple trees

planted? They need a high spot, so water can drain away. Standing puddles will rot the roots.

Apples are delicate. The least little thing will kill them—or at least render them fruitless.

But the yard is already full of birches. Perhaps they’ll have to come down. Chapman

hates the thought of destroying trees, but if apples are what Nancy wants….

“John!”

Chapman whirls around. Coming out of the woods in a blue dress and floppy hat is

Nancy—hand in hand with a tall, serious-looking boy. Chapman’s fist closes around the ring in

his pocket.

“What are you doing out here?” Nancy says. Her cheeks are red from romping in the

snow.

“Looking for a place to plant those apples.”

“Aren’t you sweet!” Nancy says. Then, to her sturdy friend: “I told you he’s the sweetest

boy I’ve ever met. Kai, this is John; John, Kai.”

The Finn’s hand feels like granite against Chapman’s. He doesn’t smile, but says in a

deep voice, “Hallo.”

“Where is everyone?” Chapman asks. “Your family?”

Nancy prances from foot to foot, almost hopping with energy. “They’re all in town. Oh,

John,” she squeals, “no one knows—you’re the first to know—Kai just asked me to marry him!

We’ll be married this summer!”

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Chapman blinks a few times.

He recalls Nancy at the schoolhouse last year, calling out, “We are not lovebirds!”

Kai nods, but still doesn’t smile. Nancy unlocks her hand from his and flashes Chapman

a ring—not a better one than his, either. “Isn’t it lovely? Aren’t you happy for me?”

“I didn’t know you were planning marriage so soon.”

“Neither did I.” She wraps an arm around the Finn’s waist. “Kai just surprised me. It’s

funny how sometimes the thing you want most is right under your nose and you can’t even see

it!”

Chapman shakes the Finn’s hand again, mutters something about coming back with some

saplings when it gets warmer, and starts back down the road. The same crow sits on the stone

wall, and this time two more join it before they all flap away.

On the way home, Chapman stops at a house he doesn’t know. An old washerwoman

with a kerchief answers the door. “Excuse me,” Chapman says. “I found this ring on the road

outside. Someone must have dropped it.”

The woman cocks an eyebrow and says, “Why, yes, I’ve been looking all over for this.

Bless you, son.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Hey,” she calls, and Chapman looks back. “Don’t you need any shoes?”

Chapman just waves, waves like it means nothing to him, like he can’t even feel it.

Announcing his departure to Father turns out to be easier than he expected. He catches

the old man in the dark, returning from the outhouse, and corners him there so Father won’t see

his tears. He mentions nothing about Nancy Tannehill but says he’s tired of Massachusetts—he’s

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curious about the untamed lands to the west: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois. Father doesn’t seem

surprised. “You don’t have a horse,” he says when Chapman finishes his speech.

“I can walk,” Chapman says.

“You need a destination. It’s not wise to wander aimlessly, with ‘the Ohio territory’ as

your only goal.”

“I’ll know my destination when I get there.” No movement without purpose, he thinks.

“God will put me where he wants me.”

“How will you live? Where will you sleep?”

“You know me, Father.”

“Take one of my guns. Then, if you get desperate, you can bring down a deer, or at least

a quail.”

“I would never use it, Father, and you know it.”

The old man puts a hand on his son’s shoulder. Chapman studies his father’s face in the

scant light, knowing his father can barely see him at all. “You will take shoes,” Father says.

“That much I insist on.”

“All right. I’ll take shoes.”

“I want to come too,” Nat says in the darkness beside them. Chapman nearly jumps out of

his clothes, but again, Father seems unsurprised.

“I told you that you have to finish primary first.”

“What’s a real education?” Nat says, stepping into view. “Sitting at a desk all day, or

exploring the wilderness? Didn’t you learn more under General Washington than you would’ve

if you’d stayed home where it was safe?”

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These lines sound rehearsed—as if his brother, too, anticipated this. What did they know

that he didn’t? “I don’t remember inviting you,” Chapman says coldly.

“You can’t stop me.”

“You two would leave me here?” Father says, yet behind his words Chapman hears a

certain pride.

“I’m going tomorrow,” Chapman says, by way of warning.

Nat spits onto the icy ground. “Shoot, I’m ready to go tonight.”

By the third day Chapman’s shoes dangle from his hands by their strings. He tosses them

to a traveler going the other way, a man with a bindle over his shoulder, who catches them

against his chest. “Barely worn,” Chapman calls.

“Thanks,” the man says, and Chapman continues on his way.

“Are you some kind of idiot?” Nat says. “We could’ve gotten at least two dollars for

those.”

“And do what with two dollars?”

“Anything. Buy food.”

Chapman laughs. “There’s food all around us.” As if by providence, they come upon a

blackberry thicket and Chapman plucks off several clusters.

“It was stupid anyway,” Nat says. “You’re not going to last long, you keep doing things

like that.”

The forest thickens as they head west. Horses and carriages become less frequent, until

the boys find themselves totally alone on the road. Something unfolds inside of Chapman,

something he never knew was there—he imagines an accordion, or a piece of paper opened to its

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full size for the first time. His strides grow easier, his heart lighter. The more distance between

he and Nancy Tannehill, the better.

“Feels like I can stretch out now,” he says.

Nat, cooking pot clanking on his back, says nothing.

One evening they come to a farm carved out of the forest. A man in sweat-drenched

overalls stands in the yard drinking water from a pail. A little girl waits beside him, and when he

drains the pail, she takes it away. Chapman and Nat each hold a hand up as they approach.

“Well, you two look tired and dirty enough,” the man says. “Where you headed?”

“The Ohio territory,” Chapman says, and the man bursts out laughing.

“This is only New York. You’ve got a ways to go.”

“We’ve got all summer to get there,” Nat says.

Newly-planted fields stretch out behind the house. Chapman recognizes the tiny green

shoots of corn. “We can work,” he says. “For a bed and a meal. We can do whatever you need.”

“Today’s work is done,” the man says. “I wouldn’t charge a man for a plate of beans and

a spot on the floor. Welcome to a bath, too, if you want it.”

As the sun sets over the fields, Chapman finds himself naked in the back yard with Nat,

taking turns in a wooden barrel filled with cold water. Chapman borrows a razor and shaves his

beard, which has grown thick. At dinner he sits at the table with slick hair and a fresh-looking

face.

“You’ve lost ten years,” the farmer says. He shovels potatoes into his mouth. The house

has one dark room, with a fireplace at one end and a curtain separating the farmer’s bed at the

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other. His wife sits alongside three young girls. Candlelight throws shadows across the walls.

Nat lowers his head and clears two plates before anyone else can finish one.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to help out,” Chapman says. “If we’d been an hour or two

earlier, we could have earned our keep.”

“We could do something tomorrow,” Nat says through a full mouth.

“I wouldn’t keep you boys. Every day counts if you’re trying to make Ohio by fall.”

“There must be something we can do,” Chapman says. “Does your family keep any

books around? I could read to these ladies from my Bible.”

Nat gives him a sharp look.

“It’s not much, but it’s something.”

“You some kind of preacher?” the man asks.

“I think it would be lovely,” the wife says—her first spoken words that night. Every head

turns her way.

“Well, there you have it,” the farmer says.

After the meal, Chapman sits by the fireplace and reads from the book of Matthew. The

women sit before him, while the farmer leans against the wall and smokes his pipe. Nat, on the

side, seems just as rapt as the females. Chapman realizes that his brother has never heard him

read like this. He did it with Nancy Tannehill a thousand times.

“Then the Lord will say to the righteous, ‘Come, take your inheritance, take the kingdom

prepared for you since the beginning of time. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was

thirsty and you gave me water, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you clothed

me, I was sick and you cared for me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will

answer, ‘Lord, when did we feed you, or give you drink? When did we take you in and clothe

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you? When did we visit you?’ And the Lord will reply, ‘I tell you the truth: whatever you did for

the least of my brothers, you did for me.’”

The wife’s face trembles on the verge of tears. Behind her, the farmer says, “You’re one

of those Swedenborgers, aren’t you?”

“I am of the New Church, yes,” Chapman says.

“What?” Nat says.

“You think everybody goes to heaven,” the farmer says. “No matter what they do.”

“Well,” Chapman says. “Everyone can go to heaven.”

The farmer points his pipe. “You’re telling me a Mohammedan, or some Hindoo in the

jungle somewhere, is going to heaven the same as me and you?”

“Christ welcomes all,” Chapman says. “Even those who call him by a different name.”

“Do you have any extra Bibles?” the wife asks. “I can’t read, but maybe”—she looks

over her shoulder—“Henry, maybe you could read to us now and then?”

“I don’t have any more,” Chapman says. “But you can keep this passage.” Carefully, he

tears the page out and hands it to the woman, who stares at it for a moment before folding it into

her pocket.

The farmer nods a grudging respect.

The next morning they rise with the farmer, shake hands in the dark, and leave without

breakfast. Chapman senses his brother’s discomfort. Nat wasn’t expecting anything like last

night’s scene. They walk in silence most of the morning, and pass through a cluster of buildings

in the afternoon—not enough to call a town. More like an outpost.

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One of the buildings is a cider mill. Inside sits an apple-crusher bigger than a carriage.

Pulpy brown pomace covers the ground around it. A few men lean against barrels in the shade.

“Now’s our chance,” Nat says, “to know if we’re going the right way.”

The mill workers give them one piece of advice: take the river. “Walking all the way to

Ohio is a fool’s quest. You might get lost, you might run into a damned bear. Why, there might

even be some Iroquois still out there. Take the Susquehanna, get there fast and safe.”

“Can’t you get no horses?” someone says. “Even if you had to share a horse?”

“We don’t have any money,” Nat says.

“What do you do with all this pomace?” Chapman asks. Nat rolls his eyes.

“How hungry are you, son?” The men all laugh. “Those leftovers are no good for eating.

We just throw it away.”

“Good for fertilizer, though,” Chapman says. “And full of seeds. Can I take it?”

The men shake their heads. “Sure, scrape up as much as you want.”

The Susquehanna is another week’s trek. During the walk, Chapman works seeds out of

handfuls of pomace, dropping the gooey pulp along the trail. He hears the river’s whoosh one

night as he and Nat are settling down, and the next morning they reach it—not too wide, but

swift-flowing with early-summer runoff. They stand on slippery rocks and peer downstream.

“What are we supposed to do?” Nat says. “Swim?”

Chapman points to a fallen tree. “We could make a dugout.”

“From that scrawny pine? You think that would work?”

“Worth a shot,” Chapman says.

“But we don’t have a hatchet,” Nat says. “Or an adze, or nothing.”

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“You’ve got Father’s knife—that should clear away the bark, at least.”

“Hell, we could just straddle this thing and ride it down the river like that.”

Chapman rubs his chin with his hand. “We could burn it out,” he says.

“Hey now,” Nat says.

They take turns stripping the bark, a task that consumes most of the day. Nat tears into

the work with a zeal that surprises Chapman. In the afternoon, they flip the log over and, using

sharp rocks, cut an outline. Chapman files down knots in the trunk. He boils some oatmeal from

his pack for their lunch. The sweet smell of fresh-cut wood hangs in the air. By nightfall, the tree

is ready to be gutted.

The next day they pad the trunk with wet moss and ferns, and start a slow burn down the

middle. Chapman keeps the cooking pot full of water nearby. As the middle section crumbles

into ash, Nat scrapes away the blackened chunks until, late in the day, the log begins to resemble

something like a canoe. “By god, this might actually work,” he says.

When they finally push it into the water, Chapman says, “The bottom needs to be flat.

This thing is going to capsize.”

“Nah,” Nat says. He stands waist-deep and rocks the log back and forth. “Might be a little

wobbly, but I think she’ll hold.”

They shove off with their rear ends wedged into the crevice and their feet hanging out the

sides. Chapman looks back and notices the cooking pot still sitting on the bank. “Wait,” he says,

and slides back into the water. He swims to shore, plunks the pot onto his head, and swims back.

“That looks terrific,” Nat says when Chapman climbs in. “That’s the best hat I’ve ever

seen.”

Chapman smiles and, to humor his brother, wears the pot the rest of the day.

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In three days the boat dies. Chunks of the log start to break off, and capsizing becomes

more frequent. Eventually, their gear soaked, the boys admit to each other that they are basically

clinging to a piece of driftwood. They wade ashore, and after clambering through some brush,

find themselves at the edge of a homestead.

Chapman knocks at the door, but no one answers. He and Nat wander around back. An

old man kneels over a wooden bench, whittling something with a knife. The blade flashes in the

sun. Several figurines line the table before him. Yellow fields lay untended, rising to a hill

covered in poplars. A flock of birds flies past. “He’s no farmer,” Nat says. “Look at these fields.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Chapman says. “We’ve been traveling for a while now—whereabouts

are we?”

“Just outside Freeport,” the old man says. “About three days from Pittsburgh.”

“Pennsylvania?”

“That’s right.”

Chapman gestures to the fields. “This your land?”

“I’m a veteran,” the man says. “Served under General Knox, fought at Trenton and

Yorktown. They give me this land for my service.”

“Our father served under General Washington,” Chapman says.

“Does he know about the land grants? The government is giving all veterans a hundred

acres—provided they can prove that they served. Can your daddy prove it?”

“He has his discharge papers,” Nat says.

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“Pennsylvania’s full, though—they’ve opened up the Ohio territory now. Won’t be long

before all that land is grabbed up too. If he wants to claim his, he better get moving. Me, I don’t

even plow mine—I’m a woodcarver, not a bean-picker. I earn my living selling these figurines.”

“How far is Ohio?” Chapman says.

“Can’t say; never been. I hear it’s a farmer’s paradise. But the hunters and trappers, they

usually keep going west, to a land called Wisconsin. We’re just scratching the surface of this

continent. No telling what’s out there.”

“Your field would be a perfect place for an orchard.”

“Apples?” the man says. “I haven’t eaten an apple in ten years.”

Chapman reaches into his satchel and comes up with a handful of seeds. “I can start some

for you. You won’t get fruit for two or three years. But once they mature, you should get apples

every fall.”

“You’ll plant me an orchard—for what in return?”

“Nothing,” Chapman says, but at the same time Nat says, “A place to rest.”

The man laughs. “You’ll have to show me how take care of them. I don’t know the first

thing about apple trees.”

“It’s easy,” Chapman says.

The next day they walk into Freeport proper. Ramshackle buildings flank a muddy street,

where horses and people move back and forth. They pass a white building with pillars out front,

labeled CITY HALL. Nat gets excited—he presses his face against every shop window. “Look at

that candy!” he says. “If only we had some money—if only you hadn’t given away those shoes.”

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Chapman, meanwhile, notices opportunities for trees. “Right here, between these

buildings,” he says. “That would be a great place to plant two or three apples. The drainage here

is great. I don’t think it’s too shady, either….”

“You know,” Nat says, “it wouldn’t be so bad to settle in a place like this.”

“Really?” Chapman says. He thinks of this town as a novelty, an interesting way station,

but not a permanent residence.

“Don’t you get tired of sleeping in the woods with the snakes and bugs?”

“I guess not,” Chapman says.

A mustached man hawks tickets for a fair, to be held that night along the river. Paper

lanterns have already been strung up; workers assemble tents and booths. “Get your tickets

now,” the salesman says. “Only a nickel. You’ll see one-of-a-kind acts, marvels found nowhere

else on God’s green earth—magic and mystery—hurry before we’re sold out!”

“Isn’t there some way we could get in on credit?” Nat asks.

“Cold hard cash is the only credit, son.”

Nat walks away grumbling, and he and Chapman sit down under a tree by the riverbank.

Skiffs push off from shore, loaded down with cargo, operated by men who shout from raft to raft

as they zip downstream. “We could hire on to one of those boats,” Nat says.

“I doubt they’d hire me,” Chapman says. He closes his eyes, and when he opens them

again, Nat is gone. His pack is still there, half-opened, which means he didn’t abandon

Chapman—he just went to explore the town. Chapman eats an old biscuit and reads from the

book of Proverbs. Down by the water, workers set up the fair. One of them walks over and leans

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against the tree, wipes his face with a rag. “You better get in there behind that screen,” he says.

“I bet they don’t want people getting a free glimpse before the show starts.”

“Excuse me?” Chapman says.

“You one of them, aren’t you?” the man says. “The ones in the show?”

“I’m just passing through.”

“You’re not in the show?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chapman says.

“I just figured with those eyes of yours,” the man says. “And how skinny you are. Never

mind, kid.”

The sun is just an orange glow in the west by the time Nat returns. He has a young girl

with him, maybe thirteen or fourteen. “This is Lizzie,” Nat says. “She got us free tickets.”

“How’d you manage that?” Chapman says.

“My ma gives me money,” the girl says.

Reluctantly, Chapman rises and follows them down the bank. The paper lanterns, strung

from tree to tree, rustle in the breeze. As they walk, Chapman takes Nat by the shoulder and

whispers, “Where did you meet her?”

“Outside one of the stores. She has a great big family. She said we can spend the night at

her house.”

People congregate around the tents. Chapman hands his ticket to the same man who

spoke to him under the tree earlier, but this time the man isn’t paying attention. “No re-entry!” he

calls to the crowd at large. Chapman wades into a sea of people, and they move down a long row

with tents on either side. Nat and Lizzie duck into one, and Chapman loses them. He lurches over

to a tent and pokes his head through the flap. There, on a makeshift stage, is some kind of

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monster—a person so mangled and deformed that it can scarcely be called a person. Chapman

quickly retreats, and realizes that each of these tents contains some abnormality, some poor,

freakish being. He stops with his head bowed for a moment and prays for all of them—for

everyone here.

At the end of the row sits the main attraction: a large cat of some sort. A rotund man with

a top hat and waxed mustache claims it to be a tiger captured in Sumatra and brought to America

on a perilous journey. The animal paces its cage with glowering eyes.

Chapman slips out of the fair, back onto the moonlit riverbank, and starts walking. To be

different is one thing. To be caged is quite another. He fingers some loose seeds in his pocket.

At a high spot, he pushes them into the spongy soil.

Sometime during the night, Nat finds him under the tree. “Come on,” his brother says.

“We got a roof over our heads tonight.”

Chapman is comfortable where he is, but shrugs on his pack and walks two or three miles

across Freeport to Lizzie’s house—an old British-style mansion, shaded by oaks, probably built

before the war, inherited by a family of women. “Their father died,” Nat says. “And now they

just roam and do what they please.”

Lizzie’s feet are black with dirt as they walk up the lane. “You don’t wear shoes, either,”

Chapman says. The girl smiles up at him.

The house is cavernous—Chapman figures the original owners were Loyalists and the

place has been ransacked, refurbished, trashed again, handed down through various parties.

Lizzie leads them by candlelight to a room with blankets on the floor, beneath a window.

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Whispers come from other rooms and Chapman gets a sense of people shuffling about. “How

many sisters do you have?” he asks.

“Eight,” Lizzie says. “We always got to tend mama. She’s too fat to get out of bed.”

Someone down the hall coughs loudly.

“What happened to your father?” Chapman asks.

“Kicked by a mule,” Lizzie says.

Chapman expects Nat to bed down beside him, but Lizzie leads him away to another

room and he doesn’t come back. The moon floats halfway across the window before it occurs to

Chapman why. His little brother, eleven years old, is dominated by urges Chapman has felt only

rarely, and in passing. By moonlight, he studies Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “All other sins

are committed outside the body, but the man who sins through sex sins against his own body. Do

you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? You are not your own—you were

bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

Nat comes to him before dawn. “I’m staying here.”

Chapman sits up. He is utterly dumbfounded. So much time passes before he answers that

Nat thinks he’s still asleep, and shakes him: “Hey! Wake up. I’m not coming with you today, you

hear me?”

“I hear you,” Chapman says.

“I’m sorry. But I’ve found something here that I can’t walk away from. Lizzie and I are

gonna get married.”

“You’re only eleven—”

“I turned twelve last month. Don’t you know your own brother’s birthday?”

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“Nat,” Chapman says, but before he can say more, his brother says:

“Johnny, you know how you’re always searching for something?”

“No,” Chapman says.

“No? What’s so special about Ohio? Why are we going there? Why do we live like

animals? What are you looking for, Johnny?”

Chapman blinks a few times.

“Listen—I found what I was looking for. These girls don’t have a man around here. I can

help them. You could stay too—maybe you can marry one of Lizzie’s sisters.” Nat looks

hopeful, then adds, “Lizzie’s the oldest, though, so you’d have to wait a few years.”

“You know I can’t do that,” Chapman says.

They sit for a moment, and then Nat dives forward to embrace him.

By first light he is back across Freeport, back to the river road, which he walks all

morning as the sun rises behind him. Birdcalls fill the air. Travelers on horseback tip their hats.

To Chapman’s right, flatboats skim down the river.

He doesn’t stop to eat until dark, when he boils some oatmeal and mixes it with nuts and

berries from his pack. His first night without Nat, the old dream returns: Chapman’s mother,

lying in bed coughing blood, blood coming out of her nose, until Chapman runs screaming from

the room—but this time, when he jumps awake with a shout, no one is there to reassure him. No

one snores softly beside him, or even down a hall. He is alone, and chilly, lying on a bed of pine

needles in a glistening forest. There is a certain purity in this.

Dear Father,

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After a long journey, I have reached the Ohio Territory and am happy to report that it is

a beautiful country. There is much farmland and wildlife here. Autumn is nearly upon us, and I

have completed my journey just in time.

Nat and I parted ways in Pennsylvania—he met a family there and stayed on to help. I’ve

been walking alone these many weeks. I wouldn’t have known I was in Ohio, had I not come

across a lonely post office, which is where I now sit, in the gloaming, writing this letter.

This journey has been remarkable. People everywhere are friendly and happy to offer

help. There exists a spirit of optimism amongst our countrymen that I never knew about. Perhaps

you recognize it, Father, from your time in the war—everyone seems to be looking forward to

something. I don’t fully understand this but it gladdens my heart to see it.

Ohio is an empty country, but not for long. The rumors of land grants are true. If you

show your discharge papers, you will be granted no less than one hundred acres of prime

farmland. According to locals, even the native Shawnee honor these grants, and don’t resist new

settlers. This could be a splendid opportunity for you.

I do have one request: my Bible is quite worn, with some pages missing, and I would like

to have another, if you could send it. You may respond at this address; I’ll likely stay around

these parts for the winter. Nat’s address is also enclosed, though I can’t attest to how accurate it

is.

If I don’t hear from you before spring, I will leave a notice with the postmaster that you

might be headed this way. On horseback, the journey should not take long. I may be somewhere

else by then.

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You are in my heart daily. I think of you and pray for you often, and trust that you know

that I love you very much, Father, and eagerly anticipate a good word from you. Until then, I

remain,

Your son,

John Chapman

2.

Moonless night. Chapman—skinny, dirty, with crow’s feet around his eyes and a beard

that stretches past his collarbone—sits hunched over a fire with wild potatoes skewered on

sticks. Early June, chilly. He’s been in the woods for over a month, and can’t recall the last time

he spoke to another human being.

Down the trail, a slight noise. A twig snap, a shuffle of dirt. The smell of another traveler.

A figure emerges from the shadows: long cloak, gun across his back, canteen slung over one

shoulder.

“Howdy,” the voice says—high-pitched, like a child’s, and for a moment Chapman

imagines Nat, whom he hasn’t seen in fifteen years. “Mind if I share your fire?”

“Sit down,” Chapman says, and the figure enters the circle of light. His face is almost

cherubic. “You want a potato?” Chapman says. “I’ve got plenty.”

“Obliged,” the kid says. “I tried all day to nab a deer but they’re too quick. Or else I’m

too poor a shot. You couldn’t get no game, neither? Ain’t there any wild boars around here?”

“I’m not even sure where here is,” Chapman says.

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“Why, you’re in Indiana,” the kid says. “Don’t you even know where you are?”

“No,” Chapman says. He feels the kid waiting for further explanation, but he doesn’t

have one. “No,” he says again.

“Well, hell, you’re on the Ohio border. You’re just south of Fort Wayne. That’s where

I’m headed. Where you headed, mister?”

“Nowhere in particular,” Chapman says.

The kid bites into a potato and chews. “My daddy beat the hell out of me two days ago

and I’ll be goddamned if I stay around there. I’m gonna sign on to fight Indians.”

“Why do you want to fight them?”

The kid snorts. “Hell, you got to fight somebody.”

Chapman blinks a few times.

“You don’t have any meat here, do you? Dried jerky or anything?”

Chapman almost says, “I don’t eat meat,” but fears the kid would only react with scorn,

so he says, again, “No.”

The kid spits into the darkness. “Lean times, I guess. Well, I appreciate you sharing your

fire. All right if I bed down here?”

“Fine with me,” Chapman says. “But I’m about to douse this fire, so bundle up.”

“What? What in the hell for?”

“It draws insects.”

“Aw, they fly right into the flames. They ain’t going to pester you none.”

“That’s precisely why,” Chapman says. “I don’t want to be responsible for killing

anything. Even bugs.”

The kid cocks his head. “Are you crazy or something?”

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Chapman takes another bite.

“You’d rather lay here in the damn cold than kill a couple of flies?”

“It’s not that cold,” Chapman says.

“I never heard of nothing like this before,” the kid says.

After the potatoes are gone, Chapman kicks dirt onto the fire so that he and the kid are

plunged into darkness. “By god, wait till I tell them about this in Fort Wayne,” the kid says.

“You know, I could just as easy go off a ways and make my own fire.”

“You could,” Chapman says. In the dark, he can see only outlines of things—which

means the kid can’t see at all. But the kid doesn’t move.

“You some kind of preacher, or what?”

“Sometimes.”

“You know any of them old Bible stories?”

“Most of them, yes.”

“Is it true what they say about the End Times—God’s going to send fire over the Earth

and burn everything up?”

The kid’s voice sounds vulnerable all of a sudden, young and scared lying there in the

dark. “No,” Chapman says. “That’s not true at all. The End Times have already come and gone.

We’re already living in the New Earth. People just aren’t aware of it.”

At dawn, Chapman rises and slinks away through the woods, leaving the kid on his back,

open-mouthed, shiny drool running down one side of his face. In the grey light he looks even

younger than Chapman thought. He takes a portion of cornmeal from his pack, leaves it beside

the kid, and heads toward the rising sun, back into the Ohio territory, a land he has crisscrossed a

hundred times, but which always seems to have something new in store for him.

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One evening at dusk he rounds a bend and comes face to face with a black bear. The

animal has its front paws halfway up a tree trunk, grasping for something, and jumps back when

Chapman appears. The little bob tail twitches. It’s at least six hundred pounds.

They eye each other for a full minute before the bear makes a noise like a dog’s whine, a

noise of frustration, as though it’s being pulled back by an invisible hand. It slinks away into the

woods. Chapman sings an old battle hymn as he passes by, one of the songs the apple-pickers

back home used to sing. Anything to make noise, to show the animal he isn’t afraid.

On a ridge, looking down at a stream, he sees an Indian: buckskin clothing, feathers

woven into long hair. Over his shoulder the man carries a kind of satchel. He kneels down at the

stream, cups water in his hands, drinks. Birds flit back and forth over the rocks.

Something inside Chapman says: Don’t pass this up.

So he climbs over a rock and down the ridge, shaking branches to make as much noise as

possible. The Indian leaps up. Chapman stands with his arms outstretched, just as he’d done with

the bear. The Indian is unarmed.

They stare at each other. The Indian says something in French. Chapman expected a wild

savage, but this Indian wears boots, appears clean—and speaks more languages than Chapman

does. He says the French phrase again.

“I speak English,” Chapman says.

“English,” the Indian repeats thickly. “My English not as good.”

Chapman’s heart pounds. “You understand me?”

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“Understand, yes—speak, not as good.” His mouth twists to form the words. “Even my

grandfather speak francois. English, this is something new. But I learn fast.”

“You’re Shawnee?”

“Shawana,” the man says. He touches his chest. “Abukcheech. The little mouse.”

“Ah-book-cheech. My name is John.” Chapman isn’t sure whether to offer his hand or

bow, so he does both. The Indian squeezes his fingers for a moment.

“Do you know where you are?” the Indian asks.

“I think I’m in Ohio somewhere….”

“You are in Shawana lands. This place is not safe for you.”

“I’m just passing through.”

Abukcheech’s face is smooth, his eyes wide-set and placid. “You are lucky to see me

first. My uncle would have killed you. The francois leave us alone, but you English do nothing

but chop down our trees.”

Chapman shakes his bag of seeds. “I plant trees.”

The Indian peers into the bag. He mimes eating an apple, and a thrill of excitement shoots

through Chapman, stronger than anything he’s felt in years. “Apples,” he says.

“Yes. Apple.”

Abukcheech kneels down and opens his satchel, which is full of herbs and dried

mushrooms. Chapman recognizes most of them: cornflower, St. John’s wort, Klamath root,

Pokeweed, Skunkweed, stinging nettles, thistles, blackberries. For each one, Abukcheech tells

him the Indian name.

He holds up some brown mushrooms. “For talk with Great Spirit,” Abukcheech says.

Chapman pulls out his Bible. “I talk to him through here.”

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The Indian takes the Bible and leafs through the pages. “In Shawana, I am healing man,”

he says. He hands the Bible back to Chapman. “You are healing man?”

“I’ve never healed anyone,” Chapman says.

“You are man of Wakan Tanka—of Great Spirit.”

“I call him Christ,” Chapman says. “But I believe we’re talking about the same thing.”

Abukcheech squints at him. “You cannot travel these lands alone. Follow me. I will show

you to my uncle. He will grant you passage.”

“Lead the way,” Chapman says.

A cluster of tents around a creek. Horses dip their snouts into the water. Laundered

buckskins flap on lines. Women pound flour into cakes. Children scamper.

“This is only summer camp,” Abukcheech says. “Temporary camp.”

A group of men begin shouting when they see Chapman. “Wait here,” Abukcheech says,

and goes forward alone. One of the Indians, a fierce-looking man with only one eye, gestures

wildly and has to be restrained by the others. Chapman’s knees shake as Abukcheech comes

jogging back.

“They want to see you. Come.”

Chapman approaches the group. These Indians are old, with impenetrable faces. The one-

eyed man spits at his feet, but another man, wearing a red cap with a feather, steps forward to

grasp Chapman’s hand. “This is my uncle,” Abukcheech says. “Tecumseh.”

The man says something in Shawnee and Abukcheech translates: “He says he has heard

of you. The Apple Man. You have roamed these lands for twenty years.”

Chapman nods. Tecumseh says more.

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“He wants to know why you do not align yourself with the other whites,” Abukcheech

says.

Chapman stammers. “I—I travel alone. I don’t align with anyone.”

Tecumseh nods, but the one-eyed man shouts a long slew of watery language and several

others murmur agreement.

“This is also my uncle,” Abukcheech says. “Tenskwatawa—the Prophet. He says all

white men come from the Serpent, the Evil One, and they must be burned. For him it is great

insult that I bring you to this village.”

Chapman lowers his head and says, “I’m not here to fight anyone.”

Abukcheech and the Prophet exchange words. Their voices grow more and more heated,

until Tecumseh steps between them. He holds a finger in Chapman’s direction and says a few

words, then walks away. The Prophet, clearly upset, spurts some last invective and stalks in the

other direction. The group of men break apart, leaving Chapman and Abukcheech alone on the

little rise.

“Tecumseh gave you permission to cross our land,” Abukcheech says. “I knew he would.

He knows you are man of Wakan Tanka.”

“The Prophet didn’t seem happy about it.”

“They are brothers—but they will never agree. The Prophet says all white men are evil.

Tecumseh is too smart for that. He knows the difference between the government and a person

like you.”

“A person like me,” Chapman repeats.

“There are no people like you,” Abukcheech says, and smiles.

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A week later he comes upon a homestead with an orchard out back, and realizes it’s one

he planted four or five years ago. The farm has since changed hands—the new owner, a young

man in a straw hat, complains to Chapman that he can’t yield any apples.

“You haven’t been pruning enough,” Chapman says. The trees are barely as tall as him,

though they should be much bigger by now. “Or you’ve been pruning during the wrong time. If

you prune during winter, you’ll get a big harvest the next summer. Prune in the summer, your

tree will stop growing.”

“I’ve been pruning every summer,” the man says.

Chapman bends a branch and inspects it. “These might be stunted permanently. But

maybe not. See, your branches should be two feet apart. That way the fruit will have room. And

your trees ought to have a scaffold shape—these limbs should grow out perpendicular. They

should have been weighted with rocks during their first year. Now they’re all over the place. And

you have far too many buds on here.”

“I wanted as many as possible,” the young man says. “To sell the leftovers.”

“The fewer the buds, the bigger the fruit,” Chapman says. “Those buds should be six

inches apart. Otherwise you’ll get nothing worth selling.”

The man’s log home is bigger than others Chapman has seen in these parts: the man and

his wife actually have their own bedroom, apart from the children. The little ones sit rapt as

Chapman reads from the book of Genesis—the story of Noah and the ark, something he figures

will entertain their young minds. When he finishes, he says, “Remember, it doesn’t matter if the

story really happened or not. It’s the lesson that’s important.”

Five little heads nod, and Chapman is amazed—this married couple looks far too young

to have so many babies. The woman is skinny as a scarecrow, with large shimmering eyes like

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Chapman’s. They look so much alike that Chapman can’t stop staring at her, and fears the farmer

will get the wrong idea. She might have been his sister.

“Do you see well in the dark?” he asks her.

“Like an owl,” her husband answers. “She can look out the window and see a fly flap its

wings a hundred yards away at midnight. It’s those big eyes.”

“That’s right,” the wife says.

“I’m the same,” Chapman says.

“Is that so? Well, I can see it now, though I didn’t notice before. You two have got the

same eyes.”

Chapman flips to the Book of Acts, to the passage about Saul getting blinded on the road

to Damascus. Carefully he tears out the pages. “Here,” he says, handing them over. “This story

always reminds me that true sight comes from our souls, not our eyeballs.”

In the morning, the farmer scribbles an address on a piece of paper and says, “Write to us

sometime—I’ll keep you updated on that orchard.”

When Chapman reaches a hill on the road, he looks back. The entire family, man, wife,

and children, stand waving to him. He waves back until they’re out of sight.

In the town of Mansfield, at a one-room post office, a group of burly men surround him

as he scratches out a letter to his brother Nat. Chapman glances up from his paper. The men cross

their arms over their chests.

“You been out in the woods,” they say.

“We know who you are.”

“You been out to Indiana. You seen the Shawnee.”

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“I’ve met some of their people,” Chapman says.

“You know their trails,” the men say. “You know where their village is.”

“No,” Chapman says.

“What do you know about their ways?”

“No more than you, I’m afraid.”

One of the men points a finger. “Just mind you know which side you’re on when the

fighting comes. If we find that village and you’re in it, you’ll get cut down with the rest of

them.”

The men start to walk away, but Chapman calls out: “The Shawnee are angry. They say

you’re taking their land.”

“They signed away that land to the United States government under the Treaty of Fort

Wayne. My Pa fought in the war, so I know. And now these goddamn animals think if they

swoop down and kill women and kidnap babies, we’ll just turn tail and run. They’ve got another

think coming. We’ll hunt down every last one of them.”

Afterwards, Chapman’s hands shake so badly, he can barely finish his letter.

He meets Abukcheech by the stream and tells him how unhappy the settlers are. “They

claim your tribe steals babies and murders women.”

“This is true,” Abukcheech says. “I am ashamed at certain things the Shawana have done.

But there is no stopping my uncle. When the Prophet speaks, people listen. They follow him. He

says to burn Christian artifacts, so we burn artifacts. He says to burn any Shawana who has

converted to Christianity—and so we burn people. Now he says all white men must burn.”

“How did he lose his eye?” Chapman asks.

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“The gods took it from him during a vision. In exchange he can see the spirit world.”

Chapman shakes his head. “Those townspeople are looking for you,” he says. “Your tribe

should just relocate—move west with the others.”

“This has been our home since the beginning,” Abukcheech says.

“The beginning of what?”

“Of everything,” Abukcheech says. “Come, I want to show you something.”

He leads Chapman into a thicket where a black-and-white mare stands silently, her rope

looped over a branch. Chapman climbs behind Abukcheech and they trot away through the

forest. He hasn’t been on horseback in years. Soon they crest a hill where he can see the entire

town of Mansfield below.

“We can slaughter them at any time,” Abukcheech says. “Yet we do not, because

Tecumseh does not believe in slaughtering innocents. Nor do I.”

Chapman points to the Fortress: a ring of spiked logs at the center of town. “They could

hunker in there for weeks.”

“We would starve them out.”

“There’s got to be some kind of compromise,” Chapman says.

“I once hoped so. But for the Prophet, there is no compromise.”

“Maybe I could talk to your uncles.”

Abukcheech gives him a hard look. “Why don’t you speak to your own people?”

“I’ve been trying for twenty years,” Chapman says. He slides off the mare. Abukcheech’s

face is heavy, melancholy, as he starts back down the trail.

“Meet me here on the new moon,” he says. “If there is a time my uncle will listen, it is

then.”

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In Mansfield, the men form hunting parties. They have rifles, muskets, swords, ropes.

They leave at dusk, carrying torches. Chapman, under awnings, leaning in alleyways, crossing

muddy streets at dawn, sees them return from their midnight searches. They want blood.

The old nightmare returns: his mother, coughing blood, blood coming out of her nostrils.

Chapman, sleeping in a field, jerks awake again and again. Never did he think the frontier would

be like this, with men hunting other men like animals. Twenty years ago, there was a spirit of

optimism pulsating from the land. Now it’s on the verge of descending into madness.

He tries to read his Bible, but it’s too dark. Instead he sits under a tree and thinks about

his father, the revolution, the orchards, the river, the chain of events that led him here tonight, the

Earth rotating on its axis. The Massachusetts beach, which he hasn’t seen in so long.

Abukcheech emerges from the shadows, his face painted red and white. An uneasy

feeling churns in Chapman’s stomach. It is the new moon. The fires of Mansfield burn below.

“Why are you painted?” Chapman asks.

“Tonight we make war. Escape now, while you can.”

“You said I could speak to your uncles.”

“If they see your face tonight they will remove it from your body. The Prophet’s blood is

boiling. He has the tribe in a rage. Tonight the Shawana kill.”

“You plan to kill as well, Abukcheech?”

He nods. “For you to kill is against your nature. But for me it is different. The little

mouse will do what the Shawana require.”

“Your English has gotten better,” Chapman says.

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“And still you have learned no Shawana at all.” Abukcheech places a hand on Chapman’s

shoulder. “I am sorry to make violence on your people. But the Shawana have a saying: There is

time for peace, and time for war. This, John Chapman, is time for war.”

“The Bible says the same thing,” Chapman says.

“Then you understand.”

“No.” Chapman starts down the hill, leaving Abukcheech behind, standing like a ghost

beside his horse. “No, I don’t,” he says.

He stumbles down the hill in fear and disgust, rusted cooking pot clanking on his back. If

the Shawnee leaders won’t listen, and the white men won’t listen, then what can he do? What

would Father do? What would Swedenborg have done? Anything, Chapman decides—anything

to stop the killing. He sprints into town, leaping over gullies and hedges, and pounds on the door

of the first house he comes to. A man’s voice calls out: “Wilson, I already told you, the damn

thing ain’t for sale!”

“The Shawnee are coming,” Chapman yells. The door swings open and a bearded man—

one of those who cornered him at the post office—says: “You.”

“Get your family inside the fort,” Chapman says.

“Why should I listen to a damn lunatic like you?”

“They’re going to kill everybody. They’re gonna burn this place to the ground.”

A woman in a bonnet appears beside him. “How many are coming?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Chapman says. “But we don’t have much time.”

“Janice,” the woman calls behind her. “Diana. Get your sisters.”

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“Now hold on just a goddamn minute,” the man says. But the woman pushes past him,

outside with Chapman, leaving the man standing there with a dumbfounded expression.

“I’m going to tell the Johnsons,” she says. “And the Taylors.” She runs down the road

with her dress billowing behind her.

“I ain’t never had control of that woman,” the man says in a low voice.

“If there’s ever a time to listen to her, it’s now,” Chapman says. “The Shawnee are out

for blood.”

“So am I,” the man says, and slams the door.

Chapman runs through the town shouting warnings, until candles flare in every window.

People flood the streets, carrying bags and rations. Mothers drag children by their wrists.

Everyone heads toward the fort, whose spiked walls stand in mute defiance. Men gather amidst

the chaos, guns dangling at their sides.

Panting, Chapman stops at a corner with his hands on his knees. Just as he catches his

breath, he finds himself once again surrounded by a group of angry men.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“You been out there living with them Indians?”

“Hell, he’s probably trying to trick us, so the sons of bitches can come loot our homes. I

say we stand and fight!”

“You’ll need a militia for this,” Chapman says. “There’s too many of them.”

“We’re supposed to hide like cowards while they run wild through town?”

“There’s a garrison over at Mount Vernon,” someone says.

“It would never get here in time.”

“Gentlemen, we’re about to get scalped.”

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“How far is it to Mount Vernon?” Chapman asks.

“About twenty-six miles,” someone says. “South, through Fredericksburg.”

“Well, if Philipides can do it, so can I,” Chapman says. He grins at the men. “Of course,

he dropped dead afterwards.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ll go rouse the garrison. They’ll make it back here by dawn.”

“None of us is loaning you a horse, you damn fool. Hell, you’d probably run right into

the damn Shawnee and get chopped up.”

“No,” Chapman says. Already his calf muscles are twitching, his feet are moving. “I can

see in the dark. Get your women and children into that fort,” he says, breaking through the circle

of men. “And don’t do anything stupid.”

He runs down the dark road, his bare feet skimming over briars and rocks. His mind

detaches from his body and he imagines Swedenborg, sixty years ago, scribbling at a table by

candlelight, somewhere in Europe, trying to capture the visions he had just received. He

imagines himself, Swedenborg, and Abukcheech sitting down to dinner together. The road

widens and he passes through sleepy Fredericksburg without waking anyone. When he reaches

Mount Vernon, in the darkest pre-dawn hours, he starts shouting again, but his voice comes out a

croak. He pounds on a door and someone opens, a dark figure, and Chapman hears himself

babbling about Indians and garrisons and forts and help, but now his legs buckle. His lungs burn,

his tongue swells in his mouth, and he falls to his knees at the doorstep. Boots clomp around

him. Shouts, torches. The jingle of halter bells. A soft female hand touches his face, drips water

into his mouth. His body trembles as with cold, though the morning is warm now. Something

occurs to him: the soldiers whom he has roused will descend upon the Shawnee with the same

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vengeance the Shawnee had for those settlers. Violence for violence. Death for death. “Why,” he

moans, as the woman pours water over his head. “Why?”

“Because you’re burning up, honey,” she says. “You need to rest.”

“Wars and rumors of wars,” he says, thinking of the Book of Revelation.

“That’s right,” the woman says. She pushes him gently back. “You’re all right. Just lie

still now.”

Chapman rests his head on the dewy grass, and sleeps.

3.

Chapman, in the woods, crouches down to scoop walnuts. Liver spots dot his hands. A

white beard hangs halfway down his chest. Blue eyes blaze from within a network of lines. He

moves slowly, fills his satchel with nuts, makes his way back to the road. His wooden staff raises

dust before him.

He has no idea where he is.

At the edge of a town, a preacher stands on a hickory stump and addresses a crowd of

men and women. Chapman approaches with his Bible clutched in one hand.

“My friends, you are on the path to evil. That’s right, every one of you. This great

country of America had a chance to steer itself the right way. It had an opportunity to do

something no other nation had ever done. It had the chance to turn toward Jesus. But it failed. It

failed, friends, because all of you got caught up in material wealth. That’s right, you.” The

preacher points at individuals in the crowd. “And you. And you.”

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The preacher is young—no more than thirty—and dressed in a ratty jacket and patched

trousers. He shakes a Bible in the air, and Chapman marvels at how thick the book seems—much

thicker than his copy. Then he remembers: most of his pages have been torn out.

The preacher goes into a mock falsetto voice. “How much land can we grab? How many

clothes can we buy? Where do I get those fancy new boots? What about toys for the children? A

new horse, a new cow, a new slave, a looking glass? Jewelry?” He raises both hands to the sky.

“Friends, Jesus Christ himself told us that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a

needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The way you’re headed is the way to

Hades, let me tell you. Where can I find a man who, like the early Christians, is traveling to

heaven bare-footed?”

“You’re wearing shoes, yourself,” someone calls out.

The preacher lowers his head for a moment, then looks up. “I am a traveling minister,

friends. I travel in the name of Christ. But you farmers and mill workers and shopkeepers and

horse dealers: who among you is like the early believers? Who here is journeying to heaven clad

only in what the Lord provides?”

“You want us to walk around naked?” someone calls. General laughter. The preacher

reddens.

Chapman nudges his way through the crowd, to the hickory stump, and plants one bare

foot upon it. His toes are black with grime, the toenails hardened and yellow. “Here I am,” he

says. The audience howls.

“Why, sir,” the preacher stammers. “I do believe I stand corrected.” He lifts his hands to

the sky. “Only one man here today is living as he should. Let him be an example to us all.”

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Chapman is confused. He can’t remember the last time he ate. A sort of numbness has

overtaken his body. He rambles through rocky fields—is this still Ohio? Is he going east or west?

Low clouds make it impossible to tell.

High above, a vulture circles.

He feels a presence—someone walking with him. In the middle of the field, he turns

around and around. No people—only a distant orchard on a hill. He heads toward it. Footsteps

again fall beside him. His mind playing tricks. Unless—is it Nat? Is it one of the children he read

to? Is it Abukcheech? Is it that woman, that farmer’s wife, who had eyes just like his?

This orchard feels familiar. Chapman walks among the trees and touches their trunks.

Whoever planted these did so expertly. Then he realizes: this orchard is his father’s, he’s back in

Massachusetts somehow, and there’s Nancy Tannehill—white hair, blue eyes, old skin, sagging

bosom. Walking with a stoop. She clutches the hand of a small girl, her granddaughter, and as

Chapman approaches, she says, “I knew you’d come back.”

“Have you stayed here all this time?” Chapman says.

“Eight children will keep a woman at home.”

“What about your husband?”

“Kai can’t go out much these days. He’s almost blind now. But you, Johnny—you still

have those same eyes.”

Chapman blinks a few times.

The little girl runs after a squirrel. Her blonde pigtails whip around. Nancy turns to

Chapman and says, “Are you all alone, Johnny? Didn’t you ever find someone?”

“I found a lot of people,” Chapman says.

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“You know,” she says, “solitary trees won’t bear fruit. Someone once told me that.”

“My company is in heaven,” Chapman says.

A fog rolls through the orchard and seems to carry Nancy away with it. Her

granddaughter remains, scampering through the heavy-laden trees. An apple plunks down beside

her—just a few more weeks and the season will be over, the fruit will rot, the harvest will be

wasted. Chapman looks around for a ladder, but weariness washes over him, and he sits down

under a tree. The girl skips over his outstretched legs, laughing. He will rest for a little while, and

then he’ll help her pick some apples—bring them back to her grandmother—maybe he could

finally plant those saplings in the back yard. But first a nap—just a small doze—just enough to

regain his energy—just a short break before he gets moving again.

Chapman closes his eyes.

Dear Sir:

I am writing to inquire about your orchard, and to remind you of the particulars of its

upkeep. First of all, remember to prune during winter only. That way, when spring arrives, your

trees will distribute their energy into fewer branches, thus making those branches bigger. You

will reap much more fruit in this manner.

Remember also to keep the buds at least six inches apart. The more room your apples

have to grow, the bigger they will be.

If you ever plant a nursery of your own, make sure to do it on a hill with good drainage.

The root systems of apple trees are especially delicate and susceptible to water damage. Tie your

saplings to stakes and weigh down the young branches with rocks to give the tree a handsome

scaffold shape.

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It would also behoove you to place your orchard near a windbreak—a barn or wall, or

better yet, a cluster of full-grown trees. This way, during storms, you will not lose too much of

your crop.

I am heading northeast at the moment, but whenever I venture your way again, I shall

stop by to examine the orchard and offer any new advice. However, I am fully confident that you

will be able to raise fruitful trees that will provide for your family, and even your town, for years

to come. Apple trees will keep producing fruit for decades, if you take proper care, so even your

grandchildren will be able to enjoy them.

Give my regards to your wife, and know that I think of your family often, when I am on

my solitary rambles, and look forward to the day when I can sit at your table again. Until then, I

remain,

Your friend,

John Chapman

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