The Gray House

Blind sits down. But not on that comfortable, chair-like branch. This one is rather like a bifurcated threshold, a place to linger awhile for those who are already halfway out the door.

Humpback’s breath is labored. He’s chasing the questions that refuse to be caught. He already knows those lots of things, all that’s been embedded in the songs, poems, sayings, and nursery rhymes. All the miracles of the House have been distilled into them, and he swallowed them whole at the age when miracles mundanely coexist with the rest of reality, so he already has the answers to most of the questions he could ask now. The longer he searches for them, the better he understands that this is so. Blind waits, stepping over the unasked questions together with Humpback. A step . . . and another . . . and another.

“What’s going to happen to her now?” Humpback asks finally. “This . . . Godmother. Will she stay there forever?”

Blind nods.

“She will. And what becomes of her there is not our concern. Not mine and not yours.”

“She’s so little!”

Blind searches his pockets for cigarettes but doesn’t find any.

“She’s tenacious,” he says.

Humpback is silent for a few seconds, evaluating this argument.

“Where is she hidden?” he asks, revulsion dripping from his words. “You know . . . The grown-up her.”

Blind sees what Humpback has just imagined. How Godmother’s chrysalis is extracted from a gym locker, and how much commotion that causes among the rest of the counselors.

“She isn’t anywhere except the Forest,” he says. “I’ve dragged her over completely.”

He cringes, already anticipating the next question. Because this is never talked about. It’s not mentioned in any poems, songs, or nursery rhymes.

“Is that possible?” comes the question.

“Yes,” Blind admits. “But it’s very hard. You can’t really do that. The House doesn’t like it and makes you pay.”

With fear, he adds silently. With the possibility of losing everything. With helplessness, banishment, and sometimes even death.

“When Ralph took me away,” he says with a shudder, “I thought that was the end of me. He said that he wasn’t returning me to the House until I told him where she’d disappeared to. Where we have hidden her. And you know . . . If I hadn’t dragged her over completely, I would have told him anything he demanded. Never in my life have I been more scared than at that moment. I ceased to exist. Turned into a nonentity.”

Blind is shaking and not noticing it. He brings the lapels of his buttonless jacket closer together over his chest. He doesn’t realize how pitiful a figure he’s cutting, and is surprised by Humpback’s hand outstretched to him.

“Don’t say it.” Humpback grips his shoulder. “I understand. I am not going to ask you to bring me over completely.”

“No,” Blind says. “There’s only one person for whom I will do that. For him I am prepared to pay the price. But no one else.”

“Try not to think about it, all right?” Humpback says.

Blind nods.

“I will find you there. And then I will bring you over. I’m allowed to do that to those who are already halfway gone. I think. I hope. But it might take time.”

“You don’t have to,” Humpback says firmly. “Not for me.”

Blind nods again and slides down the trunk. The closer he is to the ground, the cooler the air around him, as if it’s not the asphalt exhaling the heat of the day that’s waiting for him there but a sea of tall grass. When he reaches the last branch he jumps off. His fingers touch the ground and encounter small squares of cardboard. A lot of them, like someone has spilled pieces of a child’s jigsaw puzzle. It’s the questions for the Oracle. Blind picks one up and puts it in his pocket.

“Hey,” he hears a dejected voice say from above. “What do you think the Pied Piper would be playing?”

“Madrigal of Henry the VIII,” Blind answers immediately.

TABAQUI

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

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

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

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