five

The girl hovered outside the garage now. She was just standing there, squinting at X and rubbing her nose, her hair askew from sleep. Yet he was so transfixed by her that everything in his body stopped. She had wavy, light brown hair that just barely grazed her shoulders. There was a dark beauty mark on her left cheekbone that drew attention to her eyes, which were wide and glinting and seemed to change from blue to gray even as X looked at her.

He turned away and coughed savagely. Stan’s sins had been polluting his body ever since Regent set them loose in his bloodstream. Now that X had let Stan go free, the pain had intensified. The Trembling was the lords’ way of ensuring that the bounty hunters would follow orders and return to the Lowlands with their prey.

X had never suffered like this before because he’d never refused his duty before. Still, he knew that his misery—the fever, the pain, the delirium—would only increase unless he renewed his search for Stan. Even if X could endure his sickness, the lords would send another bounty hunter after him—or maybe Regent himself would arrive, seething and bent on vengeance.

When his coughing subsided, X turned back to the girl and her family. The mother was holding her children at a safe distance. Still, the boy managed to break free, and rushed at him. X’s body stiffened reflexively—no one ever approached him unless they meant to do him harm—but the boy only wanted to hug him and to whisper, “You saved my dogs!”

He embraced X so tightly that X gasped.

“Stop it—you’re hurting him,” said the girl. “And you’re being weird.”

“Step away from him, Jonah,” said the mother.

The boy did as he was told. The mother peered around the garage.

“My god, it’s hot in here,” she said. “How is that possible?”

X had warmed the air with a simple rubbing together of his hands. Seeing the mother’s concern, he made a circular motion with his palm and the garage was frigid again in an instant.

“Wow,” said the mother, even more alarmed than before.

“A-mazing!” said the boy.

The girl said nothing. She hadn’t stepped any closer. Was she afraid? Disgusted? X couldn’t blame her. He was repulsive even to himself. He saw her notice the bruises beneath his eyes, then look quickly away. Shame radiated through him. He wished that she and her family would flee. He wished they would burn the garage down around him. He did not want them to bind their fate to his. Now that he had betrayed the lords, he was a body in free fall, gaining momentum as he fell.

X touched the boy’s back gently to let him know that he had not hurt him. He stole another look at the girl, afraid he would see horror in her eyes. Instead, he saw a soft expression that he could not identify. Was that what pity looked like?

He managed to speak, which came as a surprise even to himself. He said four words with as much force as he could muster: “Leave me. Protect yourselves.” Then, so quietly it was as if he were speaking to himself, he said two more: “Jonah. Zoe.”

He began to lose consciousness then, and darkness poured in from every side. He heard one last exchange. The boy said in wonderment: “He knows our names, Mom! How does he know our names?!” And the mother answered—though it was not truly an answer but an exhausted kind of prayer—“I just wish I knew what I was bringing into my house.”

It took Zoe and her family ten minutes to devise a plan for ferrying X inside. As he waited, he drifted in and out of consciousness, like a boat that couldn’t decide whether to sink or float. Each time he came to, he begged them to abandon him. He could not make them understand the dangers. Finally, Jonah and his mother left to fetch something from the house. X and Zoe were alone.

Even in his fever, X could feel the awkwardness of the moment. He felt Zoe’s eyes flit over his face again—his hair, his lips, his eyes—and again he was ashamed to think how he must look to her. He’d seen others like her from a distance before, and they’d never stirred anything in him. But Zoe … He could feel her gaze on him even when he turned away—even when his eyes were closed. Her face gave off such warmth that it was a kind of light. No amount of horror or hatred could make an impression on X anymore—but loveliness and kindness laid him flat.

“Who are you? What are you?” said Zoe, after an agonizing silence. She paused, and laughed to herself. “Do you skateboard?”

“Do I—?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I have a blurting problem.”

Again the awkwardness was everywhere. X wanted so badly to speak to her, to make her comfortable, to let her see something in him that was not wretched.

“I do not … skateboard,” he said.

She laughed for some reason, shook her head, and put her face in her hands. She stared out into the darkness to see if her mother and Jonah were on their way back. They were not.

“Zoe,” said X, wondering if he had the energy to speak the words swarming in his head. “You must abandon me. I am not like you. You have seen what I am capable of—and creatures even more dangerous will come after me soon. They will demand that I recapture Stan, and they will destroy anyone whose shadow falls across their path. Zoe, truly, I can offer you nothing but peril.”

She knelt by his side.

The closer she came, the more his fever cooled. He had never experienced the phenomenon before.

“You saved my brother and me,” Zoe said. “And I can handle a little peril.” She smiled faintly. “What’s your name? I don’t even know your name.”

“I do not have one,” he said.

“That’s messed up,” she said. “Okay, listen, whoever you are, we are not going to let you freeze to death out here. You helped Jonah and me when you didn’t have to, and you didn’t kill Stan when you could have—and that’s when I saw what you are capable of.”

“Zoe, I beseech you—”

“No. There will be no beseeching.”

Her voice was stern now. He feared he had angered her, but saw that she was struggling with many emotions.

“My family’s had a shit year,” she said, then stopped to gather herself.

“You need not speak if it brings you pain,” he said.

“No, I want to,” she said. She started again, speaking slowly, carefully: “We’ve had a shit year. There was nothing we could do about it, but there is something we can do about you. So we’re going to help you, no matter what you say—or how weirdly you say it.”

X searched her mind to see if her will was as strong as it seemed. He moved slowly, feeling his way into her thoughts, like he was parting branches. Almost immediately, she shivered and shot him a warning look.

“Stop it,” she said. “There will be no mind-melding—or whatever that is. You have to promise. Not with me or my family.”

“I give you my word,” he said. He added—he was not sure if he should—“And I have never been able to do it with anyone but you.”

This seemed to surprise her, and she smiled.

The awkwardness was lifting, dissipating like smoke.

“What will you call me?” he said.

“I’ll think of something,” she said.

The front door slammed in the distance—a dead sound with no echo. X turned to watch Jonah and his mother cross the drive. Jonah ran excitedly. He was carrying a round, red sled. He was holding it in front of him, like a shield.

Together, they pulled X to the house. With every bump and jolt, he arched his back in agony. Once inside, they maneuvered the sled through the kitchen, then the living room. Zoe and her mom tugged at the rope, while Jonah cleared the path and shouted frantic, sometimes contradictory, instructions.

At the bottom of the staircase, they managed to get X to his feet, like a team of workers lifting a statue. Zoe and her mother held his arms to steady him, and Jonah shoved as hard as he could from behind to prevent him from toppling backward. After five nerve-wracking minutes, they reached the landing. Jonah wanted X to sleep in his room with him, and when his mother hesitated, he began chanting, “Sleepover! Sleepover! Sleepover!” In the end, it was decided that X would sleep in Jonah’s bed, even though it was small and shaped like a ladybug. The Bissells would all share the floor. The mother didn’t want her children alone with him.

Zoe helped X onto the bed, putting a palm against his chest to steady him. X closed his eyes to hide his surprise. His shirt had a rough V at the throat, and Zoe’s right forefinger had landed on the patch of bare skin. For the next few moments all he could feel—all he was aware of in the world—were the tiny movements of her hand as she inched her finger back onto cloth.

X was still dizzy and weak. The moment Zoe took her hand away he fell back onto the mattress with such a thud that the ladybug’s antennae twitched. Zoe unlaced his boots and put them under the bed. When she went to hang his overcoat in a closet, he shook his head no.

Zoe smiled.

“Security blanket?” she said.

X did not recognize the phrase, but he could tell there was kindness in it.

Zoe placed her palm on X’s chest again—avoiding his exposed skin so carefully that he felt her touch even more keenly than before—and said, with a strange kind of sweetness, “Good night, moon.”

As she turned away, he reached out to touch her arm. Had he not been in a fog and half out of his senses, he’d never have had the nerve.

“Why endanger yourselves?” he said. “Why do all this for me?”

Zoe looked down at where his hand lightly gripped her. She gave him a smile, a trace of light in the darkness.

“There’s nothing good on TV,” she said.

Jonah fell asleep first and began battling someone or something in his dreams. Zoe’s mom tossed on the floor awhile—she gave a little yelp every time she rolled onto a toy that Jonah had left on the carpet—then slipped off as well, one arm draped lovingly over her son.

X lay quietly, unable to rest despite his exhaustion. He turned to face the window next to the bed. A frantic beetle was flitting back and forth between the panes of glass, trapped forever with the wide world in full view. X knew what it felt like to be that bug. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine escaping the Lowlands and living. Truly living. He pictured himself with Zoe in the summertime when the world wasn’t hardened by ice and swallowed in snow. When there was no Trembling. No fear.

He shook his head. The vision was ridiculous—and dangerous, besides. The longer he resisted returning to the Lowlands, the more he imperiled them all.

Yet even the sound of Zoe’s breathing in the darkness captivated him. It was nearly five in the morning now. They were the only ones left awake. Some protective instinct made it impossible for him to sleep before she did. So X and Zoe just lay there in the dark. He listened to her breathing—waiting for it to deepen and slow—and had the sensation, though he had a hard time trusting it, that she was listening to his.

The blizzard had mauled Zoe’s and Jonah’s schools, and they had to be shut down for days. The flagpole at the high school had snapped in half and flown through the front doors like a missile. Half the windows on the northern side of the building had been shattered: all that remained of the glass was a rim of tiny, pointed shards that looked like vicious little teeth. Over at the elementary school, the classrooms were flooded with muddy water. Handwritten essays about climate change and drawings of horses floated through the hallways like lily pads.

X had fallen into a sleep so long and unbroken it was nearly a coma, his chest rising and falling, his legs dangling off the end of the ladybug. He slept through most of Monday. He was only vaguely aware of the comings and goings downstairs. He heard voices. He heard cupboards squeaking open and clapping shut. He heard branches being dragged across the snow and tossed onto a pile.

In the afternoon, a friend of Zoe’s arrived in a truck thumping with music. X heard Zoe call him Dallas, but wasn’t sure that was actually a name. Dallas had brought Zoe a coffee, which seemed to delight her (“Oh my god, does this have actual milk in it? Do not tell my mother.”). Still, she sent him away without letting him into the house. X knew that he himself was the reason, and he was just conscious enough to feel shame trickle through his chest.

Hours later, he woke again: another car engine, another friend. The sky was black, except for the fuzzy yellow lights of another town on the horizon. X’s shirt was soaked with perspiration.

This friend must have known Zoe well. She didn’t bother to knock on the front door—she just strode into the front hall, calling her name. The instant Zoe tried to send her away, the friend said, “Why are you being weird? Gloria and I take one four-hour nap—okay, it was five hours, shut up—and now you’re dissing me? And, by the way, what the hell was up with that insane Instagram? People are asking me about it.”

Even feverish and half-asleep, X could feel Zoe grow tense.

He heard a wooden step creak as she sat down: She didn’t want her friend anywhere near X. She was blocking the stairs.

“I’ll tell you everything, Val,” she said, finally. “But first tell me what you’ve heard.”

Val sighed.

“I hate this game,” she said. “Okay, I heard you solved the Wallaces’ murder, met a hot alien, and made the chief of police cry like a bitch.” She paused. “Let’s start with the alien.”

“He’s not an alien,” said Zoe.

“I’m disappointed,” said Val, “but go on.”

“I met him during the storm,” said Zoe. “He helped me and Jonah.”

“And?” said Val.

X didn’t understand the question, but Zoe clearly did. She lowered her voice to a whisper, not knowing how keen X’s hearing was.

“And he’s so hot I can’t even,” she said.

“You can’t even?” said Val.

They were giggling now.

“I can’t even begin to even,” said Zoe. “Ask me about his shoulders. Ask me about his arms. I mean it—pick a body part.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” said Val. “Just because I think heterosexual sex is gross and immoral doesn’t mean I don’t understand what a hot guy is.”

Zoe laughed.

“It’s immoral now, too?” she said.

“Hello, overpopulation! Hello, world poverty!” Val said. “But I’m trying to be open-minded. Say more about the alien.”

“Still not an alien,” said Zoe.

“Still disappointed,” said Val.

X sank back into sleep like someone pushed down into a river. He only half-understood what he’d heard.

He awoke only twice on Tuesday.

The first time, Zoe propped his head up against a pillow and spooned broth into his mouth, saying gently, “Three more sips … Two more … One more … Come on, don’t fight me.”

The second time, she leaned over him with a glass of water and attempted to push something into his mouth. X was confused. He began to choke. Jonah, who’d been playing with dinosaurs and wizards on the floor, looked up and said in a shocked voice, “He doesn’t know how to use a straw?”

“Shut up, Jonah,” Zoe said. “Don’t embarrass him.”

Now that he was under Zoe’s care, X began to surface from dreams more regularly. The Trembling had loosened its grip. Stan’s sins flowed more quietly through his veins, though they never disappeared entirely.

Sometimes, he heard the Bissells wonder aloud about him when they thought he was sleeping. Was he from hell—was that what he meant by the Lowlands? Why was he sent there? What had he done? Was he alive? Was he undead? What were his superpowers and what were his weaknesses? These last two questions came from Jonah, who, as X’s eyes fluttered open momentarily, had also crept close and asked if he was one of the Avengers.

Zoe’s mother suggested they all write their questions down on slips of paper and put them in a metal mixing bowl she had placed on the nightstand. When he had recovered, she said, she’d see to it that he answered them all.

Now, even as he slept, X could sense the bowl beside him filling with paper. He dreaded answering the questions, and the dread crept into his dreams like a rising flood. He saw terrible images: a parade of every soul he had ever dragged to the Lowlands. He saw the fear he inspired in his victims and, sometimes, even his own hands in a ring around their throats. X was certain that the more Zoe knew about him, the more repulsed she would be. He had only done what the lords had commanded him to do—but he had done it.

X finally had the strength to sit up on Wednesday morning. Zoe and the others were curled on the floor, still murmuring low in their sleep. The Trembling should have forced X back to the Lowlands by now but, thanks to Zoe’s presence, the pain was muted. He gazed out the window, hungry for air. The frozen river glinted at the bottom of the hill like a long glowing ribbon.

He went outdoors, and the frigid wind blasted away the last remnants of sleep. The sun was not yet visible but it had sent a flood of orange and red across the sky to announce its arrival. X was grateful that the day was not yet bright. He had lived so long in a cell that his eyes were accustomed to darkness and to close quarters. He was most comfortable at this hour, when the world revealed itself slowly.

X had been trained to ignore the beauty of the Overworld. He had been taught to cast his eyes downward, or to stare straight ahead like a horse pulling a carriage. Any memories he formed here—not just of mountains and sky, but of the dogs nuzzling his face or of Zoe placing her hand against his chest—would make him suffer all the more when he returned to the Lowlands.

And he would be forced to return—he couldn’t let himself forget it. The lords would eventually haul him back home. What terrified him was that he didn’t know when or how—or what plague they would visit on Zoe’s family for giving him shelter.

X was weaving his way down the hill when he heard the door open behind him. He turned to see Zoe coming toward him. She had thrown on a coat and snowshoes, and her face wore a dark expression.

“Are you bailing on us?” she said.

“Bailing?” said X.

“Leaving. Are you leaving?”

“No, I assure you I am not.”

Zoe seemed not to believe him.

“Because enough people have left us already,” she said. “And Jonah likes you. You know who else was allowed to sleep in the ladybug? Nobody ever.”

“Zoe,” he said. “I am merely testing my lungs.” He paused. “Will you walk with me? I would be glad of your company.”

He could see, in her eyes, that she was struggling to trust him—and he could see the instant she decided to try.

“Yes, kind sir,” she said. “I, too, should like to test my lungs.”

“Do you mock me?” he said.

“Verily, I do,” she said.

They walked in silence, down toward the snow-burdened trees. Zoe did not assault him with questions about who or what he was, and he was grateful for it. He could not remember a time when he’d simply walked beside someone with no horrible destination in mind. He could not remember anyone being so calm in his company. Zoe seemed not to fear him at all. Once, as they were crossing the frozen river, she even bumped against him playfully. He felt the whole length of his body flush with heat.

They found themselves, almost without realizing it, on the path to the lake. The dead part of the forest loomed ahead of them—the trees stood stripped and charred, as if they’d been decimated in an atomic blast. X watched as Zoe took in the grim sight. He offered to turn back. She shook her head no, like it was something she knew she had to overcome. To distract herself, she began singing: “‘Row, row, row your boat / Gently down the stream /Verily, verily, verily, verily / Life is but a dream.’”

“Even I know that tune,” said X. “Yet I think you have misrepresented the words.”

Zoe laughed: “Have I? I don’t think so.”

Again she gave him a little bump with her hip, and again he felt heat ripple through him.

When they reached the lake, Zoe walked directly to the hole that Stan had made, as if to convince herself that she hadn’t dreamed it all. X trailed after her.

The hole had mostly frozen over. It looked like a scab that was healing.

X wanted to pull Zoe away, wanted to protect her from the memories he knew would be sinking like pins into her brain.

She spoke before he could conceive of a plan.

“So Stan really did know my father,” she said. “That disgusting reptile knew my father. I thought he was lying when he said they were friends.”

X searched for something suitable to say. He was so unused to talking that forming even the simplest sentence felt like building a wall. Every word was a stone he had to weigh in his hands.

“Stan is poison,” X said carefully. “You must not let a single syllable he uttered into your blood.”

Zoe nodded, but he could see that she was distracted and had not truly heard him.

“You’d think that once my dad died,” she said, “he couldn’t disappoint me anymore.” She stopped and kicked at the ice with the tip of a snowshoe. “There goes that theory.”

X saw both hurt and anger in her—they were like competing storms.

“Yet you loved your father?” he said. “Or the disappointments would not pain you?”

Zoe hesitated just long enough that X felt his cheeks redden and wished he hadn’t spoken.

“I loved him,” she said. “Sometimes I think I loved him just enough to screw me up for the rest of my life.”

X was silent a moment.

“You do not seem … You do not seem screwed up to me,” he said.

Zoe laughed.

“Get to know me,” she said.

This time X spoke without thinking.

“Would that I could,” he said.

Zoe frowned and turned away. X wondered if it was because he’d reminded her that he would eventually have to leave. He decided it was better that she not forget it. It was better that neither of them forget.

She was staring down at the ice now. The edge of the hole was speckled—decorated almost—with Stan’s blood.

Zoe shivered, and straightened up again.

“There’s other stuff that Stan said,” she said. “I can’t stop hearing it in my head. He said he heard my dad died in ‘some goddamn cave’ and that we just left him there.”

“More poison,” X said.

“No,” said Zoe. “It’s true.”

There was another silence and, because the wind had quieted, it felt deeper somehow. X waited. Zoe began to tell him about her father—about the morning she woke up to find him gone, about the search for his body. She seemed surprised that the story flowed out of her so freely.

“I was pissed when I realized he’d gone caving without me,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t just our thing—it was our only thing. If he thought I wasn’t ready to go caving in the snow or whatever, he should have waited for me. He should have trained me. We had one thing! How hard is it to keep one thing sacred?”

Zoe stopped for a second. X didn’t know if she would continue.

“I figured he’d gone up to Polebridge,” she said, at last. “There are two really tough caves up there—Black Teardrop and Silver Teardrop—so about 20 of us helped the cops look for him. It was insanely cold. My friends Val and Dallas came. They don’t even like each other, but they pretended to because I was so freaked out. Dallas brought a big jug of this disgusting, like, weight-lifter shake that he said would give us ‘the strength of a thousand badasses.’ I refused to drink it.” Zoe paused. “Jonah came, too. I mean, it was nuts that he was there. Some therapist told my mother it was a good idea. The kid was still seven—and he was up in the mountains looking for his dead dad.”

Zoe fell silent again.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t want to hear all this.”

“I do,” said X.

Zoe searched his eyes to see if he was telling the truth.

“It’s a horrible story,” she said.

“Perhaps telling it will take away some of its power,” he said.

She nodded, and continued. X didn’t recognize all the words—some swam past him in schools, like exotic fish. Still, he felt Zoe’s pain seep into his chest and become his own.

“We searched around Silver Teardrop first,” she said. “We didn’t find anything. The caves up there both have supersteep caverns—just straight, like, hundred-foot drops—so nobody actually went inside. But at Black Teardrop, we found the rope my dad had used to lower himself down. One end was tied around a tree. The other just kind of disappeared into the cave.” She looked at X, and paused. “Jonah was the one who found the rope. He had this happy, little-kid look on his face, you know? He was like, ‘I found him! I found him!’”

Zoe turned away from X now.

“Then Jonah saw the blood on the end of the rope and all of a sudden he dropped the thing like it was a snake and started crying.” Zoe stared up at the sky. “I took the weight-lifter shake from Dallas and chugged the thing,” she said. “I ended up puking all over the place. Attractive, right?”

X could find no words to offer.

“Your father,” he said, when the silence had become uncomfortable. “He had fallen into the cave?”

“He must have stopped to take a picture while he was rappelling down,” said Zoe. “He probably wanted me to see some ice formation, or something. That’s actually the part that …” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “You know? Because he was doing it for me. And it would have been okay except that he used to wear this nerdy old helmet that had an actual flame for a light. That’s the way my dad was: he would do things because they were dorky. The flame must have burned through the rope. I used to love what a dork he was. But this time it got him killed.”

Zoe’s words hung in the air.

X put a hand on her shoulder. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d touched anyone that way. He wasn’t sure he ever had.

“The cops promised they’d go get my dad’s body, but they never did,” said Zoe. “They just fenced off the cave and left his body down there, all mangled or whatever. We had a memorial service in town, which was totally awful. Even the food sucked. Then my mom and Jonah and me had a little ceremony in our backyard. Jonah wanted to bury one of our dad’s T-shirts. He decorated a cardboard box with purple stars—that was, like, the coffin, I guess?—and put an old T-shirt in it that said Ninja Dad. We buried it under a tree that Jonah’d be able to see from his window. We couldn’t bury it very deep because the ground was too hard. Anyway, it was this whole big thing. Jonah wrote a poem, but he was crying too hard to read it, so we just passed it around. I could only read, like, two lines before I started losing it. The first two lines—seriously—they were like, ‘Now that Daddy Man and I are apart / I don’t know what to do with my heart.’”

When Zoe had finished her story, X felt desperate to tell her something about himself, but every thought, every memory, every feeling was stuck in his throat.

He told her this in his stumbling way.

She shook her head.

“I didn’t tell you all that because I wanted you to tell me something,” she said. “I told you because I trust you.”

“And I you,” said X. “Yet still I stand here, dumb as a stump. Everything I know about myself shames me.”

Zoe looked at him so sadly now that X feared he had only compounded her pain.

“Just tell me one thing about your mom and dad,” she said. “One tiny thing. It doesn’t have to be some huge deal.”

X considered this.

“I do not know who they were,” he said.

Zoe breathed in sharply. X felt a stab of embarrassment.

He told her about the Lowlands a little. He wondered if she would believe him. When he saw that she did, his shame at who—and what—he was kept spreading. Zoe seemed to know it. She stepped forward and hugged him. He was too stunned by the gesture to hug her back.

“It’s time we gave you a name,” she said when they pulled apart. “I’m thinking Aragorn—or Fred.”

Later, they climbed the hill back toward the Bissells’ house, the white drifts sighing beneath their feet. Zoe pointed out the willow where they had buried her father’s T-shirt. It was a slender tree, heavy with snow and bending so low to the ground it looked as if it were trying to pick something up. It struck X as a lonely sight. He stepped forward and took the branches one by one in his hand. He shook the snow off gently until the tree could stand upright.

He felt Zoe’s eyes on him all the while.

Back in the house, Zoe informed everyone of X’s new name.

Her mother laughed and said, “That’s not technically a name, but okay.” Jonah shouted, “I’m gonna call you Professor X!” And then immediately forgot to.

Zoe’s mother steered everyone into the living room, where an awkward silence fell. The silver bowl full of questions had migrated downstairs, and sat on the coffee table now. X cringed at the sight of it. He dreaded telling the Bissells even more of his story. They should have cast him out days ago, and once they knew who he truly was, they would.

Zoe was next to him on the couch.

“You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to,” she said softly. “And no one will judge you.”

Zoe’s mother picked up the bowl and handed it to X.

“Time to find out who we’re dealing with,” she said.

She did not say it unkindly, but it stung.

X took the bowl and set it on his lap. Immediately, he felt anxious and unsettled, like there was an animal loose in his chest. Even if Zoe had told them everything she knew about him, they knew only the bare beginnings. But that was not the only reason he feared what was about to happen.

He stared down at the nest of papers.

He could not convince his hand to reach into the bowl. He sat paralyzed.

“Pick one!” said Jonah.

X pulled out a strip of paper. The bowl made a pinging sound as his knuckle brushed against it. He unfolded the strip and stared down at the words in his hand. The letters swam in every direction, as they always did.

He looked to Zoe, helplessly.

She did not understand—but then, all at once, she did. She leaned toward him to whisper a question.

But Jonah beat her to it: “You don’t know how to read?”

X shook his head the slightest bit.

“Nor write,” he said. “Nor draw, now that I think of it.”

X knew that Zoe’s mother was gazing at him now. Was she disgusted? Scared? Was she strategizing about how to separate him from her children? He was afraid to turn to her, so he didn’t know.

“I can show you how to do that stuff,” said Jonah. “It’s actually not that hard.”

“Thank you,” said X.

Zoe took the paper gently from his hands so she could read it aloud. Her voiced quavered just enough to tell X that she was nervous, too.

“‘Why’d you get sent to the Lowlands?’” she read. “‘Did you kill somebody? Did you kill a whole ton of people—like, with a catapult?’”

“That one’s mine,” said Jonah.

“We know,” said Zoe.

X took a breath.

“I know this beggars belief,” said X, “but I committed no crime. I was never even accused of one. I will swear it upon anything you like.”

Across the room, Zoe’s mother coughed what sounded like an unnecessary cough.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but that actually does—how did you say it?—beggar belief.”

“Stop it, Mom,” said Zoe.

“Do not censure your mother on my account,” said X. “This is her home. She has shown me nothing but kindness.”

“Thank you, X,” said Zoe’s mother.

It was the first time anyone had used his name. Even in the unhappy circumstances, he liked the sound of it. It made him feel centered—present somehow, like a picture coming into focus.

“I read about a lot of religions when the kids’ dad died,” Zoe’s mother said, “and there was something in all of them that helped me. I’m kind of a walking, talking Coexist bumper sticker now.” She paused. “And, I’m sorry, but … I’ve never heard of people getting sent to hell for no reason.”

Zoe took the bowl from X’s lap and set it angrily on the coffee table, where it vibrated noisily.

“This was a bad idea,” she said. “We’re done.”

“No,” said X. “Your mother is correct: No one gets sent to the Lowlands without cause.”

He turned to Zoe’s mother now, and found her eyes.

“But, you see, I was not sent to the Lowlands,” he said. “I was born there.”

No one spoke as X’s words settled. The only sound was Spock and Uhura barking in the distance. X hated speaking the sentence, yet now that he had he felt freer somehow.

Zoe reached into the bowl.

“‘Is it weird to be three hundred years old, or whatever?’” she read.

X surprised them all by laughing.

“And whose query is this?” he said, glancing around the room.

“Mine,” said Zoe. “I mean, no offense, but you talk like Beowulf.”

Jonah giggled.

“Wolves can’t talk, Zoe,” he said. He turned to X uncertainly: “Can they?”

“I do not believe so,” said X. “As to my age, I was but a whelp when a woman we call Ripper began training me to be a bounty hunter. For years, hers was virtually the only voice I heard. I suppose I learned to speak as she does—and she was wrenched from your world nearly two hundred years ago.”

“So how old are you?” said Zoe.

X heard an urgency in her voice, as if this question mattered more than the others.

“Ripper tells me that I am twenty,” he said.

“Twenty?” said Zoe. “For real?”

“Yes,” said X. “The only reason I have to doubt her is that she is quite nearly insane.”

“Wow, twenty,” said Zoe. “If you want, I could help you apply to college.”

X recognized this as a “blurt” and let it pass.

Zoe unfolded another question.

“‘Where are the Lowlands? What are the Lowlands?’” she read.

“Those are mine,” said her mother.

“Good job, Mom,” said Jonah.

X sat motionless, trying to compose an answer in his head. Finally, he turned to Jonah and asked him to gather up all the little figures from his room—the soldiers, the animals, the wizards, the dinosaurs, the dwarves—and bring them outside in a basket.

“I am not certain I can explain the Lowlands,” he said. “But perhaps I can build them for you.”