Konstance

Behind her the line of traffic remains backed up for all eternity along the lakefront. The faceless kids in tank tops remain frozen mid-stride on the corner. But in front of her, things inside the Atlas are moving: the sky above the owl-shaped book drop box becomes a seething, swirling mat of silver, and snowflakes are tumbling out of it.

She takes a step forward. Unruly juniper hedges rise on either side of a snow-covered walk, and at the far end, a dilapidated, light-blue two-story gingerbread Victorian house shimmers into place. The porch leans, the chimney looks crooked; a blue OPEN sign flickers to life in a front window.

“Sybil, what is this?”

Sybil does not answer. A sign, partially buried in snow, reads:

Everything behind her in Lakeport remains the same: static, summery, locked in place, the way the Atlas always is. But here, at the corner of Lake and Park, beyond the book drop box, it’s winter.

Snow collects on the junipers; snowflakes blow into her eyes; the wind carries the taste of steel. As she heads up the walk, she hears her feet crunch in the snow; she leaves footprints behind her. She climbs five granite steps to the porch. In the glass in the top half of the front door is a sign in child’s handwriting:

TOMORROW

ONE NITE ONLY

CLOUD CUCKOO LAND

The door creaks as it opens. Straight ahead is a desk with pink paper hearts taped to it. A day calendar reads February 20, 2020. A framed needlepoint says: Questions Answered Here. One arrow points left to Fiction, another points right to Nonfiction.

“Sybil, is this a game?”

No reply.

On three antediluvian computer monitors, green-blue spirals drill ever-deeper. A leak, seeping through a stained ceiling tile, falls into a plastic trash can half full of water. Plip. Plop. Plip.

“Sybil?”

Nothing. On the Argos Sybil is everywhere; she can hear you in every compartment at every hour; never in Konstance’s life has she called to Sybil and not received a reply. Is it possible that Sybil does not know where she is? That Sybil does not know this exists inside the Atlas?

The spines of the shelved books give off an odor of yellowing paper. She opens a hand beneath the dripping leak and feels the drops strike her palm.

Halfway down the center aisle a sign says, CHILDREN’S SECTION, with an arrow pointing up. Legs trembling, Konstance climbs the stairs. The landing at the top is blocked by a golden wall. Written across it in what Konstance thinks might be classical Greek are the words:

Ὦ ξένε, ὅστις εἶ, ἄνοιξον, ἵνα μάθῃς ἃ θαυμάζεις

Below the writing waits a little arched door. The air smells of lilacs, mint, and roses: a smell like Farm 4 on its best, most fragrant day.

She steps through the door. On the other side paper clouds on strings glitter above thirty folding chairs, and the entire far wall is covered by a painted backdrop of a cloud city, birds swinging around its towers. From all around her comes the babble of falling water, of creaking trees, of chirping songbirds. At the center of a small stage, illuminated in a shaft of light angling through the clouds, a book rests atop a plinth.

She drifts transfixed through the folding chairs and climbs onto the stage. The book is a gilded duplicate of the blue book on Father’s nightstand in Scheria: the cloud city, the many-windowed towers, the whirling birds. Above the city it says, Cloud Cuckoo Land. Below it: By Antonius Diogenes. Translation by Zeno Ninis.