SIXTY

SIMON SHOOK THEIR HANDS AND KISSED CHARITY’S, THEN SAID:

“Oh, my. Sorry. May I?”

He grabbed Griff’s hand, kissed it. Thomas’s.

“Always working,” he said. “Always improving. You kids keep me young. Never expected so many kids. Shouldn’t be a surprise, I suppose. Sit down, will you? Would you like some tea or something?”

The cabin’s furniture was largely shapeless, backless lumps. Everything layered over with cloth and tapestry so you couldn’t tell precisely what you were sitting on, or what posture might make it tip. Griff contented himself on a purple hump in the shape of a toadstool. Simon brought him tea that smelled like anise and something else—grass after it rains.

“You’re one day early,” Simon said. “How did you discover us?”

“The radio,” Griff said.

“Oh. Wonderful. Wonderful!” He set the teacup down. “Quite an effort, the radio. Of course, people disagreed about the broadcast. Thought we’d be overrun. But it’s just right, isn’t it? The right people find their way.”

Griff nodded. Silence. Simon watched them, and Griff’s eyes were again drawn to the glinting glass case on the far wall—

“Go on,” Simon said. “Have a look.”

They stood and crossed the carpet. It wasn’t jewels. The case held butterflies. Pinned wings. Some shone with the pearly glow of a mollusk’s nacre. Others looked velvet, like the rumpled nap of rose petals. Simon remained seated.

“I used to see the wings,” Simon said. “Now I only see the bodies. Little reminder.”

Shriveled bodies between. Black, pinhead, staring eyes.

“Reminder for what?” Thomas asked.

“No recording,” he said. “No preserving.”

Charity exhaled. Her face clenched.

“Why not?” Thomas asked, turning from the case. “Why keep it so secret?”

“Pardon my language but—you must understand, being young, what would happen. We’d be Facefucked. Instafucked. Permafucked. Like the rest of everything. Like floods! Like locusts! There’d be nothing left. And here you came without phones for us to take away. Maybe a first. Please, indulge an old man with a story.”

They did. Simon echoed certain parts, energetic refrains—

Song fishing! You broadcast us! Police! False alarm!

“Can you imagine?” Simon said. “Learning it was just a false alarm. They must’ve been so relieved.”

Griff looked down, recalling the Walk of Shame.

“They’ll be mad,” Griff said.

“Think they’ll come looking?” Simon said.

“They won’t find us,” Thomas said.

“They will or they won’t, I suppose,” Simon said.

“Did you start this whole thing?” Griff said.

“I did,” Simon said. “I always liked the undertaking of big imaginings. Great big things, you know. Accomplishment!” He knocked his teacup into the saucer, stared with ferocious eyes. He laughed. But the ferocity was real.

“You climbed mountains,” Griff said.

“Plenty,” he said. “Mountains worked for a while. I tried to get a mountain. But you can’t get a mountain, is the problem. Can’t put it in your sack and carry it down with you. You climb a mountain a million times but the mountain is still the mountain and not much different from the climbing. And neither was I, at the end of the day. Adventure becomes routine. Chapters to check-boxes, you understand? So then—I chased the next great big imagining.”

“The sea?” Thomas asked.

“Whales,” Simon said. “I was fascinated. Worked fishing boats. Killed my way through thousands of fish. Literally thousands of little souls, you know? Working up to a whale.”

Charity’s face was drawn. Simon’s, too.

“So then you do,” his words even. “You kill a whale. You learn your hands can kill a thing so much bigger and more beautiful than you. It can be done. You can simmer it down. Steal its bones. You can reduce it to something small enough to smear on toast. That’s power, isn’t it? Then you’re sitting there eating your toast with a bit of blubber. And how different are you then? You can climb the biggest mountain. Swallow a whale on your toast. What is it, then, you’re seeking out there?”

In silence, Griff considered the TOE Box. Diagrams and theories, files and maps.

“Music?” Griff said.

“Yes,” Simon said. “Maybe that.”

“Will we get to see the Band?” Griff asked.

“The Band,” Simon said, his voice deep. “Well. I have a secret.”

“What?”

He leaned forward. They leaned forward.

“I’m in the Band,” Simon said.

Thomas leapt out of his seat.

“Oh my god,” he said. Griff and Charity exchanged looks—what now? Kneel? Request an autograph?

“You’re, well, you’re amazing, I mean you, thank you—” Thomas stuttered.

“No, no,” Simon said. “You’ll see it all tomorrow. Thank me then. For now, why don’t we find you a crew.”

“So, we get to stay?” Griff asked.

“Yes,” Simon said. “As long as you like.”

Thomas slapped Griff’s back, hard, and the three of them pulled into a reflexive hug. Simon laughed and went to a map stuck with colorful pins and fabric swatches, dotted with names—the Springboard, the Velvet Den, Rapture Palace, the Slitherhound, Naughty Noodle, BrindleBurner, and every crew had their own campsite—the SandDogs, the Hydras, PooperScoopers, ReFuel, the Electrolytes, WeedWhackers, TrundleBunnies—

Charity got a blue band for the Hydras, in charge of water/hydration, a red wristband for Thomas in Soundscaping, and Griff got a black one.

“A crew so secret we can scarcely say its name,” Simon said. “Shhhh-curity.”

He placed it on the opposite wrist from the paracord.

Outside, an approaching engine. Lights flared through the window and Simon was suddenly rushing, gathering up glasses. They knocked together like gentle chimes—

“Your ride! Almost forgot,” he said. “We must drink!”

He poured four small golden goblets of a greenish, grassy-smelling liquid. They touched glasses and drank. It tasted like mowed lawns and dandelions and turpentine. He hugged each of them in turn, the same way he shook hands—strong, graceful. The moment of their embrace, it was there again—

—the smell!

It struck Griff that he’d been wrong. It was not his grandparents’ home. Just the way it had smelled one particular morning.

Griff remembered him and Leo, eight years old and in pajamas, stepping onto the back patio with their father. Griff had been holding his dad’s warm hand, his dad, whispering—perfect timing. Perfect timing. Bracing air. Their breath, swirling vapor.

Overnight, their grandparents’ lawn had become a fairy tale. A fence transformed to cloud-castle ramparts, lawn furniture to marshmallow sculptures. Hills glazed in sheets of twinkling stillness. An impossible scent, all the way out in the desert.

Simon smelled like snow.