“Sustainable.”
Out on the ice teenagers in sweatshirts laugh as they glide past the safety glass. Fun: all anyone cares about.
“Yeah, sustainable. We’re driving to Boise for a sit-in on the fifteenth. You could come, Seymour. People are starting to pay attention.” She smiles a lopsided smile and her blue-black eyes are on him but she has no power over him anymore.
SEEMORE6: i made 2 from the instructions u sent
MATHILDA: 2 pies
SEEMORE6: ha yeah 2 pies
MATHILDA: these pies how do they get cooked
SEEMORE6: prepaid phones, pie cooks on the fifth ring just like on the PDF
MATHILDA: 2 different numbers? one for each?
SEEMORE6: 2 pies 2 phones 2 different numbers like the instructions
SEEMORE6: though as soon as first pie gets cooked the other will also
MATHILDA: when?
SEEMORE6: soon
SEEMORE6: maybe thursday, storm in forecast, was thinking less people would be out
MATHILDA: …
SEEMORE6: u still there?
MATHILDA: message me the 2 numbers
On Wednesday he comes home from school to find Bunny packing boxes in the living room by flashlight. She looks up at him, tipsy, nervous.
“Sold. We sold it.”
Seymour thinks of the cookers, packed with Composition B, under the bench in the toolshed and eels go swimming through his guts.
“Did they—？”
“Bought it after seeing pictures online. All cash, as is. Gonna tear down the house. They just want the lot. Imagine having enough money to buy a house on your computer.”
She drops her flashlight and he picks it up and hands it back and he wonders what truths are imparted unspoken between a mother and son and what truths are not.
“Can I use the car tomorrow, Mom? I’ll drive you to work in the morning.”
“Sure, Seymour, that’ll be fine.” She shines the light into a box. “Twenty-twenty,” she calls as he heads down the hall. “Gonna be our year.”
SEEMORE6: after pies r cooked how will I know where 2 go
MATHILDA: head north
MATHILDA: call number we gave
SEEMORE6: north
MATHILDA: yes
SEEMORE6: canada?
MATHILDA: drive north we will give instructions after
SEEMORE6: but border?
MATHILDA: u will be tremendous so brave a warrior
SEEMORE6: what if theres trouble
MATHILDA: there won’t be
SEEMORE6: but in case
MATHILDA: call the number
SEEMORE6: and someone will come
MATHILDA: every1 here
SEEMORE6: nervous
MATHILDA: will be proud
MATHILDA: overjoyed
TWENTY
THE GARDEN OF THE GODDESS
* * *
Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio Y
… I sipped from the river of wine, once for valor, twice for pluck, and flapped toward the palace at the center of the city. Its towers pierced the Zodiac, and ·[inside?]· clear ·[bright?]· streams ran through fragrant orchards.
… stood the goddess, one thousand feet tall, tending the gardens in ·[her kaleidoscope dress]·, picking up whole plots of trees and setting them down again. Her head was circled by flocks of owls, and more owls roosted on her arms and her shoulders, and they studied their reflections in the glimmering shield strapped across her back.
… ahead, at her foot, surrounded by white ·[butterflies?]· on a pedestal so ornate it must have been fashioned by the smith-god himself, I saw it: the book the hoopoe said held the ·[solution?]· to my gnawing predicament. I fluttered above it, ·[prepared to read, when the goddess bent. Her great pupils loomed over me, each as big as a house. With one flick of one finger she could smite me out of the sky.]·
“I see,” she said, fifteen trees in each hand, “what you are, little crow. You are a pretender, a creature of clay, not a bird at all. In your heart you are still a feeble human, hammered from earth, with ·[the blaze of hunger inside]·…”
“… only wanted to ·[peek?]·…”
“Read from the book all you wish,” she said, “but if you read to the end you will become like us, free of desire…
“… never will you be able to return to your prior form. Go on, child,” said the flickering goddess. “Decide…”
EIGHT MILES WEST OF CONSTANTINOPLE
MAY–JUNE 1453
Omeir
A girl. A Greek girl. This fact is so startling, so unexpected, that he almost cannot recover his wits. He who wept at the castrations of Moonlight and Tree, who winced at the killing of trout and hens, has broken a branch over the head of a crop-headed fair-skinned Christian girl younger than his sister.