“Hold up, kiddie.”
He looked at me distrustfully but stopped.
“What day is it?” The words came out smoothly enough, but they seemed to have corners. I suppose that doesn’t make any sense, but it’s how they felt, and I knew why. I was speaking English again.
He gave me a look that asked if I was born stupid or just grew that way. “Saturday.”
So my father would be at home, unless he was at an AA meeting.
“What month?”
Now the look said duh. “February.”
“2014?”
“Yuh. Gotta go.”
He went on his way to the top of the hill, sparing my dog and me one distrustful glance back over his shoulder. Probably to make sure we weren’t following with ill intent.
February. I’d been gone four months. Strange to think about, but not as strange as the things I’d seen and done.
4
I stood in front of the house for a minute or so, steeling myself to go inside, hoping I wouldn’t find my father passed out on the couch with My Darling Clementine or Kiss of Death playing on TCM. The driveway had been plowed and the walk was shoveled. I told myself that was a good sign.
Radar got tired of waiting for me and ran up the steps, where she sat and waited to be let in. Once upon a time I’d had a key to the door, but it had been lost somewhere along the way. Like Claudia’s trike, I thought. Not to mention my virginity. Turned out it didn’t matter. The door was unlocked. I let myself in, registered the sound of the TV—a news channel, not TCM—and then Radar was running down the hall, barking hello.
When I entered the living room she was on her back paws, the front ones planted on the newspaper my father had been reading. He looked at her and then he looked at me. For a moment he didn’t seem to register who was standing in the doorway. When he did, shock loosened the muscles in his face. I’ll never forget how that moment of recognition made him look both older—the man he would be in his sixties and seventies—and younger, like the kid he’d been at my age. It was as if some interior sundial turned both ways at once.
“Charlie?”
He started to stand up, but at first his legs wouldn’t hold him and he plumped back down again. Radar sat beside his chair, thumping her tail.
“Charlie? Is it really you?”
“It’s me, Dad.”
This time he made it to his feet. He was crying. I started to cry, too. He ran for me, stumbled on an endtable, and would have fallen if I hadn’t caught him.
“Charlie, Charlie, thank God, I thought you were dead, we all thought that you were…”
He couldn’t talk anymore. I had a lot to tell him, but right then I couldn’t talk, either. We embraced each other over Radar, who got between us, wagging her tail and barking. I think I know what you want, and now you have it.
Here’s your happy ending.
EPILOGUE Questions Asked and Answered （Some, at Least）。 A Final Trip to Empis.
1
If you think that there are places in this story where it doesn’t sound like a young man of seventeen wrote them, you would be right. I returned from Empis nine years ago. Since then I’ve done a lot of reading and writing. I graduated from NYU cum laude （missed summa by a hair） with a degree in English. I’m now teaching at the College of Liberal Arts in Chicago, where I hold a well-attended seminar called Myth and Fairy Tales. I am considered quite the bright spark, mostly because of an expanded version of an essay I wrote as a grad student. It was published in The International Journal of Jungian Studies. The pay was bupkes, but the critical cred? Priceless. And you want to believe that I cited a certain book whose cover showed a funnel filling up with stars.
Good to know, you might say, but I have questions.
You’re not the only one. I’d like to know how the reign of Good Queen Leah is going. I’d like to know if the grayfolk are still gray. I’d like to know if Claudia of the Gallien is still blaring. I’d like to know if the way to that horrible underground world—the lair of Gogmagog—has been blocked up. I’d like to know who took care of the remaining night soldiers, and if any of my fellow prisoners from Deep Maleen were in at their finish （probably not, but a man can dream）。 I’d even like to know how the night soldiers opened our cells the way they did, by just extending their arms.
You’d like to know how Radar’s doing, I suppose. The answer is very well, thanks, although she’s slowed down a bit; after all, it’s been nine years for her, too, which makes her pretty dang old for a German Shepherd, especially if you add her old life and her new one together.