The boys had tired of kneeling up and looking through the muscovite window at the road reversing itself behind them, or leaning out to spit at sentinel dogs. “Tell us more about the Little Lost Forest, Dirk,” said Franz. Moritz put his thumb in his mouth and nodded.
Easier to do that than talk to Felix, who always seemed to Dirk to contain several identities simultaneously, to go by the evidence of the contradictory emotions displayed by his smile, his eyes, his hands. Felix’s intelligence was one thing, his rapscallion nature another, and his unsolicited affection a third. Too much for Dirk. He leaned forward to clasp both boys’ hands as they slumped in the seat opposite. Felix relaxed with one arm behind his head to pillow it. A smile cousin to a smirk played along his upper lip.
“I forget what I said before,” said Dirk, looking for a prompt. What sat with them, what made a difference? He himself had never been a child, he now realized; what did he know about what children wanted to hear?
“The Little Lost Forest was lost,” said Franz.
“In the forest,” said Moritz.
“Walking from someplace, Rome or Greece, I forget, one of those places . . .”
“。 . . ultramontane?” supplied Felix.
“Shhh,” said Dirk, delivering a backhanded slap on Felix’s upraised knee without turning around. “The forest was—it was severed, it was orphaned. It was a place without a home. Does that make sense?”
Moritz shook his head. Franz nodded. Felix lit a pipe, pretentiously.
“It was . . . migrating. It was wandering slowly north through Europe. And in the forest were two spirits, who came from ancient times and who were carried away—”
“Like us,” said Moritz, indicating the carriage.
“Except they weren’t youngsters. And they weren’t happy.”
“We’re not happy,” said Franz cheerily enough. “Something has to happen now in the story. It’s stuck.”
“I forget who the spirits were,” said Moritz.
“Me, too,” said Felix, elbowing Dirk in the ribs.
“We have to have names for them,” said Dirk, buying himself a little time. “One is a kind of satyr of sorts—”
“—I’ll just bet he was,” muttered Felix.
“Will you let me be? He is an old acquaintance of highland shepherds. He likes to run along meadows and scare the goats into a rush. Like an invisible wolf on the margins. But he’s not intent on hunting them, just having fun. His name is Pan.”
“Are the goats lost, too?” asked Moritz.
“No, they’re still keeping the grass shorn around the ancient temples. They’re well behaved now that Pan has stopped panicking them.”
“No fun for the goats,” said Moritz.
“He likes to make trouble, that’s true,” said Dirk.
“Who’s the other one?” asked Franz. “Is it a boy?”
“No. She’s a beautiful young woman, maybe the ghost of a tree that someone cut down.”
“A dryad,” supplied Felix.
“Her name is Dogface,” suggested Moritz.
“No, it is Pythia,” said Felix. At Dirk’s scowl he put up his palms. “Sorry. Your tale. I’ll be quiet.”
“Pan and Pythia,” said Franz. “Pythia and Pan. Are they married?”
“No, they hate each other too much. But they are isolated together in the Little Lost Forest as it slowly sweeps its way north. It was in Bavaria not long ago, I think, and maybe it is in Baden now.”
“Can we see Pythia?” asked Moritz. “Will she scare us?”
“She’s beautiful beyond compare,” said Dirk. “She’s like your mother.”
“Oh, her. Well, what about Pan? Can we see him?”
“He’s tricksy. Here, look, he’s a little like this.” Dirk fiddled in his coat pocket and withdrew the old knife with the carved figure crouching atop it. What a big head, and bulbous eyes, almost leering.
“Why does he look like that?”
“He’s—he’s—” Dirk was stumped. “He’s ancient but he’s not old. He wants to stir up mischief.”
“He’s not the only one,” interjected Felix. Dirk shot him a look. Felix continued, “I mean, isn’t Pan the mascot of every university boy-scholar since the School of Socrates? Why do he and the Pythia not get along, do you think? Is it simply that she is sacred and he is profane? She is all arbory by the valley stream, and he is the wind in the uplands? They hail from different tribes, like the Montaguesi and the Capuletti?” At Dirk’s bewildered look, Felix said, “Juliet and Romeo of Verona, from families with different interests and allegiances?”
“Pythia wants—evenness,” said Dirk slowly.
“Civic order. Civilization,” intoned Felix. “And Pan wants anarchy and riot.”
“Who wins?” said one of the boys, and the other, “And how do they fight? Do they have swords and cannon?”
“They don’t fight. They only have each other, whether they like it or not. And their shifting homeland.”
“Oh no,” said Moritz. “They don’t fall in love, I hope.”
“Yes!” said Felix, smacking his knee. “Pan uses his knife to open the Pythia’s golden walnut, eh, Dirk?” He raised an eyebrow and licked his lips.
Dirk snapped, “Why is it always like that for you?”
“Because I’m young and I’m male and I’m alive. Obviously. Aren’t you?”
Dirk couldn’t really answer that. The little boys were relieved though that romance wasn’t the sine qua non of the tale. “What they both want, despite themselves, is the same thing,” said Dirk. “They want a place for the Little Lost Forest to grow large enough that they can both live there without being in constant argument. They want it to be a place all its own. Not lost anymore.”
“The forest is scary though,” said Moritz. “Wolves.”
“Baby wolves are nice,” said Felix.
“But their mothers,” said Franz.
“Mothers can be very nice.” Felix smirked. Franz and Moritz exchanged glances.
“I hope there isn’t any wolf at all,” said Moritz.
“There isn’t,” said Dirk, a little desperately. “There’s only a mouse. But he’s the king of the mice, did you know that?”
They began to look a little more interested despite themselves. A mouse was the right size. Felix closed his eyes and pretended a huge snore, and soon it was no longer pretense.
58.
After they’d eaten their lunch and stopped to pee by the side of the road—insisting Dirk get out with them and stand nearby in case of wolves—the boys gradually fell asleep in a heap. Felix finished the crust of one of their loaves and stretched out his legs to rest his calves on Dirk’s lap. Dirk shucked them off.
“That’s not much of a story,” Felix said. “Is that all you learned about the Pythia from the strategies of the venerable Mesmer?”
“You used to be nice. Why are you so dismissive?”
“I want her to be wildly fecund. Louche, licentious, the female equivalent of Zeus, taking whomever she wants. Pan won’t be enough for her, even if he is a satyr of sorts. She needs a god.”