Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr Page B

palace that gleams like the rays of moonlight, and the king and queen give him honey-hearted wine, and seat him in a silver chair, and ask him to tell the stories of his travails, and Zeno is eager to hear more, but the heat of the fire and the smell of old paper and the cadence of the librarian’s voice join together to cast a spell over him, and he falls asleep.
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    Papa promises insulation, indoor plumbing, and a brand-new electric Thermador space heater ordered direct from Montgomery Wardbut most nights he comes home from the mill too tired to unlace his boots. He sets a can of beef and noodles on the stove, smokes a cigarette, and falls asleep at the kitchen table, a puddle of snowmelt around his feet, as though he thaws a little in his sleep before heading back out the door at dawn to turn solid once more.
    Every day after school Zeno stops at the library, and the librarians—both named Miss Cunningham—read him the rest of The Odyssey , then The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles , touring him through Ogygia and Erytheia, Hesperia and Hyperborea, places the sisters call mythical lands, which means that they aren’t real places, that Zeno can travel to them only in his imagination, though at other times the librarians say that the old myths can be more true than truths, so maybe they are real places after all? The days lengthen and the library roof drips and the big ponderosas standing over the cabin unload snow with great whumps that sound to the boy like Hermes plunging in his golden sandals down from Olympus on another errand from the gods.
    In April Papa brings home a piebald collie from the mill yard, and though she smells like a swamp and regularly defecates behind the stove, when she climbs onto Zeno’s blanket at night and presses her body against his, letting off periodic sighs of great contentment, his eyes water with happiness. He names her Athena, and every afternoon when he leaves school, the dog is there, wagging her tail in the slush outside the split-rail fence, and the two of them walk to the library, and the Cunningham sisters let Athena sleep on the rug in front of the fireplace while they read to Zeno about Hector and Cassandra and the hundred children of King Priam, and May becomes June, and the lake turns sapphire blue, and saws echo through the forests, and log decks as big as cities rise beside the mills, and Papa buys Zeno a pair of overalls three sizes too big with a lightning bolt sewn on the pocket.
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    In July he is passing a house on the corner of Mission and Forest with a brick chimney, a second story, and a light-blue 1933 BuickModel 57 in the driveway, when a woman steps out of the front door and beckons him to the porch.
    â€œI won’t bite,” she says. “But leave the dog.”
    Inside, mulberry curtains block the light. Her name, she says, is Mrs. Boydstun, and her husband died in a mill accident a few years earlier. She has yellow hair, blue eyes, and moles on her throat that look like beetles paralyzed mid-crawl. On a platter in the dining room stands a pyramid of star-shaped cookies, their backs glistening with icing.
    â€œGo ahead.” She lights a cigarette. On the wall behind her a foot-tall Jesus glowers down from his cross. “I’ll just throw them away.”
    Zeno takes one: sugar, butter, delicious.
    On shelves running round the circumference of the room stand hundreds of pink-cheeked porcelain children in red caps and red dresses, some in clogs and some with pitchforks and some kissing and some peering into wishing wells.
    â€œI’ve seen you,” she says. “Wandering around town. Talking with those witches at the library.”
    He does not know how to answer and the ceramic children make him uneasy and his mouth is full besides.
    â€œHave another.”
    The second is even better than the first. Who would bake a plate of cookies only to throw them away?
    â€œYour father is the new one,