of thing."
"What time should I take you?"
"More shining generosity on your part. Don't worry, I'm keeping track. I'll figure out how to pay you back. Eventually. A little before two."
"What kids are you reading to?"
"The fatalities," he said. "Who better? The ones that aren't going to make it."
Like him, Plague-touched. The rare genetically gifted ones that could survive its ravages, though not neurologically intact, knowing that they had a few years left.
That too is another way the story might begin, Lewis and Amber listening to the doctor explain how long Lewis might live, given the right care and treatment: one to five years. And how long he would live without it: less than a year.
Amber watching a cloudy sky outside the window, ashy as Lewis's face. He kept looking at her as though to judge her reaction. Dependency shaded by years of sibling rivalry and affection. Amber seeing Lewis as though through a window. Seeing too little time left with her brother.
And also too long, too long to dedicate herself to him, putting aside everything but her work, in order to support him, like some nun in a solitary abbey. One to five years of watching over him. One to five years of driving him to his hospital appointments, one to five years of seeing the hospital, becoming familiar with its corridors, knowing where every bathroom, every drinking fountain, every vending machine, every waiting lounge was.
"Enjoy reading to the kids," Amber said as she pulled up to the curb. "I think it's a nice gesture."
Lewis had been silent during the car ride, even when she tried to bait conversation with conservative talk radio.
"What time should I pick you up?" she said.
"7:00."
"That late?"
"Can you do it or not? I can take a taxi if I need to."
And be stiff and terrified all through the ride that one of his fits come, without her to coax him back away from unbending panic, with a driver who wouldn't know what to do with a hyperventilating, shaking passenger.
She could let him do it, but she'd sit there waiting, anxious, unable to work, until he came home.
"I can do it," she said.
He stepped out, thin and frail with recent body loss. Almost time for another trip to Sears, he'd dropped another pants size. The tie flashed in the sunlight.
He walked away.
The air was full of cottonwood that spring, riding the air like memories of ash. Last year Mount Rainier had rumbled, as though announcing Lewis's diagnosis, sent out a cloud that had coated the countryside for miles. Even now, traces of it lingered on roofs and rocks. Like everyone else, she had mason jars filled with the silky ash, so unsettlingly smooth to the touch.
Time and solitude in which to work. She ascended to her attic studio, settled like a weary bird into the papa-san chair, queued up Kay Gardner, Bach cello suites, then Beatles and Will Flirt For Fairy Fruit on the music player, pulled over her graphic tablet, and began to sketch.
When work was going well, it flowed , a narrow river into which she could submerge herself, almost forgetting to breathe, feeling colors, lines move through her, coming from her lungs and heart and brain, coiling together before racing through her stylus point onto the computer, words and pictures becoming the Land of Everkind, its citizens the people of Leaf and Flower, and the talking animals that helped and hampered them.
She had been working on them for two decades now. Characters as familiar to her as Lewis: Mrs. Mountebank and her be-ribboned head; the Whistling Gypsy; the Turtle-headed Woman; the Count of Cube; Pepperjill's Magic Monkey troupe; the Tango Gotango Gotengo.
Some parents thought the books too dark. The characters too raw, too savage. But that was what children liked. The monster under the bed. The touch of fear at their heels. Mrs. Mountebank's dark-windowed wagon; the magic monkeys' pointed teeth.
A new character was coming to her. She could feel it fluttering at her mind's edges. She sat still for a half hour,
"What time should I take you?"
"More shining generosity on your part. Don't worry, I'm keeping track. I'll figure out how to pay you back. Eventually. A little before two."
"What kids are you reading to?"
"The fatalities," he said. "Who better? The ones that aren't going to make it."
Like him, Plague-touched. The rare genetically gifted ones that could survive its ravages, though not neurologically intact, knowing that they had a few years left.
That too is another way the story might begin, Lewis and Amber listening to the doctor explain how long Lewis might live, given the right care and treatment: one to five years. And how long he would live without it: less than a year.
Amber watching a cloudy sky outside the window, ashy as Lewis's face. He kept looking at her as though to judge her reaction. Dependency shaded by years of sibling rivalry and affection. Amber seeing Lewis as though through a window. Seeing too little time left with her brother.
And also too long, too long to dedicate herself to him, putting aside everything but her work, in order to support him, like some nun in a solitary abbey. One to five years of watching over him. One to five years of driving him to his hospital appointments, one to five years of seeing the hospital, becoming familiar with its corridors, knowing where every bathroom, every drinking fountain, every vending machine, every waiting lounge was.
"Enjoy reading to the kids," Amber said as she pulled up to the curb. "I think it's a nice gesture."
Lewis had been silent during the car ride, even when she tried to bait conversation with conservative talk radio.
"What time should I pick you up?" she said.
"7:00."
"That late?"
"Can you do it or not? I can take a taxi if I need to."
And be stiff and terrified all through the ride that one of his fits come, without her to coax him back away from unbending panic, with a driver who wouldn't know what to do with a hyperventilating, shaking passenger.
She could let him do it, but she'd sit there waiting, anxious, unable to work, until he came home.
"I can do it," she said.
He stepped out, thin and frail with recent body loss. Almost time for another trip to Sears, he'd dropped another pants size. The tie flashed in the sunlight.
He walked away.
The air was full of cottonwood that spring, riding the air like memories of ash. Last year Mount Rainier had rumbled, as though announcing Lewis's diagnosis, sent out a cloud that had coated the countryside for miles. Even now, traces of it lingered on roofs and rocks. Like everyone else, she had mason jars filled with the silky ash, so unsettlingly smooth to the touch.
Time and solitude in which to work. She ascended to her attic studio, settled like a weary bird into the papa-san chair, queued up Kay Gardner, Bach cello suites, then Beatles and Will Flirt For Fairy Fruit on the music player, pulled over her graphic tablet, and began to sketch.
When work was going well, it flowed , a narrow river into which she could submerge herself, almost forgetting to breathe, feeling colors, lines move through her, coming from her lungs and heart and brain, coiling together before racing through her stylus point onto the computer, words and pictures becoming the Land of Everkind, its citizens the people of Leaf and Flower, and the talking animals that helped and hampered them.
She had been working on them for two decades now. Characters as familiar to her as Lewis: Mrs. Mountebank and her be-ribboned head; the Whistling Gypsy; the Turtle-headed Woman; the Count of Cube; Pepperjill's Magic Monkey troupe; the Tango Gotango Gotengo.
Some parents thought the books too dark. The characters too raw, too savage. But that was what children liked. The monster under the bed. The touch of fear at their heels. Mrs. Mountebank's dark-windowed wagon; the magic monkeys' pointed teeth.
A new character was coming to her. She could feel it fluttering at her mind's edges. She sat still for a half hour,
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