In the days before the sky grew thin and men stopped naming the stars, a man took a wife and they built a house on the edge of the hills where the grass was dry and pale and the bones of cattle showed in the earth. He was called Elias and she was called Miriam and they were known in the village and they were kind and clean and glad in each other and no shame was upon them.

  They lived in that house for seven years and none could speak against them. He rose early and hunted and she kept the hearth and the children played beneath their windows and the seasons went on in their old procession and none foresaw the severing.

  One morning they were gone. No word and no trace and no cry in the night and the fields lay quiet as though no foot had crossed them. The house stood open. The table was set. A lamp burned low and guttered out and the dogs starved in the yard.

  They searched for seven weeks and came away with nothing and they wrote it off in the records and the winds bore away the memory. But a year passed and Elias came back. He was changed. His hair had gone white and his voice was low and dry and his eyes turned from every face. He spoke no word of his wife. He sold his livestock and let the fields go to weeds and built a small black room beneath the house and did not leave it.

  The neighbors kept away. Sometimes a light burned there. Sometimes smoke rose at night. The old men muttered and the sheriff would not call.

  And then in the year two thousand, the sky was clear and a boy named Nicky lay in his bed in the town called Rivershade and he heard a sound in the walls and he rose up and took nothing with him and went barefoot through the house.

  See Nicky, the boy with differentiated hair, its back grew and pointed upwards and its front resembled a flexing arm and its color was light crimson and his eyes were a bit larger and his pupils were pink.

  The thing was not a man and it was not a beast and it moved in darkness and made no sound of its own but the walls shook as it passed and Nicky stood against it. It came on like wind through a grave and he stood his ground and it touched him not and when the light returned it was gone.

  His uncle came to him. He was a hard man and silent but he sat by the boy and told him things not told to children. Your species is old and mysterious. The world is cruel. You must go out and see what’s broken, he said.

  He told him of the old men and the hidden power and the way the land cracks beneath the weight of it and he asked the boy if he was afraid and the boy said no.

  I’ve always wanted to go on an adventure!

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  So Nicky set out and the wind moved behind him and the fields burned in the west and he was cloaked by the morning sun and he saw in the distance the smokestacks of cities and the cold outline of the mountains and the strange lights that glowed beyond the treetops and he went.

  He began in his hometown, Rivershade. The soil was black and the ghosts there were bold. The river whispered things to the trees and the sky opened sometimes and rained insects and old men slept with knives beneath their pillows and the children drew strange things in the dirt.

  Nicky walked the streets and he listened. He carried no sword and no shield but the world looked upon him and paused. And though the dead came forward and the beasts beneath the ground stirred in their coils, he did not flee.

  For he had heard the story and he had felt the cold hand at his throat and he had looked upon the edge of things and chosen to walk there.

  He was twelve years old and the road was long and he set out before the sun was full. He walked with no map and no pack and his shadow dragged long behind him like something wounded.

  He had spoken to no one that morning. He had left a note. He had eaten bread and looked to the hills and said aloud, I am ready. There was no one to hear him but he said it again and again as though saying it might make it so.

  The road led east and the fences leaned and the crows took no flight at his passing. The fields were wide and unkind and the sky above him was without cloud and pale like skin. The wind blew once and did not come again.

  He walked until his legs ached and he spoke to himself of glory and of trials and of the men who once crossed deserts with nothing but their names. He said, I will be like them! and he believed it a little.

  The men came from the ditch and they were not men but boys made cruel by want and time and the absence of fathers. They did not shout. They moved like dogs and one held a length of pipe and one had a chain around his wrist and one smiled and said nothing at all.

  Nicky stood his ground. He said nothing. He did not cry out. He raised his fists as his uncle had taught him though he had never struck a living thing in anger.

  They came on and he struck first and his blow landed true but did not fell the boy and then the chain came across his face and he staggered and the ground was hard and he tasted dirt.

  They did not beat him long. A car passed on the road and the light of it fell across the boys and they fled like rats from a torch and Nicky lay still and bleeding and the dust rose in little clouds from his chest.

  The car did not stop.

  He sat up after a time. He touched the blood on his face and looked at it as though it belonged to another. He did not weep. He did not speak. The wind moved again and the world was silent.

  He rose and turned back. He walked with one hand across his ribs and he did not look behind him.

  That night he stood at the edge of the yard and looked up at the sky.

  I'm not strong enough, he said aloud and the land did not answer him.

  But still he stood there a long while.

  …

  I will be.