The adults are too old and far too wise to accept any portion of this lie. But there are some curious details, and even the dullest adult can still enjoy a child’s fantasy. That’s why the stories spread. A corona day is exceptionally long, and everyone hears every story, and this is how the last of the Firsts eventually learn about this impossible business.

Three of them dismiss the whole matter without qualm.

But the Father-of-all-fathers turns silent, and against his usual nature, he turns contemplative.

The sun is shrouded and night arrives, and he leaves, presumably heading for his home. But he passes the cavity where he has slept for millions of days. In secret, the ancient one slips down to where darkness always rules, spending much of the long night throwing light into the crannies and calling out with words that he hasn’t used in an eternity.

Just before dawn, what he seeks allows itself to be found.

The creature is exactly as promised—too strange to be real and barely comfortable inside its body. Noises rise from its peculiar mouth, and the Father-of-all-Fathers replies in various ways. Then the strange creature rises out of its hiding place, drawing images on sheets of gossamer weed, and the corona draws pictures on his flesh, each trading notions and truths until one of them is without hope.

The broken one starts home again.

He is devastated by the physical tolls, and those miseries are nothing next to the emotions roiling his soul. But his soul is a great thing, built large and everlasting in the world. How can such a soul change in one night?

The new day is well underway. Only the babies sleep, and he pauses in a pocket of still air, inside the half-born jungle, listening for his own essence living in the world. But all he finds, echoing in the air and in his mind, is that long-ago man.

A human, he is.

Human in shape, human in voice.

“These days will end,” says the man. “But I will grant you a few more days, if you promise me one impossible, wondrous task, sacrificing everything for the slenderest chance to save All . . . ”

ONE

He wore his age well, with gray lurking in the beard and a deep dark gaze that had witnessed more than most. The body still held its easy grace and most of that trusted strength, but the man inside was learning the benefits of filling a comfortable pillow, worldly eyes staring at a bare wall or the polished face of the floor. He had become a thinker. He often thought about his wives and their many children. Each wife had had a lovely name that he couldn’t forget, and the older children had claimed proud names that he never bothered to remember. He had loved his family as well as any man could. He still cherished almost every portion of his former life. But that was long ago, in a very different place, and whenever he thought about his ladies and his babies, there always came that sorry moment when he remembered again that each of them was dead.

His type of women didn’t live in this part of the forest. He had looked for them after arriving but always came home lonely. Some of the others talked about finding a girlfriend for the lonely man, but she would have to be brought from distant trees—in a bad humor, most likely. An angry and frightened bride would probably try to murder him before love had its chance, and that’s why he said nothing positive about the idea, and maybe that’s why the matchmaking had never happened.

There was quite a lot of talk in this place. Every subject was discussed in his presence, and he always listened to those pieces that concerned him. Words were very important, and he always worked to understand what he was hearing. Yes, he was a very smart man. But even familiar words were confusing when they were strung together, which was why he concentrated on simpler, surer qualities: he studied postures and hands and the colors of the voices and who was angry and who was most scared. That was how a smart man learned the others were thinking.

This new home was enormous, and that was just the portion of the palace where he was allowed to walk unattended.

The very important boy ruled one big room while the old-man teacher lived behind the next door. The very important man lived at the end of the long hallway, and entering his quarters only brought trouble. The giant with two mouths lived somewhere else inside the palace, and the orphans occupied two nearby rooms. There was a big rich-smelling kitchen and a small dining room to be shared by everybody, plus toilet rooms and playrooms, and there was one long room filled with fancy glass boxes and warm machines and huge cages where dumb animals lived and every kind of book—what he thought of as word-cakes—perched on the shelves. There was also space where three students could sit in their desks while the teacher stood before them, talking for half of the day at a time, saying very little that made sense.

The very important boy was owned. The man with the gray beard and dead wives was one of the owners. There was no disputing that fact. Ownership brought certain duties and obligations, including sharing a bed with the boy. The habit of sleeping together survived after they arrived in this place, but nothing was the same as before. The gray-beard was better than the boy about forgetting the past, but he couldn’t forget that wicked time when the boy shoved him inside a dark sack, which was horrible. And more important, the boy was growing older. He had never smelled human, but as the days passed, he was acquiring the odor of a genuine man.

Grown men didn’t sleep together. That rule was too old to measure.

Every creature had its rank, some distinct measure of worth and respectability, and that man-boy was becoming a potential rival. Snarls and curses were perfectly fine means to coax an enemy off the bed. A pair of fingers got eaten, but they didn’t mean anything to the man-boy. It was the teacher who put a long arm over his favorite student’s shoulder, explaining with words what teeth and violence had not made clear.

“You can’t sleep with Good anymore,” the teacher said.

The boy was sad before that news, and he was sad afterwards. Nothing had changed.

“You’re going to have to find another bed,” the teacher said to the other man in the room.

Stealing more fingers would cause useless trouble. The gray-beard surrendered the ugly bed to the stupid, ungrateful man-boy. But where would he sleep now?

One of the orphans used to be a boy, but he had grown up tall and thin as a stick, and his beard was finally coming in, giving him his own harsh, threatening stink. The other orphan was more woman than girl, and her scent was very pleasant, yes. But she didn’t appreciate his odor or his honest manners, and that’s why he was banished to a playroom, given a bed of cushions in the corner between bare walls—a space where a thoughtful man could lose his gaze in the middle of a long sad night.

The world was sad, and the world was very angry.

Every bad thing was blamed on the war. The war was everywhere and it seemed old and sure to last forever. Every visitor talked about battles and the big fires happening in far-off places. That kind of talk only made the sadness worse. Didn’t they understand? The fire and fights happened in other places. This new home was strong, and there were soldiers here to keep it strong. The palace was at the heart of the world, and while there used to be gunfire and explosions, that was hundreds of days ago. Even miserable people agreed that the fighting was not as awful as it used to be, and the gray-beard understood that what became small often vanished, and that was what gave him hope.

Many nights were spent inside the playroom, but he didn’t sleep well.

To claim that he grieved for his dead family was to miss the truth. Every wife had to die, and being his child meant that life would surely find its end.