“I’m fine,” he said, sitting up, showing them marks that weren’t even wounds anymore.

Then the doctor said, “I’ve asked before. But maybe this time, you’ll convince me. Was the pregnancy normal?”

Mother muttered a few soft words.

Turning toward Father, the doctor said, “I want to examine your wife. A careful, thorough assessment would only help.”

Father stepped forward, towering over the doctor. And with a voice louder than Diamond had never heard, he told the little man, “We’ve seen enough and heard enough from you, sir. Before I throw you on your ass, leave. Climb away, and don’t come back, and if you talk about this to anybody, I’ll gut you. I will gut you while you live, which is what you deserve. Believe me.”

Nobody visited anymore, and that wasn’t the only change. Diamond’s parents stopped wearing masks and gloves, though they were still careful about dirt and sniffles. His mother boiled his drinking water and cleaned his clothes in scalding, soapy water and fed him nothing but thoroughly cooked food. Nervous enough to tremble, his parents sat on his bed, explaining that he wasn’t sick in normal ways but it would be best for him to remain inside the room. New dangers were on the prowl, but Diamond was safe when the door was closed and locked. They told him that people would soon forget what they couldn’t see, and with time, the story about the knife and wound would seem too wild to believe. Their shared dream was that Diamond would grow out of this phase, and though they never said it to him, those two old people could imagine no greater blessing than an ordinary boy, happy like he was today, but unremarkable by every other measure.

They never stopped apologizing for his circumstances, and they never stopped asking what they could do to make his home better. And Diamond was almost honest, telling them that he couldn’t think of anything that would improve his room. His room was supposedly the largest in the house. Storage chambers had been linked, creating a complex landscape full of hollows and corners, little tunnels and dead-end holes. The walls were living wood, dark and fragrant. The furniture was built from dead wood that had been cut and shaped carefully, joined together with glue and heavy pins. There were chairs too large for his body and chests full of heavy drawers, and strong shelves were fixed to the smoothest walls, the highest shelves holding dusty books left behind by people who lived long ago. Tubes of polished metal brought light from outside, each tube ending with a round plate of glass that changed color and brightness as day passed to night. Diamond’s bed—a wide platform woven from soft silken fibers—stood within sight of the door. On the bed were his best friends, including a big lump of pale brown cloth and stuffing with jeweled eyes and a smiling mouth made from black thread and white insect shells. For some reason the doll was called Mister Mister, and the boy loved him and held tight to him when he felt most alone, and Mister Mister spoke to him with those quiet staring eyes and the grin that was like his grin, including the many white teeth.

Toys and other distractions littered the central chamber. Every leaping ball had its unique color and size, and there were rubber figures cut into geometric shapes and thousands of simple wooden blocks. He had an army of wooden figures shaped by hand and painted by hand and played with by his father and his father’s father, time and busy fingers blurring the paint while smoothing every old wooden nose. Several mirrors supplied much fun. The boy liked to hold the largest mirror before his face, staring at the nose and eyes and mouth that were not that different from his parents’ features. A circle of heavy glass was fixed to a wooden handle. The glass was thick in the middle and thin on its edges, and it meant nothing to him until he held it to his eye and looked at the wall. What had been small became wondrously large. The wood was full of giant ridges and cavernous pits. But even more fascinating was the landscape on the back of his bare hand. Thin hairs towered above smooth young flesh that was pink and stretched across a network of purplish veins and bumpy bones. He spent a full day comparing one hand with its mate and the tops of both legs with each other and the amazing unique whorls riding the tips of every finger and thumb. In his dreams that night he was a giant, so vast that tiny people walked across him—hundreds and maybe thousands of people—and he woke in the morning smiling even more than usual.

A narrow passageway led to the most remote chamber inside his room. This was once a back entrance to the house, but the chamber’s original door was gone, the living wood pricked and prodded until the hole closed. The only furniture was an old chest built to fill a round space. The chest was full of drawers. Every drawer had its lock, but one lock had been broken and no one but Diamond knew it. That intriguing space was filled with fancy tools, some with sharp edges and pointed tips and handles designed for careful adult hands. He took what he needed and went back to the main chamber, setting the hand lens on the edge of a table and weighing down the handle with one of the old books. Then he held his left wrist under the lens while the right hand manipulated the knife. This was what the doctor had done to him many days ago. Feeling more pressure than pain, he cut into the biggest vein. Eager blood fled his body, turning a bright beautiful red in the open air. Then the edges of the cut reached across the gap, clasping one another, knitting the separated tissues back together, and the blood dried to something that was harder than any scab, and the dead blood soundlessly dissolved back inside the healed, unmarred flesh.

His parents’ skin was beautiful, decorated with wrinkles and spots and old cuts never quite healed, and he asked them why this was. They would try to laugh at the question. Time had its ways of eroding and sculpting the body, they explained. A long pale scar defined his father’s face, running from just beside the right eye down under the serious little mouth. It was a handsome mark—an intriguing remnant of some important, violent event. What could have done such lasting damage? The boy asked that question several times, and sometimes he would touch the scar or stared fondly at it for too long. But the man explained nothing. Some deep pain still had its hold, and Father would find some gentle means to deflect their conversation toward more pleasant topics.

Food and games were safe, happy subjects. Father was clever that way. He couldn’t be tricked and never spoke without thinking first. And that was one reason why the boy adored the man and wanted to be like him.

One morning Diamond sat before the biggest mirror, using the sharpest knife to cut his face. He was trying to replicate that wonderful scar. But the cut refused to remain open. On his fifth attempt, Diamond discovered that he could ignore the pain, stabbing himself to the cheekbone and jerking down. Shoving his free hand into the gore, he managed to yank at the loose tissue. If the wound were too wide, it wouldn’t heal. That was what he was hoping. But his mother happened to come along. Before he could hide the knife, the door was unbolted and open, and she saw the horrific gouge in his face and the whiteness of his naked cheekbone, the bright knife tight in his hand. In a miserable low voice she said his name, coming close and taking the knife while kissing the five fingertips of her other hand, using those blessed fingers to carefully close the hole, helping his face heal itself.

“Diamond,” she whispered. “You must not. Don’t do that. Never again, please.”

He cried. The pain was small, but the disapproving sound of her voice made him sick and ashamed.

“Where did you find this?” she asked, holding the knife carefully.