Their voices were flat and fast. When she was finished, Elata said, “Every school day starts that way.”

“Sometimes faster,” Seldom admitted.

“It’s a rough unit of time,” Nissim explained, placing a hand against Diamond’s back. “Come. The two of us need to talk more.”

They moved to the back of the cabin. Master Nissim sat and smiled, waiting for the boy to look at him. But Diamond felt shy and wary. His hands wrestled each other as he settled on the neighboring chair, watching the unbroken wall of leaves, the rich green turned almost black by the goggles. He smelled the rubber straps and his own perspiration. He looked at his nervous hands. As he leaned back in his seat, Nissim said, “You must miss your room very much.”

Diamond nodded.

“And you miss your parents.”

His hands went still.

“Describe them to me.”

“Describe what?”

“The room and your family.”

Picking one parent before another might betray a favorite. So Diamond began with the room—a space that now seemed tiny and simple next to this great bright busy world. Yet even the simplest chamber requires many words to make it real. He talked and talked, and sometimes it felt as if he was another person listening to a stranger. The room was a real place inside a tree left far behind, but it was also real inside his mind. He saw the walls and floor as he spoke. He saw the woven bed and old furniture and the shelves and toys, and that made him miss everything. He didn’t cry, but tears were gathering. He was sick and sorry for so much, and to feel better again, he focused on the old wooden soldiers, each name followed by descriptions of their faces and uniforms armaments, halfway through his army when Nissim touched him lightly on the shoulder, saying, “I know what your father looks like.”

“You’ve talked to him. I remember.”

“You remember quite a lot.”

Diamond felt the praise, but it didn’t mean much. He nodded, waiting for whatever came next.

“So that I know her when we find her,” said the man, “would you please describe your mother to me?”

Diamond tried. He opened his mouth, waiting for smart words, but he discovered that someone so important couldn’t be rendered easily. His mother was too large, and every detail felt important. Finally, almost in despair, the boy spoke about her hair, conveying how she wore it long but tied it back quite a lot, and it was white and it was black but when the light was poor it was mostly silver and very pretty. He loved his mother’s hair and her worn fine face and how she smelled when she had been cooking and how those cool hands felt when she touch his forehead and face. It was one of her many habits, measuring his endless, unimportant fever.

“My parents used to worry about everything,” he said. “I was going to get sicker and die. Every day would be my last.”

“Why did they think that?”

“The doctor told them.”

“What doctor?”

“The man who came to check on me,” Diamond said.

“Because you were too hot,” Nissim said. “And you were small and looked wrong. So they found a physician. Of course they did.”

Diamond waited.

“Your father,” Nissim said. “Describe him now.”

“But you know him.”

“I want to see what you know, Diamond.”

His father’s hair wasn’t as gray and old as his mother’s hair, but his face had more wrinkles and lines, and there were many important scars. Diamond described the big scar on the face that he was going to see again, hopefully in a little while. He imagined hugging his father and being hugged by him, and he smiled as he cataloged the smaller scars and other marks on his hands and forearms.

Nissim listened. Goggled eyes looked out the window, but he only saw his next question.

“And he has another scar on his left hand, here,” Diamond said, turning his own hand to map the location. “It curves and it’s very small and new. And then farther up on the wrist, up here . . . ”

“Diamond,” Nissim interrupted, turning toward him.

The boy fell silent.

“I’m not the smartest person in the world,” the Master allowed. “But I have never met any person with a better memory than mine. And to save my life, I can’t remember every scar on my own hands.”

The boy watched the big hands open and then close.

“You don’t have scars,” Nissim said. “Your friends tell me you heal that fast and that well. But I think your mind is much more impressive. Just naming and knowing each of your little soldiers . . . well, I don’t care how isolated you’ve been. Nobody should be able to recall so much.”

Diamond head dipped. “Last night,” he began. But he felt shy again, and he couldn’t talk.

“What about last night?”

“My mother asked where my mind was. Was it in my head, or was it somewhere else?”

“She said that?”

He nodded.

“That’s interesting,” the Master said. “Tell me about life with your parents. Whatever you think of, no matter how unimportant it sounds.”

But nothing was unimportant. He described meals long digested and conversations about very little and the dead usher bird and then that one time when he left his room and Mother found him. But he didn’t mention hitting her, even if he was supposed to tell everything. Even if it was an accident, he felt ashamed again, and that’s why he looked out the window and changed topics, falling back to some the oldest memories of his parents—masked faces smiling down at him while he lay in the little second-hand crib that he slept inside before he had a real bed.

Maybe the day was half-done. Maybe this wasn’t the pure light of dawn anymore. But the hole in the canopy had grown wider, and the brilliance was astonishing. Leaves were a pale watery green, letting much of the sunlight push through them without being absorbed. Diamond talked about his life, but at the same time he marveled at how the trees looked like the sweet clear green-tinted gelatin that his mother fed him on special occasions. Somewhere inside his mysterious mind, he tasted the gelatin again, and he smiled and stopped talking, and then the Happenstance let out some ballast. Sprayed water made rainbows, and he stared at those endless, unexpected colors. Then they stopped descending, picking one direction and heading straight on.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

The Master called to Elata. “Ask the pilot, would you? Is there any food onboard?”

Elata left, and Seldom followed.

Nissim picked up one of the small perfect hands. “Who else came into your room? Besides your parents and your doctor, I mean.”

Diamond listed everybody, finishing with Seldom’s mother and Karlan.

“And your doctor,” Nissim repeated.

“Yes.”

“Who examined you from time to time.”

Diamond shifted his weight. “Yes.”

Nissim had a suspicious face. “Yesterday,” he said. “Tell me about yesterday. I want to hear every noise in the house, every word your mother said to you and everyone else. Tell me what you saw or might have seen in her face. That’s what I want to know about.”

“Why?” Diamond asked.

Nissim nearly smiled, but an unwelcome thought stole that expression away. Leaning close, he placed his hand on the head that might or might hold the boy’s mind, and with the voice that people use when they share secrets, he said, “This probably is going to be a short day, and already quite a lot has happened. Either there has been one big collision of random, remarkable events, or there is a single simple explanation for everything.”

Diamond nodded, but he didn’t understand.

“And a lot more will happen to you soon,” Nissim warned. “Tell me about yesterday, Diamond. And don’t stop talking, not until we step off this gas bag.”

Diamond talked until Seldom arrived with a paper box of full of biscuits and dried meat. Elata followed with bottled water and an apology from the pilot for the food’s miserable charms. A quiet quick meal broke out, Diamond eating the most, and then the others retreated again and the boy went on describing yesterday. He expected his mouth to stop. The words would stop coming at any moment. But a steady flow of tiny details were waiting to be remembered, each event knowing exactly where it stood in what had been the most ordinary of days. He described meals eaten and games played and passing thoughts and morning conversations with his mother, all of it normal. But nothing had been normal. He realized that now. Like Nissim, he listened to the voice pouring out of him, trying to find the true clue, that soft signal that here was something important. But nothing appeared exceptional. Nobody visited the house, even for a quick, “Hello.” Bells sounded when a call arrived, which wasn’t all that remarkable. The call came before dinner, and he didn’t hear his mother talking to anybody, and she didn’t mention anyone after that. She brought his last dinner and left him to eat alone, which was a little peculiar. Then she returned to put him to bed, and everything had changed. She was angry with the mess in his room, but she wasn’t angry. Maybe she was sad, and she was definitely worried. Yet she was fine before that, which was baffling, and that was the moment when the Master dropped one finger on Diamond’s mouth and bent down, interrupting the words to say, “While you were enjoying dinner, she used the house line. She knew that you had good ears, and so she spoke quietly to somebody. And whatever was said left her terrified.”