Diamond showed her the drawer and watched as she stole away the sharpest, best tools.

“Are you going to try to hurt yourself again?”

He promised he wouldn’t.

She accepted those words, vanishing with the tools and returning with a bowl of sweet nuts and warm fresh milk. By then, his face was normal again. She smiled at his face. She liked to watch her son eat. After a while she told him, “You’re perfect as you are.”

“But I’m not like you,” he said.

She didn’t respond.

“Or like Father,” he whispered.

She nodded sadly. Then she told him what she always said at moments like this: “You are my son, and you are beautiful as you are, Diamond. So beautiful you make both of us ache.”

He loved those two old people, but Diamond was leaving the days when little boys surrendered to their parents’ every wish. He didn’t feel trapped inside the room, and he still believed the old explanations and half-defined fears. But more of each day was spent with eyes closed, trying to imagine what he had never seen.

He knew the world was enormous. Enormous to him was a great room with tall walls and a distant ceiling—a volume too large to walk across in one long day. His visitors had mentioned the world, and his parents said quite a lot in passing. That was why he knew there were trees and wild animals and tame animals and many, many people, and every person wore a different name and special clothes, and everybody enjoyed busy, important lives. There was bright light to the day and deep shadow at night, and by stitching together tiny clues, Diamond understood that the great room had corners and holes where not even the bravest man would willingly go.

Father was brave. During one of her long-ago visits, the woman with two sons held the sterile mask across her mouth, telling the strange little boy, “You should be proud of your daddy. His work is special and rare, and he’s one of the best. He might be the very best alive today.”

Work was something that carried fathers away from home. Diamond was proud of the man, honestly fiercely proud, but he knew almost nothing about what his father did. The man usually rose early, leaving the house before the day began. If he was gone for four meals, he returned happy and relaxed. But he often wasn’t home until late, six or seven meals into the day, and sometimes Diamond didn’t see him for days and nights. On those occasions he always came home exhausted, his face dark brown except for the pale circles around his reddened eyes. The house door would open and close and Diamond would listen. He heard quite a lot. His parents used private voices, and then the hot water would run, his father washing his entire body with scented soaps. Only when he was clean would he finally enter his son’s room. His face was still dark and tired, but despite his miserable mood, Father made himself smile and say happy words, and Diamond would notice the stink clinging under the perfumes—animal smells, musky and rich and very peculiar, often carrying the salty aroma of something that wasn’t blood.

Asking Father about his work was useless. The man’s only answer was a shrug and distant stare, and sometimes a little joke about sitting in a quiet place, doing as little as possible.

Mother said much more. People weren’t visiting the house anymore, and she wouldn’t leave her boy alone. That meant she was lonely. She had nobody except Diamond to speak with, and that’s when little doses of truth leaked out. She admitted that she worried about Father. Much of the world was wild, and every wild place had its monsters, and she mentioned fire spiders and chokers, man-traps and jazzings, each of those monsters happy to prey on the small and careless. Then one day she used the word “papio.” Diamond didn’t know the word, but sometimes saying nothing was a good way to tease more words out of a person. He stared at his floor and odd toes, remaining quiet, and then she said that word a second time, explaining that the papio were smarter than men and they ruled the edges of the world.

He asked if the papio were monsters.

The question made her uncomfortable. Straightening her back, she said, “They aren’t, no. In fact they’re just another kind of human. But they must be handled with exceptional care.”

“Does Father handle them?” asked Diamond, his right hand grabbing a piece of empty air.

Mother seemed ready to laugh at his joke. But then she stopped herself, saying, “That was the wrong word. Sorry. But yes, he gets along with the papio quite well.”

On a later day, Diamond asked, “What is the worst monster of all?”

Mother thought for a long moment. Then she said, “He would never agree, but I think it’s the coronas.”

Diamond asked what the coronas were, and when she didn’t answer, he hastily asked again.

She regretted her words. “No, no. Forget what I said.”

Diamond forgot almost nothing. “Who wouldn’t agree? Is it Father?”

She didn’t seem to hear the questions. Her wide eyes stared into the wall, picturing the monstrous coronas. Diamond imagined something enormous and powerful but with no definite shape. Mother’s fists made him nervous despite her confident noise. “There are no monsters,” she said at last. “That’s a word we strap to what we don’t understand.”

Yet that night Diamond dreamed of an enormous mouth that ate his house and his parents before gobbling him down.

One day Mother was angry. The boy noticed and asked why, and she said, “No, it’s not because of you. It’s never you, honey.”

Diamond was playing. She was sitting on one of his big chairs, watching the floor. Without prompting, she said, “Sacrifice.”

He looked up at her. “What does that mean?”

“It means giving up your life and well-being, doing what’s right for others.” Then with a sneer, she told him, “Sacrifice used to be honored. It used to be celebrated. But those were different times.”

Father had missed three last-dinners and three nights. Diamond asked when he was coming home.

The old woman dipped her face and smiled sadly at her bunched up hands, not quite crying. “Soon,” she said. “It won’t be long.”

“I miss him.”

“And I wish he were here,” she said.

“Why does he have to work?”

Why indeed? She asked herself that same question and thought hard before falling back to a trusted answer. “People need work to live,” she said with a resigned, hopeless voice.

To the boy, that answered nothing.

Then she added another conundrum. Sighing, she told him, “Some people do impossible, important jobs. They are very good at those jobs. But that doesn’t mean they don’t hate the work with all their heart.”

Father stayed home late enough one morning to bring Diamond the second breakfast. Sitting on a big chair, he watched his son gobble down the salted meal and milk while they talked about the usual matters: dreams and toys and the boy’s plans for his gigantic day. Then with his most matter-of-fact voice, Diamond asked about the weather outside. Father considered, as he always did at such moments. “It’s a wonderful day indoors,” he said, and then he stood and asked if the chamber pot needed to be emptied. It did. “Well, I guess I’ll dump it.”

Father was the tallest person Diamond had ever seen, and despite his age, he was still quite strong. Lifting the pot by one handle, he held it as far from his face as possible. Then he set it on the floor and opened the door and went through with the pot and closed the door behind him. But he didn’t use the lock, and he didn’t wish his son a good day. Father was coming back. Diamond waited on the bed with Mister Mister. After a minute, a bell sounded. It was the bell that meant somebody was going to talk without being inside the house or at the door. Bad news often came with that bell, and the bell stopped and he listened, hearing nothing. But Father didn’t return. He had left too quickly to say good-bye, and that bothered the boy in many ways.