'By the light of the moon,' Shep repeated, but this time with his gaze fixed on the floor. His whisper had fallen to a murmur, and with what sounded like grief, his voice broke more than once on those six words.

Shep seldom spoke, and when he did, he never spouted gibberish, even if sometimes it seemed to be gibberish as surely as cheddar was a cheese. Within his every utterance lay motive and meaning to be discerned, although when he was at his most enigmatic, his message could not always be understood, in part because Dylan lacked the patience and the wisdom to solve the puzzle of the boy's words. In this case, his urgent and fiercely felt emotion suggested that what he meant to communicate was unusually important, at least to him.

'Look at me, Shep. We need to talk. Can we talk, Shepherd?'

Shep shook his head, perhaps in denial of what he seemed to see on the motel-room floor, in denial of whatever vision had brought tears to his eyes, or perhaps in answer to his brother's question.

Dylan put one hand under Shepherd's chin, gently lifted the boy's head. 'What's wrong?'

Maybe Shep read the fine print on his brother's soul, but even eye to eye, Dylan glimpsed nothing in Shepherd but mysteries more difficult to decipher than ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics.

As his eyes clarified behind waning tears, the boy said, 'Moon, orb of night, lunar lamp, green cheese, heavenly lantern, ghostly galleon, bright wanderer-'

This familiar behavior, which might be a genuine obsession with synonyms or which might be just another technique to avoid meaningful communication, still occasionally annoyed Dylan, even after all these years. Now, with the unidentified golden serum circulating through his body and with the promise of ruthless assassins riding this way on the warm desert breeze, annoyance quickly swelled into irritation, exasperation.

'-silvery globe, harvest lamp, sovereign mistress of the true melancholy.'

Keeping one hand under his brother's chin, tenderly insisting upon attention, Dylan said, 'What's that last one – Shakespeare? Don't give me Shakespeare, Shep. Give me some real feedback. What's wrong? Hurry now, help me here. What's this about the moon? Why're you upset? What can I do to make you feel better?'

Having exhausted his supply of synonyms and metaphors for the moon, Shep turned next to the subject of light, speaking with an insistence that implied a greater meaning in these words than they otherwise seemed to possess: 'Light, illumination, radiance, ray, brightness, brilliance, beam, gleam, God's eldest daughter-'

'Stop it, Shep,' Dylan said firmly but not harshly. 'Don't talk at me. Talk to me.'

Shep made no effort to turn away from his brother. Instead, he simply closed his eyes, putting an end to any hope that eye contact would lead to useful communication. '-effulgence, refulgence, blaze, glint, glimmer-'

'Help me,' Dylan pleaded. 'Pack up your puzzle.'

'-shine, luster, sheen-'

Dylan looked down at Shep's stocking feet. 'Put on your shoes for me, kiddo.'

'-incandescence, candescence, afterglow-'

'Pack your puzzle, put on your shoes.' With Shepherd, patient repetition sometimes encouraged him to act. 'Puzzle, shoes. Puzzle, shoes.'

'-luminousness, luminosity, fulgor, flash,' Shep continued, his eyes jiggling behind his lids as though he were fast asleep and dreaming.

One suitcase stood near the foot of the bed, and the other lay open on top of the dresser. Dylan closed the open bag, picked up both pieces of luggage, and went to the door. 'Hey, Shep. Puzzle, shoes. Puzzle, shoes.'

Standing where his brother had left him, Shep chanted, 'Sparkle, twinkle, scintillation-'

Before frustration could build to head-exploding pressure, Dylan opened the door, carried the suitcases outside. The night continued to be as warm as a toaster oven, as parched as a burnt crust.

A dry drizzle of yellow lamplight fell on the largely empty parking lot, soaked into the pavement, was absorbed as efficiently by the blacktop as light might be captured by the heavy gravity of a black hole in space. Broad blades of sharp-edged shadows lent the night a quality of guillotine expectancy, but Dylan could see that the motel grounds did not yet seethe with the squads of promised pistol-packing killers.

His white Ford Expedition was parked nearby. Bolted to the roof, a watertight container held artist's supplies as well as finished paintings that he had offered for sale at a recent art festival in Tucson (where five pieces had sold) and would offer also in Santa Fe and at similar events thereafter.

As he opened the tailgate and quickly loaded the suitcases into the SUV, he looked left and right, and behind himself, leery of being assaulted again, as though crazed physicians armed with enormous syringes full of stuff could be expected to travel in packs as surely as did coyotes in desert canyons, wolves in forests primeval, and personal-injury attorneys at any prospect of product liability.

When he returned to the motel room, he found Shep where he had left him: standing in his stocking feet, eyes closed, exhibiting his annoyingly impressive vocabulary. '-fluorescence, phosphorescence, bioluminescence-'

Dylan hurried to the desk, broke apart the finished portion of the jigsaw, and scooped double handfuls of Shinto temple and cherry trees into the waiting box. He preferred to save time by leaving the puzzle, but he felt certain that Shep would refuse to go without it.

Shepherd surely heard and recognized the distinctive sound of pasteboard pieces being tumbled together in a pile of soft rubble. Ordinarily, he would have moved at once to protect his unfinished project, but not this time. Eyes closed, he continued urgently to recite the many names and forms of light:'-lightning, fulmination, flying flame, firebolt, oak-cleaving thunderbolts-'

Fitting the lid on the box, Dylan turned away from the desk and briefly considered his brother's shoes. Rockport walkers, just like Dylan's, but a few sizes smaller. Too much time would be required to get the kid to sit on the edge of the bed, to work his feet into the shoes, and to tie the laces. Dylan snatched them off the floor and placed them atop the puzzle box.

'-candlelight, rushlight, lamplight, torchlight-'

The point of injection in Dylan's left arm began to feel hot, and it itched. He resisted tearing off the cartoon-dog Band-Aid and scratching the puncture wound, because he feared that the colorful bandage concealed awful proof that the substance in the syringe had been worse than dope, worse than a mere toxic chemical, worse than any known disease. Under the little rectangle of gauze might wait a tiny but growing patch of squirming orange fungus or a black rash, or the first evidence that his skin had begun metamorphosing into green scales as he underwent a conversion from man to reptile. In full X-Files paranoia, he didn't have the courage to discover the reason for the itch.

'-firelight, gaslight, foxfire, fata morgana-'

Burdened with puzzle box and sibling footgear, Dylan hurried past Shep to the bathroom. He hadn't yet unpacked their toothbrushes and shaving gear, but he'd left a plastic pharmacy bottle, containing a prescription antihistamine, on the counter beside the sink. Right now, allergies were the least of his problems; however, even if he were being eaten alive by a vile orange fungus and simultaneously morphing into a reptile, while also being hunted by vicious killers, a runny nose and a sinus headache were complications best avoided.

'-chemiluminescence, crystalloluminescence, counterglow, Gegenschein-'

Returning from the bathroom, Dylan said hopefully, 'Let's go, Shep. Go, now, come on, move.'

'-violet ray, ultraviolet ray-'

'This is serious, Shep.'

'-infrared ray-'