And I don’t want to die.

He found a place by the riverbank that wasn’t iced in and threw a penny.

Nick! Nick! Needle in the water! Thou sink, I float!

As he packed on the last evening, Marta knocked softly on the jamb of his bedroom door. She came in and gave him the two photographs of Astrid, which she’d taken from their frames.

“If I’m out of line, just thump me in the nose,” she said. “But before you met and fell in love, she was always your little faraway friend. A sort of guardian angel. Cripes, that sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.”

Kennet hesitated. Then he took them and carefully tucked them in the spine of a small notebook he was planning to use as a diary. He all at once wanted Astrid to follow him into war. There, more than ever, he’d need her behind him.

“Thank you,” he said to Marta, as his heart thumped enormous in his stomach.

Gold and light and terrible beauty and I don’t want to die.

On the last morning, the two soldiers and the sailor walked through the hotel, saying goodbye to staff. They left via the front veranda, each reaching up to touch the tail of the carved wooden fish and make a wish. Perhaps their last wish.

The goodbye at the station was horrible. Marta and the girls crying. Emil pale and grim. Major miserable. Little looking at his brothers with his heart on his face, but shoulders squared as he buttoned up the mantle of heir presumptive.

Kennet stuffed his eyes with them, inhaled and gobbled and tried to stay in the moment. But it was all like a dream, sliding through his fingers and memory at the first light of day.

The three fishes rode the train together as far as Santa Fe, where Nalle switched lines to head north to Colorado. On the bustling platform, swarmed with troops and civilians, Kennet had to reach up to hug the little bear, ruffle his hair and hold his jaw in the palm of a hand.

“You’re the best brother a fellow could ask for,” Nalle said. Then he glanced at Minor. “And you’re good enough, I guess.”

Minor laughed. “I’ll do in a pinch.”

“I’m kidding. I love you.” Nalle put arms around Minor and held tight.

“I love you, kid,” Minor said, rubbing his back. “No kidding.” He stuck out an arm and pulled Kennet into the embrace. “You’ll do, too.”

They stood in a motionless triangle of arms and heads. A pyramid in the shifting humanity. Private, and yet somehow public, for strange men patted their backs in passing, mumbling, “Good luck, boys” before moving on. Women’s hands caressed their shoulders, “God bless you, darlings. Be careful.”

They were the hope of the world and they belonged to everyone.