Although David Sabon later claimed that “and for meat” had appeared in the speech by mistake (transposed from a speech on the King Squid), the cutthroat Ambergris newspapers had no qualms about printing headlines like DAVID SABON RECOMMENDS SNACKING ON GRAY CAP BEFORE DINNER and NEW “ARCHDUKE OF MALID,” DAVID SABON, LIKES A NICE BIT O’ GRAY CAP BEFORE BED. Surely Mary Sabon, lone seed of a loon’s loins, became indoctrinated with her father’s attitudes at a very early age, setting the stage for her own irresponsible theories. (Perhaps so, but Mary always seemed embarrassed by her father’s activities.)

While David Sabon’s forebears included no one more distinguished than a barber in Stockton and a minor judge in Morrow, Mary’s mother, Rebecca Verden-Sabon, came from newly minted stock. Her father, Louis Verden, began his career as a jeweler but went on to illustrate a number of scientific texts, although his best work appeared in Burning Leaves, a creative journal he eventually art directed and to which I sometimes contributed when I had no work from Sirin. Verden also illustrated a series of paranoid (not paranoid enough) Festival pamphlets for Hoegbotton & Sons, including The Exchange, Bender in a Box, Naysayer Mews, In the Hours After Death, and The Night Step (all in collaboration with the darkly humorous, underrated writer Nicholas Sporlender, whom I once bumped into by mistake—underground, oddly enough).

Rebecca became her father’s apprentice and eventually took over editorial duties at Burning Leaves, although not until my gallery had turned to dust and ash. Before that, she specialized in illustrations for advertisements or to accompany scientific texts. In some ways, it could be argued that Rebecca’s work for her daughter’s first book, The Inflammation of Aan Tribal Wars, gave her more exposure than all her previous work combined.

Duncan’s parent-teacher conferences with David and Rebecca continued for several semesters. I have this rather humorous vision of Duncan in his office, talking solemnly with Mary’s parents and then, once he has smiled reassuringly and guided them out the door, frantically jumping out of his office window, on his way to a tryst with their daughter. (I honestly thought I was protecting her, and that she could make her own choices. After all, she was already a young adult. She knew her own mind.)

Apparently, the famed naturalist suffered from a peculiar form of blindness: an inability to see anything under his nose unless it crawled or flew or swam or galloped, for that keen observer of the natural world never realized what Duncan and Mary had been up to until he was told by a third party.

“Thank you,” he’d said to Duncan. “Thank you for taking such good care of our daughter.”

And in his way he had, hadn’t he?