One of the more distinctive aspects of Sirin’s offices, beyond the sheer expansive clutter on his desk (early spring, then, was it?), and the lingering odor of cigars and vanilla, were the tubular glass enclosures a Morrow glassblower had made for him. They lay clustered on the table behind his desk, near an oval window that overlooked Albumuth Boulevard. Each had tiny holes cut into the glass and contained a caterpillar, chrysalis, or fully formed butterfly. (Certainly, little bound his butterflies to the past, or the present. As they emerged glistening from their tight houses, they knew nothing but the moment. Sometimes I envied them.)

I had often observed Sirin puttering over his charges as his secretary showed me in, but this time he stood there lamenting a dead butterfly. Sirin looked tanned and well-rested beneath his crisp gray suit and burgundy shoes, any graceful effect ruined by a glaring multicolored bowtie that a clown would have been ashamed to wear; it was his only vice, besides tricking people. His hair had by now receded to reveal more and more of his narrow, intelligent face.

I had known him for many years, and yet I knew little or nothing about him, really.

Sirin spun around at my approach. (Butterflies and moths lived inside his head, Janice, just as mushrooms lived inside of mine. This made it difficult to hear.) He fixed me with the famous stare that could pierce walls and bring confessions from even the most hardened Truffidian monk.

“Look at this,” he said, gaze bright but disturbed behind the gold frames of his glasses. “My favorite sapphire cappan has been colonized by the emissaries of the gray caps. It’s a sign, perhaps.” His outstretched hands, smeared with fungal spores and bearing the crumpled corpse of his beloved butterfly, belonged to a piano player, not an editor and writer. (I often thought his piano playing was a step above his editing, to be honest.)

We met halfway between the door and his glass habitats. I stared at the creature in his hands. True enough—the dead butterfly was completely encrusted with an emerald-green fungus. The outstretched wings had sprouted a thousand tendril colonists, topped with red and resembling a confusion of antennae. It looked like some intricate wind-up toy covered with jewels. It looked more beautiful than it could have alive—not just a butterfly choked with fungus, but a completely new creature. Even the texture of its exoskeleton appeared to have changed, become more supple. I stared at it with sudden irrational fear. It was too similar to the process that had begun to claim my brother. (I am neither butterfly nor fungus, and I chose my fate, but I appreciate your concern.)

Sirin’s voice brought me back to the present.