The closer I get to the end, the closer I get to the beginning. Memories waft up out of the ether, out of nothing. They attach themselves to me like the green light, like the fungi that continue to colonize my typewriter. I had to stop for a while—my fingers ached and, even after all that I have seen, the fungi unnerved me. I spent the time flexing and unflexing my fingers, pacing back and forth. I also spent it going through a box of my father’s old papers—nothing I haven’t read through a hundred times before. Drafts of history essays, letters to colleagues, perhaps even the letter he received from the Kalif’s Court, if I dig deep enough. On top, Duncan had placed the dried-up starfish, its skeleton brittle with age. (I kept it there as a reminder to myself. After your letter to me—which, while reading this account, I sometimes think was written by an entirely different side of your personality—I wanted to remember that no matter how isolated I might feel, separated from others by secret knowledge, I was still connected. It didn’t help much, though—it reminded me how different I had become.)

I’ve put the starfish on my table here, as something akin to a good luck charm. Perhaps it will help me finish.

Next to the starfish, I found seashells, dull and chipped—the last remnants of our most noteworthy vacation. I was ten, Duncan six. Our dad had gone on sabbatical from his position as a history professor at the Porfal College of History and Advanced Theory (or as Dad called it, “Poor Paul’s Collage of Hysterics and Advanced Decay”) in Stockton. I cannot recall ever taking a weeklong vacation before or since. Dad had bought berths on a river barge for us. Mom was relaxed, happy. Dad was as calm and at peace as I’ve ever seen him.

I remember one habit he picked up during that vacation. He liked to take a stalk of sedge weed and hold it in his mouth like a pipe, gnawing on the end, a wide-brimmed hat shading his face. We’d sit in the deck chairs and read, or watch the countryside go by.

In those days, the west side of the River Moth was almost entirely uninhabited. We saw strange animals come to the water’s edge to drink; they would look at us with curiosity, but no fear. Once, we saw odd, short people dressed in outlandish clothes, staring across the water at us with a peculiar intensity. The water formed a mirror in which our images reached out to theirs across the waves—stretched, unreal.