… as I left the village gate, I passed a foul crone seated on a stump. She said, “Where to, dimwit? It’ll soon be dark and this is no time to be on the road.” I said, “All my life I have longed to see more, to fill my eyes with new things, to get beyond this muddy, stinking town, these forever bleating sheep. I am traveling to Thessaly, the Land of Magic, to find a sorcerer who will transform me into a bird, a fierce eagle or a bright strong owl.”

She laughed and said, “Aethon, you dolt, everyone knows you cannot count to five yet you believe you can count the waves of the sea. You will never fill your eyes with anything more than your own nose.”

“Quiet, hag,” I said, “for I have heard of a city in the clouds where thrushes fly into your mouth fully cooked and wine runs in channels in the streets and warm breezes always blow. As soon as I become a brave eagle or a bright strong owl, it is there I intend to fly.”

“You always think the barley is more plentiful in another man’s field, but it’s no better out there, Aethon, I promise you,” said the crone. “Bandits wait around every corner to bash your skull and ghouls lurk in the shadows, hoping to drink your blood. Here you have cheese, wine, your friends, and your flock. What you already have is better than what you so desperately seek.”

But as a bee hurries to and fro, visiting every flower without pause, so my restlessness…

LAKEPORT, IDAHO

1941–1950

Zeno

He’s seven when his father is hired to install a new sash saw at the Ansley Tie and Lumber Company. It’s January when they arrive and the only snowflakes Zeno has seen before are asbestos fibers a druggist in Northern California sprinkled over a Christmas display. The boy touches the frozen surface of a puddle on the train platform, then yanks back his fingers as though burned. Papa pratfalls into a snowbank, smears snow over his coat, and staggers toward him. “Looks! Looks at mes! I big snowman!”

Zeno bursts into tears.

The company leases them an under-insulated two-room cabin a mile from town on the edge of a blinding-white plain that the boy will only later understand is the icebound lake. At dusk Papa opens a two-pound can of Armour & Company spaghetti and meatballs and sets it on the wood stove. The bottom half burns Zeno’s tongue; the top half is slush.

“This be terrific homes, yes, lamb chop? Tremendous, yes?”