We are carefully organized; each child has a partner, whose hand she or he is to take once we arrive. We’re instructed to stay together. I’ve been assigned to Antonio, who at just five is the biggest, rowdiest boy in the class; he’s eager, self-confident, and capable of being obstreperous. We sit side by side on the bus, which crosses Speedway and then heads north into an undeveloped area of desert I don’t know. Pavement gives way to dirt roads, houses to flat open land marked by creosote and greasewood, an occasional jackrabbit shooting out in front of the wheels. Just when we’ve turned enough times to confuse me thoroughly, the bus pulls up beside a chain-link fence, idles a moment, coughs to a stop. The kids look out the window, confused but willing: Is this where we’re going? In truth there’s nothing to be seen but the bit of fence, and a narrow dirt driveway, and a hand-painted sign, in drippy white letters, that announces VALLEY OF THE MOON.

We file out of the bus, line up with partners, the teacher at the front of the line, then the double cordon of children, Antonio and I in the final position. We wait, and in a moment there’s a figure coming our way down the narrow drive. He (I presume, though in fact the body’s so completely hidden that gender is just a guess) is dressed entirely in black: black boots and some kind of Western slacks, a black shirt, black gloves, and—most strikingly—a wide black hat from which descends a black veil, dense enough to obscure the face entirely, falling from the brim of the hat all around his head, all the way to just below the shoulders. He draws close, raises a gloved hand in greeting, and announces, “I am the Mountain Gnome. Welcome to the Valley of the Moon!”

A little laughter from our group, but not much—mostly wide eyes, exchanged looks, small shoulders raised in a gesture that means, What is this? A little shivery fear commingled with delight.

The Mountain Gnome instructs us to follow him, and turns and begins to walk back the way he’s come, talking all the while. He says that he is the discoverer and keeper of the Valley of the Moon, which is for everyone but especially for children. He says we are to leave all negative thoughts, all sorrow and loneliness and fear, at the gates, for we are entering into a fairy place of love and goodwill. And soon we are passing through those gates, which are jutting, haphazard constructions of concrete in which the gnome’s embedded bits and pieces of broken china, sparkly hunks of glass, weird bits of junkyard detritus—old Disney figurines, metal springs, any shiny thing that’s caught his eye.