She shouted at the water. She turned and shouted up the embankment, into the trees, toward Joel’s house.

“Joel!”

She spun in a circle, shouting his name. She didn’t want to look at the lake but wound up turned to face it again anyway. Her throat burned from yelling, and she was beginning to cry again.

“Gail!” Heather called to her. Her voice was shrill with fright. “Come home, Gail! Come home, right now!”

“Gail!” yelled Gail’s mother.

“Joel!” Gail shouted, thinking this was ridiculous, everyone shouting for everyone else.

The lowing sound came from a long way off. It was mournful and soft.

“Give him back,” Gail whispered. “Please give him back.”

Heather ran through the mist. She was up on the embankment, not down on the sand, where the water was still piling in, one heavy, cold wave after another. Then Gail’s mother was there, too, looking down at her.

“Sweetie,” Gail’s mother said, her face pale and drawn with alarm. “Come up here, sweetie. Come up here to Mother.”

Gail heard her but didn’t climb the embankment. Something washed in on the water and caught on her foot. It was Heather’s drawing pad, open to one of her ponies. It was a green pony, with a rainbow stripe across it, and red hooves. It was as green as a Christmas tree. Gail didn’t know why Heather was always drawing horses that looked so un-horse-like, horses that couldn’t be. They were like double negatives, those horses, like dinosaurs, a possibility that canceled itself out in the moment it was expressed.

She fetched the drawing pad out of the water and looked at the green pony with a kind of ringing sickness in her, a feeling like she wanted to throw up. She ripped the pony out and crushed it and threw it into the water. She ripped some other ponies out and threw them, too, and the crushed balls of paper bobbed and floated around her ankles. No one told her to stop, and Heather did not complain when Gail let the pad fall from her hands and back into the lake.

Gail looked out at the water, wanting to hear it again, that soft foghorn sound, and she did, but it was inside her this time, the sound was down deep inside her, a long, wordless cry for things that weren’t never going to happen.

Faun

PART ONE: OUR SIDE OF THE DOOR

Fallows Gets His Cat

The first time Stockton spoke of the little door, Fallows was under a baobab tree, waiting on a lion.

“After this, if you’re still looking for something to get your pulse going, give Mr. Charn a call. Edwin Charn in Maine. He’ll show you the little door.” Stockton sipped whiskey and laughed softly. “Bring your checkbook.”