The wind blew, and the fire flickered, and a shadow fell over the moon. In the sudden darkness I couldn’t see what he had rolled. I couldn’t see what the dice read before my great-grandfather swooped his hand across the plate and scooped them back up. But I could tell one thing from the looks on the Urquhart brothers’ faces.

My great-grandfather won.

The light in the world began to change. The stars shivered and vibrated, and the moon sped away as if it were yanked on a string, as if the whole world moved in fast-forward. The desert ground sprouted trees, flowers in swirls of color, numerous as the stars. The moonlit desert had become a sun-sparkled garden. And in the middle of it stood my great-grandfather, laughing, dancing, and spinning. With yellow butterflies circling his head like a halo, he began to sing. He had this thunderous deep voice, and the whole forest resounded with it.

The Urquharts had vanished along with the moon and stars. They had no place in this daylight world, not any longer.

There was only my great-grandfather and the world he would go on to create.

Slowly the light dimmed and faded, and I came to in the Urquharts’ house.

My eyes burned, and my mouth still tasted like ash. George stood smirking in the corner. I wondered if he knew what I’d seen. I wondered if he’d ever been to the campfire world at all.

“So you see?” she said. “You understand that none of this belongs to you. Your great-grandfather cheated.”

Something snuck into me, a hardness in my heart. I heard a whisper in my ear, Jeremiah speaking through me.

“I saw nothing of the sort,” I said.

Mrs. Urquhart frowned at me.

“Is that so?”

“Indeed,” I said, the word not even mine, like I had nothing to do with it at all. “What I saw was my great-grandfather play a game and win. I don’t know what kind of game it was, but I saw your father and his brothers lose it. Lose their lives, lose their claim to this land, lose whatever it was that they bet. So I’ll leave you be now. Thanks for showing me my great-grandfather. He seemed like a hell of a guy.”

I stood up to go.

“I thought you’d be different,” said Mrs. Urquhart. “A kind boy with a good heart. That’s how George described you, anyhow, and it gave me hope. But he was wrong. You’re just as bad as all the rest of them.”

“Coming from you,” I said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

George Urquhart took a step toward me then, his fists balled up like he was ready to fight. And I got scared a minute. There was no way in hell I would win a fight against George Urquhart.