Oisín had rediscovered Rebecca the night before. She was thirteen or fourteen, he guessed, the oldest of Gus and Olympia’s three kids. They lived in Malta. Or was it Gran Canaria? Anyway, she’d introduced herself at the bonfire, shook Oisín’s hand with firm sincerity, and had answered a series of banal questions with elegance and wit. He’d decided she was the best of the family line, that all of their genetic threads had found their apex in her earnest eyes.

“Here,” she said. She’d appeared at his side. She was dressed in army shorts and black sneakers and what seemed to be an Aussie-style cowboy hat. He loved her very much and was sure that together they could map the oceans and conquer space.

“You want a task, Rebecca?” he asked her, knowing the answer would be yes. She nodded emphatically and tilted her head to receive the details of the directive.

“What we need, Rebecca,” he said, “is two backpacks. Each with a thermos of water, six apples, a bag of jerky, and some almonds. Not much else. We need them light. Can you manage that?” As he listed the items, and as the significance of the task grew, her face became ever-more joyful. She wrote nothing down but he had no doubt she’d remember every item.

“Five minutes?” she asked.

“Well, four now,” he said, and she ran on jackrabbit feet.

“Who’s coming?” Oisín yelled into the barn, which in the 1960s had been converted into a dorm for the kids. “Get out here!”

By ones and twos the children arrived, voluntarily or compelled, until he had six.

“Are you Oisín?” said one round-faced boy. “My mom said to find the weird old man wearing a wig.” The boy examined Oisín’s long white hair as if looking for evidence of its forgery.

“It’s not a wig. Who’s your mom?” Oisín asked.

“Mary-Frances?” the boy said.

“Your mom should know,” Oisín said. “She’s got fake teeth and a monkey heart. Tell her I said that.”

Two more children, both about ten and squinting in the sun, appeared from the old chicken shack. Oisín thought about sunscreen. He didn’t want to get into sunscreen. He hoped the parents would assume him useless on that front.