They stopped at a self-serve slush stand that allowed you to mix all the flavors you wanted into a tall plastic glass that looked like a bong. Leo’s personal cocktail came out army green. This had always happened to his Play-Doh, too, when it got mixed together. He drank it with his eyes closed and winced. He most resembled his late grandfather when unhappy.

“Poor bunny, you’re jet-lagged. Here. Let’s sit.” They sat on the bench next to the Lego Hans Christian Andersen, and Joanna had a sense that they shouldn’t, they should leave the space clear for people who wanted pictures of themselves with a Lego Hans Christian Andersen. But why should those people get their way?

“I’m not jet-lagged,” he said.

“Do you want to just go to the hotel room?”

“Is the hotel room in Legoland?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Oh.” Then, “I hate it here.”

“Denmark?”

He looked at her aghast. “This isn’t Denmark,” he said. “Can we go? It’s not what I thought it would be like.”

“Yes,” said Joanna, grateful and motherly, a good mother, indulgent. “What did you think it would be like?”

But she knew. In our private Legolands we are the only human people.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, and she handed Leo her phone. “You choose. Wherever you want to go, we’ll go. I know Vikings aren’t your favorite, but I have a friend at that Viking village—”

“What Viking village?”

“A Viking village,” she said. “We’ll go at the end of the week. In the meantime, do some research. Plan the next three days. If you want, we can come back to Legoland—”

“I’m never going to come back to Legoland,” he said passionately.

When our children love what we love, it is a blessing, but O when they hate what we hate!

Denmark was studded with little museums dedicated to misery and wealth and the unpleasant habits of men, and Leo wanted to go to every one. He was warming to the Vikings. There was a kind of gentle boredom to Denmark, which was in itself interesting: archaeological museums whose captions were entirely in Danish, with displays of pottery, shards and nails and swords and bits of armor. To become interested in a boring subject was a feat of strength. A splinter of Viking armor was more interesting than the whole suit, to Leo, because even though it was in a glass box it might fit in your pocket. Perhaps he liked bits because of his nearsightedness—now that he had glasses, it was disquieting what loomed on the horizon—but entire objects told the entire story, and therefore belonged to everyone. Looking at a piece of a thing, he might think, deduce, discover something nobody ever had, which was all he wanted in the world.