“Yes,” said Tokala. “And not just the pair of you, either. I have often found myself standing in a room with no knowledge of how I got there or why. Or found myself stirring a spoon with no knowledge of how long I had stood there stirring it for. Kettles stand whistling longer than they should. And dogs bark. The whole town is full of people dreaming if only you look close enough to see them. But none of us are really dreaming, Peter, are we?”

Tokala maintained eye contact so that Peter could find some comfort there while he made the connection for himself.

“No,” Peter whispered. “We’re dying.”

Tokala nodded.

“And it’ll happen again if we go back to how things were before?”

“We think so, yes.”

The snow hurried in drifts across the bay window now, darkening the apartment, and Peter stood.

“It’s just that I always thought I was born in the wrong time. That I didn’t belong out there in the wild.”

“The world will always be harsh, Peter, but always in great need of gentleness too.”

“But—”

“Never be told your gentleness is a weakness, Peter.”

Peter looked above the shadow of his own reflection in the television and saw the clock on the kitchen wall mirrored behind him.

“Why did you let us come?” he asked after a while. “When you told me back on the lake that we already had everything we ever needed, you meant the natural world. You knew all this and you still let us come.”

“Let?” said Tokala. “You’re suggesting I had any say.”

“But why don’t you?”

“Because the pull back to civilization was unavoidable.”

“No.”

“Yes, Peter. There are forces greater than us that will determine it.”

“What forces?”

“The government. Consumerism. Capitalism. They won’t let us stay away.”

“But why didn’t you fight it?”

“Because my people know better than most what trying to keep our relationship to the land cost us. Early settlers to this country saw to that. Your country’s founding fathers saw to it, and then they saw to us.”

“But if you thought you never stood a chance of staying away, what changed your mind?”

Tokala smiled, like they might share the answer to that question, and invited Peter to join him at the window. Outside, Cooper looked up through the tumbling snow from the street below. He doffed his Stetson, indicating that their little sojourn was drawing to a close, and soon Becky and the others joined him. But they weren’t alone. Snow hurried across the cables, making the broken fairy lights jump and jangle. Peter pressed his face to the glass. As if by some strange calling, their dull knell brought ghosts.