“Tact, courtesy, patience,” Blinky said softly. “These qualities are as foreign to your uncle now as were our troll ways during his first season underground. Even the scantest of aboveground scents, like those of blossoming flowers or baking bread, odors which I understand are comforts to your kind, reduce poor Jack to trembling. Why do you think he wears his mask, even here?”

“He could come back,” I said. “We could adopt him or something.”

“Would you adopt a wild animal and expect anything else than to be bit? Jack has become a creature of rock, mud, cave, and sewage, far more at home within our glorious squalor than in your rudely lit land of sharp corners and stultifying sterility. You have read the human fable of Never Never Land? So is the troll world to Jack. The accomplishments so treasured by humans are rituals of which Jack shall never partake. There will be no school graduations. There will be no first kiss. There will be no driving a car. There will be no family. Being denied this has created within Jack a great rage; that is no secret to anyone who has seen the business end of his blade. However, it is a useful rage. He would not be the warrior he is without it. He knows this and has accepted it. A tragedy, to be sure, but a necessary one.”

Blinky left my side to tuck himself within the safe confines of the closet.

In my bedroom I kicked off my shoes and ripped my arms from my hoodie. I felt something in the pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper. It was the flyer of the missing little girl with purple glasses. I looked at it for a while, thinking of the changelings, the rust trolls, and all the other beasts amassing for invasion.

I returned to the living room. Sunlight was beginning to leak through the cracks of the fortress, making it obvious that Jack was no longer there. I felt a flash of concern before noticing Dad’s bedroom door was ajar. Then I felt even greater concern, hurried over, and inserted my head.

Jack was standing over the bed, looking down in a posture of heartbroken wonderment at the wrinkled old man, once upon a time a little boy called “Jimbo.” He reached out with a tentative hand to stroke his brother’s face, but stopped when he remembered that his fingers were covered with sharp tacks. Jack’s goggles fogged over.

Dad’s body made a somnambulant jerk. Something quivered in his throat.

Jack had no problem grabbing me with those sharp gloves.

“The schmoof,” he said. “You won’t want to see this part.”