WHEN I was six years old I wandered away from home. Got so lost I never found my way back again. It happened so long ago it almost feels like a fairy tale now. I’d snuck away an hour or so before family supper, tiptoeing it along the winding creak behind my house under the nose of the pines. Next thing I knew I was out the wicker gate of the yard and boarding a train to Jupiter. Down to Florida. From there, I played hopscotch with myself all the way across the state of Alabama. Foraged my way through Mississippi and then meandered on over to New Orleans where I heard The Blues for the first time. Guy by the name of Gee Flatts took me under his wing. He taught me how to sing. The old, drunk folks who sat at the bar and listened to us play used to say I had the loveliest voice they’d ever heard. Sweeter than saccharine. Gentle, the way teeth just glide through the soft skin of a Georgia peach. I could slide it up, down, twist it around all at the snap of a finger.

 

By the age of eight I was the front “man” for a Jazz-Blues fusion group. We called ourselves The Renaissance Bears. A tip of the cap to the old Italian arts movement, a nod of the head to the vicious animal that busts up picnics at the park for the sheer fun of it.

 

Eventually, the Feds caught us by the tail. A scary-smart blonde by the name of Officer Patricia started asking questions about me. Began showing her ugly mug around all the clubs we rocked out at, wearing all sorts of goofy disguises.

 

One night, she cornered Mr. Gee Flatts while I hid out of sight behind the wheel of a pick-up truck. She shoved him something mean so that his back was pressed up against the glass door of a defunct telephone booth. I heard everything she asked him. Mostly, it concerned whether I was or wasn’t Mr. Gee Flatts’s son. Officer Patricia, who was wearing a tuxedo over a ruffled white dress shirt and who had put on a fake mustache, demanded he produce some paperwork. A birth certificate. A social security card. Anything.

 

Mr. Gee Flatts was a first-generation Polynesian. Tattooed from neck to heel in tribal art. Four hundred pounds of sun-dried meat. Had a sad pout on him—which contradicted his cheery demeanor—resulting from a lifelong battle with gout.

 

I meanwhile was a fair-skinned beanstalk with ripping blue eyes, a mute’s mouth, and exactly zero years of schooling under my belt.

 

We were an odd couple.

 

The best Mr. Gee Flatts could do was lie through his gums to Officer Patricia and act the fool. He bought us a night, alright. And that was just enough.

 

The following evening, Mr. Gee Flatts tore the set to smithereens. It was the greatest I had ever seen or heard him pluck the bass. During the encore, he unexpectedly set the stage on fire. Literally. A ring of smoke and flame separated us from the Feds who were gathered in the auditorium that night. I imagine they must have had a hell of a child abduction case built up against MGF and the rest of the Bears by then.

 

Well, Mr. Gee Flatts scooped me up in his sweaty arms and ran backstage—as fast as he could whatwith his gargantuan frame—and through the galley of the kitchen and into a dim laundry room that smelled of dish soap and rotting monk fruit. He set me down, turned my palm over to face the sky and then shoved a wad of wrinkled bills into my tiny hand. Told me, Get out of Town. Head North. And find a library. If you’re going to survive another year in this world, you’ll need to learn yourself how to read. I told him, Reading is for chumps who wear glasses and squint into the sun. He told me, Start with the ABC’s and end with the ZZZ’s. He smiled and hugged me. He smelled like burnt wood. The worlds inside books, he said, are much grander in scope than this, the world on which we stand. Remember that. Before I had a chance to ask Mr. Gee Flatts what a scope meant, he pushed me with tears streaming down his cheeks out the door and I fell backwards over a rail and into a barrel of dead fish.  A lid was slid across the top of the barrel and no sooner, I was flipped head over heels inside there amongst a wretched blackness.

 

 

 

The next moment I found myself hurtling through the air. My stomach shot up into my throat, and my throat into my mouth. I tried to call out for help but couldn’t conjure that gorgeous voice of mine to the occasion. I had lost it, inexplicably. It was gone in the blink of an eye… in the throw of smelt.

 

The barrel landed with a crash onto a hard, undefined surface and I felt my collar bone snap in two like a wishbone before Thanksgiving supper. That’s when I passed out. There’s no telling how long I was unconscious for. Time, it marched on without me.

 

When eventually I woke, I was still upside-down. My neck, slung at a most horrid and dangerous and uncomfortable angle. A searing pain shot down my spine. It radiated outward from my collar bone when I tried to reposition myself. After a dozen failed attempts, I mustered up enough strength finally to shift the brunt of my weight deeper into the barrel and invert my body to find my zenith. I blinked a million times. Plunging with an extended pinky the dead fish guts out of my ears, I felt a small pop. Moved my jaw around. Felt another. At last, I could hear again. Way out in the distance, birds were chirruping. The faraway thwack! of a hammer punching nails descended upon me. Then without preamble a loud mechanical whirring and whizzing of unseen cranks and gears roared to life yards away from where I sat alone in the darkness. That’s when I felt it, a low rumbling that charged through the bottom of the barrel. It sent a seismic tremor into the viscous jelly I was steeped in. Suddenly, a blade the size of an acoustic guitar split the top of the barrel in half, missing the crown of my head by no less than a half an inch. The barrel ripped apart down the middle like a peeled banana to reveal the fruit, me, whilst a mound of dead fish including all the “amniotic fluid” that had been eating away at my flesh spilled out onto the dock of what was at that point in my life the largest port I had ever laid eyes.

​

 

I tried to stand but my knees gave out, and I crumpled into a wearied heap—which ended up being fortunate. The blade had swung back in my direction with a vengeance. I felt the air pucker as it whooshed by. Had I succeeded in standing on my first try, I would have been impaled.

 

Dazed and exhausted, I rolled belly over. Then, thrusting my knuckles into the ground, I started crawling towards the nearest and safest place I could find. With my back positioned against the façade of a free-standing trailer I let my eyes slowly adjust to take in the bustling scene surrounding. Machines of every ordinance and denomination peppered the horizon. Some of them looked like vegetable trays on wheels. Others took the form of girders, the height and girth of redwoods, cuffed at the proverbial shoulder. They swung around metal wires that lifted and put down pallets of goods at a cadence I didn’t have the time or the patience to define.

 

What worried me, though, was that there warn’t another man or woman like me in sight.

 

Well, starved and tired as I was, I knew I had to split it out of there, and fast. Gathering my breath, I crouched low like a jaguar, counted to three in my head, and then booked it towards the sea to where I had spotted a small, abandoned dinghy bobbing gently upon the water below a dock of the bay.

 

I hopped over a red laser—a tripwire. Slid underneath the arm of a masthead that was being rushed through the fray inches above the ground on the backs of four propeller-less drones. I paused to let pass a bulldozer pushing sawdust from one end of the compound to the other. Then, I tore off again, measuring my steps on the run. Approaching the edge of the port I closed my eyes, whispered a little prayer, and then I launched myself off the asphalt, up towards the sky, and finally, met headfirst the sea.

​

 

I lost my orientation underwater. Everything was dark again. I went whirling round and round, topsy-turvy, like a rebel planet that had overshot its orbital. I couldn’t hear a thing. As soon as I felt my body slow its rotation, I opened my eyes. The salt stung. My field of vision was blurry, streaked with soft beams of light, hazy and dim. Thankfully, though, I still had my wits about me.

 

From my lungs I issued forth a stream of air that produced a narrow string of small, translucent bubbles. The bubbles shot out across my right hip socket on a diagonal. I had found “up”.

 

Waving my arms to and fro like a madman hailing a yellow cab I twisted my torso around. With a few good kicks I breached the watery depths. At long last, air. I gulped down that sweet, tasteless oxygen as though it were the dandiest meal I’d ever had. In that moment I felt in full the gravity of the truism: We miss what we do not have.

 

I peered out across the water. The sun was a copper coin. A-shining on high there above the cumulous crème puffs that were going waltzing through the vast blue sky. It was fiercely hot that day. My tongue was chalk dry. Everything smelled like mustard…

 

I shook the saltwater out of my ears by dipping my neck to the one shoulder, and then the next. Afterwards, I tried rubbing the saltwater out of my eyes with the backs of my balled-up hands. It did not work in the slightest

 

I was exasperated but feeling merry. Free from trouble. I leaned my head south in the direction of the vessel, preparing for a nice, leisurely stroke. That was, until, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a great, grey fin rising above a cresting, white-tipped wave. A raw jolt of nervous electricity passed through me. Every muscle in my body grew suddenly rigid as a tree trunk—tense—from jaw to tailbone. I watched fearfully the fin race back and forth. I was treading water. Careful not to disturb the current above or below. Suddenly, that slicked triangle, it whipped round to form what looked to me like a thick line floating there above the rolling waves. I gulped. It was a line which I realized, rather quickly, was growing larger and longer by the second.

 

The shark was heading straight for me.

 

That’s when I mashed it into turbo mode. There was no sense in my trying to think my way out of that situation. I buried my head into the nearest wave and grabbed desperately at the salterwater, yanking it backwards with every ounce of juice I had left. I strained dearly with my every fiber, pumping my legs like a jackrabbit dusting it through the desert. Saltspray went a-cascading behind. Not once did I look back.

 

My hand moments later rammed dully against the hull of the dinghy. In a flash I reached for the edge of the boat, gripped it, and climbed aboard faster than you can say cowabunga.

 

Instead of hitting the bottom of the boat however, I had landed on top of something soft and soggy. Rof! A gruff voice shot forth from beneath a pile of rope and rain jackets and life preservers. The body rose. Taller and taller. Shedding the rope and rain jackets and life preservers all the while.

 

A middle-aged captain cloaked in black, who sported mutton chops, a flat, stubby nose, and a wild, tangled mess of hair atop his head glared at me through his charcoal eyes.

 

Who dares board my precious vessel! He yelled, taking a swig of the bottle that had been hanging at his side. Tis I! I yelled back, a-frightened into adopting the manner of the mariner. And what makes you think that be okay?! Answered The Captain, who waggled a gnarled index finger but an inch or so away from the tip of my nose. There be a shark! I had clumb aboard to save myself! I cried dearly.

 

A shark!? The Captain shouted back. Be ye sure it warn’t a white whale?? I thought a moment. Aye. Er… I cannot say either w-w-way. I responded unsteadily.

 

Whaaaaaaale! Cried The Captain, rocking the boat. He chucked the bottle overboard and thrust the both of his arms into the bowels of a bucket seat at his stead. I sat there, trembling, and watched him rifle through the contents below deck. Unsure of what he was going to do next.

 

Well, next thing I knew The Captain had a harpoon gun in his hands. The devil! He was going to spear me right through!

 

The Captain hoisted the harpoon gun up onto a sturdy shoulder and squinted his eye. With his feet planted, balancing himself against the motion of the wave, I heard him inhale deeply through his nose and slow his breath. The spear tip that protruded from the latter end of the harpoon gun he aimed right at my head. I grew white. So this was how I would die after all, I had thought then.

 

A second later, he jerked the barrel of the harpoon gun towards the heavens, then whispered something inaudible to himself, and then squeezed the trigger. The spear, sizzling, zipped right over my head. I heard it splish! into the water behind me. Then, I turned around.

 

The great fin that I had seen earlier charged away from us, towards the horizon. The Captain had missed his shot. The shark—or whale—it must have known it was in danger and decided to swim away while it still could.

 

Oh, America! The Captain languished. He set down the harpoon gun, dug up another bottle, and then slunk down across from me with his back against the curved frame of the rowboat.

 

Name’s Mel. The Captain grumbled. And your’s? I wasn’t sure whether to trust Mel, and so I made up a name. Thumb. The name’s… Thumb. I answered. Unsure of why I’d given myself such a strange, heritage-less name. Must have been instincts, maybe.

​

We shook hands.

 

Where ye be after? Mel asked. Anyplace. I answered. Want to join me on an expedition? Mel offered with a smile, fishing with a loose nail out from between his incisors a scrap of food. That sounds like an Anyplace as much any, said I.

 

Mel leapt to his feet and bowed, the boat rocking beneath him. He unhinged himself at the waist and stood his full height and looked up, revering the cloudless sky. Kissing the cross dangling from around his neck, he breathed in deeply the harbor air. Finally, he crooned, Away we go!  I shook my head. Here was a man with energy enough to fill ten lifetimes.

 

Mel was zooming. He untied the rowboat from a barnacle-encrusted pole latched to the dock and then pulled in the slack into a coiled heap there in the middle of the boat.

 

I laid back on my forearms and watched as Mel kicked with the bottom of his boot the dock, sending us drifting out towards the shallows and away from the crook of the rocky beach, which grew thinner behind us with each passing minute. The sprightly captain of our wee vessel hocked a loogie. Then let loose another for good measure. He winked at me as he took up in his two hands two sturdy oars.

 

Say, where you two going? An old man peering out from the edge of the dock called out to us. He had the flat of his hand raised to his brow. Tiny as he was, I could make out among his silhouette a wily beard. He also appeared to be surrounded by a scrum of house cats.

 

The watery part of the world beckons, Ernie! Mel shouted back with a clap of his hands. How was Spain?

 

A war. Hollered the old man facing the sea, who apparently went by Ernie. Safe travels, both. Keep clear.

​

Darn, right! Thanks, Ernie… Laughed Mel, setting down his oars. He swigged from the bottle that was wedged between his leather belt and his trousers and then turned towards me. Ernie is a man of ample vices and choice words.

​

Mel rowed day and night. He broke stroke only once—out in the middle of the ocean when a small fish jumped out of the water and startled the both of us. He had reached instinctively for his harpoon gun, which was laying conditionally at his side on-the-ready.

​

That man really wants that whale, I chuckled to myself silently.

 

During the day, Mel tracked our progress against the sun. At night, he took care to reconcile our position against the north star. It was a long seven days—I was beat by the end of it... tired, dehydrated, and sick of radishes (for that is all Mel had to eat onboard).

 

With our supply dwindling, Mel charted a course due west. He seemed to have a backhand knowledge of the seas. To me, it all looked the same.

Around midday I spied a sliver of land hovering there above the water in the distance. A deciduous forest, decidedly dense. The sensation of sweet relief washed over me at seeing a new sight.

 

A giant swarm of gnats was there to greet us at our landing place--within a crescent-shaped jut of the island that was tucked around the other side of a colorful shoal. Mel and I hauled the dinghy up to a place where the tide wouldn’t be able to take it, secured it to an overturned, termite-stricken log, and then struck out in search of fresh water and food.

 

We followed a small, bubbling brook inland and eventually came across a field of wild onions and buckwheat. The sweet, delicate flesh of the onions combined with the tawny crunch of the buckwheat did my stomach good, which had been feeling upset from seven days’ rations of radishes. I turned to Mel.

 

Said I, So where to next? Mel looked at me, perplexed. Yer lookin’ at it, boyo, he said between mouthfuls. I’m off to sea once I’ve had my fill. I routed my gaze away, hurt a little by the nonchalance with which he spoke about ridding of me so easily. I was going to be left alone again. Yer welcome to join, however, if it pleases. Mel clapped me on the shoulder and nodded solemnly, as though he had picked up on my internal talk track.

 

Nay, I replied, still donning my manner of the mariner. I be in search of a new sort of Anyplace. I didn't want to be a burden on the man, who clearly had some sort of larger cosmological design to obey, a mission that he needed to fulfil. I added, Thank you, though. Thank you for feeding me and helping me find my way. Seeing as I thought my rejection had come across somewhat harsher than intended.

 

We shook hands and then without another word parted ways.

​

I walked alone through the woods without a map or a compass or a general destination I was after. It was the longest walk of my life—three years, in total.

 

All the while, I had to forge my own path seeing as there warn’t any tracks or trails to shepard me along. For the most part, I marched south. Not for any good reason—just because. I had learned from Mel the importance of tracking the sun relative to where the toes of my feet were pointed. To keep tabs, I got into the habit of climbing up to the top of a birch tree every couple hours or so, for those were the easiest trees for me to climb to gain vantage. I would perch there atop a sturdy branch, with one palm upon the trunk for support. Once the pupils of my eyes  adjusted I would take stock of my surroundings, making sure to evaluate the moon against the direction the sun was moving and to note how the clouds and the birds were behaving that day.

 

The birds in particular I found to be useful in predicting shifts in the weather. Birds circling meant food was around—a rabbit or a vole or a squirrel, usually. Many birds, travelling as a flock, meant rain was a-coming or a cold front was heading in.

 

Along my journey, I learned to hunt. I had whittled a small slingshot in honor of David by manipulating the bark of a rubber tree, thinning it down with a conch shell. To incapacitate my prey, I relied upon small, polished stones and the occasional acorn. Mostly, I was after small, furry beasties. No big game. I saw a bear only once. Thankfully, I happened to be way high up in the arms of a birch tree, out of sight. The bear, which was bathing in a flowe arranged beside the fjord of a tremendous valley, never even smelled me.

 

In any case—I must have been ten or eleven years old by the time I finally ran into somebody. At first, I was relieved. Moments later however, I realized I had crossed paths with—of all folk—an old witch. She stood awkwardly beside a muddy path that had been cleaved out of the base of a hillside. The air smelled of mildew. She, dead flowers.

 

The old witch looked very much like the prototype. In typical witch fashion, she sported a big, red wart on her chin. Was cloaked in black—again, typical. And beneath her top hat lay a hornet’s nest’s worth of wiry, grey hair.

 

The old witch leaned heavily upon a broomstick and cackled anytime she finished a sentence. She also burped a lot.

​

As afraid as I was, I sized her up with a smile.

  

Hark, who goes there? Grimaced the witch, grumpily. On her shoulder reared a black adder. It hissed at me. 

 

It is I… Thumb! I called back, a-trembling. I retained the namesake that I had given to Mel.

 

And why ye be admirin’ my hill! Who gave yer permission? The witch spat, waving her broomstick above her head with both hands around its stem. Her nose shook while she spoke. Had it been straight, it would have been the length of a ruler.

 

I w-w-was just looking to pass, yer majesty.  I replied, hoping the compliment might help me to avoid becoming the main ingredient of her next cursed stew or love potion.

 

Yer majesty… I rather like that! Cried the witch, cackling so loud her voice echoed. The echo boomeranged around the trees of the forest behind and flew back again—magic.

 

I knew then that if I kept complimenting the witch, I stood a fighting chance.

 

My oh my, I began, What a gorgeous… button-nose you have!

 

Shucks! She cackled.

 

That cloak does your body a wonder. Did you get that on sale?

 

I did!

 

Your eyes are as black and soul-less—I mean—soulful as a summer night. Your parents must have been beautiful sorcerers.

 

My mother was a witch and my father, a mountain troll!

 

Well, I was running out of compliments, and needed a good segue. Thinking fast, and looking beyond her frame to the hillside and at the pair of paths which diverged over its grassy bosom, I played the last hand I had--ignorance.

 

Say, where do those paths lead to? I am lost. I don’t know where I’m going.

 

The witch, who was rosy at the cheek, sighed deeply. She brushed away coyly her disgusting hair with her moldy, black fingernails and smiled a toothless smile.

 

The one on the left leads to the enchanted wood, where I am from. The other, to civilization. Plain and true.

 

Hmm. I replied, unsure about how next to proceed…

 

Do you want to learn the easy way or the hard way? She asked.

 

I heard from a man I used to know who went by the name Mr. Gee Flatts that the worlds of books are a good thing to learn. Does that answer your question?

 

The witch smiled, then cackled, and then let go a strange, infantile coo.

 

Then take the path to the right. You’ll read a book or a thousand if you go that way, alright.

​

Thank you mightily, I replied, relieved. Say, I never did catch your name?

​

Agatha, spat the witch. As she announced her name, to her left, I saw a rustling among the bushes. Ten little indians poked their faces out at me and, in unison, mouthed the word, "No" . Agatha tracked my eyes, craning her neck around, but the ten little indians darted into the foliage and disappeared before she could spot them.

​

I did just as old Agatha said and took the path that forked right. As I passed her she winked on me. I felt even then that that was an ill omen. However, I did not act on my instincts and run the other way. Instead, I crested the hillside riding on an air of optimism, whistling a tune I’d heard from Mel back when.

 

Well, no sooner had I passed over top that grassy knoll than did I meet another forest. This one, unlike the forest through which I had firstly wandered, looked much spookier. The trees were barren, bereft of leaves. The ground underfoot was misshapen—rocky in some areas, mud-clumped in others. Even the birds looked more terrifying… tattered at their wingtips, cawing relentlessly.

 

Nevertheless, I bucked up and a-strided onward. There warn’t no stopping me, see. I still didn’t have my voice, and I still didn’t have a particular Anyplace in mind, but I knew I had a better chance of catching a stroke of good fortune if I kept walking than if I stood gargoyle stiff and waited on it to come to me.

 

The nights out in that forest were wicked. I heard all sorts of hooting and hollering and wailing. Blasted banshees. That whole first week, I hardly slept a wink… seeing as how anytime I did encumber towards slumber, I quickly was awakened by the sensation of bugs all a-crawling up and down on me, or of the distinct feeling that suddenly I was being watched, or that the snapping of twigs had been done so by an unseen enemy who was hungry after me.

 

Once, I even rose and smelled distinctly rotting meat.

 

As dark as it got, I still held out hope. Without hope, by which I mean, the secret prospect I held of my getting out and beyond that situation I was faced with, I would have surely curled up into my shell like a snail and never laid eyes on another sunset. Somewhere, deep inside, I knew I had the courage to stand it, and to push past that intrepid lot that bore down on me like a ten-thousand-pound bogeyman. Somehow, I felt that my suffering, that my fear, that the doubt, that it all was only temporary.

​

At some interval, I came upon a sinister-looking wooden shack. It was a regular, mist-filled afternoon. The shack stood at the top of a mountain peak. Over the front door hung a simple plank with a simple engraving  which, looking back now, must have read, GILMAN.

 

For weeks, I had been footing it on up towards the top of that mount. The climb had put quite the dastardly burden on my calves and hamstrings, so I was feeling sore when I locked eyes on that shack. Inside, I could see a fire going, the way the warm light just danced off the tin shingles of the roof. The wind chimes, which had been still at my initial approach, suddenly picked up a powerful gust and went a-singin something relentless.

 

Then, the windows went black. I recognized instantly that the fire had been snuffed out. In the next beat of the heart I slumped to the moss-covered earth underfoot, gathering myself into the stance of our ancestors: a primitive crouch. Quietly, with my eyes fixed upon the crooked front door of the shack, I crept behind the nearest mulberry bush, scared as anything.

 

THWACK!

 

I woke up chained to a bed. A thin candle bearing a single flame stood atop the only other piece of furniture in the room, a small cylindrical nightstand whose legs had been sculpted into the form of four spiral staircases.

 

SheeSheeSheeSheeShee!

 

A horrid face appeared at my side, fang-baring and halfways obscured by the darkness. The voice, meanwhile, was eerily high—feminine, certainly—sounding almost as though its wielder was tone deaf.

 

The voice cried out, rhythmless:

 

Ashes to ashes,

We all fall

Down!

 

Please don’t e-e-eat me! I begged.

 

The face receded swiftly into the mouth of the darkness. My chest was pounding. I thrashed about, wrestling helplessly to get out of my chains.

 

 The voice coughed delicately. There was a pause. And then, it asked me the most surprising question I’d ever heard in my life: You aren’t here to eat me, either?

 

Nay! I yelled, startled. I am but a p-p-peaceful boy in search of an Anyplace!

 

Thanks be!

 

A switch against the back wall was flipped. In front of me stood a strikingly beautiful woman wearing a black shawl over top a navy blue frock. She brushed her black hair away from her face and smiled, pinning her chin to her neck somewhat sheepishly.

 

I’m Charlotte. My apologies for the—, she motioned to the chains around my wrists. Men can be vermin.

 

Herehere. I agreed, still donning the language of the seaman.

 

What do you think of what I’ve done with the place? Charlotte gestured openly, bending her voice to accommodate a much more agreeable lilt.

 

I looked around. Besides the bed and the nightstand, there was nothing to scrutinize save for some yellow wallpaper, across which black ink, row after row of it, had seemingly been spilt.

 

Charlotte pulled out a key, stuck it into the hand-and foot-cuffs that were latched to the bed posts, and freed me with a twist of each. I thanked her with a nod, rubbing wanly my wrists as I trundled over to inspect the walls more closely. The letters of the yellow wallpaper were arranged in the very same scrawl that I’d seen carved into the plank that was a-hanging above the front door of Charlotte’s shack.

 

What are these? I asked Charlotte.

 

Stories. Charlotte replied, matter-of-factly. Can’t you read?

 

I shuffled my feet and interlocked my fingers behind my back and said nothing.

 

How about if I teach you?

 

Really?! 

 

It would be my pleasure. Charlotte affirmed with a grin.

 

Why, that would be dandy!

​

What sort of tale would you like to start with?

​

I thought a moment. How about a mystery? Maybe one that's appropriately inappropriate. For fun.​

​

That's a good use of your words. Charlotte giggled. You may be a storyteller yet.

​

Charlotte pursed her lips together and I saw her eyes go blank. She circled the room, grazing the yellow wallpaper with the tips of her fingers, peering up and down from the ceiling to the floor, back and forth.

​

Then, she let go a slight gasp. She snapped her fingers.

​

You'll like this one, I think. One day, I plan to strip it down, the bit of it I have anyway, and send it to The Master Compiler.

 

I had never heard tell of The Master Compiler, but I rather liked the idea there being one.

​

What's it called? I asked excitedly.

​

It's called:

 

THE AMERICAN FAUSTUS