Begin One Way

(originally published in Dec. '19 by BYU's Leading Edge magazine)

On a modest soy and livestock farm nestled between third-ring suburbs, there dwelt an esotericist. The farm was not his, nor did he belong to it; to him it was simply a sanctuary in which he might gather his thoughts. He was a raccoon, gaunt of frame and rumple-coated, whose inclinations had always driven him to address matters of the spirit before those of flesh. He therefore made no attempts on the frogs in the wallow of his unused pen, but dined without savor on insects and elm seeds before returning to lie in the tall grass and sort through his multitudinous theories. He was used to hunger, and his fascinations lay elsewhere.

When he wasn’t deep in thought, the esotericist drank from the puddle that shaped his pen and watched the spinning of the majestic wind turbines whose purpose he did not know, but which vied with radio towers and towering fences to cast the most ominous shadows on poorly lit nights. He heard the squealing of swine through the east fence and closed his ears to it, trying to perceive it more as a meditative backdrop than a distraction.

But one day, the esotericist realized that this place was a waystation for him, and that waystations are not simply places of rest. A proper waystation has offerings for its pilgrims. So it was that he opened his ears and started to listen to the swine.


Though they were marketed as ‘free range swine,’ the square half-acre pen to which they had access could barely be called a ‘range,’ barren as its occupants rendered it year by year. A slim strand of filthy water lined one edge of the electrified fence. Two scraggly elm trees grew in a corner, their roots half destroyed from constant attention. The pigs’ noses were unringed, but this mercy only meant they were all the more able to decimate their environment by rooting, their every recreation a blow against their own futures. Still, it could have been worse. There were two pens used in alternation each year in order to let new scrub grow. This meant the vacant pen was an object of longing for the swine—a place of nostalgia and anticipation.

Whispers of yellow eyes by night in the vacant pen made their way through the herd. But this was no great news—it was only a raccoon, said the older hogs, and such creatures rarely saw fit to steal what little the herd had, given their own freedom. Occasionally some youngster would glimpse these eyes and come squealing, but it made no difference to most. A few among the herd, however, had known greater meaning in their lives; any deviance was therefore a source of hope and wonder. It was the hollow feeling in her ribs that led one modestly proportioned, hickory-colored widow with thinning coat, a Mrs. Doge, to stand before the fence and stare. When she saw the yellow eyes peering, she simply nodded and said, “Good evening—I thought I’d heard tell of a stranger this way.”

It was a crescent-mooned spring night. “Good evening,” replied the stranger after a hesitation, his voice gravelly. “That would be me, I suppose.”

“Have you been living here long?”

This pause was longer. “Since winter began. Five months, perhaps? Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“Why, you’re addressing your neighbor! And it’s a shame if no one’s said hello before now. I was called Carmela once, but these days it’s just Mrs. Doge.”

“I see,” said the raccoon. The whites of his unkempt fur were barely visible. “And was there a Mr. Doge?”

“Was there ever,” said the widow. She sat down and proceeded to tell the stranger about her late husband—a remarkable fellow who’d sired her three litters. A worldly boar, sold at auction from a foreclosed farm that wasn’t even his birthplace, he’d sealed his fate trying to escape one day when they opened the gate, and had darted so fast he’d made it almost half a field. He’d had such stories, and things to say about the owners, and he’d even known how to read, as did the odd pig. She was prepared to go on, but her companion stopped her.

“To read, you say.”

“Absolutely! I never picked up the knack, but he taught some of our children, including one who’s still around. I never saw the point of it, mind, but I can’t say it didn’t make him fascinating! I was lucky to win his heart—believe me, there was competition.”

“You say that you have a child who knows how to read?” asked the careful stranger.

“My darling Meadow, yes. She’s not the most curious sort, but she always liked following the rules. Always happy to please. Mr. Doge and I had eighteen kids, but the first litter’s all gone, and Meadow’s all that’s left of the second.”

The raccoon rose to his feet. “Remarkable. I wonder, Mrs. Doge, whether you believe in serendipity.”

She couldn’t say for sure as to that . . . but as she did believe in the appeal of long words she couldn’t understand, an acquaintance was struck. Apologizing for his rusty social graces, the raccoon introduced himself as Klein, an esotericist, or student of mysteries. He expressed the desire to make Mrs. Doge’s acquaintance more fully. This suited the widow so well that the two began meeting at the fence each night, and they spent many a quiet nocturnal hour discussing the hidden meanings of the bushes, the stars, and the very earth.


Mrs. Doge introduced her three surviving children to the newcomer: feisty little Shantika and her wary brother, Brendan, as well as Meadow—plump, appealing and pink but for a fringe of brown on her back. Shantika had question upon question for the wayfarer, who paused before each answer and withheld almost as many as he gave. Meadow was delighted to meet her mother’s friend and charmed him with her manners. She was happy to demonstrate the secret knowledge her father had instilled in her, reading tiny letters from the corner fenceposts and large, faded words from the side of the farmhouse. The esotericist marveled at her abilities and asked her to explain what she could of her art. All the while, little Brendan listened with interest, but stayed mostly quiet.

The other pigs harried Mrs. Doge over her habit of ‘speaking with vermin’.  They poked fun at her, or in worse extremes, shunned her. It didn’t bother her. She was middle-aged and utterly above it all. “If you don’t wish to speak with me, I shan’t be speaking with you,” she said more than once. And while she kept a few friends, there was no denying the mysterious outsider held the bulk of her interest.

“You understand, Mrs. Doge,” said Klein one night, “that I mean no offense by what I am about to say?”

The sow curled her ears back. “Oh, consider me warned.”

Klein raised his diminutive height and sniffed the air. “There is a scent to this place.”

“Well, I should hope so!”

“Perhaps you are accustomed to it, Mrs. Doge. To a wanderer such as me, however, the scent of this pigsty is one of perennial discontent.”

Mrs. Doge scraped the ground. “Mr. Klein, you do have a way with words.”

“Musty, in short,” he declared. “But is this the lot of your kind? Surely you would prefer clean quarters.”

The sow looked about uncertainly. “Well, yes, but such is the way of the world.”

“Mmm,” replied Klein. “Mrs. Doge, I must ask you about your plans for the future. Believe me when I say I do not ask idly.”

This surprised her. “The future?”

The esotericist gripped the fence wire just below the electric one; he was quite familiar with where that one ran. “May I take it that you have no plans? I confess, Mrs. Doge, that I have grown fond of you over these past weeks. I find it distasteful that you dwell here, awaiting slaughter at the mercy of your captors.”

“Well, Mr. Klein! I . . . I admit I’m not accustomed to thinking of things that way.”

“Which fact I respect, Mrs. Doge. I would not ask you to reexamine your priorities except for two things: One, I care for you, and two, the fact that your daughter can read excites me. I have been looking for an interpreter—an augur, if you will—for some time. You see, I have designs upon the city.”

“Designs?”

He nodded. “To travel its course. You know of the city, I expect?”

Mrs. Doge admitted being vaguely acquainted with the idea that in one direction, things got . . . emptier, while in the other, they got altogether woolly.

Klein nodded gravely. “That is one way to put it. But the city has a way to it, Mrs. Doge. I have been through various corners of the city, but I cannot say I know it. For it has secrets, Mrs. Doge! I am convinced of nothing so much as of this.”

“The city has secrets?”

“Great secrets indeed. Yet I have despaired of following its true path as it was meant to be followed. I could not learn to read the signs, you see! But now . . .!”

“But now you’ve met Meadow,” said the sow softly. “And . . . you think she might be useful to you?”

“My dear, you would all be useful to me.” Klein squeezed the fence and leaned his full, unimposing weight against it. “Will you come with me? Would you consider quitting this Damoclean pasture, however well appointed, to join me in my spiritual quest?”

The sow was rather overwhelmed. “Why, if only I could! But the fence, Mr. Klein.”

“Yes, the fence,” he replied, sinking to all fours again. “The fence is a problem. But you see, it is our problem now, Mrs. Doge! Before, you had no greater goals than to be served the refuse of man. Now, there is the fence.”

She was charmed utterly by his way of talking. “I suppose that’s true, Mr. Klein. And believe me, I shall devote my full powers of cognition to it!”


And so their nightly musings acquired a new focus. Rather than discussing everything in creation, the two acquaintances discussed what was right before their noses. Each of them dared to trigger the ‘offending wire’, as Klein termed it, several times in order to learn well its nature. There was a matching electrified wire at ground level, deterring anyone from digging underneath, and despite Shantika’s best efforts to thwart it, the measure proved sufficient: there would be no escape by tunnel, so it seemed.

Bare facts gave way to statements of principle, to generalities and the invention of new terms: fencelike; restriction both mental and corporal; right of egress and pain-without-injury. This practice was what Klein called ‘philosophical edifice’.  It was a formidable tool, he explained, for even while it brought satisfaction to the soul, in his experience there was no quandary it could not solve.

Young Brendan was skeptical. He named problems much harder than their own as if to discredit the esotericist’s methods from the top down. “Can your edifice method get us to the moon?” he asked. “Could it let us sprout wings and fly?” Yet his impudence was not unmixed with childish curiosity, for some sliver in him was hoping, miraculously, to be proven wrong.

As it happened, it was Brendan’s challenges that led his mother and the outsider on a circuitous intellectual journey, adding more and more blocks to their philosophical edifice until suddenly it collapsed, redundancy by redundancy, into a simple conclusion. Right-of-egress exists; therefore there is a way out by ground. To dig is to go by ground; therefore egress-by-digging exists. “It follows,” rumbled Klein as he paced atop the fence, “that where pigs are permitted to exit the pen—i.e. the gate—there you must dig in order to circumvent corporal restriction!” He pointed to the gate itself.

It was utterly, deliciously obvious in retrospect that since the ground-level electric wire could not have been laid across the gate without impeding its opening, it was there they must construct their tunnel. So they did, and the four swine had escaped almost before they knew it, while the remaining stock, afraid to follow, squealed behind them in indignant dismay.


They passed through darkness, toward silence. The squeals and grunts were left behind, as were the great turbines. They trod through a vast soybean field and were well into a woodland before Meadow finally broke the silence: “So, Mr. Klein . . . will you tell us about these ways of the city you want to explore?”

As they crept through brush, the raccoon was all too glad to expatiate. “I believe the cities were made to be plumbed, Meadow. There are others—did you know that? Oh, yes. Countless cities, all with their mysteries. It may well be that the secrets of one lead to the next, in turn, in which case I have no idea what position in the grand scheme our own may occupy.”

“And the humans?” asked Meadow. “What role do they play?”

“I believe they, too, came to the cities as pilgrims,” said Klein, “though the great mass of them may by now have lost their way.”

“What about our keepers? Have they lost their way?”

“It is possible their purpose was to keep you. To make sure too many pilgrims don’t walk the path at once. But I am inclined to say that yes, they too have lost the path.”

“Is the truth hidden in just one place?”

Klein turned to face her. “I know not, dear Meadow! All I know is that if we follow the Way, and do not stray, we will reach it eventually.”

“Then where do we begin?” asked Mrs. Doge.

“I think we must begin with the black rivers,” said Klein. “We must tread the paths behemoths tread. They are fearsome beasts. But we must keep faith that so long as we walk truly, they will not harm us.”

“I don’t know,” said Brendan. “It all sounds like a tall tale.”

Klein grunted. “Is that objectionable? Is the truth not tall? Are we not in search of higher truths?”

The shoat grinned, proud of his wit. “We pigs think there’s more truth in things lower down, like the ground.”

Klein looked suddenly at him, as if Brendan had shown an unexpected facet. “Is that so.”

“You could say that,” said Mrs. Doge, whose snout was topped with soil. “After all, Mr. Klein, how did we get free from the pen? Our edifice reached for the stars, but wound up right in the good old ground.”

Klein lifted his head in appreciation. “Touché, my dear. Perhaps I rely overly on metaphor. In any case, I believe I smell the entry point.” He reached a tight wall of bushes and, after pausing to assess, managed to scramble through. The pigs followed and found themselves suddenly faced with one-and-a-half dimensions of vastness. Above them shone the stars, and to either side stretched a long, bituminous river of blackness, just as Klein had described. There was a craning silver tree nearby whose single fruit bathed them in sodium vapor orange.

In wonder, Shantika touched her hoof to the motionless river. She cried in delight when it bore her weight.

“What is this place?” wondered Meadow.

But Klein was already scurrying to a smaller tree, straight and no less silver than the one that arched overhead. It was branchless and bore a single rectangular fruit. “There, Meadow. This is what I have brought you for.”

Mrs. Doge trotted over. “Is it a sign, Mr. Klein?”

He nodded. “If you please, Meadow.” His voice quavered with anticipation.

She sat on the grassy ground beside the black river and read the words. “BEGIN ONE WAY.”

Klein melted to the grass. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,” he murmured. Then he sprang up. “Thank you, Meadow—I could not have hoped for a better reading. And thank you all for accompanying me. This will be our sacred journey. I know not what lies at its end, but . . .”

“Something really good to eat, I hope,” said Brendan.

Klein eyed him darkly. “As stomachs hunger, so too do souls.”

The child was silenced by this. But as they turned in the direction of the sign to follow the sacred road, he thought to himself: I hope soul food tastes as good as the regular kind.


The chirping of crickets attended the journey. It wasn’t long before change followed. Gray walking paths appeared in the grassy causeway, which the travelers took to gratefully. Large squarish structures not unlike the farmhouse began to dot the road on either side, but Klein cautioned against their exploration. More ominously, the great behemoths Klein had warned them about sat slumbering on the road’s edges. They were hulking and alien in form and structure, and the children quailed from them.

“Are those really creatures?” squealed Shantika.

“Are they made of metal?” asked Brendan.

“Mmm,” Klein nodded. “Do not underestimate the manifoldness of life. They are a monstrous race known as cars, numerous and deadly. Mrs. Doge, I spoke to you once about the cloudless thunder we heard from time to time during my sojourn at your home. These cars are its source.”

“I see. Is it safe for us to be here? Should we be whispering in case we wake them?”

He shook his head. “They wake only upon some command I have yet to discover. And while dangerous, they too are pilgrims, or at least bound by the rules that bind us. So long as we act righteously, they will do us no harm.”

The first wakeful car was indeed a terror. First came the familiar monotonous churn, just short of a roar; the piglets exchanged fearful glances, tails curling. Then the gleam of its eyes struck, white light cutting through pallor. Sound and light intensified until the beast itself appeared on the horizon, approaching at a terrifying rate.

“Hold your ground,” rumbled Klein.

They did. The behemoth zoomed by, shaking ground and air. It was soon gone.

“So that’s what thunder looks like,” breathed Brendan.

“Is it really on a quest of the spirit, like us?” asked Meadow.

Klein held his ears low. “I once believed they were guardians of the city, here to protect its secrets and punish the unwary. I now consider them independent agents with their own goals. Yes, they may be utterly alien to us, but that does not mean they have no spirits.”

Not every spirit is a good one, thought Brendan, remembering an older brother who had harried him every day before being sent to slaughter. But even while the piglets struggled to digest this, Mrs. Doge let her soft flank bump against Klein’s. The more understanding he was of alien minds, the more she felt at ease with him.


Further signs followed, and Meadow interpreted each faithfully. The black ones with arrows quickly became familiar friends: “ONE WAY,” they reminded the pilgrims, lest they be tempted to stray. Another series tested their resolve. First, they were prohibited from making left turns, which led to some rather foolish-looking spins on the part of the piglets. Next, and more troublingly, “NO PARKING” told them that they could not rest.

So they kept a steady pace. At one point they discovered a paper bag in a gutter; it held a bun with pickles and ketchup, while a nearby piece of foil held traces of cheese. It was challenging to pick these up and share the food while circling constantly to the right, but the swine squealed happily when it was managed. Brendan and Shantika fought over the foil.

Each crossroad was tantalizing: the travelers slowed down as they passed, peering reverently right and left at the equally straight roads. There were more buildings, yes, and distant odoriferous breezes, but most impressive was the sheer order that lay in each direction. This stirred the fringe on Meadow’s back: she liked order and wished to explore it. But right now, she realized, order impelled her to continue straight. While she did not know the word paradox, she still appreciated the delicious pain of her conundrum.

By the time light tinged the east, they were weary. The scrap of foil on Brendan’s nose was no longer tasty, but he wore it anyway like a badge of honor, or a shield. The wayfarers had snatched an occasional mouthful of grass on the hoof, but nothing substantial had presented itself since the bag. They had struggled up a long uphill grade, and then, for the better part of an hour, walked downward toward a growing clamor that Klein warned them was likely more cars, the collective noun for which was traffic. Trees now grew generously to either side, yet there was no food.

“Are we really going to walk all day after being up all night?” whined Brendan.

“We will be visible if we do,” said Klein. “Yet we have been given no reprieve. We must continue.”

All five were nervous: they knew that humans would come with the daytime. But at the foot of the hill, at last, they were faced with a ripe, red, nearly round sign that Meadow read as “STOP.” Klein stared in near disbelief. “What fortune,” he murmured.

A second sign sat below it. Meadow peered carefully to make sure she understood it. “END ONE WAY,” she said.

They all exchanged looks. “Are we finished?” asked Mrs. Doge. “Was our journey so straightforward?”

“I think, rather,” said the raccoon, “that we are now meant to sleep. As one way ends, so begins another.”

No one felt like objecting. So the five travelers took shelter in a stand of brown bushes and slept until noon.


Shantika was first to emerge from their brambly sanctum and face the new day. The sky was laced with hazy clouds; the air was April crisp. It was evident the buildings around them were homes for humans, as a few such creatures could be seen in the distance emerging from them. The group sipped from dewy leaves; Klein crunched a beetle while the others nibbled grass. He then directed them onward, toward the river of noise. As he had presaged, it was a valley filled with cars, loud and hideous.

“This way, Mr. Klein?” asked Mrs. Doge.

“To the right,” he nodded. “As the prohibition against left turns remains. I believe we were led to this artery for a reason.”

“But we can’t walk where the cars are!” cried Shantika. “We’ll die!”

Klein peered down at the valley. “Then we shall walk beside them, and trust that the traffic will behave.”


The valley was breathtaking. Heady clouds of fume assaulted their noses, broken by the occasional refreshing breeze. Mr. Klein called it a freeway. It was sheltered by huge wooden walls, within which ran low metal barriers; it was between these that the pilgrims walked, but even from this aisle of safety they crooked their ears against the passing of each car.

The clouds dispersed and the sun warmed the valley, heightening its stench. Eventually the travelers chose to rest under the span of a mighty bridge where they found refreshment in the form of a culvert. They bustled into the water, dispersing birds, hoping to soothe their weary muscles and parched pelts.

Shantika chose to stay out, however, approaching a swallow. “Do you mind if I park here?” she asked, employing the sacred word for ‘rest’.

“No, because I do not know what parking is,” replied the bird, inclining its head.

“Good,” said the piglet. She lapped a few mouthfuls of water and turned back to the bird. “Why are you looking at me?”

“Because you are the thing in front of me.”

“Haven’t you ever seen a wild pig before?”

“If you are a wild thing,” replied the swallow, “then you should not be here unless you have come to be crushed.”

“Crushed?” cried Brendan, overhearing from the water.

His mother sputtered beside him. “What a terrible thing the imagination of a bird must be. Crushed, indeed! I’ll have you know, we’re here in the name of edification.”

The swallow examined Klein. “Is the raccoon your mate?”

The sow laughed uneasily. “Don’t be silly—a pig can’t mate with a raccoon. My relationship with Mr. Klein is strictly platonic.”

“What is platonic?” asked the bird.

“A concept too involved for such circumstances as these,” rumbled Klein.

The swallow darted aloft, perhaps collecting an insect too small to see. “I think that you mammals will die out here.”

“I imagine that would bring you great pleasure,” groused the raccoon.

“Why? Because insects will gather around your corpses? I will keep that in mind and follow you to see how well you are dying.”

“If you must,” said Klein, returning to his bath.

But Brendan was the one most troubled by the swallow’s words. Was there any good way to die, he wondered?


To their mild surprise, the swallow did follow as they resumed their trek. It kept to a distance, swooping high and wide, and sometimes seemed to vanish, only to return at the next bridge or grade. The pilgrims grew to accept its presence as one might a part of the weather.

Structures loomed in the far distance. “Are those mountains?” asked Brendan. “I didn’t think mountains could be square on top.”

“Buildings,” said Klein, clearing his throat. “Extraordinarily tall ones. They mark the city’s heart. I have been there, but never in accordance with its true path.”

“Do they store secrets, Mr. Klein?” asked Mrs. Doge.

“I have no doubt of it, my dear. I only hope that when we finally enter, we are worthy.”

As clouds returned to the afternoon sky, the space between the high wooden wall and the metal barrier grew slim. Brendan started asking whether they should turn back. He was all too conscious of the fact his mother was growingly unable to fit through the gap.

When eventually she could press no further, Mrs. Doge switched to the outside of the metal barrier. She acted blithe about it, as if the traffic gave her no cause to fear, but even Meadow glanced nervously her way every so often, and Shantika wailed intermittently. The cars were close, and now and then one would blare in its ugly voice, as if judging them, before passing on.


“Are you dying yet, mammals?” asked the swallow.

Mrs. Doge made an effort to lift her head. “Not just yet,” she deadpanned, “though I confess we are a trifle short on food.” Their only sustenance since breakfast had been the carcass of a rabbit with its whole height somehow smashed out of it—a traveler like themselves who had failed to follow the rules, Klein had surmised.

“What do you eat? Perhaps I can find some.”

“Anything!” cried Shantika.

“Anything? Then that is easy. Just eat the ground you are walking on or the metal thing beside you or the tar the road is made from.”

“Not anything,” clarified Brendan. “Can you find something that smells nice? Some acorns or fruits or worms or something?”

“I will try,” said the bird, swooping off. The travelers were left to wonder whether it remembered why it had been following them in the first place.


If there was reassurance to be had, it was in the continued presence of signs even in this deadly valley. “NO SHOULDER,” read Meadow. “YIELD AHEAD.” Her voice broke as she read these, fearing mutilation, but Klein assured the group that no heads need roll. The lack of a shoulder meant they would all be walking next to the traffic, but if they were true in their steps, they would remain safe. As for SPEED LIMIT 55, it was certainly a maximum, not a minimum—which was just as well, since none of them knew how fast 55 might be in the first place.

Brendan kept the ragged piece of foil fixed over his snout. He had given up protesting; his mother simply said they couldn’t go back now, as only death awaited on the farm. But weren’t they walking into death now? His belly growled. The occasional glimpses he caught of the swallow made him fearful, not comforted. The bird was acting as their lookout and supposedly trying to find them food, but he was all too aware they might end up attracting food for its own belly instead.

Then came a sign with a single word. “MERGE,” said Meadow, trembling.

“Merge?” asked Mrs. Doge skeptically. “With each other?”

Klein sighed. “With the traffic,” he whispered. “I was afraid it would come to this.”

“No,” said Shantika.

“So this is where it’s all led us?” asked Meadow. “To be one with the cars?”

Brendan remembered his bully again and reflected that sometimes, being treated the same was a blessing. He took a deep breath and prepared for the impossible.

“I wonder if…” began Klein, peering into the miasmic tumult. Then he pointed abruptly. “There! An island! See it?”

It was a grassy median. Cars barreled past on either side, but it seemed safe enough, if they could get there. “Is that our destination?” asked Mrs. Doge.

“A waystation, I should think,” said Klein. “We should rest there and await further instruction. I would expect it to come by nightfall, or by morning at the latest.”

Mrs. Doge nodded. Her trustful instincts had been awakened by the raccoon; not since her first taste of motherhood had she experienced so strong a sense of being on the right path. She held her body high, cautioning her children to wait . . . wait . . .

Then she ran.

She had underestimated the speed of the distant cars. Her children raced behind her; Klein actually dashed under her belly toward the median. Keenly aware she was no athlete, Mrs. Doge strained herself, but the edge of her vision told her of her doom. The oncoming traffic was too near. This would be the end of her. She knew Mr. Klein would lead her children to safety as well as he could, but without her support . . .

The car squealed to a halt. It yelled cruelly as Mrs. Doge sprinted away, only proceeding once all five of them had reached safety. They collapsed to the island, burying their noses in the dirt, rolling in the grass. “Mom,” cried Meadow. “Are you all right?”

Her heart was pounding. “It spared me. Oh, child, it spared me.”

“And there lies our vindication,” puffed Klein, out of breath. He looked from mother to daughter. “I was afraid we were about to lose you, Mrs. Doge.”

She shook her head violently. “You won’t. You’ll never lose me. Just try, Mr. Klein.”

Brendan had his head down. He only raised it a minute later when he heard Meadow’s voice from the far end of their little sanctuary. “TOW AWAY ZONE. What does that mean, Mr. Klein?”

“Hm,” he reflected. “To tow something is to take it with you. It confirms my suspicion—we must wait here. We will be taken along, eventually. By who or what I don’t know.”

Wait, Brendan wanted to say. But waiting was exactly what he didn’t want to do. “What about water?” he objected.

His mother looked to the cloudy sky. “Looks like it may rain soon.”

He tried to formulate his next objection. Walking was something, at least, even if they didn’t know where they were going; walking gave them a chance. To wait in one place, rain or not, was death—didn’t they realize that? But before he could figure out how to say it, a chirp sounded from the sky and the swallow alighted on a tall blade of grass. “Mammals!” it cried.

“Our benefactor,” Klein acknowledged.

“I have found you a place you may like! You will have to walk around the high wall, but it is only another two blocks past that. There are mushrooms there, and water and paper and other things you may enjoy.”

Mrs. Doge peered at the bird with amusement. “And what happened to waiting for us to die?”

“I discovered a cloud of gnats, and I am full.”

“Well, isn’t that a blessing. But I believe we’re all set. Or . . . Mr. Klein, could this possibly be the ‘tow’ we’re waiting for?”

The raccoon sat up and gave the question his full consideration. “Are you a servant of the city?” he asked the swallow.

“I am only a bird,” said the bird.

Klein chuffed. “We would do poorly to stray from our path at this point. Whatever instructions we receive next will come from . . . a place of greater authority.”

“No,” said Brendan.

The others looked at him.

He shook his head, and the piece of tattered foil shook too. “We have to go. We’ll die if we wait here. There’s food nearby—the bird said so!”

“Brendan!” Mrs. Doge came and nuzzled him. “I know you’re afraid. You’ve always been so cautious. But if we leave now . . . we give up everything we came so far to get! Don’t . . . don’t you see that?”

“I suggest you listen to your mother’s counsel,” said Klein. “She is wise beyond her station.”

“Well,” said the swallow. “If you do not want to come, I will return later to eat the insects that are eating you. Farewell!”

It was then that Brendan realized the full, horrific weight of what he had been coming to realize over the span of their journey—that his interpretations of the world were different from his mother’s. Most children have months or years to realize this; Brendan had been given only a day and a night. “I’m going with you,” he told the swallow.

“What? Brendan!” yelled Shantika.

“Child, you can’t. You won’t survive on your own.”

“I’ll come back,” he said, improvising. “I’ll find food and I’ll bring it back for you. We’ll find someplace safe together.”

“Brendan, you will stay here!” shouted his mother. “I’ve lost too many children! I am not going to lose you!”

But there was no keeping him. At the next lull in traffic, Brendan gave a last look back and darted away. He was out of sight a minute later, the swallow swooping with him. Not two minutes later, the rain broke.


Darkness came. Shantika’s weeping had finally subsided, and now she was hunting the soft earth for worms. Meadow lay still, but her twitching ears betrayed the fact that neither she nor any of the rest actually expected Brendan to come back. But that was a sorrow they had all borne before. All of them had lost family. They believed, on varying levels, that they knew how to move on.

At the head of the island, before the endless chains of red and white that decorated the dusk, stood the hickory-coated sow and the esotericist. Their voices were soft, as if mourning.

“Do you have any notion of what exactly may lie at the end of this journey, Mr. Klein?”

It was some time before the esotericist replied, his coat sleekly tamped by rain. “A few ideas have crossed my mind. Perhaps the secret of the cities, Mrs. Doge, is that they will teach us to build more cities. Or perhaps they will ultimately lead us somewhere else entirely.”

“Mmm,” she said, placing her cheek against his own. “Now wouldn’t that be something?”

“But the key point, I think, of secrets, is that they cannot be fathomed in advance. Above all, Mrs. Doge . . . I expect to be surprised.”

They stood on the grassy median in the rain as night fell and waited for the next step in their inevitable edification.

End one way, begin another.


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