Psychopomp Magazine Summer 2016 | Page 17

in formation, shaking his hand, giving him an alien puppy, which he knows will look like a gigantic green bacterium. He hopes no one can read these childish dreams across his face. But sometimes the adults are so perceptive.

At three in the morning, Daniel is not the only one among us to stifle a yawn with a sleeve to the mouth. Mercury’s position has shifted, but the band of the Milky Way has stayed much the same throughout the night; we can still see the bright corner of it winkling at us, but by now most of us, without saying it, have understood that nothing is coming tonight. Even the boy is struggling to believe it. He has nodded off twice against his mother’s shoulder, her loose and long hair brushing his forehead when the breeze catches it. Now he leans his body against her.

But now, feel that? There’s a breeze coming from directly in front of us, blowing hard onto our faces and dancing in the fire, and something bright and white appears and something bright where the sun submerged hours ago. At first a dot, and then a beam, and then a figure materializes and flickers. When he is still a mile from us we see him also as large as if he were standing between us and the fire; he is gargantuan, with strong shoulders and smooth, sunned arms. Over a white tee shirt he wears overalls, and one of the straps hangs down beside his hip. Or we thought so, but it’s hard to look at him. Where did his body go? We can only see his face. He has the beard not of a sage but of a logger, cut so that it fans like a mane across his jawline. Except he has no clear face, either. By the time he gets within jumping distance to the fire we know he is not an alien. This is —-. He looks neither pleased nor the opposite. Of course it’s you, someone says, and Anita with the kelly-colored afghan asks why she never heard from him when she was a little girl. He gives no answer. There are more questions, and again no answers. Instead he comes to one of us, a woman, and looks in her eyes. She has to look up for him to do this because he feels so tall. He does the same to the old man beside her. Again to the

Molly Gutman | 17