In Light's Shadow

By Warren Rochelle

Gavin Booker, a school librarian, leads an orderly, normal life. Work, jogging, friends from work, his son every other weekend. Gavin is also a secret. He is a hybrid, or part-fairy. And in the Columbian Empire, hybrids are under an automatic death sentence.

In this alternate version of the USA, magic is illegal. So is loving another man. Fairies are locked away in ghettoes, and magical beasts, such as gryphons, unicorns, and pegasi, are kept in zoos. The others, tree and water spirits, talking beasts, fauns, and the rest, are in hiding.

This is the world in which Gavin grew up. He survived, thanks to his mother. He can never forget he is different: ministers preach against people like him constantly. Hating the other is a part of every school’s curriculum.

But things are changing fast, and seemingly for the worst. Earthquakes, volcanoes, killer storms are frequent occurrences. The medicine Gavin takes to suppress his body’s glow isn’t working. The spells cast by his doctor, a witch, are losing their power. If anyone finds out what Gavin is, he is dead.

The Empire always goes after its marginalized people. Can Gavin survive the coming catastrophe? Will he ever recover from losing the boys he loved earlier in life? Can he find the fairy man who has haunted his dreams before it is too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Sep 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685502300

Book preview

In Light’s Shadow

A Fairy Tale

By Warren Rochelle

Published by JMS Books LLC

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2022 Warren Rochelle

ISBN 9781685502300

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Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

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This novel is based on my short story, The Golden Boy, published in The Silver Gryphon, eds. Gary Turner and Marty Halpern, Urbana, IL: Golden Gryphon Press, 2003: 195–214. The Golden Boy was a finalist for the 2004 Spectrum Award for Short Fiction.

* * * *

For Gary Nelson, my beloved husband, forever and always, and Ellen McQueen, the best of friends.

This novel is better because the both of you. Thank you both so very, very much.

* * * *

Both light and shadow are the dance of Love.

—Rumi

I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not. There is only light and shadow.

—Francisco Goya

All magic comes with a price, dearie.

—Rumplestiltskin, Once Upon a Time

If you press me to say why I love him, I can say no more than because it was he, because it was I.

— Montaigne

In order to go ahead, you must leave things behind which most people are unwilling to do. Your first pain, you carry it with you like a lodestone in your breast because all tenderness will come from there. You must carry it through your whole life but you must not circle around it.

— Jane Bowles

* * * *

In Light’s Shadow

A Fairy Tale

By Warren Rochelle

Chapter 1

Early Friday morning, October 27, 2000

Gavin Paul Booker did not want to go to the Northern Carolina Provincial Zoo with Cooper Road Elementary’s entire third grade class. He especially did not want to go as one of the required-by-law adults. He had plenty to do in the library: finish up fall book orders, write lesson plans, finally purge the vertical file. The expected order of his day, its regularity and normalcy, had been shot to hell.

Yesterday, Carrie Dunn, the principal, had waved all his objections aside, her Duke mug in hand, filled with hazelnut coffee he had just made for her. He should have known something was up when she came into the library after the she had made sure the red, white, and blue eagle-and-shield-and-star flag had been raised. She had that look.

He handed her the coffee, watching her warily.

I see another one of your fish jumped the tank again.

One of Christopher’s kids left the top off and I think the filter needs cleaning and—

"Maybe another fish feeder tomorrow. They’re going to the zoo, and I need you to go."

Carrie…

One of his room mothers can’t go. The law saws three adults per twenty kids. We’ve got sixty-three total third graders, and we’re short one adult. You know imperial school law as well as I do. It’ll be fun, Gav, I promise.

What time does the bus leave? Gavin sighed. He knew he would give in.

Be here at 6:45. Drive behind the bus so you can get there at the same time. Have fun!

Gavin groaned.

Now here he was, at the zoo.

Fun, yeah, right. Carrie owes me a pitcher, not just one beer, Gavin thought, as he, twenty-one third graders, the class’s teaching assistant, Eloise Capshaw, and their teacher, Christopher Phillips, waited in line at the RJR Nabisco Rocky Coast habitat to see the polar bears, sea lions, seals, and sea birds. His leg still smarted from where the damn swan had bitten him. Letting water birds wander around loose in a marsh at the zoo entrance was carrying the natural habitat idea too far. Especially if the birds bit. The zoo staffer who had shooed the bird away had blamed it on last night’s earthquake that had left cracks in the sidewalks and upset all the animals. Polar bears all looked the same: big, white dirty rugs flopping in and out of ice water.

The kids had a ton of annoying questions. That earthquake yesterday—what would have happened if it had been here? Would all the animals and birds be free? If he had to explain one more time why there were no elephants in the Northern Carolina Provincial Zoo, that they were all in older zoos, or in Africa and Asia, zoos on the other side of 30 West or 179 East, the post-war quarantine lines, he would explode. Nowhere on the zoo’s 550 acres—the largest natural habitat zoo in the country—were there any animals from anywhere in the Old World. Polar bears, sea lions, seals, river otters, bison, elk, alligators, black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, Southern Columbian monkeys, jaguars, panthers, parrots, imperial eagles—but no elephants. Five miles of trails, in and out of the Prairie, the Rainforest, the Tundra, the Sonora Desert, and all the rest—habitats and animals only from Northern, Central, and Southern Columbia, and the Caribbean islands.

He should have trusted his gut, called in sick, and pulled the covers back over his head after the alarm went off. The morning news on the radio, which he tried to ignore, had only made his feelings of unease worse.

A new volcano in Buncombe County had exploded. The city of Asheville and the entire eastern half of the county had been evacuated.

Skies that had been grey for weeks were greyer all the way to Raleigh. Army surplus gas-and-ash masks, get them now, at the Imperial Post, and these approved stores…Flights were being canceled across the country.

Yesterday’s earthquake, 7.5 on the Richter scale, just south of Raleigh, had killed hundreds attending the last day of the Northern Carolina Provincial Fair.

The chairman of the Executive Board of the Imperial Columbian Church of the Rational Christ, Scientist, had called for a National Day of Prayer.

Government scientists had no explanations for the earthquakes or the volcanoes or tornadoes or the killer thunderstorms slamming the country.

Paranormals were suspected.

Shower, breakfast, suppression meds, a particular herbal tea to reinforce the binding spells, pick up all Grey’s toys four days after the boy had gone back to his mother’s. Get the gym bag he usually kept at school, put in just-washed running clothes. Daily mirror check: dark brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, almost forty-one, normal school librarian. No interior light in his eyes, no iron blemishes, no pointed ears.

Razor blades clean (steel and copper), safety razor, wooden handle, unused, wrapped in gauze, no bloodstains, old scars barely visible.

One last check to be sure all the plastic sealants on steel appliances were still working. No cracks, no peeling.

Gavin had almost turned around going down the stairs, but he got in his car (sealant still good on the handle and door, still undetectable by normals), and after driving to school, set off on the eighty-two mile trip, following the bus and the parent volunteers.

He wished he had carried some of the protective herbs and flowers from his office, or snagged a little bag of gemstones from one of the teachers he knew kept them in their desks. Or asked Carrie for hers. His own bag would be better, but a borrowed bag was better than none.

Gavin would have bet that the half of the teachers who had herb pots also had a necklace or a pocket stone or charm or talisman. He knew Carrie carried a small, leather bag with an assortment of stones—an amethyst, different colored topazes and quartzes, citrines, a moonstone—which she changed from time to time. Carrie’s herbs were tucked away in a back corner of her office, right next to the official birthday portrait of the Emperor and his mother. But neither mentioned it, nor did any other teacher at Cooper Road Elementary. The half that kept the pots, little boxes, and bags could not quite trust the half that didn’t.

Now here he was at the Provincial Zoo, still feeling uneasy.

Gavin took some comfort in that he didn’t feel quite as uneasy about the field trip as he had when Carrie initially talked him into going. Maybe the uneasiness, stomach knots, and intestinal cramping were just a hangover from the rest of his life and the disruptions to its order and regularity. Three phone messages in one week from his mother after five years’ silence: Call me, it’s urgent. Or the other messages with the angry voice of his ex, Sophia: We need to talk as soon as possible. Call me.

Gavin shook his head as he took up the tail end of Christopher Phillips’ third grade. The other two classes were on separate tours. It had taken him a good long while to put things back together, as much as he possibly could, after Sophia had divorced him two years ago. But he had returned to the placid life he had built after slamming the door to his mother’s house behind him and not looking back. Finished graduate school, got a job, got married, started a family, jogged every other day, like any normal. Not like fairies who got married in fours, with all combinations of gender configurations. Men lying with men, women with women, are an abomination, paranormals are an abomination, had been the theme of more than one church service when Gavin was growing up. Never mind all the other so-called paranormals, witches, and the rest of the First Folk.

If he could just extract that tape loop out of his head. Gavin sighed. At least he had Grey. Having his three-year-old son every other weekend had become part of the rhythm of a life, a normal life. And he had the golden boy again.

Okay, okay, so the polar bears hadn’t been so bad, although he did want to strangle the next person who used cute and bear cubs in the same sentence. Gavin loved the otters in the Streamside habitat—if he could choose to be any animal, he’d be an otter. Sleek, dark, free, and at play forever. Were there any wereotters? If there ever had been any in the New World, they had probably been hunted to extinction years ago.

Okay, wave good-bye to the otters, and then up this path. Let’s go.

The next exhibit was the Bestiary of Evil. And it wasn’t uneasiness or intestinal cramping Gavin now felt—it was a solid, dark fear. Maybe he could wait outside. Hearing Christopher read the required history signs about the government campaigns after the Second Great Crusade—the vampire extinctions, the bounty paid per fang, the capture of almost all the evil magical beasts—didn’t help. Gavin knew his fellow teacher had faun-skins and vampire heads on the walls in his living room and a faun horn backscratcher in his bedroom. Christopher had hosted the faculty Christmas party last year and he had proudly pointed them out to everybody on his house tour, and reminded everyone just how evil and nasty vampires had been.

I’ll wait out here, Gavin said to him softly, so the children wouldn’t hear. I feel a bit queasy.

Christopher gave him an odd look. Gav, you know we have to go inside. The children can’t go in without the required number of three adults. It’s school law; you know that. You, me, and Eloise. He nodded at his teaching assistant. Eloise Capshaw was at the front of the line with two kids who had mobility issues. Every Columbian child by the age of eight shall be made aware of the physicality of evil. No child shall be made aware without adult protection. This is why we do this field trip every year.

He held up his hand and turned quickly to face the class. Hey, Peter! Where are you going? Stay with the class, Christopher called out. Back in line and stop playing with your gas mask. Just carry it. Now. Oh, I meant to tell you, Gav, I like your mask—where’d you get it? he added.

A Sears Gash—gas-and-ash, get it? Why, oh, why did I let Carrie talk me into this? I know it’s the law; I just feel funny, that’s all. Maybe it’s something I ate; I’ve felt kind of nauseated all morning. And I’ve had weird dreams all night long, but Mr. Faun Hunter doesn’t need to know that.

Come on, we won’t stay long. Peter, stay with the group.

"Mr. Phillips, Peter is picking on me, make him leave me alone!’

She’s a baby, Mr. Phillips, afraid to go see the monsters. Scaredy cat, scare—

Peter. Leave. Her. Alone. Christopher knelt down to talk to the tiny girl. Latisha, is that true? She nodded.

Mr. Phillips, she can be my buddy. That okay, Latisha? Gavin asked. She nodded again. Peter glowered.

Thanks, man. You’re a lifesaver. Christopher stood and faced the class. Everybody, hold hands with your buddy. Peter, are you paying attention? Janey, eyes forward. Peter, that’s it, put your name on the board when we get back. Go join Mrs. Capshaw’s group.

Peter, over here. Eloise waved her hand and a sullen Peter trudged over to stand at her side.

Now, class, don’t touch the glass. This is the Bestiary of Evil. Bestiary comes from an old word for beast… Christopher went on, giving the required speech and making sure every kid was accounted for, that each name was checked off the official roster he had to send in to the Northern Carolina Provincial Department of Education. Thus, the imperial decree of no child unexposed would be met. Last in line, Gavin took the hand of Latisha, a waiflike, towheaded little girl who never had much to say. She clutched his hand as tightly as she could.

The bestiary was not inviting, even though it drew almost as many people as the other areas of the zoo put together. Entering it was like stepping into a cave, the entrance a black mouth of rock, and then the hallway of dark, tumbled rocks that led to the cages. They must do something to make it so quiet, a silencer or something, Gavin thought, as he and Latisha slowly walked through the darkness. The kids whispered even without Christopher’s urging. By the time they got to the other side of the cave and stepped into the muted light of the cage room, the rest of the class was ahead of Gavin and the little girl.

Two dispirited pegasi, wings clipped, stood in the first cage, munching from the clover, fresh grass, and alfalfa that spilled out of a trough onto the earthen floor. Neither looked up as the children passed, despite their waving. A lone unicorn stood in the next cage, eating the same food. The gargoyles’ cage looked like a pile of rocks. Two gargoyles sat motionless on one boulder, side by side, almost if they were rocks themselves. The Cheshire cats’ cage enclosed a thicket of trees, the animals’ natural habitat. Gavin had to show Latisha where the two cats were, on low branches toward the back.

See that ripple of—sort of an orange—back there? That’s what they do sometimes when they are sleeping—flicker back and forth being visible and invisible, Gavin told her, remembering one of the daily Enemy Awareness broadcasts he had heard almost every morning in high school. Know the enemy. Always be on guard. Today: Cheshire cats…

I have a cat that color at home. Pumpkin. Pumpkin doesn’t disappear.

Pumpkin isn’t a Cheshire cat; he’s a normal cat. He’s a good cat.

The centaurs’ cage was empty. Gavin was disappointed, but not surprised. The last wave of induced hoof, hand, and mouth disease had decimated the few herds remaining in the Columbian Empire. The grocery store tabloids reported rumors of wild herds in the Far Northern Territories or Alaska, and across the border in Quebec, or way south, in the Yucatan jungles of the Mexican Empire, or even farther south, in the Brasilian jungles. But who believed the tabloids?

* * * *

Gavin had met a centaur once, years ago, when he was in high school. He and his mother were spending a week in the western Northern Carolina mountains, in Sylva, near the Cherokee Reservation. One morning they had gotten up early, before dawn, and drove even further west, to Robbins to see the Big Trees in the Joyce Kilmer Imperial Forest. There had been others who had the same idea, but even so, when Gavin and his mother were on the path, they felt alone and safe in a world of green quiet. If anyone spoke, it was in a whisper. The brush of the early morning light painted the Big Trees with gold, and they rose, shining spears, their top branches far away.

They saw the centaur when they were just past the halfway path marker. A male, a stallion, with the body of a roan Clydesdale. Deep and full red beard, thick, curly hair, the points of his ears barely showing, a silky-looking mane growing down his back. A quiver of arrows and a bow were strapped across his broad chest. Gavin’s mother held up her hand: Be quiet. She and the centaur stared at each other, as if they had once known each other and had forgotten and were staring to see if they could remember. Finally, the centaur nodded his head in recognition and Gavin saw his mother do the same. The centaur trotted away, his hooves crunching the leaves, and disappeared into the green and yellow shadows.

Don’t tell anyone, his mother whispered, her voice barely audible. The rangers would hunt him down and kill or cage him. Don’t mention him at all until we are in the car.

Gavin nodded. Another secret. Right then he could not speak, and only after the centaur had left, did he realize he had been holding his breath. He had never seen someone so beautiful. He waited until they were back in the car and on the road to start asking his mother how the centaur had known her, but gave up in the face of her unyielding, stubborn silence.

He never asked her again why she left little bowls of milk and plates of oat cakes outside the back door of their rented cottage all week. It wasn’t for cats was all she had told him.

That centaur was magnificent. Homo sapiens equus.

* * * *

The name on the sign by the empty cage read, Equus caballus malum. No government-authorized sign would ever have any reference to human for a centaur. His mother had taught him the other name that morning beneath the Big Trees.

A pair of golden gryphons, also with clipped wings, and as unhappy looking as the pegasi, were in the next cage.

There are supposed to be two silver gryphons, too, Gavin said, after he read the sign. I guess they are hiding in that cave in the back. Maybe the female is sitting on her eggs, or nursing her cubs.

Latisha just nodded and tightened her grip on his hand. God only knows what her parents told her before this field trip.

The werewolf was next, sitting hunched over a rock in its forest habitat. It was an eastern red werewolf, with intensely blue human-like eyes. Listed on the sign in front of the cage were instructions for identifying werewolves in human form, and ways to protect oneself from such monsters. Canis lupus malum, evil wolf.

The werewolf seemed even sadder than the rest of the Bestiary’s denizens. It hadn’t looked up, no matter how loud the kids ahead of Gavin and Latisha had been, or how many faces they had made. But it did look up just as Gavin got to the cage and stared at him with those very bright blue eyes. Human eyes. Homo sapiens lupus. Gavin froze.

Mr. Booker?

He didn’t answer Latisha at first. Instead, Gavin watched as the werewolf, shaking its big shaggy head, came slowly over to the corner of the cage where they stood. Its eyes were focused intently on Gavin. It jumped on its hind legs, its big paws only separated from Gavin’s face by the glass.

Help me, please, fairy, help me. They won’t me let change. They make me take drugs, it said in a rough voice. I need to change. Get me out of here.

I’m not a fairy. Shut up, Gavin snapped back.

Mr. Booker? Look, the silver ones came out, Latisha said. She was staring at the gryphon cage. She turned when the werewolf asked again for the fairy to get him out. Mr. Booker? What’s it talking about? What fairy? Latisha asked, looking back and forth between the silver gryphons and the werewolf. The silver gryphons ran back into their cave.

"Not a fairy? Look at your hands, fairy," the werewolf hissed.

Gavin dropped Latisha’s hand and looked at his own. The tips of all his fingers glowed, a faint, faint yellow glow, as if he had dipped them in fluorescent paint. He quickly slid them into his pockets.

I took the pills this morning. This shouldn’t be happening. Suppress, suppress, suppress.

I’m not a fucking fairy, he yelled at the werewolf who only growled and snarled in return. He looked quickly around the Bestiary. Was there anybody who’d hear him yelling? What was he thinking? Thank God nobody but Latisha was anywhere near Gavin and the werewolf.

Latisha stared at Gavin and the werewolf. You aren’t supposed to say that word; it’s not nice. Mama told me so. What fairy is it talking about?

Gavin took a deep breath. Seeing the fear in the little girl’s face, he spoke slowly, in as even and as calm a tone as he could muster. I don’t know what fairy it’s talking about. There’s just you and me and we’re certainly not fairies. The glowing had stopped, he felt it. He took a deep breath. I’m sorry I got upset—that thing upset me. Your mother is absolutely right; you shouldn’t say that.

Fairies are bad, too, Latisha said. He could guess what she was thinking. Latisha was remembering what she had been taught in school, the same things he had been taught in kindergarten and first grade, in Sunday school, and all the way through high school and college. Never mind the ads on TV and that radio that played over and over. The government made sure the lesson got through, that it was repeated over and over so no one could ever miss it. Even the youngest knew what the warning signs were, what to look out for. And what to do if they saw glowing people.

For your country and your Emperor, for God, for your family and friends, and because Jesus loves you: call the police. Just hit the big blue star on the nearest Automatic Reporting Machine and start talking. If you don’t know how to use the phone or the ARM, or neither is nearby, find the nearest normal adult and tell them. Normal people, good people, do not glow.

Fairy, please. Help me.

Gavin ignored the werewolf. It’s not supposed to talk to us. Let’s go find Mr. Phillips and the rest of the class.

Latisha nodded and reached for his hand. They walked away quickly, not looking back.

The werewolf yelled. Fairy, help me, please! Then it howled. They walked faster, Latisha looking over her shoulder.

The rest of the zoo trip was uneventful. Christopher slapped Gavin on the back before he went to his car. Thanks, man. See ya on Monday.

One of his old dreams caught Gavin just as he got to his car.

Long Beach, the family beach trip, and I am up before anybody else and I run and run in an early morning rain. There is no one on the beach but me. Finally, I stop, panting, and lean over, shaking the water out of my hair. I lie down on the sand, close my eyes, and stretch. Then I make sand angels.

I open my eyes. From somewhere, there is another boy, sitting beside me on the sand.

Curly dark red hair, yellow-streaked, as wet as my hair, the boy sits beside me on the sand. Eyes greener than mine are brown, and mine are honey-brown.

At first, the boy says nothing. He only touches me with the palm of his hand on my chest, on my heart. I feel a sudden warmth, a spark, where he touched me. I want to touch him back, but I am afraid. Is it okay? Like a flashlight blinking on and off, he glows with a rosy-golden light.

Not here, I can’t think of the golden boy here. It’s too dangerous, Gavin whispered into the steering wheel of his car.

His hands glowed.

* * * *

Chapter 2

1966–1972

Birthday Cake, January 15–16, 1966

Gavin learned that Mama was a secret when he was six, on the twins’ eleventh birthday, January 15, a Saturday. Charlie and Elliott had asked for their usual lemon-orange double-layer cake, but that year, for their double-one birthday, they wanted the cake to also be a Roosevelt cake, with red roses on grass-green icing. Mama tried to talk them out of it. Everybody had a birthday cake in the dynastic colors, ever since the first-ever TV broadcasts from the White Palace, back in 1956, the year after the twins had been born. The Crown Prince had turned sixteen and the Emperor and Empress had invited the whole nation to the party. The broadcast had begun in the Great Hall and followed the royal family from room to room, until they finally went outside to the Rose Garden and the party. The cake, which covered an entire table, had been decorated in the Roosevelt dynastic colors. Didn’t they want to be special, to be different, to be unique, Mama asked. She bet even the royal family had different colored icing from time to time. How about chocolate icing, like last year? Or lemon and orange icing? Double the flavor, double-layer, doubled boys? Double the birthday luck? Or the Empire’s colors: red, white, and blue? With the Columbian eagle-and-shield-and-star? An imperial flag cake? With a really, really big eagle?

The twins would have none of it. Dynastic colors, on a lemon-orange cake. Everybody else did, why couldn’t they? Besides, Gavin got the kind of cake he wanted on his birthday. Daddy got to pick his cake on his. She had her favorite cake on hers. That’s how it’s supposed to be, right? The birthday boy always gets to pick, right? First, a movie, then steak for dinner, then a red roses-on-grass-green cake, rose-red and grass-green ice cream for dessert, and presents. First one twin spoke, then the other, their towheads bobbing up and down like golden apples in a tin tub at an Autumn Harvest party.

Mama gave in. Gavin knew she would.

He wanted to help Mama carry things from the refrigerator to the red Formica countertop of the snack bar that divided the kitchen from the dining room. Eggs, stick butter, milk. He promised he would be careful. He promised he wouldn’t drop anything. He promised he would walk very slowly and nothing would drop and splatter on the white-and-yellow tile floor. He wanted to help Mama break the eggs into the big bright green mixing bowl. He knew how to do it: a quick tap on the side, push in, and let the bright yellow yolks drop. Then, stir and stir until all the yolks become yellow soup. No eggshells. He loved the smells of the cake cooking, the scents of lemons and oranges.

Gavin wanted to sit in the kitchen and just breathe. No, he had to go the movies with Daddy and the twins. But he had gotten sick during the night and thrown up and thrown up. He hadn’t even been able to hold down the dry toast that Mama had made him for breakfast. Mama sent him back to bed, after shooing the twins out of the room all three of them shared. After ginger ale and crushed ice, cherry-flavored children’s aspirin, double-strong chamomile tea, with extra valerian, and Pepto-Bismol, Mama had drawn the curtains, enclosing him in a warm darkness that was later permeated with orange and lemon, as he slept.

Gavin woke to a quiet house. He felt better; he felt hungry. He listened to the dark as he lay there, trying to the name the sounds he heard. Mama, down the hall in the kitchen. She was singing. Maybe she hadn’t finished making the cake yet. Maybe she was getting ready to make the frosting and he could lick the bowl. The smell of the cake had been replaced by the aroma of meat, onions, and mushrooms. He recognized the song she was singing; he had sung it to him when he was very little, to get him to fall asleep. He remembered her face, framed with dark hair like