Illustration: A set of lungs wrapped in the chain of an oval locket. The locket displays pictures of Alba and Mordecai, being silly.

[PSI-3]

“Well, let’s see now, is there anything missing?”

There were several sheets of coloured paper bedecked with crayon drawings spread over the bedroom floor. Ann had obligingly rolled back the rug to provide more drawing surface. They were comparing a yellow one and a pink one side-by-side, the three of them kneeling and examining with their hands on the floor.

Maggie could already see what Erik got wrong, but it didn’t matter if she saw it. He was the one who wanted the help.

Erik looked back and forth between the papers with a grave expression. The bird was on both, and the duck, and the cat (last time he forgot the cat), and the grass, and the pond, and the tree. Maggie’s tree had leaves and his didn’t, but he didn’t think that was missing, they just thought of different trees. He couldn’t remember anything in the story about leaves.

“No,” he decided.

“Yes, I think that looks about right to me too,” Ann said. “Maggie?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now, is there anything different?”

That was where Erik had lost the plot, and they both waited to see if he could find it. It took him a moment, but he finally pointed at his bird. His bird was on the ground and Maggie’s was in the tree, and he knew his was the wrong one because that was how this worked.

Ann had the music open on the floor beside her. “Erik, do you remember why, or do you want the story again?”

He held up one finger, still studying the pages. He had this. He was on top of this. “It’s the cat,” he said, touching it. “The cat scared the bird.”

“That’s exactly right!” said Ann. And it was also, she noted, a lot more words than he’d been using when they tried this without crayons. He wanted to understand the story and he had asked them to help him with it. It was just very hard to understand if he understood the story when the only way he could tell you about it was talking.

Hence, crayons. Crayons were wonderful things.

“Do you want to put the bird in the tree or do you just want to hear the next bit?” she asked him.

He was frowning. He wanted to do the whole thing over again and get all of it right, but he also wanted to hear the next bit. He put a large black X over his bird on the ground, and put another one in the tree.

“Oh, honey,” Ann said painfully. “You didn’t have to do it like that…”

There was a light tapping on the door and it was pushed open a crack. “Ann?” It was Hyacinth on the other side.

“Oh, just a minute. Please excuse me.” Ann picked up the door, opened it, set it back down, got on the other side of it and closed it most of the way. “We’re having Peter and the Wolf in crayon,” she told Hyacinth softly. “He wanted some help with it. He can’t read,” she added, frowning. “Not even a little bit. Did you know that, Cin?”

Hyacinth shook her head, “But I thought it might happen. Sometimes it does. He might get it back, at least some of it. That usually happens too.”

Ann nodded.

“Is he upset about it?”

“I’ve distracted him!” Ann said proudly. She dropped her voice again, “But what about poor Em? Do you have him?”

“Yes…”

“Good job!”

“…but the police were a little rough with him.”

“Why? What did they do to him?”

“You’ll see it. Well, some of it’s under the clothes, but that’s just bruises. He’s having ice in the kitchen. I need to get him a clean shirt.”

“I don’t understand it at all!” said Ann. “Why did they need to do that? They put the handcuffs on him right away! Which is another stupid thing, if I may say so. He wasn’t fighting. They just wanted to stick him with something anti-magic. What was he going to do, I ask you? Make casserole at them? Turn their sugar into salt?”

“Ann, clean shirt,” Hyacinth said.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry. I’ll get it. They’ll notice me less.”

They didn’t notice her at all. “It’s wrong,” Erik was saying.

“Well, yeah,” Maggie said, touching the page. “But it looks like you’re mad about it.”

“I am mad about it!”

Ann passed the shirt through the door without opening it further. “Here, Cin.”

Hyacinth folded it over her arm. “Where did you tell him his uncle was? Just so we don’t mess it up?”

“Oh, I just said he was with you. Then he didn’t mind about it. He asked if we could do the story before he got back.”

Hyacinth made a puzzled smile. “That child trusts one of us, I’m not sure which.”

“That child trusts all of us,” Ann replied. “What lie are we telling him about how Em got hurt?”

“He fell down some stairs.”

“Which stairs?”

“I’m not sure, but I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve decided.”

They had Peter and the Wolf in crayon (and Mordecai had ice in the kitchen) until Erik was more tired and annoyed than interested (so, not very much longer). Ann separated the drawings by author. Maggie took hers. Erik was disgusted by his at the moment, so Ann put them on the table with the music.

“I think your uncle would like to see them, anyway,” she said.

“He’s back soon?”

“I’m sure he’ll be back by the time you’re awake.”

He sighed and dropped his head back on the pillow. “Put the good one first.”

He meant the one where he got everything right. It was the first one, also the one with the fewest things in it: Peter, the meadow and the open gate.

Ann obligingly shuffled it to the front. Erik had drawn Peter purple, Maggie had drawn him brown. That was a difference, but the story didn’t have anything to say about what colour Peter was, so Ann called them both right.

“Erik? Do you want me to stay until you’re asleep?” She doubted he would want any more story, he wanted to be wide awake for that.

But he was already gone.

———

Mordecai sneaked into his room with as much decorum as the broken door and his newly acquired limp would allow. (Hyacinth helped him with the door, but he didn’t want her in the room. Truthfully, he didn’t want her at all. He wanted darkness and bed.)

Ann had left the curtains open, even though Erik was sleeping. Mordecai approached the window to close them.

There were some crayon drawings on the table with the music. On a yellow sheet of paper, Ann had left him a note in pencil (Ann and Milo had exactly the same handwriting, but Ann signed her missives with her name in a heart and Milo never signed anything): M — Erik drew these about Peter and the Wolf. He thinks you’re upset that he doesn’t understand it. He’s trying very hard to understand it. Please say you’re proud of him. He’s come back a long way.

He glanced over at the small figure in the bed. His thoughts had been nowhere else all day, not even during the worst of it. It was nice to be home with his thoughts at rest.

He took the sheaf of drawings with him and sat down on the floor next to the bed. It took him some moments and some pain to accomplish this and he was displeased to note that someone had removed the rug. He had also left his bag of ice on the table, but damned if he was going to get up and go after it. He laid one hand gently on Erik’s shoulder and leafed through the pages with the other one.

Here was Peter leaving the garden for the wide world and a big adventure. Here was the bird and the duck and the cat.

Here was a great big black X drawn over a bird on the grass and another bird laboriously drawn in the tree with thick, heavy lines. He recoiled from it.

He began to notice other corrections. That cat was a late addition, you could see the green grass through it. In another, there was a cat in the tree with a dark line scribbled through it that he had taken for another branch. Here was the bird in the pond, but drawn over in blue like the water. Here at last was the wolf appearing much too early, with the boy and the grandfather and the duck and the cat still in the meadow. That whole picture had been scrawled over with a jagged dark line.

He doesn’t understand it. He’s trying, but he keeps getting it wrong.

Far from understanding it, he used to know it. He used to tease his old uncle about not being able to do the noises for the hunters. (“Just then, the hunters came out of the woods…” “…with arrows! Very, very quiet arrows!”) He hardly asked for it anymore, because he was tired of it. He wanted “Cinéfone Killed the Radio Star,” or the theme from the Silver Streak.

What am I looking at? What is this? What happened?

He looked again at the body on the bed — less one eye, less the memory of Peter and the Wolf, less even the capacity to understand it.

There was more here in front of him than Erik had had to say on any subject since his injury, all the things he did know and his determination to have the rest, and his anger when his reach exceeded his grasp, but all Mordecai could see was the damage.

Erik hissed a breath and rolled on to his back. Mordecai skidded in the papers (he had been observing them on his hands and knees) and realized he had grown afraid of his child.

What are you going to do now? How else are you going to hurt me today?