“Someone needs to bake the birthday cake,” says Agnes. She opens the oven door. She puts her arm inside the oven and waves it around. She wouldn’t call it hot. That would be an exaggeration.
“It’s pleasant,” says Agnes. “Like a dry spring day in Yorkshire.”
It reminds Agnes of something.
“The Hotel Robin o’ the Wood,” says Agnes. But wasn’t it all rain, rain, rain?
Dorcas is dropping two huge scoops of vanilla ice cream into a tall, frosty glass. The glass fizzes over.
“Root beer!” exclaims Agnes. “But it’s before dawn!” Dorcas slurps defensively.
Every morning, the sun comes up later. The days are narrowing. Slivers of light.
On Axel Heiberg, the three months of darkness have already begun. What would Agnes say about root beer on Axel Heiberg?
Dorcas imagines Bertrand on the Trans-Siberian railroad. She has reached the end of the line. She climbs out of the sleeper car. She pushes off from Siberia in a skiff.
“Auf Wiedersehen!” calls Bertrand. Soon she bumps up against the frozen seas. The penguins come out from their igloos to greet her — Dear Bertrand! — and the leopard seals come out of their igloos to eat the penguins, but then the good cheer takes them, and they hold off, waving: Dear Bertrand! Erdbeer Käsekuchen Eis for everyone!
Why shouldn’t there be penguins in the North Pole?
“The Great Magnet,” thinks Dorcas. “It pulls us all.”
Bertrand may be drinking root beer right this very moment, sitting on a stump in the soundless forests of Axel Heiberg. Or it may be that she is not drinking root beer. It may be this:
The sun will not rise over Axel Heiberg and Bertrand will not rise. Bertrand will lie very still and cold, dark hair silvered with frost, lips ultramarine and her skin the circumpolar colors: cyan blue, cyan green. The condensation from her breath froze all around her in the night, and Bertrand lies entombed in ice on Axel Heiberg, between the three sisters Kidney, with a bottle of root beer on her grave.
[:]
Fiona runs into the kitchen. She has just stitched the fringes to the left arm of Mrs. Borage’s white leather jacket. The fringes are thin and green and numerous. It took a great deal of work. Fiona needs to eat a handful of raisins. Raisins are how she maintains her power.
Fiona is descended from King Solomon. All of his descendants derive their power from raisins.
She bumps into Dorcas. Is Dorcas in a shamanic trance?
“The peregrination of flightless birds,” intones Dorcas.
Fiona stares at Dorcas. Is Dorcas saying what she thinks Dorcas is saying?
“We should form a motorcycle gang?” whispers Fiona. Dorcas does not answer. She is eating Fiona’s raisins, although Dorcas is descended from Ham.
[:]
Agnes pays no attention to the Theta waves in the kitchen. She is remembering the rope ladder leading up the sarsaparilla tree into the Hotel Robin o’ the Wood. At the Hotel Robin o’ the Wood, the guests wore horned helmets. Agnes would like to wear a horned helmet at Mrs. Borage’s party, but her helmet was lost, decades ago, over the Atlantic, or stolen at O’Hare, by baggage handlers.
Was one of the baggage handlers at O’Hare wearing a horned helmet?
“Yes,” remembers Agnes. A tall woman with lustrous eyes and a deep, dark gap between her two front teeth. Agnes had mistaken her for the Venus of Willendorf. Looking back, she recognizes the dent in the helmet, and the silver pentagram, the logo of Hotel Robin o’ the Wood.
The Venus of Willendorf wouldn’t wear a helmet advertising the Hotel Robin o’ the Wood. Not when there is a Hotel Venus of Willendorf.
“The hospitality industry is not more interesting than paleo-zoology,” says Agnes. “But at least I don’t have a degree in it.”
[:]
Dorcas is thinking that she might like to credential as a shaman. Bryce has so many things stuck to the walls and the refrigerators. Dorcas imagines a large certificate with crimped edges above the mantel. Her name embossed in runes.
The best schools for shamans seem to be concentrated in Roskilde, Denmark.
“I could take a correspondence course,” thinks Dorcas. Should she complete the requirements and also become a Minister of Culture? Dorcas thinks she would enjoy taking the course called “Drylægens Natmad.” She is fairly certain that translates to “The Veterinarian’s Midnight Snack.”
Midnight is neither AM nor PM. It is something in-between. Do the veterinarians diagnose the witches? Can they change them back?
Dorcas decides to go for a walk in the center of town where there are fewer things to think about.
X
Mr. Henderson stands in front of the Country Store. Instead of his cobwebbed cookie jar and the four blue mugs and the rack of thick dishes, there is a wicker cornucopia in the window. It is filled with bottleneck gourds. There are fake red maple leaves scattered around and also twiggy artisanal soaps. Mr. Henderson rubs his long jaw. He takes a deep breath. He enters the Country Store. The store manager gives him an envelope of ten-dollar bills. The store manager is happy. The market has revised its opinion of Mr. Henderson’s pottery and so has the store manager.
“Why don’t you make us a line of clever salt and pepper shakers?” asks the store manager. The sky is the limit with clever salt and pepper shakers!
“The pepper could be a thundercloud,” says the store manager. “And the salt could be the other kind of cloud. A sunny cloud.”
[:]
Now Mr. Henderson has enough money to buy more muesli and soup and a bag of marshmallows for Mrs. Borage. He also buys vanilla pudding.
“To keep the wolves from the door,” says Mr. Henderson to the young woman at the check-out. It is a joke. The young woman does not smile. She has not seen the sixteen dogs in Mrs. Borage’s garden. Even if she had, though.
“I’m rusty,” thinks Mr. Henderson.
Mr. Henderson walks all through the town carrying his groceries. His elation fades away. Walking through town is never uplifting. The town is a vortical center of the Universe. There is a great deal of downward suction. Everyone Mr. Henderson passes has extremely bad posture.
Mr. Henderson sees Mrs. Borage standing on the little patch of lawn outside the library. He is about to call “Hallo!” but then he senses that something important is about to happen. Mrs. Borage is standing perfectly still, staring at the statue of Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher is very large and stern, even sitting down. She is wearing a high-necked dress and holding an enormous book open on her knee. She is exactly halfway through the book.
If Mr. Henderson were a sculptor, he would have carved the book the same way, so that Dorothy Canfield Fisher was reading the very middle.
“It is the decision that requires the least courage,” thinks Mr. Henderson.
Is Mrs. Borage going to turn a page? She is reaching towards the book.
Mr. Henderson has to cover his eyes.
[:]
In the kitchen, Ozark has just caught her toast on fire. She holds it with metal tongs.
“Thought is impossible without the illumination metaphor,” concludes Ozark. She shuffles her flashcards. She has gotten the units wrong. What units are best for the episteme? Watts? Lumens?
[:]
Mr. Henderson’s teeth are chattering. The inside of his garage is rimed with ice. Ms. Kidney is shaving ice into a metal bucket with a Hirschfänger.
“Don’t mind me,” says Ms. Kidney. “I’m performing a minor operation. Just call me Dr. McGillicuddys. Or Doc, if we’re familiar. Or, Gilly. Eh, Gilly?”
Mr. Henderson kicks his wheel. He holds the lump of clay between his hands.
“Clever shakers?” thinks Mr. Henderson. He imagines clay figurines, Ann Lee and Joseph Meacham, Ann in a glazed white bonnet, Joseph in a matte black suit. He imagines shaking them over his tomato soup.