Table of Contents

• “Doctor Couney’s Island”
• “A Capella”
• “The Driving of the Year Nail”
• “Two Boys”
• “The Color Winter”
• “Survivors”
• “Holding Pattern”
• “Rain, Steam, and Speed”
• “Stegosaurus Boy”
• “The Conqueror Moment”
• “The Old Woman and the Moon”
• “Mister Peck Goes Calling”
• “Tip of the Scorpion”
• “Whistle in the Dark”
• “Winters are Hard”

From The Old Woman and the Moon

The beginning of the tale is always important.

A long time ago, long before even the wet bricks of Sumer were laid down and nobody had ever heard of Gilgamesh, a magician fell in love with the moon.

The moon in those days had no seasons, did not wax or wane. Its light was constant throughout the night. It was this constancy that had first attracted the magician’s love.

The moon felt the same and they carried their tryst over a decade until one day it was no longer enough. The magician vowed he would be with his love at all costs. He studied for years the inner flows of rivers and communed with cephalopods, observed the clockwork mechanisms of the stars and discussed the task with the tides. After he had sufficiently prepared himself, and under the face of the full and constant moon, he climbed a tall mountain and cast his spell. For three days, he wrestled with the sky and the sun. When he awoke, the top of the mountain had been sheared off as if cut by a great knife. The forest had been broken and flattened in all directions as far as the eye could see. The night sky was clear but empty. The moon was nestled in the crook of his shoulder, smiling and asleep.