“Hello, traveler.”
I freeze. A small glow ignites in the dark. Unlike the fireflies, it is steady and motionless, and for an instant I believe that the light itself is calling me. Then the glow brightens until I can see that it is a flame in a glass lantern, resting on a table on Mr. Harding’s back patio. To my relief, it is not Mr. Harding sitting there, but a woman I don’t recognize.
“Hello,” I respond.
“What are you up to?” she asks. Her voice is clear and light.
“I was . . . nothing.”
“Oh, I doubt you were nothing,” she says. “And I doubt you were up to nothing, too. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Something about her relaxes me—whether her voice itself or her gentle teasing. I stand up straight, no longer looking to run. “Why did you call me traveler?”
“I figured that’s what you are,” she says. “Either that or a leprechaun.”
“A leprechaun?” I bite back a snicker. “I’m not a leprechaun. I’m a boy.”
“Well, isn’t that just what a leprechaun would say! Now I’m really suspicious. Step into the light so I can get a look at you.”
I draw closer, and can see her better now. She has calm eyes and a pale, smooth face. Her hair—brown with fine streaks of gray that glitter in the lamplight—falls messily down to her shoulders. She seems neither old nor young.
“It’s hard to tell by the lamp,” she says. “Is your skin green?” Now I can’t help but giggle. “Did I say something funny?” she asks.
I immediately stop. “No, sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she says. “You can laugh. I don’t mind.” She smiles, the skin around her eyes crinkling into elfin wings. “I’m Esther.”
“I’m Elliot. I live next door.”
“Very nice to meet you, Elliot. I think I’ve met your parents—the entrepreneurs?”
“No, the Chances.”
She laughs. I’m confused by this, and would probably be offended except that it’s a beautiful, almost contagious sound—bright and shiny, ringing from her throat like a little bell. It occurs to me that you’re not required to be offended when someone laughs at you. You can just let them laugh. Still, I’d like to know why.
“Did I say something funny?”
She stops. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind either.”
Esther nods, then leans forward in her chair. “An entrepreneur is someone who starts a new venture,” she explains. “Someone who takes a chance. So you see, we were kind of saying the same thing. Your parents own the shoe store, right?”
“Yes.” Talking about my parents reminds me that I should probably get home. It’s officially dark now. My mother will start to worry soon, at which point she’ll open the back door and loudly call my name until she can see me coming. For some reason I’d rather Esther didn’t witness this summons, but I’m also not eager to leave. My family and I aren’t saying a whole lot to each other these days, and the more I think about it, the more I realize we never really have, as if there were only so much oxygen in the rooms of our house, and too much talking would threaten our ability to breathe.
“Do you want to be an entrepreneur someday?” Esther asks.
“No.” The quickness of my reply surprises me, but all I can think of is the shoe store and my mother’s perpetual state of anxiety and the blood rushing to my father’s face after his morning work calls. “I want to help them.”
“How so?”
I want to explain to Esther about how I listen to my parents’ conversations and try to catalog their problems so that I can find solutions for them, but my head swims in a fragmented sea of worries I don’t understand—mortgages and personal guarantees, interest rates, employee turnover, supply chains. My shoulders hunch up toward my ears as helplessness sets in, and I can’t gather my thoughts into any kind of coherent response. “I’m not sure,” I finally say. “Maybe I could be an advisor?”
“That sounds like a great idea,” says Esther. “I bet you’re gaining all kinds of valuable experience just by watching your parents, and someday you’ll be able to put it all together and give other entrepreneurs wonderful advice.”
Instantly, my shoulders release and the helplessness subsides. At the same time, my throat tightens so that I can’t reply. Yes, I want to say. Yes, that’s just what I meant.
“And what do you have there?” Esther asks, nodding toward the book in my hand.
For a moment I had actually forgotten about the book. Now my mind lights up with memories of Neverene, and my heart with a desire to return. “It’s about a place,” I say. “A really cool place.”
“Ah,” says Esther. “That sounds wonderful.”
I grip the book a bit more tightly, as if someone might take it from me. Esther doesn’t seem to notice. She just looks at me patiently. Reluctantly, I remind myself that the book isn’t mine, and I hold it out to her. “I found it in the woods. I was just going to borrow it.”
“From whom?”
“From Mr. Harding, I guess.”
For the first time since I’ve met her, Esther’s face falls and the light in her eyes dims. “Mr. Harding passed away,” she says.
I stiffen. Outside our circle of lamplight, the darkness suddenly feels dangerous and empty. I’ve never known anyone who has died. I may not have liked Mr. Harding, but his death unnerves me, and I feel guilty for having been relieved that he wasn’t on his patio tonight.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” says Esther. “But he had a long life, and one that he could call his own. And that means a lot.”
“He didn’t like us playing in his woods.”
Esther nods. “He cherished his solitude. Also, he was a jerk.” At the look of shock on my face, she laughs. “It’s true,” she says, “but he was my uncle and I loved him all the same.” I am even more surprised to hear that Esther was Mr. Harding’s niece. It’s hard for me to believe that two such different people could share the same genes.
“Anyway,” she continues with a sigh, “I suppose the woods aren’t his anymore. There’s nobody here but me. As far as I’m concerned, you may play in them as you wish, and the book you found is yours.”
My chest warms. Though the tightness returns to my throat, this time I’m able to speak through it. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome,” says Esther. “Now I wonder if maybe you should get home so your parents don’t worry about you?”
I nod, give a little wave, and go. When I reach the crumbling stone wall that separates our yards, I pause and turn. “I was glad to talk with you,” I call back.
From within the circle of lamplight, Esther raises her hand. “Farewell, traveler who is not a leprechaun.”
In the Future
Bannor says that in the future you can talk to the dead.
Which was inevitable, he says, once they figured out how to seamlessly connect a computer to the human brain. He says biochip implants are commonplace in the future, and their usage has graduated from the vulgar, like the chip in your wrist that allows you to pay for groceries, to the profound, like the one in your skull that combats the onslaught of dementia.