Cloud Cuckoo Land

Stranger, whoever you are, open this to learn what will amaze you.

…how long had those tablets moldered inside that chest, waiting for eyes to read them? While I’m sure you will doubt the truth of the outlandish events they relate, my dear niece, in my transcription, I do not leave out a word. Maybe in the old days men did walk the earth as beasts, and a city of birds floated in the heavens between the realms of men and gods. Or maybe, like all lunatics, the shepherd made his own truth, and so for him, true it was. But let us turn to his story now, and decide his sanity for ourselves.

When he opens the little door, light spills through the arched doorway. Atop the stage, Marian stands on a step stool, touching a brush to the gold and silver towers of her backdrop. He watches her climb off the stool to examine her work, then climb back on, dip her brush, and add three more birds swinging around a tower. The smell of fresh paint is strong. Everything is quiet.

To be eighty-six years old and feel this.

Olivia-the-goddess crouches beside Rachel in her sequined dress. “Aethon doesn’t read to the end of the book?”

“That’s how he writes his story on the tablets,” says Rachel. “How they get buried in the tomb with him. Because he doesn’t stay in Cloud Cuckoo Land. He chooses… What’s the word, Mr. Ninis?”

The beating of hearts, the blinking of eyes. Zeno sees himself walk out onto the frozen lake. He sees Rex in the rainy light of the tea room, one hand trembling over his saucer. The children gaze down at their scripts.

“You mean,” says Alex, “Aethon goes home.”

Dear Seymour,

I was happy to hear from you. Here is everything I could gather from the trial, from Mr. Ninis’s house, and that we recovered at the library. The police might have more, I’m not sure. Nobody ever did anything with all this, so I’m trusting you with it. Access is part of the librarian’s creed, after all.

If you can make any sense of it, I think one of the children Zeno worked with would be interested: Natalie Hernandez. Last I heard from her, she’s taking classes at Idaho State in Latin and Greek.

At one time you were a thoughtful and sensitive boy and it is my hope that you have become a thoughtful and sensitive man.

Marian

“I have heard,” Omeir says, “that this is a place that protects books.”

The man glances up and back at the book again and says something to the interpreter.

“He would like to know how you came to possess this.”

“It was a gift,” Omeir says, and he thinks of Anna surrounded by their sons, the hearth glowing, lightning flashing outside, shaping the story with her hands. The second man is busy examining the stitching and binding in the lantern light.

“I assume you would like to be paid?” asks the interpreter. “It is in very bad shape.”

“A meal will suffice. And oats for my donkey.”

“I,” she says, “am Aethon, a simple shepherd from Arkadia, and—”

“No, no,” says the boy. He bats the page with his hand. “The voice, with the voice.”

She blinks; the planet rotates another degree; beyond her little garden, below the town, a wind hazes the tops of the swells. The boy raises an index finger and pokes the page. Konstance clears her throat.

“And the tale I have to tell is so ludicrous, so incredible, that you’ll never believe a word of it, and yet”—she taps the end of his nose—“it’s true.”