Not far from the glade, Ray discovered a wide, pebbly shore descending to a lake. Across the still water, he spied cliffs and, to his surprise, villas nestled among forested hills. No lights shined within the tile-roofed buildings, nor did any shapes move between them. He felt that the villas had known darkness and solitude for a great many years. He couldn't decide whether that feeling, or that place, was ominous or peaceful; he suspected it was a matter of perspective, and that suspicion made him regret his inability to draw landscapes. In any event, it was a good place to have a think.

So, he thought, my girlfriend is a tree. His eyebrows furrowed. Something about the proposition troubled him, but he couldn't pinpoint what. Of course! With everything else going on, he hadn't asked whether Trivia was looking for a relationship. He'd projected his own romantic interest on to her, which was hardly fair. They had an undeniable emotional connection, but Trivia seemed like a free spirit. Why risk an awkward conversation when things were going so well? Best to take it slow and see where that led him.

Also, she's a tree, he thought. That's pretty weird.

Ray stood at the water's edge and hurled a rough white stone into the lake. The stone made a visible, but soundless, splash. He repeated the experiment twice with the same result. Cautiously, he immersed his index finger, then his entire hand. The water felt pleasantly crisp but colder than he had expected. A chill swept up his arm, permeating his body.

He removed his hand from the lake, but the chill did not leave him. His fingers obeyed his command to wiggle, but he felt nothing from the wrist down. Ray retreated from the water line, tucked his hand beneath his armpit, and listened to his teeth chatter for several minutes before sensation returned.

All along the shore, white stones shuffled and slid towards the lake. Ray's first, absurd thought was to find a doorframe to hide beneath, but there was no earthquake, only a sea of eyestalks, scuttling legs, and waving claws - crabs, pale as ghosts, seeking sanctuary in the lake.

Ray thought, what are they afraid of?

His answer stood at the tree-line.

Ray said, "You can still follow me? Even here?"

The deer dipped its antlers and walked onto the shore. In the moonlight, it looked more ghostly than the fleeing crustaceans.

"You really scared the crab out of them," Ray said.

The deer snorted.

"Fine, be a critic," Ray said. "Why don't you contribute something to the conversation? It's like I'm talking to myself."

The deer walked to the water's edge and lowered its head.

Ray said, "I wouldn't. You'll get brain freeze, like eating ice cream too fast."

The deer looked across the still lake to the lightless, lifeless villas.

"At least you listen," Ray said. "Even if you have nothing to say."

The deer looked Ray in the eye, then waded into the lake.

"Don't go in there!" Ray said.

The deer forged towards the distant cliffs. The lake lapped at its legs, leaving a languid wake. The quiet undulations disquieted Ray for reasons that he could not discern.

"Come back! Shit!" Ray wrung his hands, which still ached from being immersed.

The water rose to meet the deer. Or, the deer sank to meet the water.

Ray addressed his groin. "I'm sorry about this, boys." With a progressively less manly shriek, he charged in after the deer.

The water soothed Ray, extinguishing aches he had not even been aware of. He realized that the lake washed away not only pain, but the memory of pain. For an instant. Then came the unfathomable cold.

It was a strange feeling to run on legs that could not feel. Ray's heart and lungs raced each other towards catastrophic failure. He lost his footing after only a few strides and flailed his hands in midair, seeking a life ring or a buoy. He found an antler.

The deer planted itself in the silt and held Ray up.

"Are. You. Stupid?" Ray said, panting. "You can't go there. That's the dying-place!"

The words came unbidden, but Ray knew them to be true. He felt it in his freezing bones, in the terror gripping his heart: Those shadow-shrouded villas did not house the living, and never had. He tried to pull the deer to shore, but his strength flagged, and the deer pulled him farther into the lake instead.

"Please," Ray said. "Turn back or we'll die."

The deer turned its head so that Ray swung around to face it. The movement loosened Ray's grip on the deer's antlers.

"That's it?" Ray said. "That's what you wanted to tell me?"

The deer nodded.

Ray's head slid underwater. No light could penetrate the lake's surface, and he lost track of which direction was up. He forgot what up was. Panic overtook him, but he did not know what he was panicking about, which caused him to panic anew.

Something hooked underneath Ray's armpits and lifted his head above water. He drew breath as though he were breathing for the first time. "Haaaaaaaaah." Water streamed from Ray's hair and down his face. His body trembled uncontrollably, but the lake's effect on his mind lasted only a moment. He realized that he was suspended from the deer's antlers.

The deer backed out of the lake, dragging Ray onto the shore.

Ray lay on his back, shivering, until he could feel the hard pebbles digging into his skin.

The deer stood over him with its head bowed.

With the last of his strength, Ray touched the tips of the deer's antlers, staining his hand crimson. "There's blood on your antlers. Why is there blood?"

The deer's eyes shone. It looked mournful as before, but not judgmental. Pitying, Ray decided, just before the deer trotted away.

"Wait!" Ray said. "I can't feel my legs! And there's-"

The rocks shifted beneath him. Dozens of segmented legs found purchase on his wet shirt. The first climber crested the rise of his chest, waving its white claw like a banner, though it was not signaling surrender. Many others followed its lead.

"-crabs."

--

The robber shot out the Kangaroo's fake video camera. "Hurry up!"

"Okay! Okay!" Rony scooped the contents of the cash register into a plastic bag and handed it to the robber. The Mossberg lay behind the counter, unseen, but store policy was store policy.

The robber opened the bag and shuffled through the bills. "There's only fifty bucks in here!"

Rony sighed. "Respectfully, sir, there are four twenties, and you didn't count the rolls of quarters. Those are ten dollars each." On some level, he knew snark was suicidal, but he'd reached his limit two or three absurdities earlier.

"Oww!" the robber slapped the back of his free hand with the butt of his revolver.

Rony's eyes widened, not least at the waving muzzle. "What happened?"

"Goddamn bit me!" the robber said. "Where's the rest of the cash?"

"In the safe," Rony said. "No one ever reads the stickers." The universe, he thought, can force-feed you a bullshit sandwich, but it can't make you pretend to like it. In snark, man is eternally free.

"Do you want to die?" the robber said.

"No," Rony said. "I'm just saying, the stickers aren't for my benefit, they're for you, the customer. I still count you as a customer even though you aren't paying for anything."

"Shut up and open the safe," the robber said. An angry red welt rose on the back of his hand.

"I am the clerk," Rony said, as though reading a picture book to a toddler. "The clerk does not have the key to the safe. Are you with me?"

"Open the safe!" the robber said.

"I don't have the key!" Rony said.

"Shit!" the robber said, "It's not enough!" He furiously scratched his arm, from his wrist to his shoulder, and the back of his neck.

Pity replaced the snark in Rony's voice. "There's about $120 in that bag. There's another $13 in my wallet. Take it and buy whatever you need to feel better." He slid the wallet across the counter, then pulled it right back.

The robber looked puzzled.

"Hold up." Rony rifled through the wallet. "Let me get my student ID. You know the college charges $50 for a replacement? And you thought this was a robbery."

"Gimme your credit cards, too," the robber said.

"I don't have any." Rony tossed his wallet to the robber. He kept his ID.

"Don't screw with me," the robber said.

"My family is careful with money," Rony said. "That's why we own convenience stores instead of rob- pursuing other opportunities."

His robber's hands were badly swollen, and his eyes and lips looked puffy. He took two steps towards the door, hunched over, and began to gasp.

"I believe that concludes our business," Rony said. "Thank you for choosing Kangaroo."

"I can't breathe," the robber said.

Rony glanced at his shotgun, and at the robber, whose arms and neck were now covered with hives. He sighed and reached for his cell phone. "You're sick. Let me call you a doctor."

"No phone calls!" Between wheezing coughs, the robber aimed his gun at Rony's forehead.

"You have what you want," Rony said.

"I've got to kill you," the robber said.

"Why?" Rony said. "You shot out the camera, and I can't see your face because it's all fucked up with hives." He gestured as though smearing something over his own face.

"Because." The robber pointed at the colored strips on either side of the door.

"You're kidding," Rony said.

"You know how tall I am," the robber said. "You've gotta go." He raised his gun, but his fingers had swollen too much to fit inside the trigger guard, and his hand looked like an inflated surgical glove. He pondered it like a newborn.

Rony ducked behind the counter and came up with the shotgun. "Drop it!"

--

Ray woke on a patch of sand where the shoreline met the forest. He was stripped to his underwear, but dry. A campfire crackled beside him, contained by circle of stones which he inspected for antennae and claws. Satisfied that the stones were not spooky crabs, he scooched closer.

Roosevelt held his arm over the fire, toasting Ray's soggy socks like a marshmallow. Rex curled up next to him, happily chewing on a shattered, ghost-white carapace. Seeing that Ray had woken, Roosevelt squeezed the last moisture from the socks and tossed them into a pile with Ray's pants, shirt, and shoes.

Ray dressed himself. "I passed out? How did you find me?

Roosevelt pat Rex's head.

"Good boy! Who's a crab killer? Yes you are!" Ray cooed.

Rex continued gnawing on his latest victim. Red welts on his belly suggested that some of the crabs had gone down fighting.

Ray warmed his hands. "Thank you for the campfire. I was freezing."

"I protect." Roosevelt threw a broken branch onto the fire, stirring up orange embers.

Ray touched his upper lip, then held up his index finger. "Is this okay? That's not like, one of your relatives, right?"

Roosevelt gave a look of what Ray assumed was confusion. It was hard to tell with all the burn scars.

Careful, Ray thought. No reason to offend the guy. "I thought you and Trivia were trees?"

Roosevelt shook his head.

"Then what are you?" Ray said.

Roosevelt looked him in the eye. A brief, simple note of fragrance filled the air. It smelled a little like spring, which Ray thought made sense, and a lot like moonlight, which didn't make sense at all. "You did that. You and Trivia can communicate by scent."

Another, even simpler note. Bland. Perhaps a hint of vanilla? Smelling the scent made Ray feel confident for a moment. That must mean 'yes,' he thought.

Roosevelt nodded at Ray. The first note, like spring and moonlight, returned.

What does moonlight even smell like, Ray thought.

Smells like this, his brain responded. Obviously.

Screw you, brain, Ray thought.

He shook his head. "Sorry. I smell what you're saying, but I don't understand it. I can only make three or four fragrances, and I doubt you'd like any of them. Can we try English?"

Roosevelt furrowed his eyebrows. "Folk." He touched his chest. "I am folk."

Ray frowned. "Not like Bob Dylan, I take it. Well, I get that you're not really a tree. But Trivia and Wilson made it sound like you were."

"Man is not house," Roosevelt said. "Folk is not tree. Not bird. Not ant."

"You live in them?" Ray pointed at the branches in the campfire. "That's what you meant by 'vessel.' But no folk were living in those?"

The bland scent, with a hint of vanilla, returned. A moment later, Roosevelt said, "Yes. Empty vessel."

"The trees in the timberlands preserve weren't all empty, were they?" Ray said. "A house isn't a man, but if you burn it down while he's inside it-"

"Child is not crib." Roosevelt's face showed no emotion, but he stared miles away.

"Fuck." Ray mouthed.

Roosevelt's eyes welled with grey tears.

"I'm sorry-" Ray said. He didn't complete the sentence. How could he? I'm sorry I work for the guy who killed your family? I'm sorry their ashes clogged up your tear ducts? I'm sorry humans are so goddamned stupid that we don't understand how much suffering we inflict?

No, he thought. That wasn't true. Trivia said that powerful people wanted to harm the Green. Someone knew. Did Jim Frazer know? Did it matter, when the crime was so grave?

"Wilson protects?" Roosevelt said. Ray discerned the request in the question: He wanted to grieve alone.

"Wilson said he had somewhere he needed to be." Ray said. "I'll go look for him, okay?"

The air carried a hint of vanilla and of pain.