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excitedly. “He was a throwback, not quite a man—”
    â€œOr more than a man,” she said quickly. “Did they not find him in a mountain valley in the range that overlooked her village?”
    I pushed my chair back from the table. “The old hunter Fergus brought him back from an expedition into the clouds. From the altitude to which he climbed he could see the planets clearly, and Jupiter watched him like an eye the night he captured the strange lad in a trap that was a hole dug like a grave and covered with flimsy branches.” For the last half a sentence, she recited the words with me.
    We sat for a moment in stunned silence, and then she said, “I feel light headed … but not dizzy. Like I’m waking up.”
    â€œEvery time you voice a string of Mrs. Strellop’s words,” I said, “the next comes into my mind.”
    â€œYes,” she said, “like a magician pulling scarves from his pocket.”
    â€œWhat now?” I asked.
    â€œFergus believed him to be more ape than human.”
    â€œHe brought Jupiter back to the village and put him on display in a cage made of branches lashed with lanyards.”
    â€œEach of the townspeople paid a silver coin to see him; covered from top to toe with a reddish brown fuzz, cranium like a cathedral, thumbs on his feet, and jutting jaw,” she said, staring at the wall as if the cage was there and she was seeing him. She shook her head sadly.
    â€œFor a time he was a renowned attraction and many came to view him,” I added.
    Maylee sighed. “And then like everything—for some, even life itself—the sense of wonder wore off.”
    â€œFergus spent so much time with the wild boy that he came to realize the boy was more human than ape, and the lad learned to read and write and speak perfectly.”
    â€œHe was no longer confined to the cage,” she said, as if reading from a book, “but went about in human clothes, helping the aged hunter, now wracked with arthritis, get through his days.”
    â€œActually,” I said, as if setting her straight, “this Jupiter, this beast boy, was quite a prodigy. Fergus taught him to carve wood with a knife, and the hairy apprentice created a likeness of his master, his father, from a log of oak that stood six feet tall and perfectly mirrored the hunter.”
    Maylee did not immediately reply, and for a moment, I feared she had lost the thread of events, until she finally blurted out, “Then Jupiter grew, tall and strong—”
    â€œLike this,” I said, and not even knowing what I was about, stood up as if carved from words and animated only by the story. I thrust my chest out and flexed my biceps. My bottom jaw pushed forward and, furrowing my brow, I bent my knees slightly and took slow, big steps in a circle.
    â€œThat’s him,” she said. “But then Fergus died.”
    I felt the air leave me as if I’d been punched in the stomach, and, retaining my simulation of Jupiter, I hung my head and slouched forward. “And the boy was set adrift in an alien world,” I said.
    â€œYour eyes,” said Maylee.
    I could feel the tears on my cheeks. “Time passed,” I said, and, with this, sat down and lit two cigarettes, passing one to my guest. We smoked in silence, time passing, but I felt the persistence of the tale like a slight pressure behind my eyes, in my solar plexus. The tea had me in its fog. The light from the lamps appeared unnaturally diffuse, and I heard, whisper soft, traces of a children’s choir emanating from my ears. Still, one small part of me clung to reason, and in that thimble of rational self, I trembled with wonder and fear at what was happening.
    Maylee stubbed out her cigarette and said, “After Jupiter buried Fergus, he set about making the bottom floor of the old man’s home into a shop from which to sell his remarkable carvings.”
    Her words again