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out into something that sounded like what he had learned the Air people called a song, and even the child—who must have been a boy, because he was wearing pants—seemed to follow along. How did that boy know what the words were? The beat and time that went with the words? How did he know the up-and-down sounds of the melody? Sephiri listened to them make the sounds together in the driveway. Then he watched the three of them disappear inside their house. Into a place behind a door that he knew nothing about. What world was it that they were going to? What worlds were there beyond this one and the Obsidians? He didn’t know.
    So it was the mysterious nature of things that enticed Sephiri to get up and walk deeper into the soundless sightless jungle of black, into the place of darkness with the faraway sliver of light that lived in the coat closet. The dark path seemed to lengthen with every step, but the remote shaft of light beckoned him. He had come too far to give up now. His fear had long since dissipated, and he was curious about what he would find. But as the hours passed, Sephiri’s legs grew tired. He began to long for the ease with which he could move under the sea, how he could float effortlessly, how he could glide through the water to get where he wanted. Here, it was as if the farther he walked, the farther away the sliver of light seemed to be.
    Fatigue washed over Sephiri, and his eyes drooped. He grew impatient with the endless, unchanging plain of darkness and the slice of light that wasn’t getting any nearer. His legs were rubbery with exhaustion, and he felt he couldn’t go any farther. “I’ll just have a rest here,” he said to himself, sitting down on the field of black. His eyes were heavy, but he could still see the thin line of light far beyond the miles of nothingness. His feet were aching, and he was yawning deeply. And just before he drifted off, he thought he heard that same voice from before. But in his drowsiness, he couldn’t tell if it was from the blade of light or inside his head. “I’m coming,” he mumbled, and fell fast asleep.

Meetings
    B renda stood outside the brick-faced Takoma Park Autism Center, shivering in the morning mist. Sephiri was at her feet, staring at what must have been something embedded in the concrete of the sidewalk. She had been anxious about the meeting with the speech pathology doctors all week, and now her stomach was turning. She took the morning off and cleared her schedule. Longtime coworkers knew of her situation and remained condescendingly silent. They knew her husband killed a retired police officer, that he went to prison, that she was raising a challenged child alone. She now regretted telling Manden that she would meet him at the entrance of the center. She did not like being in front of the brick façade, on display, feeling the eyes of people in cars passing by. Still, she had wanted to avoid the chance that Manden might see her waddling down the platform or struggling up a broken escalator if the elevator was out of service. It was an irrational fear, but she indulged it nonetheless. She also hated standing on empty subway platforms, on crowded elevators, at the entrances of places. She could have easily taken the Metro from the Petworth subway stop just a block away from her house and saved the trouble of time and gas, but she chose to sit in traffic instead. Besides, she was uncomfortable in crowds, in the gumbo of eyes and snickers at her weight.
    Or else, she was invisible. No one bothered to open doors for her when she was walking right behind them. No one offered a friendly smile when they met her eyes on the street. They saw, she reasoned, the largeness that framed her. They did not see her. She knew that she was not the only overweight person in the world, but standing alone sometimes made her feel as if she was. Her weight, which had moved in and taken over everything about who she used to