Shadows Out of Time

For a long time, still under some kind of spell, as if in a dream, Thomas groped around in the dark. He entered several rooms, some of them empty, some cluttered with furniture or piled high with boxes. The place was dry, with an old-wood smell, like old houses are expected to have. He had been expecting dampness, mud. If there were trees growing through the floor or roof anywhere, he did not find them.

He knocked his knuckles on the walls. Solid.

At first he was afraid he was trespassing, but then, after passing through dozens of rooms, still in absolute darkness, and aware that he was lost, there was nothing he could do but call out.

He heard his voice echoing, but the house only responded with subtle creaking, the way old houses do.

Hours seemed to pass and he was hungry and tired and scared. It was as if, in a dream, he had fallen into a deep pit, or a grave, and now he had awakened, not in his own bedroom, but in a strange place, still in the dream.

But he knew he was awake. Things were just too solid. He bruised himself painfully when he stumbled over a staircase in the dark. Feeling his way, crawling, he made his way to the top and rested there, sitting on the last step, leaning on the smooth floor above it, and he fell asleep — a dream within a dream within a dream, or maybe not — and it seemed to him that he had been carried off in the belly of a winged monster that only looked like a house when it was resting in the forest. It opened its eyes, and starlight flooded in. He saw two tall, arched windows (which had been eyes) and the night sky outside, and he watched the full moon rise, bright and huge and closer than he had ever seen it before, even though (through a recently developed interest in astronomy) he knew that the full moon was not due for another two weeks. (Thomas had a bit of his brother’s pedantic streak.)

Then someone put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Hello Thomas.”

He yelped, and jumped away from the window. This wasn’t a dream.

“Hello,” he said softly.

The other replied with the most unlikely announcement imaginable. “Welcome to Hell” or “You know you’re dead now, don’t you?” would have made sense, but, no, the other person merely said, “Come and get your breakfast. It’s ready.” He could only follow the other into the next room, where, indeed, a breakfast of bacon and eggs and juice had been laid out on a polished table. This room was dimly lit, by candles in holders along the walls.

He sat down at the table. He was able to see the person seated opposite him now, a man clad in a black robe, much younger and better groomed than the lunatic in the woods; but if they had been monks, they would have been of the same order. This one had jet black hair, as Thomas did, and a pointed beard, which of course Thomas did not.

“My name is Thomas also,” the other said. “Maybe you should call me Big Thomas to avoid confusion. You will be Small Thomas.” He smiled, but Small Thomas took little comfort in that.

“Am I being kidnapped?”

The other laughed softly. “You have a lot to learn. Eat your breakfast.”

He started eating, then paused again. “Then do I get to go home afterwards?”

Big Thomas did not answer. Instead he placed on the table one of the killing jars from Small Thomas’s knapsack. He held it up to the candlelight. Inside was a prize catch, which had been the highlight of the day before things got weird, a perfect specimen of a white underwing moth. The upper wings look exactly like white birch bark. The hind wings and underside, with their pattern of curving dark and light stripes, create a kaleidoscope effect to confuse predators. You only find these creatures in northern woods, in New England, and not in Philadelphia where Thomas was actually from.

He started to protest when Big Thomas opened the jar. Even from across the table there was a strong whiff of carbon tetrachloride, the killing agent, which the boys could get because their father was a chemist at DuPont. Big Thomas carefully removed the moth and held it in the palm of his hand. He didn’t breathe on the moth or say any magic words, but to Small Thomas’s amazement, it began to stir. Then it crawled to the tip of Big Thomas’s finger and vibrated its wings. He tossed it into the air, and the moth took off, soaring up, up among the dark rafters overhead.

“But, it was dead…” said Small Thomas.

The other held his hands about a foot apart. “Within a certain interval in time,” he said, “the moth was alive. Go before that interval”—he waved his left hand—“and it does not yet exist. After it”—he waved his right—“it is indeed dead. In between, it is alive. Move it back into that interval of living, and it is alive.”

“Was that…a miracle?”

“No, it is your lesson for today. Now finish your breakfast.”

III

And Little Thomas grew to be a man.