Jennifer tensed. “I really have no idea.”
“All right,” Margaret said. She leaned her head back against her chair and closed her eyes. “I’m tired now.” She said this like she was dismissing Jennifer under a cloud of disappointment, a student who hasn’t lived up to her promise, or won’t. Refuses to.
Should Jennifer call what she feels uneasiness? Or is it actually something approaching dread? She was hoping Margaret didn’t notice. Carrasco. But maybe she did. Let’s imagine the worst: Margaret went to the library, armed with that name, and looked her up. Information poured forth like gold treasure from behind a secret door. Now Margaret knows everything. Every fact except the one that matters most.
Outside her window Jennifer can see trees in the foreground, the color of charcoal except where the green moss is on them, their stolid trunks thinning into branches, thinning into delicate graceful twigs, opening like hands to grasp the sky. Never in her life has she paid so much attention to trees. Beyond these are vague and smudgy trees, as in a watercolor painting, and beyond them nothing. There is just nothing there. Impossible not to see magic in this, the gray mist that disappeared the world. She can’t stop looking at it.
Milo appears beside her at the window, putting his palm on the glass. “Can we touch it?” he asks.
“We can go out there. But I think it’ll just feel damp.”
“What’s damp?”
“A little bit wet.”
“I think it will feel like a cloud,” he declares.
“What do you think a cloud feels like?”
He appraises her, catching on. “It doesn’t feel like it looks.”
“I think you’re right.”
“So what does it feel like?”
“What do you think?”
He considers, then abandons consideration. “Cows.” He giggles.
“Cows?” she asks with amusement.
“Cows!” He laughs, enormously pleased with himself. “It feels like cows!”
“All right, silly,” Jennifer says. “Let’s go test that theory.”
Outside the fog moves with them, so that as they approach an object it resolves before them into clear solidity, while beyond it obscurity reigns. They’re enclosed, as in a spell of protection. “It’s mystical,” she says.
“What’s mystical?”
“A little like magical, but different. Magical is bright and sparkly. Mystical is . . . strange.”
Milo reaches out his hand cautiously, as if the air might bite him. “I feel it,” he says.
“What do you feel?”
“Cows!” he says, and looks at her hoping for a laugh.
“No, really,” she says. “What does it feel like?”
“Damp,” he says. Then he looks at her in earnest confusion. “Why doesn’t my hand disappear?”
“Well, you can’t disappear to yourself.”
“Why?”
She shrugs. “The fog is never right where you’re standing. Not to you, anyway. It would be to someone looking at you from far away.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Magic.”
He doesn’t say, Mo-om, a reproving singsong, like he normally does when she offers this explanation. He frowns like he’s taking it seriously. “So I could disappear to you.”
“You could,” she says. “But please don’t.”
He dances away with a mischievous expression, daring her. She stays very still because if she gives chase he’ll definitely run. “Don’t,” she says. She feels a flicker of fear.
He utters a whooping laugh and takes off.
“Milo!” she shouts, running after. She could catch him easily, except that she trips on a tree root and stumbles, and once she’s straightened up he’s gone. Oh God. He’s gone. She listens with terror for the sound of a splash or a scream. But he’ll see the pond if he comes upon it. Just because she can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s actually been swallowed by the fog.
“Milo?” she calls. She moves slowly, listening. He’s doing a remarkably good job of keeping still. Not a crackling twig. Not a giggle. The fog parts for her as she approaches but doesn’t reveal her son. Trees and rocks she can have, but him it keeps. “You did it, Milo,” she calls, trying not to sound terrified. “You disappeared.”
Now she hears a giggle. From Milo, or the changeling sent to replace him as the fairies carry him away? She walks in what she thinks is the direction of the giggle. “Milo? Please come out now. Really, Milo. I don’t like it. It’s not safe out here.”