Ted has set his island on the floor next to Callie’s, and the two of them kneel in front of their creations. Stan and I take a few steps toward them. Dave and Mimi hang back by the door, and I’m grateful to them for knowing that this is a time to give us some space. Mark’s long gone and I don’t much blame him, and so I just text him thank you thank you thank you.
We stand there, Stan and I, watching our siblings moving their hands over these mountains and plateaus. Their hands tremble in time with and over their trembling fields, the bit that seems to shake and bloom so gracefully on Callie’s island, kind of violently on Ted’s. Their hands move closer together, until they’re almost touching but not quite, and I look down again and stare at the small mountain ranges, the long expanses broken up by cracks and tears in the sticks and grass, by shallow dips that look like riverbeds long dry and frosted over. There’s a ridge ringing a field and around it what could be a stretch of trees with low branches. I look over at Ted’s, and there’s the same ridge ringing this shuddering expanse. His is this thin, thin, thin layer of paper that seems to shudder and shake with every molecule of air that moves around it, while Callie’s is almost . . . dancing, and I can’t figure out how. Ted’s trees are actually Popsicle sticks and pens and pencils stuck in hard with some paper on top like a canopy, whereas Callie’s are also sticks, but the canopy is woven, and some of the sticks are split up and splintering off into branches. But still. It’s the same place. And that trembling expanse, with small flowers almost poking through on Callie’s . . .
Oh my God. Dad’s story.
They’re building their home.
They’re building their memory of home.
“Stan,” I whisper without knowing why. “Everyone. Can you help us get these guys back in the house? I think I might know what’s going on. Or at least part of what’s going on. And Stan and I have some stuff to talk about.”
“What kind of stuff?” Dave asks. I can tell he’s wary of Stan, and I don’t have time for his wariness right now, because my sister has just built a smart-car-sized memory of the place where she was born out of grass and sticks, and Stan’s brother did the same thing but with paper and spit as well as sticks, and Dave, the major thing you have going for you is that you’re so understanding, so how are you not getting that this is all that matters to me right now?
But I don’t say that. What I do say is “The fact that our Arctic-born siblings just made these models, simultaneously, despite being totally isolated from each other.”
“Yeah, okay,” he says, but not without giving Stan one more warning look, and then everyone helps shepherd our siblings and their sculptures back into the house.
Dave, Stan, and I sit in the kitchen, while Mimi flits around trying to find some food for Ted and Callie. Ted and Callie are sitting down and basically just staring at each other, raising their hands one at a time, like they’re trying to figure out a math problem using sign language.
“Okay, Stan,” I say. “What do we do?”
“What do you mean?” says Stan.
“Uh,” I say and gesture first toward the greenhouse and then at Ted and Callie. “You know, the whole ‘Our Icelings built, at the same moment, in two different places, incredibly intricate replicas out of whatever materials were handy of what is almost definitely an Arctic island, which strangely seems to replicate what little we know about the one where they were abandoned’ thing? That’s more or less what I’m referring to when I ask you what we should do next.”
“Are you asking whether or not we should report it to Jane?” Stan asks.
“Well,” I say. “Does a situation like this really warrant reporting?”
“Good point. They don’t appear to be in distress,” Stan says.
“They’re not showing any symptoms normally associated with fits or . . .”
“Conniptions?” Across the counter, Dave says the word he knows I refuse to say, and he winks at me, and it’s cute, but I get these shuddering chills anyway.
“Nope,” says Stan, “I definitely don’t see any fits coming on. Their eyes aren’t rolling up into their heads.”
“No arms or other limbs flailing about,” I say.
“They’re being supervised by those responsible for them.”
“I think we’ve exhausted the list of report-worthy criteria and can conclude that this isn’t anything we need to bother Jane with.”
“Unless there’s some ‘Weird, Spontaneous Art Projects and the Dangers They Pose to Your Orphan’ pamphlet that I missed, I’d say we were in the clear,” Stan says.
“I have seen no such pamphlet, and as such I definitely agree,” I say.
“So then what?” Dave says, leaning on the counter between us now. I turn to him and give him a look that’s more accusatory than I meant. “What? Don’t give me that look. I care about Callie. And I obviously care about you, and you care about Callie more than anyone. And what happened—what’s happening—tonight is crazy and basically unprecedented. In that it’s unprecedented. So what are you all going to do about it?”
“Dave’s right,” I say. “All of this is too weird to be just a coincidence.”
“I agree,” says Stan, and the way he says the words makes them feel heavy as hell.