"We walk from here,” said Roo, studying a travel-stained typed paper she had carried from the States, her directions; they'd come to her from an entomologist, an old friend or boyfriend, Pierce gathered, who with a dozen other researchers from around the world lived and worked here too, as though in Eden, naming the animals: bugs in particular, of which there were countless kinds. He'd invited Roo; Pierce didn't know if he had also been expected. There were scorpions around too, Roo said; scorpions galore.

"This way saves a lot of time,” she said. “The bus goes all the way around the mountain. We can go straight up. There's a path—see?"

They weren't the only ones setting out on it, there were mothers with bundles and children and a man with a machete slung at his waist in a worked leather scabbard, like a knight's sword. Pierce lifted the backpack, slung it over his shoulders as she'd shown him, and pulled the waistband tight. That was the secret, she'd said. You can carry a lot of weight, if you balance it right.

A lot of weight. Almost immediately sweat tickled on his brow. The path wound upward, and one by one those who walked with them came to their houses, small farms and cabins, and waved farewell. Roo asked the way, said the name of the dairy and the research station, and they nodded and pointed ahead. The path entered the forest and narrowed, as though making up its mind what it must do, and then decided to ascend straight upward, seeming to disappear. Take small steps, she called back to Pierce. You don't have to lope, she said. You don't have to stride. Just make a little progress, a little steady progress.

And they came at length over a crest, and into green meadows, right amid the clouds: clouds actually stood on the next higher crest, and the next crest beyond that couldn't be seen at all under its broad hat of white. Black and white cows lifted their heads to see them, and one by one returned to cropping the emerald grasses. A flight of parakeets occurred, red and yellow. A tall, vanishingly thin man was walking toward them, white shirt ballooning, gibbon's arm raised in welcome, what a coincidence.

They three walked together, Roo and her friend in reminiscence. To Pierce it seemed not like visiting the tropics but like returning to the land his fairy ancestors had come from. The lowing cows, belled and horned, were called home at evening, winding slowly o'er the lea. Little lanes led through the dewy grass and along the tangled hedges from house to house, and from their open Dutch doors he and Roo would be hailed in cheerful English, but rainbows, single, double, triple, came and went continually over the breasted fields as the big clouds and their small children passed over just above their heads, and warm showers wet their faces for a moment. Underfoot grew a million small flowers in candy colors, just like the flowers that color the edges of the forest floor in woodland cartoons—they were called, Roo said, impatience.

Why impatience? She didn't know. They seemed patient enough to him; the whole place seemed imbued with a holy patience, the brindled cows at evening, the changeless weather—there weren't even silos, because the green sprang yearlong. But at night Roo's weedy entomologist friend—Pierce's too already, unjealous as a saint or a house pet—hung a white sheet on his cabin wall, and shone a black light on it, and from the surrounding night there came will-lessly in the things he studied, in all their multitudes: bugs just like twigs a half a foot long, great beetles like warhorses caparisoned in heraldry, tiny sparks and atomies, moths with trailing raiment green and gold. He told them about the army ants that, on a biological cycle not yet understood, would appear suddenly in billions on the horizon and march like an army of Wallenstein's through fields, through houses even, eating everything in their unswerving path—meats, clothes, green lizards, unfortunate infants; then gone till next time. And he told them to shake out their shoes in the morning.

"Because of the scorpions,” said Roo.

They walked up higher, toward the cloudy-headed heights; they sat in a glade—he hadn't before ever found himself in a glade, he didn't think, but here was one for sure—on a fallen log and listened to the insects seethe. Royal blue butterflies of impossible luster visited Oz like blooms, stamen and pistil, comically obscene.

"It's real,” Roo said. “It's all real."

"It is."

As they held hands and looked around themselves like the First Boy and Girl, a pair of slow mammals appeared from out of the forest, cat sized, great eyed, with tall tails erect, a boy and a girl, maybe; what were they called? Coatimundi, Pierce remembered or imagined.

"So do you ever,” Roo in time said, “really think about kids?"

"In what respect?"

"Well, for instance. Having kids. Being a parent."

"You think about that?"

"Yes."

"It's something you want."

She didn't answer; it wasn't a question; hers to him remained in the air unanswered.

"Well,” he said. “I have a son."

She didn't say anything for a time, neither did she move, though she removed her hand from his. “You have a son?"

"I had one. Not a real one. An imaginary son."

Nothing.

"His name,” Pierce said, looking down or out but not at her, “was Robbie."

"Robbie."

"Yes."

He knew that he was about to tell her that Robbie, who had not long ago been more real to him than almost every corporeal person he knew, was only twelve, or maybe thirteen, though big for his age in some respects, and of all that happened between them and after. It was as though he could see himself from afar sitting there beside Roo on the fallen log, as though he were at once the poor stupid mortal he in fact was and at the same time a laughing god watching him, watching him dig himself deeper. He told her. It took a while.

"Oh my God that is so strange,” she said softly. She had raised her hand to her mouth, as though she saw a wound she hadn't known he bore. “That is so creepy."

He took his own hand, looked at his feet.

"And you just made him up? Just like that?"

He couldn't say that he had made him up, because it was so clear to him that Robbie had arrived, unsummoned; wished for, yes, though not in such a form, not foreseen or imaginable even. Would he have to say Yes I made him up in order for him to be able to pass away and not have been? He tried to think of a way to say that it hadn't really been his idea, somehow; that yes he had welcomed Robbie and elaborated his presence—added facts and flesh and a gaze to him, whatever he was—had been glad, so glad he'd come; but that still he hadn't thought him up, had only and suddenly found him to be there, complete, as though on his doorstep. Which he knew mitigated nothing.

"It seemed,” he said, “to solve a problem. That's what it felt like. It solved a problem, at last. I was glad."

"But the stuff you did.” She swallowed. “I mean are you, is that something you."

"No,” he said. “I never did. Never before. Not even when I was a kid. Never. I never even thought of it.” He said nothing more for a long time, and she said nothing, only looked at the forest floor, the beasts and bugs.

"I don't know,” he said at last, “where he came from. I really don't. I don't know why."

"Was it,” Roo said carefully, as though afraid to guess wrong, “like a dream? Like dreaming? Or like pretending?"

"I,” said Pierce. It was like dreaming in being given, and unchosen; not like a dream in its willfulness. “Like sort of a dream."

"Well.” She touched his arm, and then in a moment withdrew her hand again, as though she found him too hot. “You know how they say everyone in a dream, all the people, are you. You yourself turned around, or put outside of you for you to see."