I doubt that the Mister was, or would ever have been capable of regretting the departure of Nicolas Baker. It was not in him.

But the rest of us? Well, count us a plurality of: yep.

I was ushered indoors during the aftermath of the resignation, and all of the children were shuttered into our room and locked securely within. Even Ashli was caught and penned in with us, though not before she’d done some bit of ruin to the kitchen at the height of her riot-in-solo.

We were now on the wrong side of midnight, too shook up to take abed and desperate for further news yet expecting none to be provided of us. My cousins Priscilla Hektor, Su-Hope Park, and Ursula Jeminee were up and awake from the racket, and making a whispering huddle with Ashli and I, sat together on the floor rug in a loose circle.

“And who is Nick again?” Su-Hope interrupted. She distractedly flopped a felted blue elephant doll against her knees.

“He was the man with the guitar,” I reminded her, feeling a pinch of hurt on his behalf.

“He plays music for us at the Crist-o-mas,” Ursula added primly. “And once for your birthday.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Su-Hope’s face made the act of memory look like effort. “That was Sinte Klauss and his elfen First Hand who was here.”

Ursula and I shared a look, and held our tongues. We tried to include Ashli in our silent little conspiracy, but she was busy on her ruminating and would not engage with us.

An anger like spent coals is the exhausted choler: all the same heat, just lingering, but none left of that ephemeral substance which allows it to reignite. The sage called it phlogiston, the scientist called it the hydro-carbon bond, and few living left were quite sure what it was become now.

So, Ashli chewed on a dried bit of chicory-root with her eyes on elsewhere. Then mechanically, she gathered her small sister into her lap to unbraid the child’s hair. Neither made a sound, as the elder tangled with scowls and the younger stared blankly while moving her mouth like a fish.

“He is left Ghost Perch’s enterprise then?” Ursula straightened her back to a discomfortable rigidness, which was to be understood as a rebuke of the rest of us for our posture.

I breathed out from my nose. “Sit up, Su-Hope,” I instructed as I reluctantly corrected my own uprightness. “We have yet to hear the outcome. I struggle to imagine though, the path which might reconcile us to him.”

A shadow passed over Ursula’s face. “I think I do not much prefer a house without music at-all.”

I did not like to be despaired of that, resolving I might set my fingers to an instrument myself if I had to. We passed the next moments stealing glances of concern at our straw-headed cousin until her cracked voice raised.

“I haven’t got a clue where I’m gonna get cigarettes from now,” she chuckled croakily. Then she narrowed her eyes threateningly and pointed at the three of us awake and capable of language. “Don’t smoke. It’s bad for you,” she hypocracied.

Though I am sure we would have been right to embrace and comfort our dear winter coyote, I was not possessed of the self-assurance to bridge the divide. Priscilla, who she clutched like a doll, was the best of the reassurrance she was granted.

We were saved from our gloom by the brass-metal operation of the lock, and the door spilled lamp-light into our room as it swung inward.

Momma stood watching us, and then knocked gently on the doorframe. “I said you’d be up,” she sighed. “May I come in?”

Only Ashli would have refused her, but she was plum empty of fight and instead turned her face away with shame.

“Auntie Osbie!” Su-Hope welcomed Momma.

“Ms Z,” murmured Ashli.

“You know, I’m going to be depending on you all tomorrow,” Momma began. She made as if to join us in our circle, but I would not have it (in consideration of her knees, and the general respect one should have of a lady) so I leapt to fetch our little table and offered it for her seat.

Momma rolled her eyes at me and squeezed my arm, but took the offered place anyway. I set her lantern into a cleared space on the bookshelves and claimed a new spot cross-legged, away from her and next to Ashli.

“We will all need to be on our very best behavior,” Momma instructed. “I know you are all so very brave, and well behaved. Us grown-ups rely on your smiles and your composure.” Her smile wavered. “Especially after we’ve had a little argument, we cannot be upsetting people further.”

“Did Mister go after Nick?” I asked, my mouth dried up.

Momma was quick to correct my worry. “Oh, no. No. We all felt it would be… unproductive for the discussion to continue. Auntie Vaunda was kind enough to speak with the Mister, and temper his concerns.”

We were relieved by this. It was a known thing that Auntie Vaunda was capable of an almost miraculous reversal of the Mister’s worst moods.

“Rahit is off to handle Hand Baker,” Momma assured us of our First Hand. “If there is a relationship to be salvaged, he’ll…”

She paused.

“It did not occur to me that some of our men are so keenly valued.”

Detecting the nature of her question, I nodded. “Maynard and Fat Mike seem to hold similar positions of respect amongst our men. Though I only knew why Maynard held our trust until… well, today. If it’s a matter of their blessings, It might be my guess that Mike is carrying one too.”

I cringed as my cousin hissed through her teeth. Might she have felt I was betraying the Hands’ confidence with my counsel?

Ignoring Ashli, Momma nodded. “Hm,” she affirmed. She folded her fingers and wrung her hands together. “Well. Since we’re here, what can I do to help you all get yourselves to bed?”

---

Here I must again make some allowance to abandon historiography to fit our needs for the continuity of narrative. I will spoil none of your expectations to inform you that we were still children, and that children would request a story for their bedtime. The complication here is simply that Momma’s account was a story told in parts, and over many weeks, and sometimes out of order.

Instead, you are better served if we were to stitch them together into a single and coherent sequence. But I should and must relay her story to you, taking liberties in the assembly of its sessions into one whole. It is necessary because it is my Mother’s own biography, and because it represented my first coherent and complete account of the end of the world.

--- Osbergh Zugravescu ---

“Well, for a long time we asked ourselves questions like: when did it start, and could we have known, and should we have known, and sometimes when we were sour we asked whose fault it was; as if the Vaders might pack up and go home if we’d just have rounded up some fusty crooked government man from the old world and spanked him properly into action.

Now, I don’t promise to know for sure, but personally, I mark the beginning of this story on the day when China blew a big gaping hole in the moon.