I was in a large park not far out of town, and had just sat down with my journal to record the birds I‘d seen on the way there when a crow landed about twenty feet away. At first I thought it hadn’t seen me, so I sat still and watched. The crow sidled in my direction, tilting its head to one side and then the other, as if looking at things on the ground. As it got closer, I began to have misgivings (not nearly enough misgivings, as it turns out).

I started wondering, do crows get rabies? Do they attack you if you’re near their nest? Finally it stopped nine or ten feet away from me, cocked its head, and appeared to eye me coolly.

“Hi,” I said, hoping to scare it.

The crow made a sound that sounded suspiciously like “Hi” back, but I was sure it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. I put the cap back on my pen, put the pen in my journal, and closed the journal carefully. The crow stood there looking at me.

“So, what’s up?” I said, as my mind raced to the movie The Birds and other possible reasons why a wild crow might approach me. Didn’t they like shiny things? But I didn’t have any shiny things. Was I threatening its young? But there weren’t any young around, and I wasn’t even sure it was the right season.

Then the crow spoke. I couldn’t understand at first that it was speaking to me in English. When I did, it was a strange feeling, like the first time you see a picture appear in one of those Magic Eye things. The implications were rocking my subconscious mind.

“Greetings, earthling,” it said, “Take me to your leader.” Then it almost fell over laughing.

Since then, I’ve had time to get used to crow humor in general, and that crow’s sense of humor in particular, but I’ll never forget the effect that first joke had on me. It really pissed me off. I finally get a chance to converse with a non-human creature, I thought, and it turns out to be the same kind of wise guy I’ve had to deal with all my life. Cut me a break!

I calmed down, reminding myself that it was a momentous moment. “Hello, “I said again. “May I ask what you want?”

“The pleasure of this dance,” the crow said. “Or, better yet, got a cigarette?” It looked me right in the eye and, I swear, it grinned.

“Look,” I said, “I came here to enjoy the beauty of nature and to record my observations of the season. The birds I came to see do not include a wise-ass crow, talking or not.” Even to me, my level of irritation seemed unwarranted. I wish I could go back now and tell myself it wasn’t. And maybe give myself a large, heavy club.

“Hey! Like, what’s with the ‘tude, man?” the crow said, strutting toward me in a clear imitation of adolescent challenge. “You call yourself a bird watcher, nature lover? Where’s the childlike wonder, where’s the love of Mother Earth’s children? C’mon . . . Get a grip, honey!” At the words get a grip, the crow’s voice went into falsetto, and it turned around and shook its tail feathers at me. Who was this guy anyway?

I took a deep breath, and put my journal down. “Is there something I can help you with?” I asked.

“I can say with some confidence,” the crow replied, “that there is nothing with which you can help me. However, it may not be too late for me to help you.”

Precognitive parts of my brain were desperately attempting to signal me, but I plunged on. “Too late? What do you mean? What could you help me with?”

He grinned, or something. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “How lame is your life?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Somehow, I have a feeling that our opinions are going to differ on this.”

“Oh, and do ya now, begorrah?” he said in what was probably meant to be an Irish accent. “Bless and save us, why would you ever be thinkin’ the likes of that, now?” He kicked up his feet in an approximation of an Irish jig, and then one of his legs gave out and he all but toppled over. He winked, and pretended to hobble around. “I’m afraid it’s pretty lame,” he said.

I tried to formulate an argument, but off-hand I couldn’t come up with much evidence to offer a wise-guy crow to convince him that my life was worthwhile. There wasn’t much to convince me. But that was none of his business.

“And how do you think you could help that?” I asked. “Are you going to introduce me to the delights of day old roadkill? Teach me the Zen of owl-mobbing? Have you, in your bounteous mercy chosen me to be the first human to reach crow enlightenment?”

“Maybe, maybe,” he said blinking his eyes and nodding his head in mock sagacity. “I picked you out of thousands. I didn’t like the others, they were all too flat.”

I recognized that line from a famous comedy bit. “Listen,” I said, “crows don’t watch Monty Python, or speak in fake Irish accents, or know clichés about aliens. How do you know all these, um, more or less cultural references?”

“From TV!” he said, spreading his wings wide. “I’ve been watching it for months, studying to meet you.” He leaned forward as if sharing a confidence. “You know, you guys are into some weird stuff.”

“Hey, don’t blame me. I don’t watch it,” I lied. “But why would you be studying? What’s going on?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said. “Look over there.”

Two things happened at once. At a motion of one of his wings, a building appeared, with a wooden door covered with elaborate carvings of vines, birds, serpents and stars. At the same moment, another crow appeared out of nowhere.

“Wait,” it said to the first crow, “We should both be here. I don’t want to miss the fun. It turned to me. “Hello.” it said, “my name is Corbett. I am to help and keep an eye on Bartholomew. I’m very pleased to meet you.” Corbett bowed politely and ignored his companion’s snicker.

The first crow parodied Corbett’s bow. “Just call me Bart,” he said, “Black Bart.”

“Pleased to meet you, Corbett,” I said, “My name is Icarus. It is an honor to speak with crows, perhaps some more than others. And now I am curious to learn what’s behind that door over there.”

“That door there,” asked Corbett, opening his eyes very wide. “How about this door here?”

He moved his wing toward the building and it changed into a small version of the Taj Mahal, with a door slightly open. Before I could take a step toward it, Bartholomew cried out, “Or this door here!” and motioned toward it, changing it into what looked like a Hollywood movie studio with a big, glitzy sign above the door.

I yelled “Wait!” but there was no stopping them. Corbett kept changing it into places like the Dalai Lama’s palace at Llasa, one of the Mayan pyramids at Tula, or the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, and Bart kept changing it back into American cultural icons like the Indianapolis Speedway, Disney World, and Graceland. It finally stopped when Bartholomew interrupted Corbett’s creation of a scale model of the Rouen Cathedral and turned it into a huge fiberglass walk-in ice cream cone with a huge fiberglass licking tongue at the top.

“Where did you get that?” Corbett said, incredulous.

“I don’t know. I think I made it up!” Bartholomew answered. They looked at each other and fell on the ground laughing. I covered my eyes. This was too much.

When they had pretty much recovered, I said, “Hey, this is park land. Aren’t you afraid of causing permanent damage and attracting a lot of attention?”

“No,” said Corbett, still suffering small spasms of mirth. “We do it all by messing with your cerebral cortex. Only you perceive it. Saves moving all that matter around.”

“Not that there is such a thing as matter,” Bartholomew said. “But let‘s save that for later. For now, think of it as induced dreaming.”

“You mean I’m seeing things that aren’t there?” I said. My mind had not only entered unfamiliar waters. It was thrashing around in the deep end. “Does this mean I’m going crazy?”

They exchanged a look, and I thought they were going to crack up again. But Bartholomew kept a straight . . . beak, and said, “Wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. Sanity is not a human strong point.”

“Fear not. All is well,” Corbett said liltingly. “Now, let’s enter the Devastating Dairy Delight, shall we?”

The monstrous cone still stood before us, like something you’d see along a New Jersey highway in hell. (I’m sure there are some.) Reluctance locked my feet. I wasn’t sure what to expect if I walked through the door, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be a sundae.

“Look,” I said, “I’m not going in there. Find someone else. I have chores to do.”

“Yeah, well so do we,” Bartholomew said. “And this is it.”

Corbett shook his head at Bartholomew. “That’s O.K.” he said. “We can let him go. Here, let’s get rid of this.” He motioned toward the ice cream cone and it was gone. “Go ahead. Maybe we’re asking too much.”

I put my journal in my backpack. I felt shaky and disoriented. “See ya,” I said weakly to the crows. They nodded solemnly, watching me. I left. To go home I had to walk over the ground where the strange buildings had been only moments before. And when I reached the point where they had been, everything went black.

I wish I could have shown up there under other circumstances. The place was idyllic, and if you don’t know what idyllic means, it’s worth looking it up to get the idea. Hills curved green and graceful on every side. Birds flew in pleasing arcs or sang from the branches of glittering trees. Flowers of many forms and colors bloomed all around, their fragrances (yes, I’m afraid it’s the only verb that works) wafting on the soft breezes, and everything was infused with light of a sort that implied something profound, though I couldn’t say what. Brought there young and without extreme aggravation, I would probably have fallen to my knees in gratitude and delight.

Corbett and Bartholomew have since assured me, however, that I arrived at exactly the right time and in exactly the right mood so that what needed to happen happened. Reverence and wonder were not meant to be part of the formula. And from their perspective, they certainly would have decreased my entertainment value.

As soon as my eyes focused I began to yell “Where am I? What the hell? ”

The two crows flew to me out of nowhere, or out of where we’d been a moment before. “Definitely not hell,” Bartholomew said cheerily. “Bad guess. Try again.” He winked.

Before I could answer, something started moving, something that I thought was a tree. But it wasn’t moving like any tree I’d ever seen. It moved like a person, more or less, and I realized I was looking at an ent! Well, O.K, a sort of small and effeminate ent, but still . . . It was close enough so that even through my anger I thought, “Hey, cool!”

A sound came from it like a high-pitched clearing of a throat, which was, in fact, what it was. “Ahem!” Corbett and Bartholomew jumped and fluttered.

“Here’s someone for you to meet . . .” Bartholomew started.

“I’d like to introduce you to . . .” Corbett said. Their sentences collided and stopped.

“Transome,” Corbett concluded solemnly, “a tree entity.”

“As if you couldn’t tell,” Bartholomew whispered, and rolled his eyes.

“Shut up,” cooed Corbett.

Transome nodded at Corbett, and turned to me. He was about eleven feet tall, the top two or three feet being leafy branches. His/her/its skin was smooth over the face and torso, rougher over the extremities. It (I’ll use ‘he.’ It’s just easier.) nodded at me and seemed to take great pleasure in showing me how deeply he could bow. Then he stood straight, lifted his gnarled hands in delight and said, “Fabulous! This is absolutely fabulous!”

He leaned back a little and took a good look, swaying from side to side. He turned to the crows—would it be in bad taste to say he beamed?—then turned back to me and said, “Words cannot describe how pleased I am to meet you at last!”[1]

The hand he extended for me to shake felt cool and hard. “Pleased to meet you,” I answered. “Excuse me if I’m a bit overwhelmed.”

“Of course, of course!” he said, sympathetic to an almost pathological degree. “How terribly shocking for you all this must be! I completely understand, poor girl!”

“It’s a male,” Bartholomew whispered, not forgetting to shoot a grin my way.

“Oh, no!” Now he was mortified, mortified beyond any mortification you could imagine. “I beg you to forgive me. How unthinkably gauche! I’m just hopeless at telling when flowers aren‘t involved!”

He stared fixedly at my crotch until I became uneasy. “It’s O.K.,” I said. “The whole species barrier and all . . .”

“You see, in my family we all have both,” he said in a slightly more confidential voice. “I can’t imagine having to be one or the other.” He stopped, but then clearly felt that further explanation was needed. “Of course, we don’t self-pollinate, no matter what some people say!”

“How nice for you,” I said, not sure of the correct response.

Strangely, I felt instantly at home with this being, having known men and women who were much like this. I’d found that in most cases the effusive and seemingly frivolous manner disguised a cool and efficient mind, and often a remarkable ability to organize people, create amazing things, and, most usefully, write successful grants.

These were the people, dismissed as hopeless in high school, who returned to the class reunion years later, embracing former classmates, telling us we look marvelous, and amusing all of us with stories of what Philip Glass and Maya Angelou were really like at dinner parties.[2] Movers and shakers.

A shadow of concern passed over Transome‘s face, presumably as he reran his own last speech in his head. “I don’t mean to disrespect the single-gendered, of course,” he said hastily. “I mean, some of my best friends are single-gendered! Well, not that kind of friends, naturally, but I mean . . .”

I’m not sure how long he might have gone on in this vein, but at this point Corbett cleared his throat, and Transome seemed to pull himself together. “As you might guess,” he said, a bit more somberly, “we have you here for a Reason.”

“I was hoping,” I said. My fascination with Transome had, for the moment, derailed my anger. “And that is?”

“Tying up loose ends,” he said. “As I’m sure you know, this venue is winding down, running time is almost up, and, well, this little experiment didn’t pan out.”

“And by ‘this little experiment’ you mean . . . ?” I said. I was suddenly uneasy, not just because I had met talking crows, watched them create strange edifices in the park, been transported who knows where or how, and was now conversing with a talking tree. Well, maybe that was a lot of it, but when he said the words winding down, and time is almost up, my stomach twisted.

“This world,” Corbett said. “What for you might be called this mundane plane of existence.”

“I see,” I said, “And we know this how?”

“We know it because we can see time running out,” Transome said, “but I thought you would have heard the Mayan prophecies.”

“Not really,” I said, “didn’t some Aztec end day come and go a couple of decades ago? How much stock can you put in that stuff?”

“The Aztecs,” Transome said with a sigh. “Time was not their forte. The Mayans, however, were the masters of time. By their methods they could see the end from where they stood, and they wrote it down. It will come in December of 2012. But there are problems. Things aren‘t . . . ready.”

“Loose ends,” I said.

“Exactly,” he answered. “And unfortunately, a human is required to tie them up, so to speak. So we‘ve chosen you.”

“Why me?” I asked, echoing the cry of victims of the heroic quest genre down through the centuries.

“You volunteered,” Bartholomew said, in a tone dessert lovers reserve for the words ‘chocolate decadence’.

“No, I didn’t,” I assured him.

Corbett shrugged. “It was a pre-birth thing,” he said.

I let it drop. “Aren’t there any others?” I asked.

“Just you for now,” Transome said. “Auxiliaries to be called if needed.”

“And you may find,” said Corbett, “that one or two people who have this figured out or who are naturally drawn to it will show up to help.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Retrieve energies from around the world, in places where man and the earth joined hearts and wills, and bring those energies together to jumpstart the end times,” Transome said. “Isn’t it exciting?”

“Look,” I said, “maybe you’ve mistaken me for Harrison Ford.”

Transome looked puzzled, but Bartholomew was delighted.

“Or Elijah Wood!” he said.

“Or Odysseus,” said Corbett, joining in some of the spirit of the thing.

“Keanu Reeves!” Bartholomew added.

“Or Hanuman,” Corbett offered.

“Sarah Michelle Gellar!” Bartholomew said.

They seemed ready to continue indefinitely, but Transome reeled them in once he‘d gotten the gist of my comment. “Well,” he said loudly, and paused, choosing words carefully. “We are not expecting you to be, shall we say, the master mind, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Bartholomew gave a snort of suppressed laughter and Transome stared him down. I saw another tree being appear some way off and get Transome‘s attention. He gave a quick nod and turned back to us.

“You will be given small tasks some of which may seem incomprehensible to you but that will move us toward the ultimate goal,” he said.

“How will I be given these assignments?” I asked. I could see he was finishing up with us in order to get to his next business, but I still had a million questions.

“Since you seem to have established a comfortable rapport with these two, I see no reason not to have them guide you through the effort,” he said, with a business-like smile and a nod that caused his leaves to swish noisily.

Corbett gave an at-your-service kind of bow, while Bartholomew jumped and then preened in anticipation of much joy to come.

“You will work closely with them,” Transome continued. “They may appear to you at any time. Now, pleased to have met you, I’m afraid I must go.”

“And if I have problems?” I asked, desperate.

“If you have problems, you may take them up with Corbett and Bartholomew,” he said, beginning to walk away. (Would it be in bad taste to say he lumbered off? Sashayed would probably be more accurate anyway.)

“But what if my problems are with them?” I called hurriedly. But he was gone. They were all gone.

[1] You may find the amount of italics annoying or even alarming, but it would be impossible to quote Transome accurately had italics and exclamation points not been invented.

[2] Dinner parties that, if one asks enough questions, turn out to have been thrown by someone rich and famous in honor of this classmate’s latest success. “But how tedious,” they’ll say, really meaning it. “I’d rather hear what you’ve been doing all these years back in the old home town!”

It seemed ridiculous and alarming even to be wondering who did what. I must have walked home and done anything that had been done, right?

But the crows were the malware in the computer of my rationality. The things I vaguely wondered that day about my jeans and my dishes I now wonder about everything all the time. And this was the first incident, so I was on edge.

The other alarming thing was, I discovered when I turned on the radio that it was Monday morning. What had happened to the rest of my Sunday? It was a good thing I wakened early. I had to get to work.

I went through my routine and got ready. But as I went to leave, there was Bartholomew on the bookshelves by the door.

“Good morning!” he said. I felt for a moment as if every molecule of air had been pushed out of my lungs. “Breathe,” he urged me, and I inhaled deeply.

“What?” was all I managed to say when I’d caught my breath.

“A little assignment for you to do at work today,” he said brightly. “Something to get you started. Though you started pretty good just then,” he said and grinned.

“It makes me nervous,” I said, “your coming and going. And when I think about how you do it, it makes me more nervous.”

“Don‘t worry,” he said comfortingly. “You’ll get used to it.” Then his smirk returned. “Well, not really,” he said and shrugged. “Anyway, this is what you have to do today. If there’s some kind of break at work, something happens to stop the routine, and people are milling around, then walk to the part of the place where the public has access, and place this disk,” he pointed to an irregular disk of yellow metal, thicker than but smaller in diameter than a quarter, “and set it somewhere in plain sight. Then go back to work.”

“That’s it?” I said. “What if there’s no work interruption?”

“Then don’t do it,” he said.

“And if someone asks me what I’m doing?”

“Tell them anything you want,” he said, adding, “but remember what they look like.”

“What if someone tries to stop me?” I asked.

“Only do it if you can,” he said. “It should be O.K.”

“Do I get told why I’m doing it?”

“Just take it,” he said, pointing at the disk with his wingtip.

To get it, I had to get nearer to him than I’d been so far to him or Corbett. As I picked it up he reached out his wing and I felt the brush of his feathers against the back of my hand. They were real. They felt like feathers. He looked me in the eyes and I felt a chill run through me.

“Au revoir,” he said, lifted his wings, and gracefully disappeared.

It was unnerving, but exciting. I reminded myself that I’d been wishing for something interesting to happen in my life. Here it was. I slipped the disk into my pocket and went to work.

It was a normal day at the guitar factory. I greeted the people I usually greeted, and stopped to talk with an older man who does pearl inlay on more expensive guitars and on the custom models. We joked around as usual. I liked and respected him; he was an intelligent and thoughtful guy. But as we spoke I imagined telling him the story of the crows and what had happened to me. I could picture first the uncomprehending look, then the change to the “you’re an alien after all” look, and the subsequent breakdown in communications. I wished him a good day then, and went on to my work station.

Everything was normal until some time after lunch. Then an announcement came over the loudspeakers. “A problem has occurred with the electrical system in the plant. Until we find the source, please step away from all equipment. You are free to move around, go out for a cigarette or visit the cafeteria until further notice.”

People were milling around looking for one another, and then going off in different directions. I walked toward the front of the building where the store and the waiting room for factory tours were, fingering the disk in my pocket. I felt exhilarated, on a stealthy mission for forces only I knew.

No one paid attention to me, even when I got to the lobby. I hesitated, wondering where to leave the disk. I chose the store for no reason, opened the door and went in.

The employee behind the counter was chatting with someone from the work floor whom she clearly knew. The other three people in the store were either shopping or else browsing while they waited for the 1:15 factory tour. I walked to a display shelf in a corner, and casually lay the disk there in plain sight. I looked around and was sure no one had noticed.

As I walked to the door, I looked back at the shelf where I’d placed the disk, and noticed that a man who’d been looking carefully at clothes on a circular rack was staring straight at me. He wore a black T-shirt under an expensive-looking suit jacket. His eyes swept from me to the shelf where I’d put the disk and back. Then he unconcernedly went back to looking at the clothes.

I slipped out the door and headed for my area on the floor. As I did, the loudspeakers declared that the electrical problem had turned out to be a false alarm, and we were requested to get back to work. I worked the rest of the day without incident and returned home jubilant, stopping only at the store for food.

I was expecting, actually counting on, a visit, so I wasn’t surprised to see Bartholomew. What did surprise me was that he was hiding in the refrigerator when I went to put away some groceries. I backed up quickly and he flew out onto the counter.

“How do you do that?” I said breathlessly.

“I wedge myself into your imagination,” he said, “and then it puts me wherever it wants.” He walked around the counter, poking his beak against things. At one point he held one of his feet out in front of him and turned it one way and another, as if admiring it. Then he looked at me.

“So how’d it go?” he said.

“Great!” I said. “All according to plan.” I was tempted to boast, but restrained myself. It hadn’t really been my doing, and I knew he’d call me on it. “There was a break like you said. It doesn’t happen often, so I was surprised. I went up front and put the thing on a shelf in the sales area. No one stopped me.”

“No one saw you?” he asked, tilting his head.

“Just one guy, a customer, saw me,” I said. “He looked at me for a moment and then went back to what he was doing.”

Bartholomew closed one eye and squinted with the other. “Shiver me timbers!” he said. “What did the scallywag look like?”

I described him as well as I could after a glimpse: skin light brown, with features that made it hard to name a racial background, very fit and prosperous looking, probably in his mid-thirties.

“Little braid down the back?” Bartholomew was interested.

“Not that I saw,” I said, “but I only saw him from the front. I’d know him again if I saw him.”

“You did well,” Bartholomew said, and I thought he released the words reluctantly. “It’s time for another assignment.” He stretched his wings out all the way, then tucked them back to his sides and preened one a little. “Your next assignment,” he said, “is to quit your job.”

“Your next assignment is to quit your job,” he said again when I didn’t reply.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Bartholomew instantly cheered up. I was dismayed, and he could build on that.

“You don’t want to quit,” he said, in that way people have of repeating what you say when they don’t believe you. “I thought humans wanted to leave their jobs.”

“That’s only if they have some other way to get money and support themselves,” I said, “like if they win the lottery.”

He batted his eyes, and it occurred to me he might be parodying Transome. “Honey,” he said, “when you went with us to Never Never Land, that meant you won the lottery! Don’t you get it?”

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t get it.”

“It means you don’t have to play normal anymore,” he said. “You’ve been commandeered, shanghaied. The end of the world is coming, and you have a job to do.”

“I still need a job to pay my bills,” I said.

“No, you don’t need anything,” he said. “You are the hero of Solsbury Hill.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what he meant.

He pointed at my CD player and it began to play the old rock chestnut Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel (which had not, of course, been in the CD player, and which I actually did not even own).

“I was feeling part of the scenery.

I walked right out of the machinery,”

he sang along gleefully.

“My heart going boom, boom, boom,

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘You can keep my things they’ve come to take me home.’”

From what I could remember, he was pasting different parts of the song together, but the CD seemed to be playing along. When it finished, he continued in a crazy overdone voice:

“You can keep his things,” he sang, high-stepping and looking right at me with a big grin, “we’ve come to take him home.”

Despite myself, I started to laugh, but emotions rose up inside me and suddenly I was struggling not to cry. I buried my head in my hands. “You’re crazy, this is crazy,” I said.

“Let go. It’s time to let go,” he whispered. He flew to the top of one of my bookcases and sidled across the top. “All the things you’ve been clinging to, they’re all an illusion. The glass isn’t half empty or half full, like they say. It’s already broken.”

As he said the word broken he reached out a wing and knocked over my jade vase. I lunged, but before I could get there it hit the floor and smashed to pieces.

“Hey,” I yelled, “You can’t do that!” I tried to fight it, but a sob came into my voice. “It was a gift from Corinne. It’s precious to me. It was precious to me.” I leaned over and started picking up the pieces.

“Let go, let go,” he said, darting away when I reached toward him. “Look at the pieces and let go.” As he finished the sentence, he just faded away.

I went for the dust pan and brush, and for a basket to put the pieces in. Some tears trickled down my face as I collected them. Corinne, Corinne, of all the things in my apartment, why would Bartholomew have chosen this?

I knew why. That’s how he was. He was bent on destroying anything that was whole inside me. It had been fun having the crows enter my life, after the initial shock. When I pulled that trick at work, I felt like a secret agent. But this was different. I didn’t want to help if it meant losing everything I still cared for.

I sat back on my heels, dustpan in one hand. What was going on? Was this real? What was real? Was I going crazy? I suddenly felt wild and desperate, like I wanted to call up everyone I knew.

Instead, I decided to break it off with the crows. What had I been thinking? They couldn’t exist. Or if they did, what were they really? Why should I trust them, and what did they have to do with me? The world was ending? What baloney! People have been saying that since the world began!

The thought of returning to the quiet life I had so recently reviled now seemed an irresistible relief. I took the basket that held the still-beautiful pieces of the jade vase and set it in the middle of the kitchen table. I went to bed that evening resolved to change things.

We’d seen the jade vase at a flea market, and I’d admired it. She gave some excuse before we left, and went back and bought it for me. She surprised me with it the next day, not for a birthday or anything, but just to enjoy my delight. Two days later she died in the accident.

I’d gone back over the day when she gave me the vase a thousand times. It almost seemed like when she gave it to me, it was a good-bye gift. She’d said something playful about having something to remember her by, and I’d said no, I would keep her with me always.

The vase represented all my moments with her, this beautiful being who had come into my life for a short time and filled it with meaning. I couldn’t believe it was broken.

I hoped Bartholomew would show up before I went to work so I could tell him I was finished. I got up and got ready, feeling better than I’d felt for a while, filled with new resolve, fueled by the pieces of the jade vase.

When I went out to the kitchen, though, the basket on the table was empty. I looked at it for a long moment, as if maybe the pieces would appear, but they didn’t.

“You son of a . . . !” I said loudly, ready to do battle. I heard a throat clearing in the living room and went out.

It was Corbett this time, and beside him on the bookshelf was the jade vase. Unbroken.

“You put it back together?” I said. “That won’t fix what happened. I’ll always know it’s broken.”

“Well,” he said in a measured tone, “technically speaking, I didn’t put it back together. Bartholomew shouldn’t have done what he did. Breaking it was wrong. So I went back, and I made it not broken.”

My distress was not eased. “I saw it break,” I said. “You can’t fool me.”

“Look at it,” he urged me, nodding. “Take it, hold it. It’s whole.”

I picked it up, and it was whole. It felt as whole as when she gave it to me. There were no chips, no cracks. And then, somehow, that was scarier than seeing the pieces scattered on the floor. I couldn’t talk. I just looked at him, helpless.

“What you want,” he said, “is to be fooled. You want me to go in and wipe the memory of it being broken from your brain. That’s what we normally do with people in these situations. You’re different. We’re not going to baby you like that.”

“But look,” I said, “what do I do with the memory of it breaking? How do I reconcile that with holding the unbroken vase in my hand?”

Corbett smiled. He was trying to be soothing, or pretending he was trying to be soothing. “Let’s call it your assignment,” he said. “Work on changing your schematic of the world so that you can incorporate those two memories side by side.” He cocked his head to one side and added, “You’ll have to be able to do more than that to fulfill your destiny.”

I still felt determined to quit, but turning the unbroken vase in my hands was starting to have a strange effect on me. “No more assignments,” I said quickly, “I’m done.”

“You’re not going to quit your job, and help us tie up the loose ends of the world?” Corbett said. He didn’t sound convinced.

“I’m not quitting my job, and I’m not helping you do anything,” I said. I put the vase down carefully and headed for the door. I had just realized I was going to be late.

As I walked out the door, I heard him say softly, “That’s O.K. Go ahead. Maybe we’re asking too much.”
Work that day was like a situation comedy but without all the pretty women—and without most of the laughs. I got there late and everyone stared at me as I walked out to my work station. Things were backed up at my bench and people were waiting for pieces I hadn’t finished. I tried to hurry and made stupid mistakes. Then, just as I was finishing up a piece for the next person to work on, a call came over the loudspeaker telling me to report to my supervisor’s office.

I smiled apologetically at my waiting coworker and headed down the aisle to the office. When I got in, she told me to have a seat, which was unusual.

“Icarus,” she began, “as you know, material costs are high, and we’ve been planning to cut back. We were having trouble deciding who to cut in your department, but today is not the first day you’ve been late, and your work has been falling in quality.”

“So you’re going to fire me,” I said. I was angry.

“We’re laying you off,” she said.

“With benefits?” I said.

“No benefits,” she said.

“Laid off with no benefits is fired,” I said.

She was silent for a moment, and I could just about hear her thinking, “Call it what you want, egg sucker.” But aloud she said, “In gratitude for your years of service, a small bonus will be added to your check when you receive it in the mail.”

Under the circumstances, I didn‘t consider ‘Thank you’ to be an appropriate response. “So do I go back to work now,” I said, “or is this it?”

“You may gather your things and go,” she said. She reached across the desk to shake my hand. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

And with that my seven year tenure at the guitar factory ended. Walking home, all I could think was, how did the crows do this?

The café was crowded. It wasn’t a big place. I took the last table, a little two-seater along the wall. I was part way through my latte, sitting with my head in my hands when I heard someone say, “There aren’t any tables. Can I sit here?”

I didn’t even look up. “Sure,” I said. I wasn’t thrilled to have company, but who cared at this point?

“You look bummed out,” the person said.

“Just lost my job,” I said.

“At the guitar factory?” he said. At that I looked up. It took me a moment to realize it was the guy I’d seen in the factory store the day before.

Screw him, I thought. I’m not telling him anything.

“Yeah, at the guitar factory,” I said, pretending I didn’t recognize him.

“I saw something funny at the guitar factory yesterday,” he said. “Want to know what it was?”

“No,” I said.

He went on. “First I heard them announce electrical problems, even though nothing seemed to be wrong. Then I saw a guy calmly walk into the public store from off the work floor, deliberately place an object on a shelf when he thought no one was looking, and walk out. Then, when he should almost have been back to his place on the floor, the loudspeaker said the problem didn’t exist after all, and everyone went back to work.”

“And your point is . . . ?” I was feeling hostile.

“Why did you put it there?” he asked.

“It was a guitar part,” I said. “They needed it up front.”

“A guitar part,” he said, and I didn’t like his grin.

“For an electric guitar,” I said. Actually, we only made acoustic guitars, but he probably wouldn’t know that.

“The truth must be better than I thought if you’re lying that bad,” he said. He sipped his coffee and looked at me.

Or maybe it’s worse, I thought. If only you knew. I shrugged, and took refuge in a cliché of my time. “Whatever,” I said, and sipped my latte.

“I think you and I should walk and talk,” he said. “Why don’t you finish up, and let’s go.”

On one hand, I’d about had it with strangers trying to run my life. But on the other hand, here was a potential body guard. I was pretty sure the crows would leave me alone if I was with someone, and I definitely didn’t want to see them. I drank up and said “O.K.” Whatever this guy’s deal was, he didn’t seem dangerous.

We dropped our cups off at the counter and left. He was looking at me like I was a jack-in-the-box on its last crank. “I can tell,” he said. “Something’s really up with you.”

We headed toward the town circle half a block away, where there were trees and benches. I was silent, debating whether to just tell him everything, not expecting him to believe it, but just to tell it to someone, just to hear the whole preposterous story myself.

He seemed like an unusual guy. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that when you meet most adults, there’s a heaviness about them, a closed quality, as if problems and failures or other people’s judgments have closed them up and weighed them down. This man, however, seemed light and free.

He wore a leather cord that disappeared under his shirt and I noticed, remembering Bartholomew’s question, that he had a thin braid hanging down his back. He was average sized and seemed fit, but not offensively so. And even after a closer look, I couldn’t have guessed his ancestry. He could probably have passed for a number of ethnic groups, none of which were typical of white bread Nazareth.

“I guess you’re wondering who I am,” he said, settling onto one of the benches. “But that’s a tough question. I like to say I walk the line between schizophrenia and wisdom.” He laughed.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

“It means that the way I see the world would seem like craziness to a lot of people,” he said. “I watch for clues to indicate that weird stuff is going on. And right now, buddy,” he jabbed me with his elbow, “you are my clue.”

“Well, if you’re looking for weird stuff going on,” I said, “you have the right person. Too weird. I may have fallen off your wisdom/schizophrenia line on the wrong side.”

He didn’t press me, but waited, no doubt hoping I’d say more. I changed the subject. “So what brings you to beautiful Nazareth?” I said.

He shrugged. “Business,” he said. “Listen,” he said, “I’ll tell you what. Before you get back on the employment trail, I’d like to take you a few places and show you some things. Are you from around here?”

I told him I was from the general area, but I’d only lived in Nazareth about seven years. I wasn’t going to go anywhere with him. I didn’t even know the guy!

But then he said, “Did you know that the world is supposed to end in December of 2012?”

In retrospect, I guess that was it, the thing that made it real to me that I was being been drawn into something I might have trouble walking out of.

“You know,” I said, “someone did tell me that recently. They said the world is in a wrap-up phase.”

“It is,” he said. “You can see it happening. I’m in this area because there are things near here that are being activated as the end times approach.”

“Here?” I said. “Like what?”

“Ancient sites, places of power,” he said. He laughed at the skeptical look on my face. “There are markers,” he said, “hidden in plain sight.” He raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “You should come see what I mean,” he said. “You’ll like it.”

“Why should I go anywhere with you?” I asked. “I don’t even know you.”

“Because,” he said, and looked me straight in the eye, “strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”

It was my favorite quote from Kurt Vonnegut, one I’d quoted a lot in my footloose younger years and that I’d laughed over with Corinne more than once. A huge impulse rose up in me, urging me to go with him. “Icarus,” it said, “you need to get out of Nazareth.”

“You just want to show me stuff?” I said.

He nodded. “And I’ll deposit you back here at the end of the day.”

I considered for a moment and told him I’d have to stop at my apartment for some things, and then I’d be ready to go. We agreed to meet back at the circle in an hour.

I braced myself for an avian encounter, and sure enough when I entered the apartment I was set upon by talking crows. They were always so damned happy.

“Sorry to hear you lost your job,” Bartholomew said, beaming.

“Right,” I said. “I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it.”

“How on earth would we do that?” he said gleefully.

“Gosh,” I said, “I don’t know. How did your buddy here make the vase not broken? I don’t know how it all works!”

“You knew enough to hook up with the Rat, though,” Corbett said in a quiet voice.

“What rat?” I said.

“The Reality Rat,” Bartholomew said. “That’s what people in our neck of the woods call your new friend.”

“You know him?” I said, suspicious. “Why Reality Rat?”

“Ask him why,” Corbett said. “He’s watched with great interest by all of us.”

“He operates on different batteries, receives esoteric frequencies,” Bartholomew said. “But here’s a hint: don’t count on him to get you a job.”

“Is he in cahoots with you?” I said, ready to curse my luck.

“No,” Corbett said, “but he’s not against us.”

“You might say he’s in the same business,” Bartholomew said. “He’s an Independently Arising Phenomenon. An Anomaly. A Sport.”

“Go with him for an adventure,” Corbett said. “We’ll hear about it later.” He paused and then said, “Oh, and by the way, isn’t it better with the vase whole?”

Bartholomew chimed in. “It’s whole, but it’s already broken,” he said. He winked and they disappeared.

He looked over at me and grinned then looked back at the road. “I knew you had unseen resources,” he said. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Friends,” I said, stretching the truth.

“You must have some pretty interesting friends,” he said. “Yeah, I’m the Reality Rat. What did they say about me?”

“They called you an Independently Arising Phenomenon,” I said. “An Anomaly, a Sport.”

He laughed and hit me on the shoulder. “We’re not talking human friends here, are we?” he said.

“They’re crows,” I said, curious to see his reaction. “Two crows who talk to me.”

He didn‘t even blink. “Two crows who talk to you and who told you to do what you did at the guitar factory yesterday,” he said.

“You got it,” I said.

“You lucky jerk,” he said. “You got chosen. And that’s who told you the world is in a wrap-up phase.”

“They want me to help,” I said, feeling a little puffed up about it, after trying to quit only a few hours ago.

He raised and lowered his eyebrows humorously. “I think I know of these entities of whom you speak,” he said.

“The crows?” I asked.

“These entities you see as crows,” he said. “What are their names? Do they seem to be male or female?”

“I think they’re both male,” I said. “One’s named Corbett and the other is Bartholomew.”

“Sounds like you may have hit the big time” he said.

I briefly related the tale of my life since the arrival of Bartholomew. “So you see,” I said at the end, “On one hand I have what is barely a life in a small town I don’t especially like, with no family, no girlfriend, and no job. On the other hand I have these crazy crows pulling me into an insane life I know nothing about.”

“Tough decision,” he said. “Let’s see, do I want to retreat to a soon-to-be-eliminated-anyway life of boredom and mediocrity, or do I take the one-in-ten-billion chance to make a difference in the world and learn and experience things not being offered to anyone else? Hmmm . . . ‘There’s a poser, Master, and no mistake.’”

I knew he was quoting Sam speaking to Frodo in the Lord of the Rings, and I knew what he meant to imply. “But this isn’t Middle Earth,” I said. “It’s Pennsylvania. And I’m not Frodo the pure and good ring bearer. I’m Icarus, the badly screwed up loser.”

“You don’t know me,” I said, “but I may be the lamest person alive. I’m disenchanted with the current way of life but can’t offer anything better. I act like a lazy person, not because I don’t like work, but because I can’t see or imagine anything worth working for. I have few friends since I quit drinking, and the ones I have don’t really like me. I feel shut off from humanity, and repelled by its pastimes and values. By most people’s standards, I’m worthless and hopeless. And now I lost my job. Frodo I ain’t!”

He heard me out. “Man,” he said when I was done, “they must have handcrafted you.”

We were traveling north on Route 33, and had reached the top of the Kittatinny Ridge. I wondered where we were going and what we were going to see. “That’s a pretty mysterious statement,” I said.

“Not mysterious, logical,” he said. “The way I see it, how could you be ready to let go and serve the intangible if you’re fully invested in the tangible? It’s not surprising that whatever it is that makes you perfect for the crows’ purposes makes you ineffectual in other ways.”

“Well, I couldn’t have been ‘handcrafted’ ” I said, “because I just met them this week.”

He gave me a wry grin. “So since you just became aware of them, they couldn’t possibly have been screwing with your life the whole time, right?”

I decided to talk about something else. “So,” I said, “where are we going, anyway?”

He laughed. “I’m taking you to see something old, something outside the scope of your knowledge even though it’s inside the scope of what you thought was your knowledge.”

“Meaning?” I said. “Can you say something that makes sense?”

“O.K.,” he said. “You know the woods around here?”

“Pretty well,” I said. “I’ve hiked through them a lot.”

“And have you seen, for example, anything the Indians might have built with stone before the Europeans got here?”

“No,” I said. “The Indians around here, the Lenape, they didn’t build with stone.”

“Right,” he said, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “Too busy making a bare subsistence living. People with no culture. Simple savages with no time for anything else.”

“Well,” I said, “If they’d built anything I guess we’d know.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked mildly amused.

The first place he took me didn’t impress me. It consisted of a wooded hillside with 3 short horizontal walls, from which two parallel walls led uphill to a much longer wall that seemed to run along the top of the ridge. There were also some stone piles which he called cairns. Most of them were free standing, but a couple of them were neatly constructed against boulders, formations which did not suggest mystery, but which were somehow pleasant to look at.

I suggested it was just a farmer’s method of clearing the area of rocks, so he made me walk around a little with him to see what part of the area was cleared of rocks. None of it was, but so what? As we got in the car and headed back down the road, I asked him why he was showing me this.

“Who do you think built it?” he asked.”

“Maybe it was built for some kind of industrial use,” I said. It seemed lame, but who knows? Colonial life was a complete mystery to me. “Or maybe it was just some farm boys with time on their hands. No television, no computer games.”

“Maybe a crazy farmer, huh?” he said.

“Could be. More likely than Indians,” I said. He shrugged.

We stopped at a mini-market for food and gas. He said he had other places to show me and he didn’t want to take time for a restaurant. Before we got back on the highway, he drove me through a low area where there were well-formed stone piles, or cairns, as he called them, on both sides of the road. Walls surrounded some of them.

“What do you think these are?” he asked.

“I think I know this one,” I said. “Farmers used to use wild grasses to feed their cattle, and would go into low areas and reap the grasses with a scythe. I’ve read about it. They probably piled up the stones to get them out of the way.”

“Some of the cairns are exquisitely formed,” he said. “You examine them, and they look like works of art.”

“Well, it’s the sort of thing a person could get good at, maybe take a little artistic pride in if you had to do it a lot,” I said. “Seeing these makes me think I wouldn’t mind trying it myself.”

“You’re good,” he said, but not as if he thought I was right.

“Well, come on,” I said, “It makes more sense than saying they’re some kind of mystical pre-Columbian stonework that everybody missed until now. There’s no evidence the Indians built in stone.”

“Actually,” he said, “a number of Europeans who wrote about eastern North America in the first century or so after their arrival mention that Indians built stone cairns for their dead. Thomas Jefferson mentions it, for one.”

“But not here,” I said. “I think we’d know if they’d done it here.”

“Why?” he said, “because Europeans were so kind and respectful to the Indians and their traditions that the Indians were eager to share with them their most sacred places? Because modern investigators are so thorough and unbiased that they can’t have missed anything? Because if there were pre-Columbian stonework here it would have walked up and introduced itself?”

“Somebody would have noticed,” I said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Well, I’m telling you that there are unexplained things in the woods, right under your nose, right where people think everything is known. Never underestimate people’s ability to look right past the truth, or straight at it, and not see it.”

“I just think there’s no need to insert mystery where there is none,” I said. “What I saw could easily have been built by farmers or other colonials.”

“This is an experiment, then,” he said. “Let’s see what it takes. Let’s see at what point that certainty of yours starts to crumble.”

“Why are you showing me all of this?” I asked. “Why me? And what difference does it make if I believe you?”

“I can’t give you sensible reasons,” he said. “I don’t operate that way. We were talking in town, and I realized I should do this. I don’t ask for any more than that. That’s what it means to be a Reality Rat.

We pulled back out onto the highway. “O.K., why Reality Rat?” I said.

He looked over and seemed to be evaluating me in some way. “I’m the Reality Rat because I’m the opposite of what parents teach their kids to be. I lurk around the baseboards of reality and get what I need from the crumbs other people drop. I live my whole life behind the scenes. And the really good stuff in life–the nonmaterial stuff–I get because there’s no competition.“

“I don’t get it,” I said. “How did you get to be a reality rat?”

He was silent for a moment and then said, “It was partly how I was born. Even as a child, I wasn’t attracted to the things being offered as goals in life–the money, the stuff, even the pleasure. They just weren’t motivators for me. I don’t know why.

“Adults thought there was something wrong with me because they couldn’t motivate me. I could know all the answers on a test and write down all wrong answers. I could be pitching a great game and decide it would be cool to let the other team win. I didn’t enjoy fiction because the motivations of the characters all seemed completely alien.

“I believed people when they said there was something wrong with me. I mean, I could tell I was different. I did well in school most of the time, but when I graduated high school, I couldn’t see the point of college. Why prepare for life? Why not just live it? I couldn’t see the point of anything by then, not jobs, not relationships, which had always been difficult, not even living. Shortly after graduation, convinced I was some kind of mistake, I decided to commit suicide.”

I looked at him in surprise. He didn’t seem like the type.

He shrugged. “Life was all trouble and no meaning. The things that fascinated me meant nothing to anyone else. So I went to a high building along a busy street at a busy time, figuring that if I didn’t die in the fall, I would get run over. And I jumped.”

He looked at me and shook his head. “I had it all worked out. I was certain I would die. But here’s the weird part. Somehow I miscalculated, and I fell into the back of a truck that was carrying old mattresses to the dump. I actually fell onto a soft mattress. I was a little injured, and as you can imagine, the truck driver called an ambulance when he found me, but my careful plan had been foiled, and the question was, by what?”

“Wait,” I said. “You actually fell into a mattress truck?”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “Like Bugs fuckin’ Bunny.

“I told the doctors at the hospital that the fall had been an accident, but they didn’t believe me, so they kept me a couple days for observation. I lay in bed and walked around the ward, and thought and thought and thought. Concepts of God and spirituality up to then had seemed ridiculous and irrelevant. People talked as if it were just about church and relating to other people, and I knew I didn’t have a social gene in my body, so I’d figured none of it applied to me.

“But this was different. I reached the conclusion that some invisible thing or person had intervened in my suicide, something that wanted me alive more than I did. And, and this is what really obsessed me, this thing or person that intervened had a really sick sense of humor. A mattress truck! In the face of my tragic desperation, Life, or Spirit, had made a gesture to me, and the gesture was one of complete, cartoon-like absurdity.”

He was quiet for a minute, and I thought he’d finished, but then he continued.

“It occurred to me that night that my life was forfeit, that since I had meant to die, the rest of the time I lived was extra, and I could do whatever I wanted. Whatever I wanted. And all I wanted was to hunt down whatever it was that had made that gesture. That absurdity provided the first glimpse of meaning to my meaningless life. I began to pay all my attention, you might say, to the man behind the curtain.”

“But how?” I said. “How do you hunt that down?”

“I became single-minded,” he said. “I knew that, whatever it, she, or he was, by definition it was there, present every second, right there with me. I also knew I couldn’t see, hear, touch, smell, or taste it. So I figured, either my senses couldn’t perceive it at all, or I was receiving the information, and interpreting it incorrectly.

“I began to unlearn everything I thought I knew about what seemed to be the world around me, and to unlearn everything I thought I knew about interpreting the information my senses were bringing to me. I had to stop thinking I knew what everything meant, to deconstruct my understanding. I worked on thinking without words or familiar concepts. I worked on accepting information without interpreting it.

“I know this all sounds theoretical, but it wasn’t. It also wasn’t easy or seamless or quick. But I had as long as it took. I had no other agenda. And if I died first, well, death was my heart’s desire.”

“Did it work?” I asked, not sure what the criterion would be.

“It worked like crazy,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t like I thought it would be, so at first I didn’t recognize what was happening. But over time the whole world changed. The meaning of every bit of information I received changed. Nothing inside me was different, but I lived in a new world. It was . . . truly beyond words.” His face was energized, almost glowing, as he spoke. I didn’t doubt he’d had some kind of transformation.

“So how do you live now?” I said.

“Moment by moment, guided by life,” he said. “Whatever is true at a given moment is always exactly what I need. Nothing is ever incorrect or extraneous. From this perspective, the world practices complete economy.”

He looked at me to see if I was following him. I can’t say I was, but there were bells going off inside me, like something inside going, yes, yes, yes.

“Henry Thoreau said, ‘It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all,’ ” he continued. “I call it flying under the radar. And here’s the thing, kiddo. This is the perfect time for the Reality Rat. Culture is disintegrating. As the rich and powerful confiscate all wealth and privilege for themselves and their families, the only free agent is the person who covets nothing. He is free to laugh off tragedy and able to recognize traces of a benign intelligence in the debris. The world I tried to leave turns out to be my world.”

“You say you covet nothing,” I said, “but you have a car.”

“Yes,” he grinned, “I do right now. It recently became available to me under funny circumstances, surrounded by a certain amount of omen and coincidence. That, to me, is like life saying, ‘Look!’ So I bought the car, and now, you see, I know why: to drive places with you.”

“So you didn’t know you were going to meet me?” I asked.

“No, I came to investigate the stonework, and decided to visit the guitar factory,” he said. “I didn’t know why. I just know that wherever I go I’ll see what I need to see and I’ll know what to do.”

“Are there other people like you?” I asked.

“Could be,” he said. “I don’t know. I might not know one if I met one.”

“Then who calls you the Reality Rat?” I said.

“It’s my nickname for myself,” he said. “That’s why when you said it I knew your crows must be the real thing.”

“The real what kind of thing?” I said. Just thinking about them made me uneasy.

“The real Harbingers,” he said. “They come riding the winds before the final storm.”

I felt like a rusty bolt I saw lying along the side of the road as I walked: intended for some purpose at its creation, but now a piece of debris lying useless and unnoticed in the dirt while the rest of the world rushed by. That’s what I was, just another piece of annoying clutter. And Corbett and Bartholomew, of course, were right on it.

“Hey, how’s life treating you,” I heard, and Bartholomew landed on a branch nearby. Before I could say anything, he said, “Don’t answer. We don’t really care. Look, it’s time for you to take a little trip.”

“A trip where?” I said, not too keen on the idea.

“A trip abroad!” he said. “Tourista time!”

“Oh, no, no airports for me,” I said. I didn’t mind planes, kind of liked the whole flying through the air thing, in fact, but I cave in at personal scrutiny, and my tendency to feel and act guilty under any kind of scrutiny made the airport experience a nightmare for me.

“That would be taken care of, of course,” Corbett said. He had arrived quietly and taken a place just above Bartholomew in the tree. “As you may have noticed . . .”

“Transportation . . .” interrupted Bartholomew, “not a problem for us.” and he said the last phrase from well above Corbett in the same tree, having instantaneously arrived there without moving.

“I have noticed that,” I said, “but I don’t like it. How do I know if it’s really happening or if you’re just messing with my head?”

“Hmmm . . .” said Bartholomew, “always with the same question. What’s real and what’s not? Have you considered professional help?” He grinned and cackled.

“As we have assured you before,” Corbett said patiently, “although the two seem mutually exclusive, they are in fact one and the same.”

“No,” I said. “In one option my body is transported from one place to another. In the other my body stays still and an illusion of being transported to another place appears in my head.”

“There’s a problem with those options,” Corbett said carefully. “Strictly speaking, there is no other place.”

“No head, either,” Bartholomew chimed in, as if trying to be helpful. “No body. There’s just seeming.”

“Quite a lot of seeming, though,” Corbett said, as if that concession might help.

“Tons!” said Bartholomew, “scads, loads . . .” He seemed ready to go on and on, but then he stopped and seemed to be looking at something. “Here comes some now,” he finished, and Corbett and I turned to where someone was struggling in a blackberry bush. The person seemed surprised and disoriented.

I realized who it was when he looked up. His glance moved from me to the crows and back again, and he smiled. Then he strode over to the tree where the crows were and clapped his hands loudly, yelling “Hey!” several times. They lifted out of the tree like ordinary crows and flew off cawing.

Then the Rat turned back to me. “Were they bothering you?” he said.

“How did you do that?” I asked as we ambled away from the scene. “They’re some kind of powerful cosmic crows.”

“Well, I’m wise to ‘em,” he said. “I’ve run across their kind before. When they mess with me, they’re messing with the wrong illusion.” He winked. “What were they after you about?”

“They want to send me somewhere, somewhere abroad.” I said. “But I hate dealing with airports, so they were touting the benefits of instantaneous travel, and explaining the principles it’s based on, like ‘nothing’s real anyway.’ ”

“Including them,” he said, and laughed.

He seemed so relaxed, but I felt tight all over my body. “How’d you get here?” I said. “What happened?”

“I was in Philly, where I was planning to spend the day. I was pushing my way through a crowd to cross a street, and suddenly I was pushing through thorns.” He laughed again. “I love your friends.”

His laughter soothed me a little but I felt jumpy, and not able to concentrate on anything. As we neared the parking area, he proclaimed, “Time for some lunch!” He pulled out his keys and pointed them at what I realized was his car.

“But how . . .” my voice got stuck and I couldn’t continue.

“There’s a thing on here like a silent whistle,” he said. “It calls my car from wherever it is.”

I was really tense for a moment and then realization flooded me. He hadn’t been magically transported. I’d let the crows influence my thinking. He must have been down in the woods all the time and just happened to show up at that minute.

He saw me relax and laughed. “Feel better now?” he said. “What a coincidence, huh?” He seemed delighted as we got into the car.

“Unbelievable,” I said. “You’re as full of it as they are.”

He refused to discuss it further as we drove toward Allentown on Route 22. When I tried to pin him down on what had happened, he alarmed me by saying “You’re not a bolt, you’re a nut.” When I asked how he could have known about that, he said it just came into his head.

I wasn’t sure where we were headed, but I was surprised when we got off the MacArthur Road exit, and pulled into the shopping mall parking lot. “What are we doing here?” I said, alarmed. I had worked at the mall when I was just out of high school, and I hated it. We got out of the car and walked across the lot.

“If you’re having problems deciding what’s real and what’s not real, this is the place to be,” he said. “We’re going to lunch at the bagel place and watch the mall go by.”

“The bagel place?” I said, “why not go to that place with the ice cream?” I figured there ought to be some compensation for being at the mall.

“Most of the tables there are too far from the front,” he said, then shrugged. “But O.K., ice cream it is.”

We entered the mall, took the escalator to the second level, and presented ourselves to the hostess at the front of the restaurant. “It’ll be a few minutes until we find you a table,” the young girl said. She looked harried.

Just then a waitress came hurrying up and the two stepped further back so that we couldn’t hear their whispered conference. They nodded and the waitress hurried off again.

“A table will be open in a moment,” our girl said with a polite smile. My companion thanked her warmly and she hurried off after the waitress.

“Aren’t you going to ask for a table near the front?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Seems like she has enough on her mind.”

A minute later, both girls appeared, escorting a couple who seemed to be in a hurry and who kept apologizing over and over. The woman was prominently pregnant.

“That’s O.K., that’s O.K.” the hostess kept saying. “You certainly can’t help it.” As the couple left she called after them, “We wish you all the luck in the world!”

She turned to us, shaking her head. “Of course it’s all right if they go,” she said. “We don’t want her to have the baby right here!”

“I’ll say,” said the waitress, rolling her eyes. She motioned to us with two menus and said, “You can have their table.” She led us to a table that was right on the mall.

I looked at the Rat suspiciously. “Good choice of restaurants,” he said as he sat down, shaking his head. “Does this sort of thing happen to you often?”

“You did it,” I said.

The waitress came back from the kitchen and explained that if we would like salmon with mustard dill sauce and savory mashed potatoes, or grilled chicken on focaccio with pesto sauce, lettuce and tomato with a side of steak fries, we could have a discount, because they were already being prepared for the couple who just left.

“I hope you like salmon,” my companion said. “I want the chicken.”

Salmon is my favorite, although I rarely go to places where they serve it. We ordered and the food came out almost immediately. I was starving. It tasted great. The absurdity of the incident had put me in a rare mood, as if the troubles of the world had lifted and everything I saw was interesting.

“In a case like this,” he said, “neither of us made the thing happen. Sometimes if you’ve put yourself in the flow, you get carried places.” He seemed pleased with what he was about to say next. “A Reality Rat is a surfer on the waves of life.”

“Don’t disturb my digestion with philosophy,” I said.

Teen boys wore huge baggy clothes and necklaces. Teen girls wore little tight clothes and lip gloss. There were women in trim, expensive suits, high heels and no-nonsense gold, women dressed in T-shirts and jeans, women dressed like teen-aged girls—somehow on them the clothes looked much more plainly like hooker-wear, and older women in skirts, soft blouses and sensible shoes.

Clothing store manikins in windows across the mall demonstrated possible looks. The place suddenly seemed like a huge props and costume room, selling everything people need in order to portray the characters and act out the dramas they choose. The mall was also a public stage where they got to act it out, away from the criticisms of those who knew them to be someone or something else.

Two teenaged girls went by, one in black clothes, black hair and steel jewelry, with a pale complexion and black lips, the other, with orange spiked hair and lots of piercings, wore a band logo T-shirt with big black jeans that had patches pinned all over them. A few yards behind them walked a wealthy-looking white man in a golf shirt and Dockers. Then came a couple, the woman slender tanned and muscular in tight shiny clothes, the man tan and muscular, wearing athletic clothes. Her hair was bleached blond. He had a tattoo.

For some reason it was all starting to seem funny. I looked over and saw the Rat watching me. “You can be anything you want to be as long as you have the money,” he said, “here at Mall World.”

It was then I noticed an overweight woman, past retirement age, standing a short distance away, leaning on the railing overlooking the first level. She had a large shopping bag in one hand and a great big purse over her shoulder. Two children were with her, maybe a four-year-old and a seven-year-old, and it was plain she loved them very much. It was also plain, however, that she was worn out. She spoke kindly to them and smiled, but her body language said she was overwhelmed, as if she didn’t think she could make it from there to the car carrying the bags and keeping the children controlled and safe.

While I was looking at her, she glanced over. I waved and looked away, a little embarrassed at being caught.

When a minute had gone by, I looked back. She had set down her bag, and, while the kids chattered on, she had one hand on the rail, the other on the head of the younger child, and she was facing upward with her eyes closed. After a few moments, she looked down and opened her eyes. Her smile at the children had more energy now. She seemed renewed. She picked up the bag and started off, talking animatedly with the children, who seemed calmer, as if soothed by her new mood.

“What happened there, huh?” the Rat said. I jumped. I hadn’t realized he was watching. “Inner resources. I was ready to go out there and help her, but she did something many would call spiritual—a terrible word because it means so many different things to different people—and she renewed herself.”

“Through prayer, you mean?” I said.

“It doesn’t matter exactly what she thought she was doing or what you would call it,” he said. “Whatever it was, it changed her position in relation to the moment. She contacted something beyond the material, got a different angle on who she is and what was going on. And you might say that from there she could access a cache of energy that was invisible or out of reach from where she was to start with.”

“She wasn’t like the other people we were looking at,” I said, “fantasizing about who they were. She was all there.”

“She was all heart,” he said. “You could see how she loved those kids. She didn’t care two cents how she looked to anyone.”

“But everyone loves,” I said. “Why doesn’t it do that to everyone?”

“Some people build a fortress of fear around their love,” he said, “always thinking: will someone take, hurt, kill what I love? A little love puts them in opposition to the rest of the world.” He paused. “That woman was ill, knew she might not be around long, so she threw away the distraction of fear and just opened her heart to give and receive as much love as possible. She feels she’s in her last days.”

“The crows say we’re all in our last days,” I said.

He nodded. “And in a way, it doesn’t matter if they’re right,” he said.

The waitress came up just then to clear away our empty dishes. She’d brought a dessert menu, and we both ordered something good. The Rat saw my eyes follow the waitress as she walked away, and he laughed.

“Reality as it’s been presented to us isn’t real,” he said. “It’s like the stuff they paint backdrops on for plays. On the side where it’s lit, it looks solid. But from behind the set you can look right through it. It’s the sheerest fabrication. And once you can see that about reality, you can walk right through it. That’s what I do. I play on the bright side when I need to, and deal with what is real the rest of the time.”

“I don’t get what you mean,” I said.

The waitress came with our desserts and the check, and when she had gone, he said, “I mean when you’re aware it’s the last days, your last days, you see everything differently. The artificial prison you’ve built around you burns away, and you’re free, free to be who you are, someone you may barely know.”

“Like what happened to you,” I said.

“Right,” he said, and leaned forward. “You know how free you are?”

“No,” I said, worried about what was coming next.

“You are free to ignore those crows, if that’s what you really want,” he said. “You don’t have to do anything they say.”

Of course he was right, right? What were they going to do, caw me to death? Or transport me around the world and leave me there? Or turn me into a slug? . . . “I don’t think so,” I said. “They can do anything to me.”

He pointed across the mall. “See those two men over there, in black suits?” he said. “That’s them, isn’t it?”

I shook my head and started to say no, when something about their movements, and the way they were talking and laughing grabbed me in the pit of my stomach. Was it them? I was horrified.

One of them glanced briefly our way. I looked over at the Rat and he was staring at me. “Time to go,” he whispered.

I hadn’t finished my dessert, but I didn’t argue. We left enough money for the food and an ample tip on the table, and headed down the mall in the opposite direction. When I looked back, the men were gone.

“I don’t think it was them,” the Rat said, as he opened his door to get in the car. “They just reminded me of crows.”

“That was too much!” I said. “While we were talking, I was feeling so good and then when you pointed them out, I was scared witless.”

“You looked it,” he laughed. “I thought they were going to have a second medical emergency at the same table! You’ll have to watch out. All this stress is making you vulnerable.”

I won’t see you tomorrow,” he’d said as he let me out. “I have some unfinished business to take care of down in Philly.”

He probably winked, but I was careful not to look.

I knew the crows might show up at any time, so I decided just to relax and do ordinary things. I played music, did a few sit-ups, even called one of my brothers. I heard his usual complaints about his job, his landlord, and whoever else he was projecting his anger on at the time, with something approaching enjoyment, not because I lacked sympathy for his plight–life is indeed hard–but because it seemed so innocent now–no end days, no crows.

Ordinary life had taken on the irresistible glow of inaccessibility. I looked in my cabinets and found an old pack of corn muffin mix that my mom had brought on her last visit. I checked to see if I had the ingredients, mixed it up and stuck it in the toaster oven. Still no crows.

While it baked, I washed the few dishes and listened to the radio. News of what our current administration was doing used to make me feel furious and powerless. Now I gave them an indulgent smile. Their abuse of the earth and its people wouldn’t go on much longer.

The muffins came out steamy and fragrant. With butter and apricot jam, I certainly couldn’t tell that the mix was well over a year old.

As I sat down to coffee and my second muffin, I was feeling peaceful. I decided to get a newspaper from the machine in the lobby of the apartment building, so I could job hunt while I ate. I grabbed two quarters and headed for the door.

More than a week of rain can make even the thickest grassland into a mire of mud and tussocks. Walking through it in fifty degree weather and cold driving rain wearing cheap sneakers can give novel nuances to one’s future use of the word misery. That’s true enough for someone who expected to be there, but doubly so for someone who thought he would be padding down the hall toward the steps to buy himself a newspaper.

Of course, the first thing I did was turn around and try to go back, but the doorway was gone. The apartment was gone. There was nothing but land and rain, and maybe in the distance a sheep. I didn’t need an ornithology degree to figure out who had done this.

I could see that I was by a trail, or at least a narrow track, that led to the top of a hill. Maybe from there I could see where I was and judge how to get home. I refused to think about whether it had been raining outside my apartment a few minutes earlier.

I slogged miserably up the hill, stopping at one point to yell a profanity. I thought of my muffin and coffee, the comfortable anticipation I’d had, just moments before, of a morning of simple relaxation.

As I neared the hilltop, solid shapes appeared through the rain and mist. I drew nearer and found they were standing stones, a broad circle of low ones. I touched one and walked toward the next. They were coated with lichens as if they had been there a long time.

This wasn’t Nazareth.

“Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,” sang an all-too-familiar voice.

I didn’t even turn around. I was trying to think of some way to express my anger that wouldn’t cause Bartholomew to fall over and kick his feet in the air laughing.

After what turned out to be a prolonged silence, Corbett spoke. “We happen to know that you’ve always wanted to visit Great Britain,” he said.

“And,” I said, “I suppose it’s just a coincidence that I wound up in the nastiest, soggiest bit of it.”

“It might have been Derbyshire,” said Corbett, as if I should know that would be worse.

“Or the Orkneys in midwinter,” said Bartholomew brightly, “but he wouldn’t let me.”

“We told you you’d be going on a trip,” Corbett said, a bit reproachfully. “We were going to explain it fully until you brought your little friend around.”

“I didn’t bring him around,” I said. “He just happened to show up.” They exchanged looks. “But if someone had brought him there, it would have had to be you. You’re the ones who materialize the impossible. I’m the one who’s the brunt of it, remember?”

They both fell silent for a moment, then Bartholomew spoke in an unusually sober manner. “Look, we couldn’t bring the Rat. We can’t touch the Rat. And he wasn‘t in that woods a moment before. We‘d have known.”

Cold rain poured over my head and face, and my feet cramped with chill. I found myself shouting, “Don’t bullshit me, you bastards! Don’t try to implicate me in your . . .” The only word I could think of was shenanigans, and it would only have been worth it if Bartholomew would have died of laughter.

“You don’t know your own capacities,” Corbett said. “You haven’t realized what you are and how much you can do.”

This just wasn’t the right time to sort all that out. “So what’s the story,” I said. “Why am I here?”

The rain was diminishing now, and the surroundings were becoming more visible. Whether it was real or virtual, the place was stunning. As the rain tapered off, so did my anger.

Where I came from in Pennsylvania, hills were covered either with trees (increasingly rare) or development (increasingly ruinous and far reaching). Nowhere do you see bare hills like this, with others nearby. Nowhere do you see a ring of stones like the one in which I stood. And, although it would have been awkward to admit it at the moment, I had always wanted to see one.

It was a wide circle, with some of its stones no longer standing. The stones that were standing tended toward the build of the middle-aged American, broad for their height, but the effect was profound. Here was something of great meaning, I realized. But what was the meaning, and who had been trying to communicate it to whom? My mind grew quiet, trying to hear the stones speak.

“This circle is ancient,” Corbett said. “By two thousand years ago, no one could remember why it was built. It’s called Druid’s Circle, but it was built long before there were druids here.”

I stood soaked and shivering, leaned against one of the stones. In no time at all, my perspective had completely changed. At that moment, all the circumstances that had led me here seemed like an incredible streak of luck. Wasn’t I the luckiest person in the world to have been chosen to be brought to this place?

Corbett said something about it having been built by pre-literate people, made to communicate to parts of us most of us don’t know we have. I only half followed him. As the atmosphere cleared I could see hills stretching off into the distance. In one direction I saw a town and then the sea out on the horizon. A few sheep were grazing not far away. It was exquisitely beautiful.

“So, about why you’re here,” Corbett said. “Strangely, you’re uniquely suited . . .” I ignored him. I didn‘t care. I was absorbed in looking at the stones and the low bank around them, at the landscape and the sky.

“He’s not listening,” Bartholomew said. “All of a sudden he’s all euphoric and useless. I think it’s time to take him home.”

“Really?” Corbett said, looking me over. “I suppose you’re right,”

I was jolted from my reverie and a moment later found myself standing, soaking wet, just inside my apartment door with a newspaper in my hand. I stepped in and out the hall door a couple times, but nothing happened. Except, of course, I became furious. I searched the apartment, but the crows were nowhere to be found.

My coffee was cold, my clothes were wet, it was a sunny day outside. Everything added to my irritation. I put the paper down, showered and changed, going over the morning’s events in my mind. Part of me yearned for the happy, whole feeling I’d had at the stones, and part of me tried to explain the whole thing away as a dream or hallucination. I wolfed down my cold muffin and decided to head for the library where internet access was available. I paused warily as I stepped out my door, but, alas, remained in Nazareth.