Page 133 of Under Story

Tess wins the job easily. When she arrives in Madison, Laurel treats her to cheese curds and pitches the cave experiment. Tess needs no convincing. Afterward, Laurel gives her a campus tour. She takes care to mention that Tuesdays are horror movie night at the student union.

Tess touches Laurel’s arm. “I love horror movies.”

In Science Hall, they turn an unused office into a situation room. Gloria creates a map of the inside of the cave. They affix it to a bulletin board and chart circuits with pushpins. Tess carts boxes of ORBs into the office for storage.

“Can we see them?” Gloria asks.

The ORBs are nestled in protective padding, like ornaments. Each is roughly the size of a softball.

“It’s basically an electronic nose,” says Tess, passing one around for inspection. “Air enters a sorting tube, and a sensor interprets volatile molecules. The results are translated into color. If the volatiles come mainly from fungi, the gas in the ORB turns green. If plants are the primary source, it turns red.”

The latest model was engineered to measure concentration, too: the color glows brighter as communication increases.

Gloria’s mouth is parted. “How did you come up with this?”

“Slowly,” says Tess.

Gloria and Tess make the next visit to Cedar alone. The time is coming for Laurel to withdraw: she feels an urge to turn away from work, toward Silas, and she heeds it. At eighteen months, he reminds Laurel of her grandfather Bob. Bob remained active through his eighties, but in his final years, he receded. At family gatherings, he took his hearing aids out. It did not seem that he was unhappy, but that conversation no longer interested him. If they sat outside, he closed his eyes, and his white hair danced in the breeze.

—

Laurel’s nonresistance dissolves when Silas turns one. She can only think of lasts: His last word. His last smile. The last time he’ll walk, roll over, lift his own head.

Her milk comes in. She wakes from dreams sweaty, gasping, saying aloud: “I take it back.”

Eli holds her when she comes undone in the grocery store. Every day, he tells Laurel there’s still a chance. When she needs to, she lets herself believe it: they’ll escape with their baby, held to her breast.

Silas loses his last tooth. He forgets how to wave. There is a terrible momentum, like something being pulled into a drain. Even when he is silent, Laurel hears crying—either the echo of a previous scream or her own hallucinatory forecast of the next one.

In September, Kenji Nakamura knocks on the door.

Laurel steps backward. The overtaker seems like a mythical villain, his very presence a bad omen. Silas sleeps in a sling on her chest, and she puts her arms around him, as if it is Mr. Nakamura—and not nature itself—who plans to take him away.

Mr. Nakamura gazes at Silas. “How is he?”

How little Laurel knew when Mr. Nakamura was last here. Since then, she has molted, seen miracles, lost her old coat like a sheep. She does not want to need him again.

“He’s fine,” says Laurel, snapping. She has an urge to cover Silas’s face.

“I’m here to help,” the overtaker says.

No, no. Lying. She feels deranged. Silas has entered another sleep regression, but he is sleeping now, and Laurel has turned the lights off.

“We don’t need help,” she says.

“You will,” says the overtaker.

“You can’t force us. We’ll run away.”

“Your son wouldn’t survive. He’ll need to be in your body.”

There is care in his voice, but the words go in cold as a spear. Whatever Laurel might have said dies in her throat.

“Wait.” Eli’s face looms out of the darkness. “You said there was—an instrument. Last time you were here, you said you’d met a couple, and there was a device, something they used to cross over.”

The overtaker looks at them with sorrow leavened by practice. “I don’t know any more now than I told you then.”

Eli comes to stand with Laurel and Silas. Kenji Nakamura does not seem alarmed by their reaction; to him, this must be ordinary. Laurel wonders if he visited the redheaded teenage girl from the park. He must have known hundreds of people like her. Madwomen, clinging to their bundles.