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in unison.

  “Yes, first our father vanished. Although we didn't witness his Sparkling, our mother assured us that he was bound to be happier now, and so we accepted that, but then one morning, it happened to her as well. We were at breakfast,” he said, and paused again, looking around at the nook as if the word “breakfast” combined with his current location had knocked his train of thought off its rails.

  “Can I get you something to eat?” Dolly asked after Marcus failed to continue with his narrative.

  “Oh, no, thanks,” he said, recovering his bearings. “Yes, we were at breakfast and Mom was flipping flapjacks when The Sparkling started happening to her, only it was more like Sparking. Of course we'd seen others Sparkled before, random people going about their every day lives, shopping for groceries, working behind the counter, walking down the street, that sort of thing, but with Mom it seemed different. It looked like it was hurting her and she cried out in protest. “No!” she shouted,”not now! My babies! No!” and there was the sound of loud crackling in the air, like lightning, and I could see tears in her eyes as she reached out to me, and then she was gone, first at the edges just a little bit, and then altogether, poof, all at once. Ben was only two and I was only five, and there we were, alone in the world with no one to look after us.”

  “That damn Sparkler!” Veronica cursed. She was always the most vehement of the crew. Her own experience had been similar enough, only in her case she was the mother and it was her own small child who had taken from her by Sparkles, in the very act of breast-feeding. She could never understand what wish a mere baby could possibly have had that could be granted by the Sparkler. It seemed more like malice, like common theft, like an act of cruelty than a granting of desire.

  “What happened next?” Dolly asked, literally holding her breath in suspense until Marcus continued his story.

  “Well, of course life went on as normal, like it does for everyone while waiting for their sparkling, We all have to keep ourselves occupied, earn our bread so to speak, put on a show like we mean it, though deep down we all know we're only just waiting for it. Ben and I were taken in by a woman who had known our father, known her quite well as it turned out, unbeknownst to my mother. It was from her we discovered that our father hadn't actually been sparkled when he left us, but later on, through a series of curious incidents he did eventually meet his end in his own peculiar way. Even then, no one could be quite sure There were witnesses who claimed to have seen sparkling involved, but others said no, that wasn't sparkles, that was flames.”

  “All the witnesses agreed on the circumstances, though. Our father was driving a bright red convertible down a windy road at twice the speed limit on a rainy slick afternoon when he lost control of the vehicle and slammed head on into a very old and very large elm tree. The car exploded and no one ever saw my father again. The firefighters claimed there was no body in the wreckage, and so the story went out that he was sparkled at the very last moment before the car hit the tree. Our step-mother had her doubts, primarily because our father never owned or was ever seen to drive a red convertible, and also he was on a fishing boat at the time, pulling in lobsters with his colleagues. How our father got mixed up in the story is still a mystery to me but the truth seems to be that he took advantage of the confusion to find himself a new life. Apparently it was not the first time he'd pulled a trick like that.”

  “He sounds like quite a character,” Snake said admiringly.

  “But anyway,” Marcus went on, ignoring the comment, “we had a good enough childhood even at that. Kitty looked after us, and we went to school more or less. We shared a bunk on her houseboat and worked around the dock as youngsters, picking up compliments from old-timers who compared us favorably to our father, who was famous as a shirker and a loafer in those parts. Ben and I were always close, and kept no secrets from each other. I knew all his private dreams, what kind of girl he hoped to marry, what sort of job he'd like to have, what sort of life he'd want most to live. He was quite a daydreamer at that. He always saw himself living on a tropical island, fishing all day and feasting at night, with a nice friendly plump girl by his side and at least seven children running around the encampment he planned to build, which was to consist mainly of bamboo huts on stilts above the shoreline.”

  “What's a tropical island?” Dolly asked, confused.

  “Oh that's a kind of fairy tale we once read about,” Marcus smiled at her. “It was warm all the time, even at night, and there was nothing but sand along the ocean except a volcano in the center of the island surrounded by something called a jungle where funny creatures called monkeys lived.”

  “I know that fairy tale,” George piped up. “I read about it too when I was a kid. There was this guy who set sail to find the end of the world and he got lost in a storm and his boat washed up on that very kind of place. An island!”

  “Isn't an island like a small continent?” Mildred queried. Mildred was never much of a reader. She only knew what people told her in person.

  “It's a myth,” George nodded, “a fairy tale Everyone knows there's only Gaia.”

  “So how was Ben going to live on a place that doesn't exist?” Dolly was puzzled.

  “He was not very realistic,” Marcus said. “That's why after high school he went to work in a copy store and then everything went wrong. He met and married the wrong woman. His whole life went down the drain after that.”

  “That's sad,” Dolly said and Marcus nodded.

  “It was very sad. Gloria was always telling him what to do, where to go and making fun of his dreams. She mocked him and scolded him and berated him and demeaned him constantly. That's why he ended up staying long hours in the store and even working weekends. He didn't want to go home where she would only complain and be mean to him. He told me there had never been anything good in their relationship, it was just a force of habit. He'd never loved her and she'd never loved him. There was no such thing as love, even. He was in a terrible state.”

  “Why didn't he leave her?” August wanted to know. “That's not so hard to do.”

  “There are always two people to blame in every bad relationship,” Veronica added. “It's not fair just to put all the blame on the wife.”

  “He lost his will to live,” Marcus said. “It doesn't matter anyway does it? That's what he'd say to me whenever I had the chance to talk to him in those days, which wasn't often, because, well, because we didn't talk much. Why bother, he'd ask me. We're just going to get Sparkled anyway, and then we'll be gone, right out of here, everything will change and it will all be better, right? So why even try? Why do anything?”

  “That's the whole problem,” Makima said, slamming her fist on the table. “There's no point in anything as long as there's these stupid Sparkles! You don't even have to want anything in particular, not consciously at least. You don't get a choice. The Sparkler decides for you. Why bother, indeed?”

  “There's not even room for hope,” August declared. “In the time before The Sparkles people had hopes. They had faith. When they prayed, they meant it. When they truly wanted something, they wanted it with all their hearts.”

  The room fell quiet for several moments. August was spouting nonsense again. Heresy. No one else believed in an actual time before The Sparkles, they only imagined what it might be like to live with no guarantee of ever getting anything you wanted, where you'd have to actually do something, take action, put in some effort, work at it if you wanted to make your dreams come true. With the world as it was, your labors sometimes brought their own rewards, it was true, but those fruits could never be very meaningful. Only the rewards brought by The Sparkles could be the True Desire. Everything else was merely cause and effect. Dig a hole in the ground and you've got yourself a hole Build a business and you have a business, but what does it all mean? Very little if not accompanied by little bright lights and occasional twinkling noises.

  “I told him to focus on the things he could control, like his domestic situation, like his d
aily life, but he wasn't interested in any of those things,” Marcus said. “As for myself I enjoyed solving the puzzles and challenges my various jobs bring to me each week. It's not much but it's enough for me.”

  “What about your dreams?” Dolly wanted to know. Marcus shrugged.

  “I don't know if I have any,” he said. “Except wanting my brother to be happy. He was such a happy kid. We used to play all sorts of games when we were small. He was a fantastic swimmer and diver, and he was fast, super fast. He loved to race anyone and beat them and he'd laugh, he'd laugh so loud sometimes it hurt his sides and he'd fall over, banging his head on the ground from too much mirth. He told terrible jokes. He loved playing jokes on Kitty, like hiding in the cupboard and jumping out when she wasn't expecting it. Even as a teenager he still enjoyed living. I taught him how to drive and we'd go for long road trips, all up and down the coast, sleeping in the back of my old pickup truck and playing with our old dog, Kettle. We still shared a room the whole time I was off at trade school learning about machines and he was finishing high school. It wasn't until he met Gloria, that's when his life turned to shit.”

  “You don't like her much, do you?” Dolly clucked. “Is she really that