The child pulled back, breathing in, and pushed forward, breathing out, trying to row himself to sleep. In out, in out, he thought. He wiggled his legs in excitement. The oars of his mind were pulled by Viking warriors, pillagers in his command. They rowed and rowed, toward a Swedish fishing village with cobblestone houses and a large hill. The ladder was the sole attraction of the town, the one peculiar pride for which the simple people held their chins up. The boy ordered his fleet to row faster as he charged up the ship’s center, sword drawn, and leaped onto the grassy shore. He gave the order, and flaming arrows were fired on the straw roofs.
His covers were bunched up and his arm was stretched out towards the door in the ordering gesture. He laid back down. Left, right, left, right, his head nodded. At least he thought those were the directions. He turned onto his side and looked at the door, which he preferred to leave open. The hall light shone through a dome of white glass. He imagined the light’s pointed, black cap turning up toward him, searching for something in him that would make him worthy. The wall around him folded down and the ceiling collapsed, revealing the hidden shape of a dragon which turned its head, revealing another Crate & Barrel eye and the boy sat up to face it. The eggshell head leaned forward—on its snakelike neck with shingle scales—before swinging back and exhaling a tiny gale. The boy’s hair, now just below the fan, was blown back and the attic dragon leaned in to lick him.
The boy sat back and looked around his room. He couldn’t sleep. He rubbed his eyes and slid out of bed. The boards of the old house creaked, so he walked slowly and tried to find the right balance of pressure, pacing, and foot placement to make the least amount of noise. His data was inconclusive, and he typically just chose a random one. This time, he walked slowly on the balls of his feet.
His mother—a woman who wore lipstick to the dentist, who came from a place where they talk about dunes like mountains and lakes like oceans, who’s love and hate were braided together in childhood by abusive adults—had already gone to bed. He slunk for her sake. His father, who fancied himself a Greek, stayed up late thinking about how what drove us to love drove us to space; due to his non-confrontational parenting, the boy did not worry about him. The father, who prided himself on his well-roundedness, was in reality a mathematics professor who’d never been good enough at anything else to follow the example of his antiquitous heroes. He was not even skilled at noticing the time. Primarily, the professor was interested in space, and the greatest disappointment of his life was that NASA didn’t want him. Nonetheless, he positioned himself in his hexagonal study, most every night, surrounded by tall white bookshelves, trying to draw connections across concentration like the thinkers of old. As far as the boy knew, the study light was maintained by the vestal virgins.
The stairs were creakier than the top floor, but the child had a more defined strategy here, although he was not entirely sure if it worked: clinging to the edges of the stairs, in hopes that noise was enhanced the further his feet got from the supports. He didn’t even know if his mother was a light sleeper or not, his parents’ bedroom at night was a yawning cave that could hold any terrible secret behind its darkness. The darkness seemed to pour out of it, like fruit out of a cornucopia, and the spirit of adventure in his head rarely manifested itself in action. He would not have gone downstairs if he didn’t know that his father would place helping his son above all other pursuits.
Thus, the boy began his odyssey, crossing the floorboard desert to the stairs of hell where he would venture into the underworld, like his favorite musician, Orpheus. The boy warmed up the strings of his violin, sending a few sonic arrows through the attic to calibrate. The sweet song wound down the stairs and out the windows, pulling the foxes and magpies to him, creating a small army of woodlands creatures he was sure would soon include the mighty Cerberus. The boy forgot himself and released a confident guffaw which caused the study door to creak open.
“Nils, is everything alright?” his father asked.
“Yes pop, can you get me some milk?”
His father stood in the doorway, eclipsed by the intense, reading light. “Sure. I could use a late-night milk myself.”
Nils started with a run, then slid in his too-big, Lion King pajamas into the living room, almost tripping on the couch.
“Let’s go a little slower this late, buddy. These are low energy hours.”
Nils looked into his father’s tired eyes and nodded, but with speed despite its stealth, a grin crept onto the professor’s face, like sunlight into the morning’s corners. He jumped into his father’s arms and grabbed for his chin. “Spiky beard!” he squealed.
“Yup, yup. You caught me, I’m unshaven.” His dad set him down. “Let’s get some milk, you need to get to sleep.”
They walked hand in hand to the kitchen where the father reached to the angular utter on the wall and flicked two lights on. In art class, Nils had made a cow head and legs to pair with the quartet of switches, but his mom had refused to have it on her wall like the rest of his eccentric, student artwork. Nils swayed slightly, letting his arms swing in circles and looked past the desired display for his phantom statue, walking towards him in the night. The cow’s ghost faded when he noticed the couch below it wore a sloppy set of bedding.
“Pop! Look! Look! We must have a burglar sleeping here. Maybe a spy! I’ll get my slingshot.”
“No, Nils don’t!” The professor had to grab his son by the collar to keep him from running away. He sighed. “I’m sleeping there.”
“What, why? Who keeps mom company?”
The professor chuckled. “She doesn’t need company now, I hope.”
The boy looked into his father’s eyes. He saw something uncharted, like the night sky in a new season. Nils looked away.
“Dad? Can I have some milk now?” the boy asked.
“Sure, buddy.”
