A knock in response from the boy’s chest.

    “Well done!” The medium praises, turning to show appreciation to the young disciple, emerged at our left from the wall. “What now?”

  The student smiles, hair caught in the draft of the singularity. It’s great being praised. “We open him.”

  The girl I’d seen in the hallway approaches. Gingery hair up in a high ponytail. The medium waves at me as the girl secures a rope around her ankle and pulls her back down to the ground. I see her mouth moving but, left suspended by the bed, Zosi and I can’t hear anything they’re saying.

  They both turn toward the mother and she slowly shakes her head. She stands up and her brows furrow. 

    “I don’t think she wants to leave the room,” Zosi guesses.

    “Sure looks like it.”

  As the medium continues talking with the mother, the girl moves back and forth from the hallway to the bed, carrying tools one by one because they'd otherwise be ripped from her. She lets go of them and scalpels and forceps float up to me like helium-filled balloons.

    “She probably doesn’t care about the spread. It might’ve already spread to her, anyway. What, with her being around him all the time. I already feel the weight and we haven’t been here long,” Zosi says.

    “Well, she seems more grounded than the father. She might manage to hold herself against it.”

    “They’re not really related, are they?”

    “No,” I say, and Hermes’ eyes move toward me without interest. He doesn’t need a file for these things. “But they’ve been in Honest, Honest? a very long time. Most end up in a group or so, if they don’t manage to solve the city. They hang onto each other.”

  The medium returns.

    “She’s staying. Maddalena will be by her side.” I bite my tongue because she’s always been better at handling hurt and she understands the shades of the soul. I’m just a hunting dog with a knack for dry logic. Connecting point to point. Hearts are such a mystery. “We’ve got no other choice, then. Philosopher, if you would be so kind.”

  I hand her a scalpel, feeling sorry for the boy and wishing his heartbeats had told us a little more. It’s easier when they’re willing to reveal their secret aches.

  The medium rubs the boy’s small chest in a circular motion and then brings the pointy end of the blade to it. Cuts a line into his flesh and there’s no blood. Zosi holds his breath. I squeeze my teeth together and the harpies hide, some of them rushing into my ears. It's all very clean looking but when she reaches into the cut and pulls the ribs apart like a double-door to some outback terrace, there's horrible crunching of bones.

  Then, a low drawn out sound escapes. Desolate saxophone. Dust and the smell of cigarettes. The medium reaches in with the forceps and pulls out a wilted agglomeration of forget-me-nots. Zosi’s hand grabs my arm.

    “My, my. Aren’t you kind of young to be so taken with constellations?” Hermes remarks, slightly bent over the bed like an angular late afternoon shadow. Our clue for today.

  The medium blows soft air into his split apart ribs. Dust flies out in clouds and I cough. It swirls silver and then gold as it catches the distant dusky glow of the city. 

    “Turn off the lights,” I say, and the lights go out. It must be the students since they’re the only ones who can hear us, although I don’t see them do it.

  Something like fireflies crawl out of his ears and his nose and chest. They beat their vibrating wings upwards in clusters of yellow dots. The medium chases them away with a flick of the wrist.

    “We should replace the flowers.”

    “With what?”

    “Cosmos would do. I'm certain we've brought some. Students, tell Maddalena.” And they must’ve because the apprentice leaves the room and returns with a handful of flowers. A student hand produces them from the wall. “Thank you.”

    “Watch out.” Hermes says with a raised eyebrow.

    “What?” comes Zosi’s voice a little too late.

  As she places the flowers between his ribs, whatever held us in mid-air looses its density. Sounds flood my ears again. And, of course, we fall. After much clatter and a few sighs, the boy’s chest is put back together. No need for needle and thread.

    “That was rather quick.”

    “He only had the shallows,” the medium tells Zosi as I watch the incision between his ribs heal and fade as if it never had been.

  The students emerge dutifully and patter their feet around the bed, sprinkling vials of sweet-smelling water.

    “He should be immune to the singularity for now. The spooks will stay away. The clouds, too. At least, until later.”

  I wonder if the boy will wake up and run around again. If he’ll be careless enough to kick a ball around the yard and look at the strangely frozen sky without wondering too much. Or if the shadow will stay with him like a vague memory, gnawing its whispering way back into his heart.

    “I’d like to see the father,” I say, as we let the boy rest and step outside on the back porch to watch the rain stop. It takes a while but it does and the storm clouds disperse. Water drips from the roof. "That was stardust inside his chest. I don't like it."

    “Here,” Zosi brings the medium the peaches he bought for her.

    “You’re kind,” she says with a jolly smile and takes them from his hands. She sinks her pointy teeth into the fruit and eats. “Those were the easy edges. We caught it in time. We’ll see how tricky the father’s case is.”

    “It doesn’t look it.”

    “They usually don’t.” I sigh, again.

    “Wouldn’t the more serious, deeper ones be more evident?”

  I don’t know, I’d like to tell Zosi. The strongest predators are stalkers in the night. You don’t feel them watching and you don’t feel them until they snuff out the light from your eyes. Unless a black hole is feeding, it might take a bit to notice how it tugs and claws at its vicinity. The medium wipes her mouth with her sleeve.

  You can’t ever know just how much someone keeps buried inside, nor how deep. Another rule for philosophers, you simply don’t judge. Theorize but don't jump to hasty conclusions. You don't have the right. Not until you’re submerged in it.