By the light of the moon

reason to an extent that even the radiant tunnel in
the wall had not done.
    With the palm of her right hand still against the back of Shep's
right hand, Jilly was afraid to struggle with him, for fear that
any movement she made would further fold here to there, wherever there might be this time. 'Smooth it out, honey,' she urged,
tremors creasing her voice as strangely as the walls were folded
before her. 'Let it go, sweetie. Smooth it out like it ought to
be.'
    Between thumb and forefinger, Shepherd still pinched the fabric
of reality.
    Slowly he turned his head to look at Jilly. He met her eyes as
directly as he had met them only once before: when he'd been in the
backseat of the Expedition outside the house on Eucalyptus Avenue,
just after Dylan had rushed away without explanation. Then, Shep
had flinched from eye contact, had looked at once away.
    This time he held her gaze. His green eyes appeared as deep as
oceans and seemed to be lit from within.
    'Do you feel it?' he asked.
    'Feel what?'
    'Feel how it works, the round and round of all that is.'
    She supposed that by transmission through his hand, he expected
her to feel what he felt between his thumb and forefinger, but she
was aware only of his warm skin, of the sharpness of his
metacarpals and his knuckles. She expected to detect tremendous
tension, as well, to have an awareness of how hard Shep must be
straining to achieve this incredible feat, but he seemed to be
relaxed, as though folding this place to another required no more
effort than folding a towel.
    'Do you feel the beautiful of all that is?' he asked, addressing
her with a directness that had no element of autistic
detachment.
    As beautiful as the secret structure of reality might be, this
close an encounter with the mystery of it did not delight her as it
seemed to enchant Shepherd, but instead crystallized an ice of
terror in her bones. She wanted not to understand, but only to
persuade him to close this gateway before he fully opened it.
    'Please smooth it out, sweetie. Smooth it out again so I can
feel how it unfolds.'
    Although her father had been shot to death a year ago in a drug
deal gone bad, Jilly had the fearful notion that if Shepherd didn't
unfold this, if instead he folded it all the way and took them from here to there , she would abruptly come face to face
with her hateful old man, as she had often opened the apartment
door to the sight of his dangerous smile. She expected Shep to
swing wide the gate to Hell as easily as he opened a gate to
California, facilitating a father-and-daughter reunion. Come to
collect the eye insurance, baby girl. You got the eye-insurance
premium? As though Shep might unwittingly give her father a
chance to reach out from Beyond to make good on his unfulfilled
threat, blinding her in not one eye, but in both.
    Shep's gaze drifted away from her. He refocused on his thumb and
forefinger.
    He had tweaked the pinch of nothing from left to right. Now he
tweaked it right to left.
    The wildly angled stripes in the wallpaper realigned themselves.
The unbroken line of the corner, floor to ceiling, became clearly
visible again, without a single zig or zag. What she had seemed to
see through an octagonal prism, she here saw undistorted.
    Squinting at the pinch point where Shep still squeezed something
between thumb and forefinger, Jilly thought she saw the air dimple like a puckered film of thin plastic wrap.
    Then his pale fingers parted, releasing whatever extraordinary
fabric he had held.
    Even viewed from the side, his green eyes appeared to cloud, and
in place of the ocean's depth that had been revealed, there came
now a shallowness, and in place of enchantment... a melancholy.
    'Good,' Dylan said with relief. 'Thank you, Shep. That was just
fine. That was good.'
    Jilly let go of Shep's hand, and he lowered it to his side. He
lowered his head, too, staring at the floor, slumping his
shoulders, as though, for an instant liberated, he had once more
accepted the weight of his autism.

28
    Dylan moved the second chair from the table near the
window, and the three of them sat in a semicircle at the desk, in
front of the laptop, with Shepherd safely in the middle, where he
could be more closely watched.
    The kid sat with his chin against his chest. His hands lay in
his lap, turned up. He appeared to be reading his palms: the heart
line, head line, lifeline – and the many meaningful lines
radiating out of the web between thumb and forefinger, that area
known as