Doris came over to Joey’s side as he worked to hide his alarm. It was very clear those kids had seen him and Xi Yong. How?
As Lon began helping his sister pick through the crayons, Doris said, “They must have been watching something on TV.”
Joey bit his lip hard. He so wanted to tell her the truth. This was far worse than last night, when he’d finessed the ‘camping trip’. Letting his mate believe a lie felt terrible. But how to tell her?
She was looking at the kids, not at him. “Or maybe Pink and Lon saw something in one of these old books.” She indicated battered picture books in a yellow bookshelf.
Now, Joey’s fox insisted. Tell her now.
“I believe him,” Joey said slowly.
Doris looked startled. He hesitated, the urge to spill everything nearly overwhelming. But not yet. He knew he had not yet earned her trust enough for that.
Luckily, Lon gave him a chance to speak indirectly by saying, “We did see it!”
“Did!” Pink echoed.
“I believe you,” Joey assured them. Still addressing the children, or at least speaking while looking at them, he said, “At least, until proven otherwise, I tend to believe anything a child tells me. Even if it’s not convenient to my worldview. Consensus reality is not a hard rule. It changes from century to century, region to region.”
The kids stared blankly at him, then returned to their drawings.
Joey risked a glance at Doris, whose expression was impossible to read. But he saw no disbelief. She was sitting on the floor. She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees as she said, “My parents would argue with you. My sister too. For them, everything is black and white. Nothing is real that they can’t see and touch.”
“Do you believe everything is black and white?” Joey asked, holding his breath.
Doris looked away, then back, and met his eyes. “I don’t. I guess you could say my being a drama teacher is a compromise with what I wanted to be true as a kid. Since then . . . well, I never much liked the Red Queen character in Alice in Wonderland, except I’ve always loved her saying that she often believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
“Only six?” Joey laughed.
Doris’s smile faded a little. “Though I have to admit, many of us are still seeking Number One.” She looked down at Pink scribbling away, and Lon drawing more carefully, little shoulder blades poking the back of his shirt as he tried to outline a vaguely equine shape. “Bird would agree. But then she writes stories that have dragons that are as real as the human characters.”
Joey leaned forward. “Have you ever asked about Bird’s impossible things?”
Doris said softly, “Sometimes I’ve wanted to . . . I think I’d like to live in Bird’s world. I did, as a kid. But then I had to grow up.”
Joey caught himself leaning toward her. His arms ached to hold her, and his mind streamed with words, beginning with, I am a nine-tailed fox. He was half a breath from confession when she gave a short sigh. “I know I’m beginning to sound silly.”
Joey said with total conviction, “Nothing you say is silly to me.”
And she met his eyes, honest, true, maybe a little yearning.
Lon looked up, breaking the spell of the moment. “I can’t make those things right.” He gestured by his head.
“Antlers?” Joey asked.
“Yes! Antlers. Auntie Nicola said that’s what they are.”
“But horses don’t have antlers,” Doris said gently. “And they don’t come in red. Are you sure your animal was a horse?”
Joey knelt down beside Lon, and glanced at the tube-shaped animal with four straight legs. Lon had attempted to draw the cloven hooves. The antlers looked like whiskers rising from the animal’s ears. But the red was there, crimson bright. It did look like fire.
“That’s a qilin,” Joey said.
“A what? Sill . . .”
“Qilin. Sounds kind of like tsill-in.” He said it slowly. “They’re found in China, mostly.”
Lon’s eyes widened. “China? Do you have to go on the freeway?”