Excerpt: A House with Three Stories

Rostya’s shadow was probably tired, too.

There were a dozen empty seats at least on the train out of town, and only a few that were full, and one had been his for half the ride. But he felt exhausted. Just sitting wasn’t enough. His shadow had collapsed, having been dragged by its wrists down the platform and onto the train. He envied it, briefly. It didn’t give half a damn for the shakes of the floor or the rattling windows; and Rostya himself was considering how badly he wanted to multiply and fill the car, sitting down enough times that the relief could add up to comfort of some kind. There were other reasons to multiply, too.

Reasons to multiply were multiplying. He had no way of knowing how many times the train-wheels revolved from the city to his home halfway up the mountain and its backyard full of lemon trees. Logic told him ‘a lot’, however, and that was the number of reasons crawling through his bones.

One to sit there, one to sit there, one to sit there, one to stand stoic, one to join his shadow on the floor despite the dirt. One to tell Jackson he didn’t mind what they’d done in her brother’s kitchen. One to burn down the building. One to buy an edge at E.’s and use it to vanish. One to practice martyrdom. One to climb the Windmills. One for each stop the train made, all three of them, and one for good measure to be the conductor. One up, one down, one sideways. One into the river. He could not swim well, but he had never drowned before.