Since as long as I can remember, I've never been able to sleep at night. So I lay myself down when the sun comes up and sleep through most of the day. Phin says it's because I have a little bit of memory like he does. I say it's because I have a problem with nightmares and figuring things out for myself. The whole world's mostly asleep when the dark is out and that's the best time for me to sit and think through everything. I still don't understand why, when Phinnaeus goes, I stay. I've never been able to leave Early. She's too much a mystery and if I leave for even a moment, she'll reveal the answer, and I will have missed it. She was always something more than human for me and at the same time, something less.

I remember watching her once, when I was younger. She was standing in the middle of a rainstorm, thinking we were too young to remember.

"Stay her, boys," she said to us, leaving us behind in the Wheels, while she ran out into a summer downpour that ended up carrying half the state away. "If I don't come back, you won't remember anyway. But you just don't understand about water. It's the only way I can get to River." When we were little and too young to talk, she'd mention River every now and then. Now, she stops at rivers and stays silent, like Phin did after the ice-pick rod, for days. But rainstorms are different. She'll go out in them like it's the last thing she ever wanted to do in life.

Me and Phin watched her climb out of the car and run down the road and we climbed out of the back and stuck our faces to the window. When she came back, she was completely dry, as if not a drop of rain had touched her. This happened often. She'd run out into the rain, into storms that should've left her dead and drowned and she'd come back completely dry. Untouched.

"Damn it!" she always said when she got back in the car. "Damn it." Then, she'd remember we were there and look at us with a puzzled expression, as if we weren't supposed to be there, look ahead, stick the key in the ignition and start driving again without mentioning anything. So Phin and I grew up on the road with a mother called Early, who did everything she could to get soaked in a rainstorm but always came back out of it dry.

"I suppose, little brother, man," Phin said, "that she's just got herself followed around by a column of air. No rain for her, no sir. She's got a pocket waiting on her in the sky."