I didn’t mean to bite my uncle, really. It’s just that I don’t like it when he bops my nose, and I’ve told him this. He still always does it, though. If he’s going to disregard my voice as if I’m some animal he can’t understand, then I thought I should act like one. I bit him. Surely, he would understand that, but clearly I was wrong. I didn’t mean to really hurt him. So, Dad, here is the apology letter you said I had to write.

I am sorry you got hurt, Uncle. I hope my actions have explained what my words never could. Your finger will be safe from my teeth as long as you never try to touch my nose again.

Finally away from her mother’s judgmental gaze, the little ocean stretched. North, south, east, and west, she tumbled over deep trenches and shallow sands. There was plenty of room, so her wiggles wouldn’t disturb her siblings or annoy her mother. There was no one to tell her not to stretch even further, no one to care what she did.

Her fist knocked against something, and she twirled, venturing again to inspect it. Hard, unyielding, rough. It didn’t rock at her touch like a boat. It didn’t fly off like a gull. Perhaps this was one of the clouds that often sailed high above, cousins mother required she send a polite wave to.

So, she waved, but no response came. Clouds always called her cute, and sometimes they chuckled, but then, they never saw her so indecently sprawled like this.

The little ocean gathered herself and waved again but was still ignored. How rude of this stiff, immobile thing. She would make it notice her. She whirled, glittering with bubbles, and hunched at the edge of her domain. Then she charged. She dashed against towering rock, glimpsed lounging dry sand, but her mother towed her back and wrapped her in her frothy arms.

“What are you doing, little one?”

The little ocean reached toward the rocks again. “Why does it not answer?”

Her mother embraced her tighter and continued to bear her away. “The shore sleeps. Do not bother it.”

Yet, just before the rock vanished from sight on the horizon, the little ocean grinned. There, where the water lapped the land, appeared a small wrinkle in the sand, a smile.

Duncan hated Saturdays. They were his dad’s day off, but that wasn’t the problem. Dad had always believed in quality over quantity regarding time, and for the last forty years, Saturday had been devoted to him. Each week would bring the best adventure money could buy to fully cement their father-son bond.

However, Duncan’s knees had a creak they hadn’t twenty years ago. When he turned just right, his back twinged, and a vein above his left eye would throb for “reasons unexplained.” His wife called it a nervous tic.

It throbbed now as his kayak floated too near dripping veins of lava. The newly formed island was a black mass spiderwebbed by molten orange, and steam hissed where infant rock licked the ocean. The cloud embraced Dad and hid him from cowardly eyes.

“We should go back to the yacht!”

Dad didn’t look back. “Where’s your spirit of adventure? We’ll see this beauty from all angles, then circle back if we’ve had enough.”

Teeth grit, Duncan clutched his paddle. No physical leash kept him here, but how could he explain to his mother, let alone the board of investors, that he had gone back without the old man?

“Captain Diego told us not to pass the buoys.”

“You only live once.”

With a glance at the captain’s warning markers behind him, Duncan dug the paddle into the water. “That’s what worries me.”

“It’s not deep,” the oldest brother claimed as he stepped into the puddle. Mud squelched between his toes. Per usual, he didn’t notice, but the middle brother did.

This one grimaced. “If it’s not deep, why can we only see grass around the edges?”

“And where did our ball go?” the youngest added, peeking around his safe, second brother.

Now nearly to his knees in the water, the first deflected their arguments with a wave. “The ball’s hiding because it doesn’t want to play with you sissies anymore.”

“And the grass?”

“Grandpa has secret little bald spots. Don’t you think the earth has ’em, too?”

The middle brother crossed his arms, but before he could reply, the oldest disappeared with a mighty splash. Seconds rolled on, kneading into minutes. What was a second brother to do? He couldn’t swim to save his life, let alone anyone else’s. That was why he had called over the oldest in the first place. Maybe if he grabbed a big stick and poked the puddle…

A hand shot above the surface, clutching a shiny red ball. As it glided toward the puddle’s edge, it rose, joined by a head, then shoulders, and finally the rest of the oldest’s body.

He tossed the ball at his siblings. “Do not lose it again.”

The second brother handed the prize to the youngest and trailed the first. “It was deep.”

“Nah, I just did that to scare you mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms?”

“Because all you did was stand there.” He stomped through the waving grass, soaked and jaw clenched so his teeth wouldn’t chatter.

“That’s a stupid thing to do on purpose,” the youngest said too quietly for the oldest to hear.

The second placed his hand atop the littlest’s head. “Yeah, but stupid comes with brave sometimes, and I envy him the latter.

This place wasn’t for children. How many times had Linda been told that? Even so, her sandals pressed into this forbidden ground, soft as the freshly tilled fields around her village. It held no evidence of this afternoon’s shower, damp and a little musky but lacking any scent of petrichor. Instead, a lighter perfume saturated the air, sweet but shier than citrus and sharper than apple.

The flowers far above her head glittered in the starlight, the palest of pinks and purples against wending, deep gray branches. She set her eyes upon the massive trunk in the center of it all—a clear shot, nothing to keep her from the answer she sought. The Tree wouldn’t judge her. It wouldn’t tell her she would only understand when she was older.

Linda broke into a run but fell back as a hand tangled in the reverse side of her vest.

“Girl, you know them rules is there for a reason. So’s the fence you must have climbed and the guard you snuck behind.”

Vision blurred by tears, she looked up at Peg-leg Paul, loudest mouth in the village but the slowest runner for obvious reasons.

His face softened. “I understand you’s desperate. You want the Tree to tell you how to get your sister to come back.”

No, Celia had deserted for good reason. Linda wouldn’t drag her back here, and she wouldn’t waste a wish trying.

Paul towed her toward the gate. “The Tree does more than answer questions, Linda. It unlocks an area of truth in the mind of one who sleeps in them branches. Even adults can handle that only so many times before they go insane.”

She was insane already, though. This whole village was. Celia said so.

Twisting out of her vest, Linda tore across the soft soil. As Paul’s shouts played a melody over the rhythm of her heart, she scaled the gnarled trunk and kept going as high as she dared. She didn’t have much time, but at least the answer should be simple.

Once the sky’s speckled velvet black outweighed the pastel of the flowers, she wedged herself in a V and filled her lungs with the Tree’s fragrance, one thought held at the forefront of her mind: Should I go with her?

Benton Shultz had a big nose. Everyone said so. His kindergarten classmates called him Big Nose Schnoz, and his high school peers called him worse. His co-workers didn’t say anything, but it was written in their sidelong glances.

All that would change, thanks to this flyer he had found beneath his windshield wiper.

Want to look perfect? Smaller letters followed: No surgery required. Then this back alley address.

The office consisted of one room, fake plants, a wall of drawers, a desk, and a man in a doctor’s white coat.

“What can I do for you?”

“Can’t you tell just by looking at me?” Benton asked, and sure enough, the doctor’s gaze caught on the hooked honker in the middle of his face.

“It will cost you.”

Benton didn’t care. He wanted this beak gone. He didn’t understand the explanation in the brochure the doctor handed him, nor did the doctor’s lecture make it any clearer. He took away only one point: This would make his nose perfectly normal.

He signed all the papers.

“When do we make this happen?”

The doctor closed a drawer, hiding an object behind his back. “Now.”

“Really? There’s no blood work or any—”

The doctor pinched Benton’s nose, jerked his head back, and poured a vial of clear liquid down his throat.

Released, Benton coughed. “You couldn’t have just told me to drink it?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“I can take my medicine without it having to be shoved down my throat.” He patted his nose. “It doesn’t feel any different.”

“You should notice subtle changes throughout the week.”

Thus assured, Benton went home, checking the mirror as often as he blinked. This eagerness was childish. He wouldn’t be able to watch the changes happen. Turning off his selfie camera, he promised he wouldn’t check again until morning.

All night long, his nose throbbed.

When daylight came, he faced the mirror and performed a thorough inspection. Yes, his snout might have been a smidgen smaller. Throughout the day, nothing could erase his smile.

The next day, he convinced himself that his proboscis was even more minute. Yet, the third day, he noticed something else.

“My nose is great,” he told the doctor as he entered the alley office.

“Then what seems to be the problem?”

“Well, now that my nose isn’t so huge, don’t you think my ears stand out too much?”

The doctor steepled his hands. “I can fix that, but again, it’ll cost you.”

Benton still didn’t care, and this time he drank the dose just to prove he would, even if it was nasty. The momentary discomfort was nothing next to the years of teasing and judgement.

A month later, his mother came to visit.

“Notice anything different about me?”

She hugged him tight. “Of course, my elephant in the room. That is a lovely haircut.”

“No, well, yes, I did get a haircut.” He pulled back. “Anything else? About my face?”

She shook her head.

“Mom, do you seriously not see it? I’ve shrunk my nose down to a normal size!”

After a silent moment, she held in a chuckle. “Benton, your nose was never big. We only said it was because you had a bad habit of sticking it everywhere it didn’t need to be.”

He always said his name was rare but gave no further detail, so that was what they called him. Rare. Some added a mister to it, or señor, herr, meneer, -ông, -san, or yéye. He claimed all rivers were one—the Amazon, Mississippi, Nile, Yantze. Even smaller rivers like this one, so forgettable that it didn’t even have a proper name. The locals simply called it Ilog. The River.

Diwa ran, eyes pinned to the silent, white wings of an owl doing its best to leave her behind. She hadn’t bothered with her slippers, but time and sense had been with her enough to grab her coat. The black fabric did little to protect her from the frigid droplets shaken from the trees.

In celebration of autumn’s end, the sky had thrown a banquet, and Ilog drank more than her fill, engorged and still greedy for crops or fools. Diwa knew better than to approach those banks, but those Rare summoned—via a raven by day or an owl by night—came, no matter what.

As Diwa stopped on the border of land and water, the moon hid behind winter’s clouds. Ilog licked at her bare toes, and the earth drew in her heels. She pulled her coat tighter, peering into the dance of darkness.

She didn’t spot him until he spoke. “Are you the one to solve a riddle for me?”

There upon a narrow raft sat a man shriveled by time, features never the same from moment to moment. Not even his clothes stood immune to the shift of angles—a beggar’s rags, an emperor’s robes, a businessman’s suit, a farmer’s frock.

“That can’t be me, Lolo. I’m terrible at riddles.”

Grandfather Rare glanced at the white owl perched upon his oar. “Ah, but you followed my pet all the way here. Will you say he found the wrong person?”

No, Diwa would never be so rude. She pursed her lips. “Perhaps there is something else you need me for?”

“Perhaps, yet this riddle must be answered first. Will you not even attempt it?”

No, for Ilog devoured fools, and Diwa well knew the tales of those who answered incorrectly.

“Lolo, I will find someone to solve the riddle.” She retreated a pace but stopped as Rare smiled and shook his head.

“Is there no curiosity within you, child? Do you not want the prize, even to know what it is? Do you not crave the adventure?”

Maybe she did, just a little, but to be safe, she put another step between herself and the river. “What is the riddle, Lolo Rare?”

His smile became the crescent moon. “Which direction does the river flow?”

Ilog ran west, but everyone knew that. It wasn’t tricky enough to be the answer to a riddle. Besides, Rare claimed all rivers were one, and not all flowed west.

Yet, all rivers did travel in one direction.

“Down,” she said, lifting her chin. “The river flows down.”

“It does indeed. How clever and brave you are.” Rare gestured to the front of his raft. “Board, child, and be granted your reward.”

Diwa wrapped her coat tighter around herself, one frozen foot scraping at the back of her ankle. “Can’t you hand it to me here?”

Rare laughed. “Even if I could hand you all the sights of the world, they would not be as enjoyable.”

“All the sights of the world?” Diwa gasped. “You mean you’ll take me anywhere? Everywhere?”

“The reward is more than that, should you wish.” Distance entered his eyes, and his hand fell softly atop the owl’s head. “My raven left, and you would fill the role nicely. You have already offered to summon someone for me.”

“But Lolo, how can I be a raven? I don’t even have wings.”

As Diwa settled onto the raft, Rare’s smile rivaled the wide night sky. “You will.”

Fate’s nails were red. At first, she’d tease them across your skin, but inevitably, those ruby blades always sliced to the bone. That was how she kept them red.

Ricardo’s mother told him this the moment she deemed him a man. “Watch out for that temptress,” she said.

Ricardo always listened to his mother.

Yet, he pulled over on the rural road. Parked in a freshly mowed field was a truck the same blood color as Fate’s nails. It could have been the truck of his dreams had he dared have such dreams. A “For Sale” sign propped against its windshield. Before he knew it, his hands were gliding across its buffed hood, then shielding his eyes as he peeked in the windows.

“Beauty, ain’t she?” said a man in an unbuttoned suit jacket and overalls.

Ricardo shrugged. “It’s alright.”

“’Twas my grandpa’s, and he don’t need her no more, so she needs a good home.”

Ricardo gulped. He could be that good home. His car ran fine, but this truck was water in the desert—something he hadn’t known he needed tied up with a red bow and delivered by Fate.

As he peeked at the price written in the sign’s margin, Ricardo gripped the cashier’s check in his pocket. Who needed a vacation when he could have the truck of his non-existent dreams?

“Dios en los cielos, bring me not into temptation,” Ricardo prayed. Silly to tell God that God was in heaven, but his mother always said it that way.

He released the check and pulled out an inhaler.

“Asthma?” Overalls asked.

“It’s preventative.” Two puffs through the hollow plastic mouthpiece punctuated his reply.

Overalls leaned over the hood. “This beauty could be called preventative, too. She’ll be whatever you need, guaranteed.”

Ricardo didn’t need a truck, but somehow, he signed paperwork and handed over his vacation money. He pulled onto the highway in the Fate’s vehicle, windows down, wind singing through his hair, and radio blaring. She had given him a gift. He should have known the backswing was coming.

The truck waited in the parking lot while he worked. Clouds covered the sun and poured their wealth onto the sizzling blacktop when he emerged from the office building, shoulders slumped and head drooping as low as his loosened tie.

He climbed into the truck, not noticing how he dripped on the pristine upholstery. “Dios de mi madre, what am I going to do?” His arms and face collapsed over the steering wheel. “I need someone to talk to.”

The truck shuddered, shrank, and folded until he sat on the cement in the pouring rain. A dog with fiery fur rested her head on his knee.

Ricardo looked around. “A-are you a shapeshifting robot? A guardian angel?” He lowered his voice. “A devil?”

The dog stared, understanding in her round, golden eyes. Just like headlights.

He patted her head. “W-what would happen if I said I needed someone who could explain a few things?”