Author's Note: And here's where the corner cutting begins. I was going to go on a long long tangent here- but I changed my mind because it's taken me three years to finish part I of this story, and it's going to have at least three more similarly sweeping parts. Theoretically. I keep messing with stuff. Anyhow, Part II 1 short odd chapter. I'd rather get more commentary on the work as a whole than this chapter, but any and all reviews make me happy.

Persephone

Part II: While Winter Reigned on Earth

22 HOURS

Sarah left a note for her parents that she gone to the movies with Brent after all. She told them his sister was watching Toby at her house, and that they would return in the morning. They would be angry, but she couldn't let them find their son gone. She chose not to think about what they might think if she disappeared.

XXXX

Toby woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache and ran into the spare bedroom just as he had always done. He stopped in the doorframe, studying the girly pink wallpaper and moldy peach carpet and suddenly realized that he had no reason to run into the spare bedroom at all. Strange. There was a memory lingering there. He shook his head violently but nothing came; his headache just got worse. Rubbing his eyes, he turned around and went down the stairs to breakfast.

"Sometimes, I wish I was still in school," his mother said while she flipped pancakes. "Once in a while, I just want an old fashioned vacation."

"A whole week of family day," his father agreed.

"That could make a person crazy. Are you feeling all right Toby?"

The little boy yawned. "Hungry."

"You fell asleep so early last night- I didn't want to wake you. Eat up now."

His father unfolded and re-folded his newspaper. "What are we going to do today slugger?"

"I don't know." The pancakes and maple syrup did wonders for his head. A moment later he forgot it had been hurting at all. He smiled at Karen with sticky cheeks.

"What do you want to do?"

"I think I have a make-believe I need to finish. That's right," he slurped out between mouthfuls.

Karen and Robert exchanged worried looks. While Toby seemed normal most of the time, he was awfully fixated on fairy stories. And while they wondered if they wouldn't have minded a little girl's fascination with the fantastical, imaginings didn't mesh with football. Ignorant to it all, Toby wiped his mouth on the table cloth before his mother could scold and ran back upstairs.

XXXX

There was a beautiful block maze spread across the sea blue carpet in his small room. It had taken hours to construct. But who was it for? He'd been playing with a special bear yesterday. The bear had only a short period of time to make it all the way through the maze, like a hero or a mouse or a small boy…the time limit corresponded precisely with the amount of time for which his mother had banished him. And there were plenty of traps, places where the blocks would fall down or GI Joes would suddenly attack in number. But the bear was missing.

Toby searched the room, looking high and low. He even checked the dirty clothes hamper, underneath the smelly gym socks. No bear.

He ran into the frilly pink guest room on his quest. He looked under the bed and in the closet. He couldn't find it anywhere.

He'd been searching for a stuffed toy. A brown one. Something special. Maybe his monkey from the DC zoo?

Returning to his own room, he found the monkey draped haphazardly on the foot of his bed, little Velcro arms wrapped tightly around the wooden frame. The monkey was just the right size to steer down the alleys of the maze. Toby snatched him up and returned to his blocks.

But the whole thing seemed slightly stupid now.

XXXX

In the middle of the night, his father woke up, climbed out of bed and stormed down the stairs. The police, he shouted, he needed to call the police. A disappearance! A crime! They needed to come right away.

His step mother bolted after his father, rubbing her eyes in hazy confusion. She found her husband holding the telephone in his hand, listening to the operator wailing, "If you'd like to make a call…"

His father apologized for the commotion, told Toby to go back to bed, and blamed the bad dream on the chocolate cheese cake he'd eaten that night before bed.

XXXX

And so the family forgot.

He didn't go to the theater for ten years after Linda left. And then suddenly, he bought tickets left and right. They made theater a regular family outing, whether performed by the high school or the reparatory company. Toby hated it. Karen usually slept. He wasn't sure why they made a habit of going.

The guest room was still frilly and pink. Someday, she'd get Robert motivated, visit Home Depot, pick paint and furniture and turn it into something marvelous. Something inspired like those design television shows. Karen tried hard to get creative, but the juices refused to flow. She couldn't bring herself to change the room.

Karen wished sometimes, for a daughter. She wasn't too old, she thought, to have more children. When she told Robert, he envisioned the child with long dark hair like his first wife, but he didn't mention that to his second.

XXXX

An outside observer would have said that Toby was trying to remember something he was supposed to forget. Sometimes, he thought there was a hole in his mind.

First he named stuffed animals Sarah, then the new hamster for his birthday Sarah, then the characters in his stories. He didn't know why the name was important; his parents worried because he was so un-original.

The other children at school wouldn't stop making fun of his imaginary friends. He hid Sarah to keep her from shame and stopped telling anyone about her.

He could never count his family correctly. Whenever he drew a family picture, there was always a momentary fourth face that shattered as soon as he pressed his crayons to paper.

And the stories. In the stories there was always a princess with long dark hair and sparkling eyes who held out her hand and showed him the way. She guided him like a beacon, but he could never see her.