Free Idea in Stone by Hamish Macdonald

out of the clearing, sending Stefan tumbling back off his seat.
    He righted himself, amazed. One last raccoon scuttled up to him and handed him a note. Stefan read it: “They don’t call it chemistry for nothing”. The raccoon grabbed the note and ran back to the others. His father looked at him and tapped his own chest in the spot where just days before Stefan’s mother tapped him.
    All the creatures stood up on their haunches, then took a bow. Stefan, not sure what else to do, still not sure what he’d seen, clapped for the little raccoon players. His father stood tall in their midst and winked at him.
    Then the moon went out.

    ~

    Stefan opened his eyes to the dawning day. In this early light, the colours around him all looked like watercolours with a touch of white added to them. He lay on the picnic table, the burnt parka still wrapped around him, his body aching from huddling against the cold. The previous evening’s events came back to him, and he sat up, looking around the campsite for any trace of what he’d seen. He saw nothing. He climbed off the table and explored the woods around the site until he found what might have been the clearing where he saw his father. There was the log he sat on, but what had been a clearing was overgrown, so thick with brush and small trees that he had trouble negotiating the space. He pawed through the bushes, but couldn’t find any sign of the binocular picture or his father’s script.
    He was covered with soot and filth, and reeked of smoke and bacon. He walked to the edge of the island and dipped his hands in the cold lake water. He scrubbed them, smearing the black soot around at first, then managing to clean it off somewhat. His fingernails and the wrinkles of his hands were outlined in black, but he could get rid of that when he got back to the city. He scooped water into his mouth and swished it around, then scooped some more and scrubbed at his face. When the water grew still, he looked at himself, reflected there, his face pale except for the rings of soot around his eyes. There’s my raccoon face , he thought.
    He was finished here. Time to pack up and go home.

    ~

    Thomas Jackrabbit heard a car pull away from his driveway. He opened the front door to find a large box there with an envelope sitting on top. He opened the letter:
    I know what I have to do, Grandpa. I have to follow this. Thank you so much.
    Thomas smiled. He was impressed that Stefan had managed to pack all his camping gear back into the box. Then he cocked his head, puzzled: black, sooty water was oozing from it.

    ~

    “What are you doing up there?” yelled Delonia. “Come down, we’ve still got work to do before everyone shows up.”
    “Just a minute,” hollered Stefan in reply. He unfolded the interlaced flaps of a cardboard box. It was the last thing in the attic he hadn’t dismantled. Inside, he found a smaller box labelled “Robert”. Its lid was taped shut, but Stefan picked at it and found the tape brittle and dry. While driving home from Thomas’s, he’d reflected on what he’d seen in the woods, and remembered the attic. He knew that he’d find his father’s things here. That’s what the figure meant when he agreed to let Stefan have them.
    Inside, Stefan found the stereoscopic picture-viewer, some pictures, and his father’s play, along with other memorabilia from his youth in Scotland and the early days of his musical career with Delonia. Stefan picked up a snapshot of his parents singing together in what looked like someone’s basement with a party around them, everyone in very dated clothing, Delonia wearing black-rimmed cat-eye glasses. Stefan laughed at the sight of this. His father didn’t have his beard yet then, and his smile beamed at Delonia, who smiled just as brightly back at him over the word she sang.
    Chemistry, he thought. He remembered the deer. His father and Delonia were changed by finding each other. They were in the process of becoming something, he