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Sara laughs. “Julius has a wonderful sense of play.”

“‘Play’?”

“He’s just messin’.”

“How did you all”—I make a motion, like stirring a pot—“meet?”

Sara draws her legs up. She turns her head and lays a cheek on her knees. I can see her wistful look reflected in the large round mirror of a dressing table. Throughout the rooms, there are thrift shop Art Deco dressing tables with big round mirrors. You turn a corner and catch a shocking glimpse of yourself in the circular glass, as if the house is watching you with many eyes.

“It was Julius,” she says, sighing, “who saved us from the streets.”

And she’s in love with Daddy?

“Slammer and I were squatting with a family under a bridge in Portland. Not your normal family—everyone was a runaway. The oldest guy, SB, was in his twenties. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of violence, but what made me want to leave was the way people turned on each other, just because SB told them to.

“His name was really Satan’s Boy. It was really Duane, or whatever. There was this one girl who was mentally retarded—we used to call her Bubbles—and one day SB accused her of lying to him…. You know what?” She stops. “That’s negative energy, and I’m here now.”

“Did something bad happen to Bubbles?”

Her face closes up and she presses her lips against her knee, then sinks her teeth into her own skin and chews on it in order to keep from seeing it again, the bad thing that happened to Bubbles.

“You don’t have to do that.” I gently touch her hair. “It’s okay.”

She stops and turns her face away. The sun raises a soft orange corona along the ridge of her bare shoulders. She is wearing two fraying tank tops, one over the other, and a heavy silver pendant of three interlocking triangles.

“Megan has the same necklace,” I observe.

She sniffles. “It’s a valknot.”

“Nordic, right?”

“There was a king in the seventh century.” She turns her head and lifts wet, translucent eyes. “King Odin. It represents his powers—to bind or to open our minds. It means ‘knot of the chosen.’”

“Cool. Can I get one?”

“Only if you’ve taken the vows to follow the Allfather,” she says cautiously.

“Is Julius the Allfather?”

She nods.

“And the vows?”

“I can’t talk about that.”

I grin. “Well, I guess we’re all chosen. For something. Like you guys winding up here together.” I make the stirring motion again. “Slammer, huh? What’s his story?”

“Survival.”

“Got it. Did you two run away together?”

She laughs a little and wipes her eyes. “Are you kidding? We’re from totally different backgrounds. Where my parents live, he couldn’t get past the gate.”

“Your parents must be looking for you.”

She shrugs. “They gave up on me in high school. They are not in my life. In the squat, Slammer and I made a pact to stick together, so when Julius showed up and said he could live on the farm, Slammer said if I couldn’t go, he wouldn’t go, either.”

Dick Stone cruises the underbelly of Portland, recruiting street kids—young and vulnerable and not easily traced.

I sip the tea. It tastes like twigs.

“I left home, too. Moved to Portland from Los Angeles.”

Sara is bemused. “I can’t see you on the street,” she says, which I find vaguely insulting. “Don’t ever go to Pioneer Square at night. You can’t imagine how those kids are living.” Her eyes fill again. “It’s so sad.”

I give her a moment and ask, “Where are you from?”

“Dirt,” she says, floating to her feet as Megan comes back through the curtain.

“Let’s get you settled.”

The three of us climb the dark-wood staircase to the attic room the girl and I will share. The wallpaper is fragile and old-fashioned, sweetheart roses, original to the house. I pick out the daily life of this jerry-rigged clan from the smells that have risen up the staircase on strata of hot air: cat food, musty rugs, herbal shampoo, sage incense, and weed.

“Where is Julius?”

“Out on his tractor,” Megan replies. “He’s always on his tractor.” And I hear it through the window on the landing before I can see Dick Stone through the panes of glass, a small figure in a straw hat on a red machine,