As so many tales do, this one begins with a family. A man, with skin dark as the sheen of a raven’s wing, sunlight glinting from its feathers as it rides the breezes above the mangroves, and his wife, slender and with a smile wide as the Mississippi when it’s glutted with new spring rain, and their son, small but shadowing to be wiry and strong like his father. And, of course, they were happy, before. Before the sickness came, the man was content to eke out a living from the land, as long as at the day’s end he returned to the twin suns about which he revolved. Before the sickness came, the woman had a hard lot and a busy one, but in everything she labored she was creating more happiness for herself and her family. And they assumed the baby was happy, though a quiet child, before the sickness came.