Cordelia found him one February afternoon on the mounting block in the wet with his hands over his ears.
"How long have they been at it?"
He shrugged.
"Since dinner?"
He nodded.
She did not tell him it would pass, and she did not go to his mother. She took him up into the warm.
"Can you hum?"
He looked at her.
"Not talk. Hum like this." She hummed four notes.
He hummed them back again.
"Go up at the end."
He did that, too.
"Now the same, and put your name in it. Do not say it—sing it."
There was a long pause. Then a small boy in a wet coat sang his own name straight through, with no stop in it anywhere. He looked at her as if she had done a conjuring trick.