Drew put a hand on his forehead. He did feel cooler, but that wasn’t exactly trustworthy, was it? He was conversing with a rat, after all. He felt in his pocket for the kitchen matches he’d left there, struck one, and lit the lantern. He held it up, expecting the rat to be gone, but he was still there, sitting on his back paws with his tail curled around his haunches and holding his weird pink hands to his chest.

“If you’re real, get off my manuscript,” Drew said. “I worked too hard on it for you to leave a bunch of ratshit on the title page.”

“You did work hard,” the rat agreed (but showing no signs of relocating). He scratched behind one ear, now seeming perfectly lively.

Whatever fell on him must have just stunned him, Drew thought. If he’s there at all, that is. If he was ever there.

“You worked hard and at first you worked well. You were totally on the rails, running fast and hot. Then it started to go wrong, didn’t it? Just like the other ones. Don’t feel bad; wannabe novelists all over the world hit the same wall. Do you know how many half-finished novels are stuck in desk drawers or filing cabinets? Millions.”

“Getting sick fucked me up.”

“Think back, think honestly. It was starting to happen even before that.”

Drew didn’t want to think back.

“You lose your selective perception,” the rat said. “It happens to you every time. On the novels, at least. Doesn’t happen at once, but as the book grows and begins to breathe, more choices need to be made and your selective perception erodes.”

The rat went to all fours, trotted to the edge of Pop’s desk, and sat up again, like a dog begging for a treat.

“Writers have different habits, different ways of getting in the groove, and they work at different speeds, but to produce a long work, there must always come extended periods of focused narration.”

I’ve heard that before, Drew thought. Almost word for word. Where?

“At every single moment during those focused periods—those flights of fancy—the writer is faced with at least seven choices of word and expression and detail. Talented ones make the right choices with almost no conscious consideration; they are pro basketball players of the mind, hitting from all over the court.”

Where? Who?

“A constant winnowing process is going on which is the basis of what we call creative wri—”

“Franzen!” Drew bellowed, sitting upright and sending a bolt of pain through his head. “That was part of the Franzen lecture! Almost word for word!”

The rat ignored this interruption. “You are capable of that winnowing process, but only in short bursts. When you try to write a novel—the difference between a sprint and a marathon—it always breaks down. You see all the choices of expression and detail, but the consequent winnowing begins to fail you. You don’t lose the words, you lose the ability to choose the correct words. They look all right; they look all wrong. It’s very sad. You’re like a car with a powerful engine and a broken transmission.”

Drew closed his eyes tight enough to make spots flare, and then sprang them open. His orphan of the storm was still there.

“I can help you,” the rat announced. “If you want me to, that is.”

“And you’d do this because?”

The rat cocked his head, as if unable to believe a supposedly smart man—a college English teacher who had been published in The New Yorker!—could be so stupid. “You were going to kill me with a shovel, and why not? I’m just a lowly rat, after all. But you took me in instead. You saved me.”

“So as a reward you give me three wishes.” Drew said it with a smile. This was familiar ground: Hans Christian Andersen, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, the Brothers Grimm.

“Just one,” the rat said. “A very specific one. You can wish to finish your book.” He lifted his tail and slapped it down on the manuscript of Bitter River for emphasis. “But it comes with a condition.”

“And that would be?”

“Someone you care for will have to die.”

More familiar ground. This turned out to be a dream where he was replaying his argument with Lucy. He had explained (not very well, but he had given it the old college try) that he needed to write the book. That it was very important. She had asked if it was as important as she and the kids. He had told her no, of course not, then asked if it had to be a choice.

I think it is a choice, she’d said. And you just made it.

“This isn’t actually a magic wish situation at all,” he said. “More of a business deal. Or a Faustian bargain. It’s sure not like any of the fairy tales I read as a kid.”

The rat scratched behind one ear, somehow keeping his balance while he did it. Admirable. “All the wishes in fairy tales come at a price. Then there’s ‘The Monkey’s Paw.’ Remember that one?”

“Even in a dream,” Drew said, “I would not trade my wife or either of my kids for an oat opera with no literary pretensions.”

As the words came out of his mouth, he realized that was why he had seized the idea of Bitter River so unquestioningly; his plot-driven western would never be stacked up against the next Rushdie or Atwood or Chabon. Not to mention the next Franzen.

“I would never ask you to,” the rat said. “Actually, I was thinking of Al Stamper. Your old department head.”

That silenced Drew. He just looked at the rat, which looked back with those beady black eyes. The wind blew around the cabin, sometimes gusting hard enough to shake the walls; the sleet rattled.

Pancreatic, Al had said when Drew commented on his startling weight loss. But, he had added, there was no need for anyone to be crafting obituaries just yet. The docs caught it relatively early. Confidence is high.

Looking at him, though—sallow skin, sunken eyes, lifeless hair—Drew had felt no confidence whatsoever. The key word in what Al had said was relatively. Pancreatic cancer was sly; it hid. The diagnosis was almost always a death sentence. And if he did die? There would be mourning, of course, and Nadine Stamper would be the chief mourner—they had been married for something like forty-five years. The members of the English Department would wear black armbands for a month or so. The obituary would be long, noting Al’s many accomplishments and awards. His books on Dickens and Hardy would be mentioned. But he was seventy-two at least, maybe even seventy-four, and nobody would say he died young, or with his promise unfulfilled.

Meanwhile, the rat was looking at him, its pink paws now curled against its furry chest.

What the hell? Drew thought. It’s only a hypothetical question. And one inside a dream, at that.

“I guess I’d take the deal and make the wish,” Drew said. Dream or no dream, hypothetical question or not, he felt uneasy saying it. “He’s dying, anyway.”

“You finish your book and Stamper dies,” the rat said, as if to make sure Drew understood.

Drew gave the rat a cunning sideways look. “Will the book be published?”

“I’m authorized to grant the wish if you make it,” the rat said. “I’m not authorized to predict the future of your literary endeavor. Were I to guess…” The rat cocked his head. “I’d guess it will be. As I said, you are talented.”