When the first snowflake fell, Uncle Otto flung the bucket of mare’s milk he brought from the barn into the well. Without a word, he made his way to the garage, picked up his red toolbox, then hobbled into the house where he promptly barricaded himself in the attic. A day turned into a week; a week became a month. Our initial concern for his well-being was soon replaced by something resembling a child’s feral curiosity, for we quickly grew addicted to the smell of burnt sulfur and absinthe that drifted through the house and lulled us each night into a cold-sweating sleep. Mornings we were awakened at moonset by the wobbling whine of a crosscut saw and the apocalyptic thump of a plastic mallet emanating from above, and we spent the dim daylight hours hunched over a backgammon table brushing the luciferin-filled sparks that fell through the ceiling cracks from each other’s hair. Somehow, we managed to live through the extended holiday season. Finally, in the middle of February, our uncle emerged, bronze-skinned and bearded, bearing in his sore-riddled hands a small silver box containing what he said were the seeds of an ancient Aztec summer: a trio of mechanical hummingbirds cast from hand-me-down gold. And we had hoped for so long for so much more.