The Nowhere Man had been walking the Norwegian Wood for eleven days, and he still could not say what he was looking for. He left his apartment because the walls had started to feel like a second skin, and he had grown tired of his own company inside them. Out here under the pines, he thought the answer would come fast. It had not. He drifted wherever the path bent. When other walkers passed and said the river was pretty, he agreed and went toward the river. When they said the river was cold, he agreed and turned back. He had no compass of his own, and without one he understood he could walk these woods forever and never stop. On the eleventh afternoon he came upon a wooden garden bed half-swallowed by the brush. Neon plants spilled over the sides in colors that did not belong to any season. He recognized the bed. He had built it himself, four days ago, in a burst of certainty that this clearing was the place. He had stayed one night. By morning the certainty was gone, and he had walked away without taking anything. Seeing the bed again told him he was moving in circles. He sat down on the dirt beside it and admitted he did not know what kind of place would ever feel right. He made himself a small test. He would name, out loud, what he actually wanted from a place. Not what the river-walkers wanted. Not what the people back in the city wanted. He spoke into the trees. He wanted a roof that did not feel like a cage. He wanted color, because the gray apartment had drained him. He wanted to be able to step outside without packing. He wanted somewhere a stranger could sit down and he would not mind. He stood up. For the first time in eleven days, he had a shape in his head to match against the world. He walked until dusk and found two things close together in a stand of thin pines. The first was an open gazebo painted in loud swirling colors, its roof curling up at the corners like a held breath. The second, twenty steps behind it, was a small cabin with the same wild patterns climbing its walls and a round window above the door. He stepped onto the gazebo floor and sat. A breeze moved through the open sides. He did not feel boxed in. He looked back at the cabin and saw a roof he could walk away from each morning and return to each night. He stayed where he was for a long time. Then he stood, crossed to the cabin door, and tried the handle. It turned.

The door swung inward and the Nowhere Man stepped onto a wooden floor painted with the same swirls that climbed the outside walls. He shut the door behind him and stood in the quiet. A round window threw a coin of light onto the boards. He waited for the feeling he had chased for eleven days. It did not come all at once. He set his bag down slowly, ready to pick it up again if the room told him to leave. He walked a slow circle inside. There was a narrow bed, a stove, a table with two chairs. Someone had lived here once. He could tell by the ring of soot around the stove door and a chipped mug left on the shelf. He touched the mug. It was dry and cold. On the wall beside the table, tacked at one corner, hung a sheet of yellowed paper. He stepped closer. The heading read EVICTION NOTICE. The body of the letter had faded to nonsense, half the words bleached out by years of sun through the round window. No name at the bottom. No date he could read. Whoever had lived here had been told to go, and had gone, a long time ago. He took the paper down. He held it and waited for the cabin to feel less like his. Instead the opposite happened. The last tenant was not coming back. The notice in his hand was proof. He folded the paper twice and set it on the table. Then he opened the door and stepped outside to look at the ground he might be standing on for a while. Behind the cabin, closer than he had noticed at dusk, stood a tree he had missed. Its trunk twisted in painted colors. Its leaves were patterned like cloth. A dreamcatcher hung from one low branch, turning in the small wind. He walked to it and put his hand on the bark. The tree was warm. He stood there until his breathing slowed to match the turning of the feathers. He went back inside and closed the door without hurrying. He lit the stove with kindling from the box beside it. He filled the chipped mug from his canteen and set it on the table next to the folded notice. He sat down in one of the two chairs. The other chair stayed empty, and he found he did not mind it being empty, and he found he did not mind if someone later came and filled it. The cabin was his tonight. He would sleep in the narrow bed. In the morning he would step outside and come back, and that would be the test he had wanted all along.