When Sheriff Lewis was a boy, his father would read him stories about the Heads. Lewis never understood why his mother didn’t like it because he and his brothers loved it, and the Heads were just simple creatures.

I was eleven years old when it happened, Lewis said, his voice so slow his words were close to tears, his eyes fixed on some invisible point on the wall behind me. He was answering my question about his father’s final moments, the ones he’d spent in the burning. We sat in the same sheriff’s office where I’d first met him, only I was the one who’d brought him in now. His wrists were cuffed behind his back with metal links that had been folded over his hands like a rosary.<br><br>I didn’t know how much he’d heard, but he knew enough, and I think he wanted me to hear it.<br><br>When Sheriff Lewis was a boy, his father would read him stories about the Heads. Lewis never understood why his mother didn’t like it because he and his brothers loved it, and the Heads were just simple creatures. They were the children of God, and their faces were blank and soft and round like doll faces, so they were called Heads. They had no eyes, no noses, and no mouths. They had no arms and no legs. They had no skin. They were thin and came in a million colors, so they looked like the first shoots of a flower, when it’s sprouting from the earth. And their purpose was to absorb the light of the sun.<br><br>“They”, Lewis said, his voice breaking, and he looked away, wiping at his eyes with his shoulder.<br><br>The Heads were the simplest creatures in the land. That’s what Lewis’s father would say to him and his brothers when night came, and their mother went to sleep, and they’d all sit in the library and listen to the stories their father read on the thin pages of a book they weren’t allowed to touch, because it was one of the First Ones, and the ink was said to be the blood of the first creatures that’d bred in the Garden.<br><br>The Heads were like the first creatures in the Garden, but their job was far more important, because they’d keep the world from burning away. They’d keep the sun from consuming it, and without the Heads, the world would burn up, and all the creatures would go on a long and terrible journey across the droughts and the oceans. And the Heads knew it, too, because they were children of God, and they’d been given the gift of speech. And when they grew up, they’d be called to the Garden to absorb the light.<br><br>“My eyes,” Lewis said, and his voice was shaking. “My father’s eyes … he could always see it, but he … he couldn’t tell me until now.”<br><br>I nodded and motioned to the deputy beside him. She uncuffed Lewis’s wrists and folded his arms across his chest. I retrieved another set of cuffs and locked his hands together in his lap. I stood up and gripped his arms above the elbows and lifted him, so the deputy could put a hand under his shoulders.<br><br>A week ago, I had a dream, Lewis said, and his voice was shaking. All my life, I’ve had the same dream. I’m standing in the garden. I can see the Garden. The light is strong. I can feel it in my bones. And I know that I’m home.<br><br>Lewis was starting to cry, and I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t let it go on. I lifted him with the deputy and we started to carry him toward the door, but he started to panic.<br><br>I’m home! Lewis cried out. I know it! I know I’m going home!<br><br>And the voice of God booms out of the Garden. I can hear it, Lewis said, and he was gasping now, talking fast. It booms out of the heavens, and it says, “Do you have the key? Do you have the key to the Garden?”<br><br>And Lewis knew what that meant, he said. He knew what it meant because his father had told him so. His father wasn’t supposed to leave the house with Lewis after his mother’s death, but he’d done it anyway, and he’d brought Lewis to the church where they could talk freely, and he’d told Lewis that his eyes were the key.<br><br>“These eyes,” Lewis said, touching his eye sockets. “These eyes are the key.”<br><br>He started kicking his legs, and the deputy pulled tighter on his shoulders.<br><br>“My father said that, if I wasn’t the key, then I would have to find the key,” Lewis said, his voice trembling. “And so I ran. I ran. And I found him. And I killed him. And I plucked out his eyes.”<br><br>We were at the door now, and the deputy took Lewis’s arms and held him up, so he could look at me. I knew he was going to say it, but I still flinched when he did.<br><br>His eyes are the key, Lewis said, and he was gasping and panting and his face was red. His eyes are the key! And I put them inside me. I put them inside me. I put them inside me!<br><br>And Lewis threw his face into my chest, and wrapped his arms around me, and wept, so hard that he shook, and the deputy had to hold him up because he collapsed against me.<br><br>I lifted my hands, and I had to leave them like that for a moment. I didn’t know what else to do.<br><br>“They’ll let me in,” Lewis said as he cried. “They’ll let me in. They’ll let me in.”<br><br>But I knew why they wouldn’t, and I felt sorry for him.<br><br>The eyes were the key, but you had to keep them. You had to keep them in their sockets, because it was the sight they gave that was the key. You couldn’t just tell the heads the stories. You had to see them. And you had to see them with the eyes of the head. Because the eyes were the only thing that didn’t burn away when the sun came for them. The only thing that didn’t burn away, Lewis had said, was the eyes.<br><br>I unwrapped his arms from my chest and lifted Lewis’s head. I held it in my hands and looked at his skin. I took a deep breath, and I did it, even though I knew it would hurt.<br><br>I touched my fingers to the burns above Lewis’s eyebrows. The deputy gasped behind him, and I felt the pain in my fingers. But I didn’t move them. I pushed against the skin and the burns, and I found it there. Under the skin, the wounds of the eyes, where his eyelids had sealed over them. And I didn’t know how to tell him, but I felt sorry for him, so I stole his pain.<br><br>“Lewis,” I said, my voice soft, and my throat was tight. I trembled as I spoke. “The key is gone.”<br><br>“My heart,” Lewis said, and he looked up at me. His eyes were red. “My—”<br><br>He stopped, and he looked up at me, and I felt like he saw me, saw me for the first time, and I felt like he knew. He knew I’d ruined it for him. He knew that I could never have done it. The wounds would have healed over. There was no way he could have ever gotten them back, no way he could have used them. But still, he looked at me, and his face twisted, and I knew he blamed me, and I couldn’t blame him, so I let him do it.<br><br>I let him hate me.