Cloud Cuckoo Land

Folio A

The introduction to the fictitious Cloud Cuckoo Land text emphasizes Diogenes’s fidelity and encourages the reader to decide what it is or is not true. Diogenes found the text in Aethon’s tomb. Aethon, the protagonist of Cloud Cuckoo Land, is a shepherd living in Arkadia, Greece. The story is recorded on 24 damaged folios, and is incomplete, much of it lost to time. Diogenes recorded the story for his sick niece. The translations are all by Zeno Ninis.

Zeno and Seymour: Lakeport Public Library, Lakeport, Idaho; February 20, 2020; 4:30 pm

Zeno Ninis is an 86-year-old man who is directing five fifth graders—Alex Hess, Rachel Wilson, Natalie Hernandez, Olivia Ott, and Christopher Dee—in a performance of Diogenes’s Cloud Cuckoo Land. The play is set to premiere the following day on February 21. Zeno and two library employees, Sharif and Marian, have set up the stage in the children’s library.

Seymour Stuhlman, a 17-year-old boy, waits outside the Lakeport Library. He is going to plant two bombs in the library on the wall nearest the neighboring Eden’s Gate Realty office. He will use two cell phones to trigger them after the library closes. He also has a Beretta 92 semiautomatic pistol. He hesitates as he goes inside, places the backpack, and begins to leave. Sharif confronts him with the backpack in hand and sees the bombs, and Seymour fires his gun twice. Upstairs, Zeno and the children hear two gunshots. The children continue rehearsing because they do not know that it was a gun, but Zeno recognizes the sound and understands that there is an armed person downstairs.

Folio B

Even though the original order of the 24 folios is now unknown, experts agree that Folio B is the first part of Aethon’s journey. A drunk Aethon sees a performance of Aristophanes’s play, The Birds, and mistakes the play for reality. He begins to dream of a real Cloud Cuckoo Land somewhere in the sky. Resolving to find it, Aethon goes to find a witch in Thessaly to transform him into a bird.

Anna: Constantinople, Turkey; 1439-1452

Anna is a young orphan living in Constantinople with her older sister Maria “in the once-great embroidery house of Nicholas Kalaphates” (33). They live and work there with others, including: Kalaphates, the master of the house; Widow Theodora, the “Head Embroideress”; and Chryse the cook. Unlike her sister, Anna is a terrible seamstress and always gets in trouble. She dreams of something greater than her life as a seamstress. When she gets to go out on errands, she runs as far away as she can. Anna likes to go to an old defense tower to admire a fresco of a donkey by the sea.

When Anna is sent to get Kalaphates’s wine, she discovers a teacher reciting Homer’s Odyssey to a group of boys. The teacher is Licinius. Anna wants Licinius to teach her, but because girls, especially in Anna’s social class, are not taught to read she must barter some of the wine to get a lesson. Licinius shows her how to spell “ocean” in Greek. Anna barters more items for lessons; however, Licinius is sick and dying. At their last meeting, he gives Anna his “quires,” the loose papers constituting part of a manuscript. Anna secretly reads them at night, but because she steals candles, Kalaphates becomes suspicious and mistakenly confronts Maria. He brutally injures her face and head and burns the quires. Anna watches from the shadows in horror.

Omeir: A woodcutters’ village; Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria; 1439-1452

Omeir is born with a cleft lip, a birth defect that leaves the upper palate and lip open to the nose. His mother knows that the baby will be discarded due to his condition. Omeir’s father dies on his way back home to see the baby, and Omeir is blamed for his death. Omeir’s grandfather takes him to die atop a mountain but finds he cannot leave the child and returns home with him. The village residents drive Omeir’s family into the mountains to live in isolation. The family experiences initial hardship in their new home. Omeir is a quiet child with an imaginative mind. His cleft lip continues to be a source of anxiety and ridicule for him. He enjoys Grandfather’s tales of strange lands and creatures. The family’s cow has twins named Tree and Moonlight, which both survive despite the odds.

In 1451, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire dies. His successor decides he will take Constantinople, whose walls have protected against invaders for centuries. A band of traveling Ottoman troops arrives at Omeir’s house. Grandfather, who has always done everything he could to protect Omeir, informs him that the men are taking Tree and Midnight, and Omeir must go with them to serve in their war.

Folio Γ

On his way out of the village, Aethon encounters a “foul crone” who calls him a fool for trying to find Cloud Cuckoo Land. She berates him for risking what he has for the unknown, claiming that “what you already have is better than what you so desperately seek” (69). As the folio trails off, Aethon grows even more restless to find Cloud Cuckoo Land, taking the crone’s warning as an insult.

Zeno: Lakeport, ID; 1941-1950

Zeno and his father move to Lakeport when the latter is hired at the local lumber mill. Zeno is teased at school for being different and feels constantly out of place. His only comforts are the Lakeport Library, where the twin librarians, both named Miss Cunningham, read him Greek tales; and his dog Athena.

Zeno’s father and Mrs. Boydstun, a Lakeport resident, begin a romantic relationship. When the United States enters World War II, Zeno’s father immediately joins the army and leaves Zeno and Athena in the care of Mrs. Boydstun. He is killed while serving. Zeno feels he is to blame, so after his father’s funeral, he walks out onto the frozen lake. Athena pulls him to safety just in time before he falls in. Zeno lives with Mrs. Boydstun after his father’s death. She hates Athena and treats Zeno coldly. The Cunningham sisters order a book for Zeno to cheer him up: The Mermen of Atlantis. The illustrations captivate Zeno, who realizes that he is gay. He fears this realization, burns the book in the fireplace, and does not return to the library for fear of the librarians finding out his secret. Zeno knows he will not be accepted if he comes out. He trains to join the military and fight in the Korean War, feeling compelled to enlist when he turns 17.

Seymour: Lakeport, ID; 2002-2011

Seymour shows signs of neurodivergence from his birth: He hates certain sounds and sensations, often feels overwhelmed, and struggles to communicate. His young, underemployed mother, Bunny, must provide for them alone. They live in the trailer Bunny’s deceased great-uncle “Pawpaw” bequeathed to them in Lakeport on the edge of a large forest.

Seymour struggles in school because he is constantly overwhelmed. Bunny cannot afford to take him to a doctor to diagnose his condition. She leaves Seymour home alone while she works, trusting Seymour to stay inside until she returns. He immediately wanders into the nearby forest and is awestruck by a great grey owl whom he names Trustyfriend. Bunny is distraught when she finds Seymour in the forest, but he continues to sneak out every day after school to see Trustyfriend, with whom he feels a strong connection. Seymour goes to the Lakeport Library with his class and learns about owls with Marian’s help. When a sign from Eden’s Gate Realty announcing a housing development appears, Seymour learns that Trustyfriend’s forest is going to be demolished.

Folio Δ

The parts of the manuscript detailing Aethon’s journey to Thessaly are lost. He arrives and seeks a sorcerer to turn him into a bird. Women in the square laugh at his inquiries, but the innkeeper’s maid, Palaestra, tells Aethon to look through the keyhole of a room after midnight where he may find a sorcerer.

Konstance: The Argos; Mission Years 55-58

Konstance lives with her mother, her father, and 83 other passengers on the Argos traveling from the Earth to Beta Oph2, an exoplanet in another galaxy. Sybil has not fully mapped Beta Oph2 yet, so nobody knows exactly what awaits them. They have everything they need to live on the Argos, including Sybil who contains all human knowledge. Each passenger gets their own Perambulator, a miniature treadmill that allows the user to “walk” while in a simulation, and Vizer, headgear that allows the user to “see” a simulation, when they turn 10 to allow them to access the ship’s virtual library.

Konstance and the other children “meet” Sybil and enter her self-contained chamber, Vault One. Mrs. Chen, the Argos’s teacher, informs the children that Sybil’s compartment can function independently of the rest of the ship. Konstance has night terrors after meeting Sybil. She sneaks to her father’s farm. One of the few passengers who remembers Earth, Konstance’s father is older than the other children’s parents. He says he is from Scheria, a mythological land referenced in Greek stories, like Homer’s Odyssey. Father comforts Konstance by telling her part of Cloud Cuckoo Land, continuing from Folio Δ: Aethon finds a sorceress who transforms herself into an owl.