On one side of the forest lay the lands of psychological realism. On the other rest the realms of fantasy and fabulism. And in the long shadows of the trees themselves... Three sons send their father to Valhalla in his old jalopy. A rusted robot waits on the stone wall by a child's bus stop. An undertaker is one coin short at the river Styx. And in the bookending stories "Anything But Pure" and "Receding," a soldier seeks to unbury...