A puppet arrived under the arch of a little proscenium up top. He looked uncannily like the brigand, right down to the gusseted Lincoln-green tunic and the pistol. The puppet looked this way and that, as if to make sure he was alone. Then he sat down and clasped the pistol, barrel upright, between his legs and began to stroke the shaft of it.

No children’s puppet play, this. She’d closed her eyes.

“That’s filthy,” murmured the bandit, somewhat approvingly.

She heard the puppet rocking back and forth. Though there was no sound, she could tell by the quickening of the rhythm that the big pop was near. “Stop,” she’d tried to say, but her voice had fled: She knew no one was listening to her.

“Whoa,” said the bandit, “you’ve got some nerve-”

She had peered between lashes, she admitted it: The mouth of the pistol had fountained a surge of foamy blood all over the trousers of the puppet, who fell back, sated and, it seemed, dead.

Worried that the Clock was not just illustrative of morals but perhaps a hand of fate, she’d whirled to see the brigand. He was slack jawed at the performance (though that was the only part of him slack), and he hadn’t yet noticed that the boys had liberated him of his considerable wallet and his pistol both.

They kept the cash and the bullets and returned the pistol before releasing him. They had nothing to fear: He tore off crashing through the underbrush like a fox from hounds.

The blood was good, no? asked the dwarf. Juice of blood oranges and pomegranates thickened with cream of tartar. The Clock is talented but needs some fuel from time to time.

She hadn’t asked how it came to be that the Clock was supplied with a puppet resembling a chance highway robber. Such a turn put paid to the notion of chance at all. Still, in some ways that was consoling: She could stay where she was, clandestine and still, and freely believe that this must be her fate. The need to decide further was removed from her, which made something of a rest.

“I won’t keep you longer than I’m directed to,” said the dwarf now, as they headed toward the sanctuary he had divined might take them in.

“You did me a service by rescuing me. I’m not looking to leave you. I have no plans but to keep out of sight. I merely worry at the thought of armies massing around us.”

“Armies are only hunters in formation. Upright teams of precision hunters.”

“Once I hunted for information, but one of my informants was killed. I have retired from hunting, Mr. Boss. I am no fan of the spoils of the game.”

He reached out to pat her wrist but she tucked her hands in her shawl. Such reticence she showed! Hoping to further this unexpected moment of confidences, the dwarf asked her, “How would you feel about a Lion hunt?”