“Out!” The preacher screamed the last word, the veins standing out in his neck. Taleswapper put his hat back on and strode away. He heard the door slam closed behind him. He walked across a hilly meadow of dried-out autumn grass until he struck the track that led up toward the house that the woman had spoken of. Where she was sure they’d take him in.

Taleswapper wasn’t so sure. He never made more than three visits in a place—if he hadn’t found a house to take him in by the third try, it was best to move on. This time, the first stop had been unusually bad, and the second had gone even worse.

Yet his uneasiness wasn’t just that things were going badly. Even if at this last place they fell on their faces and kissed his feet, Taleswapper felt peculiar about staying around here. Here was a town so Christian that the leading citizen wouldn’t allow hidden powers in his house—yet the altar in the church had the devil’s mark on it. Even worse was the pattern of deception. The hidden powers were being used right under Armor’s nose, and by the person he loved and trusted most; while in the church, the preacher was convinced that God, not the devil, had claimed his altar. What could Taleswapper expect, in this place up the hill, but more madness, more deception? Twisted people entwined each other, Taleswapper knew that much from the evidence of his own past.

The woman was right—the brooks were bridged. Even this, though, wasn’t a good sign. To bridge a river was a necessity; to bridge a broad stream, a kindness to travelers. But why did they build such elaborate bridges over brooks so narrow that even a man as old as Taleswapper could leap them without wetting a foot? The bridges were sturdy, anchored into the earth far to either side of the stream, and both had roofs, well thatched. People pay money to stay in inns that aren’t as tight and dry as these bridges, thought Taleswapper.

Surely this meant that the people at the end of the track were at least as strange as those he had met so far. Surely he ought to turn away. Prudence demanded that he leave.

But prudence was not strong in Taleswapper’s character. It was as Old Ben told him, years before. “You’ll go into the mouth of hell someday, Bill, just to find out why the devil has such bad teeth.” There was a reason for the bridges, and Taleswapper sensed that it would mean a story worth remembering in his book.