What is being strong, he said, or wanted to and didn’t. What did it matter. Being weak or strong in yourself made no difference at all. He could not manipulate the clouds to rain nor the traffic to halt nor the boy to heal. But things were different now. He’d not told her that. He had the map now, he’d never had the map before. It could lead him where he needed to go, to cross to cross the great salt lakes marked there and though the tunnel and beyond the Mountains of Darkness to the place where the Ur-shanabi grew. If only he could stop being assailed by distractions and side-quests, and other people telling stories. Stories, always stories! But they were all he had. He tossed the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his foot. Over the river the city lights shone.

“When I was ordained, I was sent back out into the world to spread the good word as written in the Funny Pages,” the preacher said. His fingers, thick and tan, rested on the surface of the table. “I walked from town to town, visiting the lonely homesteads of the Escapement on the way, preaching the word. Mostly I was mocked and jeered at. More than once I had to make a hasty retreat, or use my pistols to defend myself. Once, I arrived at a place called Benders’ End, named for the family who lived there. A place never touched by a clown’s smile, as they say. Dark and dismal homesteading land, nothing but a flat plain in all directions, as far as the eye could see. What anyone thought they could grow there is anyone’s guess. Fool’s parsley and devil’s snare and thistles. Those bloody Benders had a sort of encampment out there, an inn they called it, and at first they welcomed me pleasantly enough. Their matriarch, Ma Bender, claimed sympathy to Harlequin, and I dare say she may have meant it, for there is a dark side to every clown, and there was none darker than the Bender family. I stayed for dinner, at their urging. The daughter, too, attempted to distract me. It was then that I noticed the scuff marks on the floor, the outline of what I thought a trapdoor directly underneath my chair. As I was looking, Pa Bender swiped at me with a hammer. I was lucky, having swooped down, and he missed. Then the womenfolk came at me with knives. No doubt they planned to cut my throat, rob me, then dump my body in their cellar.