“I heard a noise,” the Stranger said.

“So? And you can put your gun back in the holster. Slowly.”

The Stranger did as she said.

“You put substance in the soup,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “It flavours the meat. What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” the Stranger said. “This isn’t my business.”

“You’re damn right it isn’t.” She gestured with the sawed-off. The Stranger took a step back from the wagon, and another, and his shadow hastened to match his steps.

He looked at Titania. Her own shadow billowed behind her, a huge, undulating mass that swallowed starlight in its wake. The Stranger took another step back and his shadow hid behind him.

“There was no offence meant,” he said.

“Good.”

Abruptly, she released her hold on the sawed-off, and with that she was gone. The Stranger took another breath and emptied his lungs slowly. When he returned to the fire he saw that both of the tinkerers were fast asleep, entwined in each other’s arms under their heavy coverings. He lay down himself, on his back, and stared at the distant stars.

He had got a good look into the glum interior of the wagon, before Titania caught him. He saw the hanging iron pots and pans, old and bent and blackened by countless fires. He saw the bags of nails, the hammered horseshoes, the beaten copper bowls, the kettles and coal irons, the heaps of badges and buckles, and the spurs with their rowel and chap guards.

It was, then, just as described, a tinkerer’s travelling emporium, cramped and dark, smelling of rust and the road, filled with the debris of everyday life and its mundane demands. Nothing more, nothing out of the extraordinary.

On the floor, in the centre of all that cramped space, a vast object lay partially covered in dirty blankets. From time to time it struggled feebly against the bonds that held it down, and its vast, black-and-gold head would hit the floor with a powerful thump that shook the ironmongery all about it. It had two glass eyes and a mouth with many jagged teeth. It was about the size of a tuna. Its scales, even in that quick half glimpse of the Stranger’s, with the cloth flap only momentarily raised, and but little light coming in, nevertheless shone a bright gold, and its intricate mechanism rattled and whirred as it flopped there on the floor. Behind the glass eyes, a look almost human had stared out at the Stranger in supplication. On the fish’s forehead, above the eyes, there was a nasty-looking dent, perhaps from a recent gunshot.

No more sound came now from the wagon. The giant piece of materiel that he had witnessed moved no further within. The Stranger lay on his back and his limbs grew heavy. The embers whispered with dying fire. The stars streaked across the sky, forming sentences in a language he wanted to but couldn’t read. He felt himself dropping into sleep.