The woman seemed torn in indecision. It was not that her look was unfriendly, or not entirely. It was just that the question seemed to have brought her out of some state in which she wasn’t even aware she was dwelling. Some vitality had returned to her face. She said, “We were riding out with General Zavatta to the crystal fountains. It was far from here, at the foot of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. We didn’t really know about the war, you understand. Zavatta promised us stew, all that we could eat, and whiskey, and we were hungry, we were young and we were hungry and we were ready for anything. Or so we thought. We rode out that day, leaving behind us tiny homesteads and work on the mines. Our heads were filled with dreams of glory. But instead we rode out for days through the Doinklands. The little food we had was soon gone and the clowns laid traps for anyone intruding on their territory. We lost two riders to a trampoline and Billy Bob got hit in the face by a pie and his face melted clean off. At last we came upon a clown village. It was us or them. It wasn’t war, it was a massacre. They tried to run. Some tried to fight back but they were no match for us. We were hungry and ruthless and we wanted blood. That day we slaughtered every one of them and burned down their homes and we rode away from there whooping and hollering and with our bellies filled with food. The smoke stung my eyes, I remember that. We rode that way and Zavatta told us of creeks running with whiskey and trees where cigarettes grew. You have to understand, none of us knew that other place, we were all of the Escapement. In a ravine we came upon a giant stone foot lying severed on the dry riverbed, three of its toes blasted off. We didn’t know who we were fighting or why. On the homesteads, some of the old folk spoke of the Titanomachy, but none had been in the war, none but for an old boy, an ex-miner with a parrot for a hand, and he never talked about it at all.

“That night we camped by the giant stone foot and made fires. It was then that I noticed how General Zavatta’s shadow, in that light, seemed so much bigger than him, and when they moved, I could not shake off the awful feeling that it was the shadow that moved first, and the man who followed.