Once, a travelling entertainer came to the town. He brought with him a machine of sorts, called a praxinoscope, and he’d set it up in the town hall and charged a ducat at a time, and though ducats didn’t come easy to the kid nevertheless he had paid admission, to watch Mercator’s Magical Shadow Show!! as it was billed.

He’d come in, clutching his ducat, and sit down with the rest of the townfolk and the other children—they sat on the floor, while the adults sat in rough-hewn chairs—but in truth, when it came, it was a disappointment.

The adults oohed and ahhed at the shadow play: impossibly tall buildings and vehicles that moved between them at jerky speed as Mercator the Magnificent—a small, whiskered man in a faded, once-dapper sequin jacket—rolled the crank. There were flying machines in the skies and all manners of improbable miracles, and there were no horses to be seen. The kid liked horses.

His mother didn’t come with him to see the shadow show. She had a loathing for all and every manner of entertainer. So the kid went alone. Ultimately, he decided, whatever this other place was it was just that: a shadow on a screen. He was bored.

Mercator stayed around for a few days but then he left and took his praxinoscope with him. He had a little wagon and a single, patient horse with eyes kinder than its owner’s. The kid ran into him only once after the shadow show. Mercator was drunk and pissing against the side of the town hall when the kid passed by, after dusk. Mercator’s shadow, like a grotesque extension of its owner, danced beside the man. For some reason the kid did not wish to step on or near it. He skipped around the dancing shadow and hurried away from there. For a moment the shadow felt almost alive.

The kid read whatever penny books or periodicals came through. His mother was not a voracious reader but she tolerated this habit. He rode horses and he played Hangman’s Bluff and Juggler’s Ball and Ghost in the Graveyard and, of course, they all played at clowns.

He was quite a happy little kid, for a while.

This all changed after the Rasmussen Gang rode into town.

But the Kid did not want to think about that now. In fact, he realised, he did not want to think about much of anything. A pleasant lassitude of thought prevailed on him. The featureless grey plains seemed never to change and the track just led on and on and on into the distance.