I saw the card begin to shimmer and glow as Boss told the story of it. I realized then that I could smell the food on his table, rotten and putrid, that I could hear the flies buzzing all around it. These cards were powerful, they were. The Fish Boy held not a goblet or a cup but a big metal pot, and rising up from it was an alligator gar, long-snouted, fang-toothed, and ornery. It was coming for the Fish Boy, it was. It looked like it was about to bite his nose off.

It made me feel bad for Boss Authority’s Fish Boy, like there was nothing that kid could ever do right, like every time he tried it all just went wrong for him. You could feel his loneliness right then and there, in your bones, you could feel the big empty deep in your own heart.

I guess what I mean is I could relate to that Fish Boy, I really could. I knew all about loneliness, about having nobody to talk to, nobody to play with, everybody running off and hiding whenever you take a walk outside. My whole life in Collardsville had been just the same way. Boss Authority’s card told the truth, it did, and maybe I related to it even more than I did my own.

I shook it off. It was time for me to flip another card, my Home card.

I remembered my last failure at Baudelaire Quatro’s, where all I did was embarrass myself. Here the penalty would be much more severe. I didn’t even want to think about that, if you want the honest truth. I was sweating so bad my shirt was drenched through and I thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I reached my hand toward the deck and it was shaking so bad I couldn’t hardly get hold of a card.

In my mind I wanted the Staggerly Road, the meanest, snarliest patch of earth you ever dreamed of, something easy for the Fish Boy to be heroic on. Or maybe the Wayward River, nothing but the rambling life for this kid, his true home not some wooden shack somewhere but the wild free air under the bright and roving stars, be it land or water or any other kind of world the Good Lord created. That’s the Home card for this Fish Boy, I’m telling you what.

But neither of those were the cards I drew. No sir.

My first card was the Bone Queen, definitely not a Home card. Next was the most durn useless card in the whole deck, the Bilious Chef, holding his swollen belly. No Home card there either.

I flipped the top card and laid it down.

But my third card most certainly was a Home card. I’d done it.

Yes sir, I’d gotten further now than I had with Radegar, and I was surely grateful for that. When I laid it down on the table I heard Tally let out a big relieved sigh next to me, and it didn’t even bother me any, I was so glad I hadn’t just doomed us all. I started to feel a little better, I did. Not good, mind you. Just better, like it wasn’t all lost yet, like there might be some hope out there after all.