Except guess what Home card I drew? Not the Wayward River, no sir, a card I could talk for days and days on end about. Not the Far Yonder Mountains neither, not the Staggerly Road, which was something I could cast some dreams on. I did not even draw the durn Bramble. You know what card I turned?

The Sleepy Town.

Yep, that’s right, the single most boring card there is. It’s a morning sunrise, a tumbleweed rolling down a road, maybe a drowsy dog yawning in the early light. Just a bunch of buildings, maybe one with some smoke in the chimney, a tall brick place like what Mom’s bakery should have been. You know what else is going on in the Sleepy Town? Nothing. I mean it. Even the dog looks bored to tears. That couldn’t be my Fish Boy’s Home card, no way no how. But that’s the card I flipped and there was nothing else for me to do except Orate it as good and wild as I could.

I took a deep breath and got to it.

“Fish Boy’s waking up in Sleepy Town, he is, up even before the rooster crows, up before there’s anything except a big-eared dog lazing around. Yes sir, the Fish Boy is wide-awake, and he has been for hours.”

I could see it, the Sleepy Town forming out of the haze in my mind—Collardsville, in all its sad boring glory. But the more I began to talk about it, the more it started to matter to me. I remembered what it was like, waking up those early mornings, wishing I was somewhere else. Wishing I was on an adventure.

“You wanna know why that Fish Boy’s awake?” I said. “I’ll tell you why. He’s been daydreaming. He’s been daydreaming of this wild world he knows exists out there, far beyond the town. The world he was born into, a world of magic and action, a world of chance, of gamblers and knife fights, the roving roaming world, yes sir, that’s the world he’s dreaming of. But dreaming don’t get him there, not even close. Dreaming ain’t good for much of anything.”

The Sleepy Town seemed to flicker and vanish in the air, and then it was gone. My first round of Orating was over.

Okay, so I hadn’t exactly done great, but at least it was a start. The tension in the room relaxed a little bit, like it wasn’t just me who was relieved. I could Orate, I knew that now. Me and the cards were working up the beginnings of a story.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Harlen the dog-man crouched low, his beard scraping the floor, all tense, ready to move. Then he leapt out Marina’s side window, busting right through the glass. Drusilla Fey was up from her chair in a second, hollering hexes hard as she could through the night.

“I’ll send rabid bats after him,” she said. “I’ll call down lightning to fall, won’t be more than a smudge of the beast left.”