Food and drink and card games were going all over the place, every table filled with chattering, screaming, dancing people. The smell was tremendous. There were folks from all over, folks from lands I’d never even heard of, a million different accents and faces and ways of being, each one more fascinating and beautiful than the last. Never in my dreams had I imagined a place so fearful and noisome as the Skinny Yellow Dog. It was wonderful. I felt like Heaven was a gutter and I’d just stepped right in it.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” I said.

Nobody listened.

“I need to find passage to the Swamplands.”

Nothing.

“Some bad folks stole my daddy and I need help.”

You couldn’t hardly hear me over the fiddle and the dancing and the knives scraping plates.

“This is durn useless.”

I saw a girl dressed in rags begging. She was going table to table, holding out a tin cup, clinking the change in it. People ignored her or yelled at her or told her to bug off. She seemed so tired and sad and innocent. It made me mad the way folks were treating her. It made me mad I didn’t have anything to give her myself.

“Please, sir,” she said to one bearded man. “I just need some food for me and my granddad. We’re starving, we are. We’re plum out.”

“Scram, you little cockroach,” said the man, and shoved the girl down. Her change went sailing across the floor.

I took a step toward her, like I was going to jump in and do something about the man, or at the very least help her gather her coins back.

Then I took a look closer. The girl straggled to her feet, all limping-like, her face hidden from the bearded man by her hood. But from my angle I could see that she had a wad of bills in her left palm and she was smiling something secret. That’s when I realized it.

The girl was a pickpocket. She wasn’t begging, she was distracting folks while she robbed them blind.

She caught me looking at her and winked.

I don’t know. That showed some spunk. You got to admire a person like that.

Something about her made me brave. So I cupped my hands and shouted as loud as I possibly could.

“Excuse me, everyone! I am looking for my pop! His name is David Josiah Pennington and he was kidnapped by two low-down scoundrels and that grizzled dog Boss Authority!”

A hand clapped over my mouth. I was yanked backward and tumbled over something stuck out, like a foot.

“What are you doing, you idiot?” said a girl’s voice. “Looking to get yourself killed?”

I tried to mumble back but her hand was strong and she had my arm twisted behind my back. It hurt. This girl had some strength to her.

“You better hope nobody else heard you, boy,” she said.

That made me scared a little bit. I looked around the room, trying to see if anybody was noticing us. The music was loud and wild, and people were munching fried catfish and fried chicken and sopping up gravy with cornbread and slamming frothy mugs onto tables, same as before. The pale magician cocked an eye at me, but then he turned his head back to his magic hat. I was pretty sure no one even noticed I was there.