Khabir kept going as if he had heard nothing, but just as he opened the door to go outside, he turned back and looked directly at the spider. There was a moment of grotesque disorientation, as if the villa were being turned inside out, and then the Trickster found himself on the other side of a solitary doorway, vomited out of the labyrinth, once more in human shape. The villa had vanished, and the figure that had been Khabir was changed.

“Multiple human shadows. How do you do it?” the Trickster marveled.

Patience closed the door. “It has to be done. Everything in the labyrinth is me.”

“Except for what goes in of its own free will,” the Trickster guessed.

Patience gave him a silent nod of confirmation.

“But dear Patience, I have had so many doubts about you and your love of free will that your mastery of puppetry does not appease my concerns.”

She sat down on the ground without grace, as if suddenly exhausted. “Shall I tell you how I achieved this high skill?”

The Trickster dropped down beside her. He choked back his yes, sensing that the knowledge would be both unpleasant and impossible to forget, but it was too late.

She leaned forward, demanding his full attention with an intent gaze. “Every path I dreaded to take, every weakness I rejected, even the joyous passions that threatened to overwhelm me—in sum, every part of me I could not control—I set apart from myself. I gave my wild selves their own incarnations and pushed them out to work their will in the space and time allotted to them. I have whittled myself down piece by piece, in pain and in bliss, until what remains is my core of iron, molten and compressed under the burden of all my ifs and maybes.”

The Trickster had no answer but silence.

She straightened, taking away some of the force of her presence, and spoke more gently. “I am sorry, my love, my self. We cannot escape responsibility for our decisions, even when we want to be persuaded that someone else is to blame for that final ‘yes.’ That is as true for you as it is for me. I know how free is the will that I gave you, and yet I am also responsible for your actions. How shall we live out this paradox?”

Unshadowed and true, she rose to her feet. “The world is my labyrinth, and everything in it is me, except for what enters of its own free will.”

“Free will . . . ?” he began, uncertain of his own query.

“Free will is a game—only a game, but a necessary game. The greater my power, the more care I take to honor its rules.”