"Though neither is it of any other world," said the mage in the same quiet voice.

"But I have also had visions of butchering the angels," replied the madman, as if to argue the absolute hopelessness of his mania.

"You have envisioned precisely what you believe you have not envisioned. But how could you have known this, when it is the nature of what you have seen-this anima mundi of the oldest philosophers and alchemists-to deceive and to pose as the soul of another world, not the soul of the world we know? There is only one world and one soul of that world, which appears in beauty or in boredom or in madness according to how deeply anima mundi has revealed itself to you. It is something which is not there when you look and there again when you look away."

"You speak as if it were a god or demon."

"There is no other or truer way. Like god or demon, it is an assemblage of ourselves though not of ourselves alone. But no further words now," finished the mage.

He then instructed the madman to seat himself at the table of arcane designs and to wait there with his eyes calmly closed. And for what remained of that moonless night the mage worked secretly in another part of his house, returning to the wretched dreamer just before dawn. In one of his hands was the product of his labors: a pair of strangely darkened spectacles, as if they had shadows sealed within them.

"Do not open your unhappy eyes, my friend, but listen to my words. I know the visions you have known, for they are visions I was born to know. There are eyes within our eyes, and when these others open all becomes confusion and horror. The meaning of my long life consists of the endeavor to seize and settle these visions, until my natural eyes themselves have altered in accordance with them. Now, for what reasons I cannot say, anima mundi has revealed itself to you in its most savage aspect; which is to say, its secret face. Thus, your life will never again be as you have known it. All the pleasures of the past are now defiled, all your hopes violated beyond hope. There are things which only madmen fear because only madmen may truly conceive of them. Your world is presently black with the scars of madness, but you must make it blacker still in order to find any soundness or peace. You have seen both too much and not enough. Through the shadow-fogged lenses of these spectacles, you will be blinded so that you may see with greater sight. Through their darkly clouded glass the lesser madness of anima mundi will diffuse into the infinite, all-penetrating vision of things in which madness is the sole substance and thereby becomes absent and meaningless for its very ubiquity and absolute meaning. But what would murder another man's mind will bring yours peace, while making you a puppet of peace rather than its prince.

"Henceforth, all things will be in your eyes a distant play of shadows that fretfully strive to impersonate something real, ghosts that clamor to pass themselves as flesh, masks that desperately flit about to conceal the stillness of the void behind them-henceforth, all things will be reduced in your eyes to their inconsequential essence. And all that once shined for you-the steel, the stars, the eyes of another-will lose its luster and take its place among the other shadows. All will be dulled in the power of your vision, which will give you to see that the greatest power, the only power, is to care for nothing.

"Please know that this is the only way I may help you, for my life has taught me that no single soul may be restored where there is no hope of restoring the soul of the world itself. One final word: you must never be without these spectacles or your furies will return to you. There, now you may open your eyes."

Faliol sat very still for some time. At first he did not notice that one of the mage's own eyes was closed, covered by a sagging eyelid. What at last he saw this and perceived the sacrifice, he said, "And how may I serve you, wise man?"

In the window behind the two seated figures, the dull light of dawn was grappling with the darkness of the past night, with the shadows that seemed almost to be clinging to the window's glass, or were sealed within it.

III Anima Mundi

While the revelers in the streets of Soldori remedied their discontents by throwing off the everyday face of orthodoxy, those attending the masquerade at the duke's palace found their deliverance by donning other faces, other bodies, and perhaps other souls. The anonymity of that night-no unmasking was expected to be held-enabled a multitude of sins against taste, from the most subtle to the most grotesque indiscretions. The society of the court had transformed itself into a race of gods or monsters, competing at once with the brightest and highest of stars and the strangest of the world's lower creatures. Many would undoubtedly spend the succeeding days or weeks in darkened rooms behind closed doors, so that the effects their disguises had wrought on their bodies might be known to none. For a few rare spirits, this by necessity would be their last appearance in the eyes of the court before a final seclusion. All were quite clearly arrayed as if something unparalleled, and possibly conclusive, was to occur that night. Musicians played in several of the palace's most sumptuous and shimmering halls, glittering glasses were filled by fountains of unnaturally colored wine, and maskers swarmed about like living gargoyles freed from the cathedral's stone. All, or nearly all, were straining from some unheard of antic, suffering the pleasures of expectancy.

But as the hours passed, hopes dissolved. The duke-in essence a simple man, even a dull one-took no initiative to unloose the abundant possibilities of the masquerade; and, as if secretly aware of these perilous directions, he restrained the efforts of others to pursue them, to digress from the night's steadily unwinding course. No coaxing could sway him: he allowed several odd witticisms to pass unacknowledged, and he feigned that certain dubious suggestions and proposals were obscure to his mind. Unnourished by any source in the duke's own nature, every attempt at innovation curled at its colorful edges and died. The initial strangeness of the masked gathering went stale: voices began to sound as though they were transacting business of some tedious sort, and even the sight of a jester, albeit one with darkness within the eyes of his mask, offered no special merriment to this sullen assembly.

Accompanying the jester, who made no lively movements, was a knight out of armor, dressed in radiant blues and golds, a crusader's cross emblazoned upon his chest, and over his face a white silk mask of blandly noble expression. The odd duo progressed from room to dazzling, crowded room of the palace, as if they were negotiating a thick wood in search of something or someone. The knight appeared nervous, his hand too obviously ready to go for the sword at his side, his head patrolling with skittish alertness the bizarre world around him. The jester, on the other hand, was altogether more composed and methodical, and with excellent reason: he knew, as the knight did not, that their purpose was not a difficult one, especially as they would enjoy the complicity of Wynge himself, whom the knight had called the Sorcerer and whom the jester addressed as a wise man mage. Had Faliol not been invited to Soldori by a certain messenger who served two masters? And was not Wynge eager to release himself from the unhappy girl who had sought his advice in a certain matter (such innocence he could hardly believe still existed in the world) and who became a pawn in her father and the duke's game? For himself he was unconcerned, but they had also placed the girl's fate in his hands. Once she was out of the scene, these two men, both emulous of a god's glory, would lose the power with which they manipulated the mage, whose retorts and formulas they wanted to provide them with magical riches. Under the present circumstances, the knight might easily regain his beloved, and the jester would finally make good a debt, settling the price he owed for a pair of spectacles.

The two characters paused at the hugely arched entrance to the last, and most intimate, of the masquerade's many rooms. Pulling at the knight's golden sleeve, the jester angled his pointed, sneering muzzle toward a costumed pair in the far corner. These distant figures were impersonating two monarchs of the old days, a king and queen in ancient robes and stoles and many-horned crowns.

"How can you be sure that they are the ones?" whispered the knight to the buffoon at his side.

"Boldly approach and take her hand. You will be sure, but say nothing until you have led yourselves back through these rooms and to freedom."

"But the Sorcerer," objected the knight. "He could have us both executed."

"All is safe. While I engage him as the king's jester, you will make off with the queen. Trust that what I tell is true."

"I do trust you," said the knight, as he surreptitiously stuffed a jeweled pouch twice the size of the first into the belt of the jester.

The two characters separated and merged with the murmuring crowd. A few moments later, the jester arrived first at their destination. From a distance he seemed to speak a few words into the king's ear and then suddenly leaped back to play the fool before him, hopping about wildly. The knight bowed before the queen and then without ostentation led her away to other rooms. Although her masked face smothered all expression, the manner in which she placed her hand upon his appeared to reveal her knowledge of the knight's identity. After they had gone, the jester ceased his antics and approached the stern and statue-like king.

"I shall watch the duke's men around us, who may have been watching you, wise man."

"And I shall see that our two little babes find their way through the forest," replied the mock-monarch, who abruptly strode off.

But that was not part of your design, thought Faliol. And neither was the pseudo-king's playful voice that of the solemn mage. The dark eyes of the jester's mask followed the movements of the imposter, until he passed through the hugely arched entrance and became lost in the dreamlike throng of the next room. Faliol had just started in pursuit when a strange commotion in another part of the palace swiftly conveyed its anxieties and rumors through all the rooms of the masquerade.

But now that something unheard of had finally occurred, it seemed neither to delight nor relieve any of those same souls who had wished for a unique happening on that carnival night.

The disturbance originated in the centermost room of that labyrinth of rooms composing the arena of the masquerade. To the surrounding as well as the peripheral rooms, including the one in which Faliol was now caught by the crushing crowd, there first traveled sounds of sudden amusement. These were quickly transformed, however, into ambiguous outbursts of surprise, even shock. Finally, the uproar took on the character of intense horror-all voices in alarm and confusion, all movements alarmed and confused. Word passed rapidly, though less and less reliably, from mouth to mouth, room to room. Something terrible had happened, something which had begun, or was initially perceived, as a fabulous hoax. No one knew exactly how it was possible, but there suddenly appeared in the midst of the most populated room some outlandish spectacle: two gruesome figures whose costumes went far beyond anything previously displayed at the masque. Someone said they were most closely akin to giant leeches or worms, for they did not walk upright but writhed along the floor. Another had heard that the creatures possessed countless tiny legs, and thus more properly resembled centipedes of some type. Still others contributed further characteristics-many-taloned claws, reptilian tails, near-human faces-which made up the composition of the fantastic beasts. But whatever may have been the initial reaction to these, presumably artificial, creatures-at some point they inspired the crowd with unreasoning panic. And however the subsequent actions may have transpired, the consequence was that these bizarre intruders were hacked and torn and trampled beyond recognition by the frenzied, nightmarish gathering.

Tragically, once the massacre was accomplished, it was not the slaughtered remains of two uncanny monsters that the masqueraders-their masks removed-looked down upon. Instead, it was two of their own-a knight and queen of the old days-whose blood was spreading across the intricate designs of the palace floor. Their bodies, once so far from each other, were now all but indistinguishable.

Throwing off his jester's face, Faliol worked himself near enough to the scene to confirm the horror with his own shaded eyes, merely to confirm it. For the image delivered to his mind immediately took its place among the seamless and unending flow of hellish eidola which constituted anima mundi and which, in his vision, was a monotonous tapestry of the terrible ceaselessly unfurling itself in the faintest tones of shadowy gray. Thus, the appalling tableau he now witnessed was neither more nor less sinister in his sight than any other which the world might show him.

"Look again, Fa-fa-faliol," said a voice behind him, as a forceful boot propelled him within inches of the carnage.

But why was everything painted so brilliantly now, when a moment ago it seemed so dull, so unspectacular? Why did every piece of severed flesh quiver with color? And even more vividly than their red-smeared forms did the horrible fates of these unhappy beings affect Faliol's mind and feelings. He had been hired to save them and he could do...nothing. His thoughts were now careening wildly through crimson corridors within him, madly seeking solutions but falling at every turn into blind corners and flailing hopelessly against something immovable, impossible. He pressed his hands over his face, hoping to blacken the radiant scene. But everything remained invincibly there before his eyes-everything save his spectacles.

Now the duke's voice broke the brief lull of the dazed and incredulous assembly. It shouted orders, demanded answers. It proclaimed the ruler's prophetic misgivings concerning the masquerade and its dangers: he had long known that something of this nature might occur, and had done what he could to prevent its coming to pass. On the spot, he outlawed all future occasions of this kind and called for arrests and interrogations, the Torture of the Question to be liberally implemented. Exodus was instantaneous-the palace became a chaos of fleeing freaks.

"Faliol!" called a voice that sounded too clear, within all the confusion, to have its origin outside his own mind. "I have what you're looking for. They're with me now, right here in my hand, not lost forever."

When Faliol turned around, he saw the masked king standing some distance away, unmolested by the frantic mob. The king's hand was holding out the spectacles, as if they were the dangling head of a conquered foe. Fighting his way toward the unknown persecutor, Faliol continued to remain several steps behind him as he was led by this demon through all the rooms where the masquerade once flourished, and then deeper into the palace. At the end of a long silent corridor, the gaudy, flapping train of a royal robe disappeared into a doorway. Faliol followed the fluttering bait and at last entered a dim chamber with a single window, before which stood the mummer in a sparkling silk mask. The spectacles were still held by the velvet fingers of a tightly gloved hand. Watching as the dark lenses flashed in the candlelight, Faliol's eyes burned as much with questions as with madness.

"Where is the mage?" he demanded.

"The mage is no more. Quickly, what else?"

"Who are you?"

"Wasted question, you know who I am. What else?"

"What are you?"

"Another one like the other. Say I'm a sorcerer, very well?"

"And you killed the mage as you did the others."

"The others? How could you have not heard that rattling pantomime, all those swords and swift feet? Didn't you hear that there was a pair of leviathan leeches, or something in that way, menacing the guests? True, I had a hand in the illusion, but my hand contained no gouging blade. A shambles, you saw it with your own eyes."

"In their fate you saw your own future. Even a sorcerer may be killed."

"Agreed, even a sorcerer with three eyes, or two eyes, or one."

"Who are you to have destroyed the mage?"

"In fact, he destroyed himself-an heroic act, I'm sure-some days ago. And he did it before my own eyes, as if in spite. As for myself, I confess that I'm disappointed to be so far beneath your recognition. We have met previously, please remember. But it was many years past, and I suppose you became forgetful as well as dim-sighted once you put those pieces of glass over your eyes. You see why the mage had to be stopped. He ruined you as a madman, as my madman.

"But you might recall that you had another career before the madness took you, did you not? Buh-buh-brave Faliol. Don't you remember how you were made that way? Don't you wish to remember that you were Faliol the dandy before we met on the road that day? It was I-in my role as a charmseller-who outfitted you with that onyx-eyed amulet which you once wore around your neck, and which made you the skillful mercenary you once were. That you loved to be.

"And how everyone else loved you that way: to see a weakling transformed into a man of strength and of steel is the stuff of public comment, of legend, of the crowd's amusement. And how much more do they love to witness the reverse of this magical process: to see the mighty laid low, the lord of the sword made mad. This was the little drama I had planned. You were supposed to be my madman, Faliol, not the placid fool of that magician-a real lost soul of torments in red and black, not a pathetic monk chanting silent psalms in pale breaths. Don't you understand? It was that Wynge, or whatever his name was, who ruined you, who undid all my schemes for your tragic and colorful history. Because of him I had to change my plans and chase you down to this place. Blame him, if anyone, for the slaughter of those innocents and for what you are about to suffer. You know my ways, we are not strangers."

"No, demon horror, we are not. You are indeed the foul thing the wise man described to me, all the dark powers which we cannot understand but can only hate."

"Powers? At least the magician spoke of me as a being, albeit a type of god or demon. But I might even be regarded as a person of sorts, someone who is just like everybody else, but not quite like anyone. I honor him for his precise vision, as far as it went. But you're wrong to contend that no one understands me; and as for hating the one who stands before you-nothing, in truth, could be farther from truth. Listen, do you hear those brawling voices in the streets beyond the window. Those are not voices filled with hate. In fact, they could not possibly hold a greater love for me. And reciprocally I love them, every one of them: all I do is for them. Did you think that my business was the exceptional destinies of heroes and magicians, of kings and queens, saints and sinners, of all the so-called great? Such extravagant freaks come and go, they are puppets who dance before the eternal eyes of my true children. Only in these multitudes do I live, and through their eyes I see my own glory."

"You see but your own foulness."

"No, the foulness is yours alone to see, Faliol. You see something that, for them, truly does not exist. This is a privileged doom reserved for creatures such as yourself. A type of consolation."

"You have said enough."

"Liar! You know that you wish my speech to go on, because you fear what will happen when I stop speaking. But I haven't said what I came here to say, or rather to ask. You know the question, don't deny it, Faliol. The one you dreamed in those dreams that were not dreams. The torture of the question you dreaded to hear asked, and dreaded more to have answered."

"Demon!"

"What is the face of the soul of the world?"

"No, it is not a face...it is only-"

"Yes, Faliol, it is this face," said the masked figure as it peeled away its mask. "But why have you hidden your eyes that way, Faliol? And why have you fallen to your knees? Don't you appreciate the vision I've shown you? Could you ever have imagined that your life would lead you into the presence of such a sight? Your spectacles cannot save you now, now that you have seen. They are only so much glinting glass-there, listen to how they crunch into smaller and smaller fragments upon the fine, cool marble of the floor. No more spectacles, no more magic, no more magician. And I think, too, no more Faliol. Can you understand what I'm telling you now, jester? Well, what have you got to say? Nothing? How black your madness must be to make you so rude a buffoon. How black. But see, even though you cannot, how I've provided these escorts to show you the way back to the carnival, which is where a fool belongs. And be sure that you make my favorite little children laugh, or I will punish you. Yes, I can still punish you, Faliol. A living man can always be punished, so remember to be good. I will be watching. I am always watching. Farewell, then, fool."

A glazen-eyed guard on either side of him, Faliol was dragged from the duke's palace and given to the crowd which still rioted in the streets of Soldori. And the crowd embraced the mad, sightless jester, hoisting his jingling form upon their shoulders and shaking him like a toy as they carried him along. In its scheme to strangle silence forever, Soldori's unruled populus bellowed a robust refrain to Faliol's sickly moans. And his blind eyes gazed up at an onyx-black night which they could not see, which his vanished mind could no longer comprehend.

But there must have been some moment, however brief, in which Faliol regained his old enlightenment and which allowed him to accomplish such a crucial and triumphant action. Was it solely by his own sleeping strength, fleetingly aroused, that he attained his greatest prize? If not, then what power could have enabled his trembling hands to reach so deeply into those haggard sockets, and with a gesture brave and sure dig out the awful seeds of his suffering? However it was done, the deed was done well. For as Faliol perished his face was flushed with a crimson glory.

And the crowd fell silent, and a new kind of confusion spread among them-those heads which were always watching-when it was found that what they were bearing through the streets of Soldori was only Faliol's victorious corpse.

DR. VOKE AND MR. VEECH.

There is a stairway. It climbs crooked up the side of total darkness. Yet its outlines are visible, like a scribble of lightning engraved upon a black sky. And though standing unsupported, it does not fall. Nor does it end its jagged ascent until it has reached the obscure loft where Voke, the recluse, has cloistered himself. Someone named Cheev is making his way up the stairway, which seems to trouble him somehow. Though the angular scaffolding as a whole is secure enough, Cheev appears hesitant to place his full weight on the individual steps. A victim of vague misgivings, he ascends in weird mincing movements. Every so often he looks back over his shoulder at the stairs he has just stepped upon, as if expecting to see the imprints of his soles there, as if the stairs are not made of solid wood but molded of soft clay. But the stairs are unchanged.

Cheev is wearing a long, brightly colored coat. The huge splinters on the railing of the stairway sometimes snag his bulky sleeves. They also snag his bony hands, but Cheev is more exasperated by the destruction of expensive cloth than undear flesh. While climbing, he sucks at a small puncture in his forefinger to keep from staining his coat with blood. At the seventeenth stair above the seventeenth, and last, landing-he trips. The long tails of the coat become tangled between Cheev's legs and there is a ripping sound as he falls. At the end of his patience, Cheev removes the coat and flings it over the side of the stairway into the black abyss. Cheev's arms and legs are very thin.

There is only a single door at the top of the stairs. Behind it is Voke's loft, which appears to be a cross between a playroom and a place of torture. No doubt Cheev notices this when, with five widely splayed fingers pushing against the door, he enters.

The darkness and silence of the great room are compromised only by noisy jets of blue-green light flickering spasmodically along the walls. But for the most part the room lies buried in shadows. Even its exact height is uncertain, since above the convulsive illumination almost nothing can be seen by even the sharpest pair of eyes, never mind Cheev's squinting little slits. Part of the lower cagework of the crisscrossing rafters is visible, but the ceiling is entirely obscured, if in fact Voke's sanctum has been provided with one.

Somewhere above the gritty floor, more than a few life-size dolls hang suspended by wires which gleam and look gummy like wetted strands of a spider web. But none of the dolls is seen in whole: the long-beaked profile of one juts into the light; the shiny satin legs of another find their way out of the upper dimness; a beautifully pale hand glows in the distance; while much closer the better part of a harlequin dangles into view, cut off at the neck by blackness. Much of the inventory of this vast room appears only as parts and pieces of objects which manage to push their way out of the smothering dark. Upon the grainy floor, a long low box thrusts a corner of itself into the scene, showing off reinforced edges of bright metal strips plugged with heavy bolts. Pointed and strangely shaped instruments bloom out of the loam of shadows; they are crusted with...age. A great wheel appears at quarterphase in the room's night. Other sections, appendages, and gear-works of curious machines complicate this immense gallery.

As Cheev progresses through the half-light, he is suddenly halted by a metal arm with a soft black handle. He backs off and continues to shuffle through the chamber, grinding sawdust, sand, perhaps pulverized stars underfoot. The dismembered limbs of dolls and puppets are strewn about the floor, drained of their stuffings. Posters, signs, billboards, and leaflets of various sorts are scattered around like playing cards, their bright words disarranged into nonsense. Countless other objects, devices, and leftover goods stock the room, more than one could possibly take notice of. But they are all, in some way, like those which have been described. One wonders, then, how they could all add up to such an atmosphere of...isn't repose the word? Yes, but a certain kind of repose: the repose of ruin.

"Voke," Cheev calls out. "Doctor, are you here?"

Within the darkness ahead a tall rectangle suddenly appears, like a ticket-seller's booth at a carnival. The lower part is composed of wood and the upper part of glass; its interior is lit up by an oily red glare. Slumped forward on its seat inside the booth, as if asleep, is a well-dressed dummy: nicely-fitting black jacket and vest with bright silver buttons, a white high-collar shirt with silver cufflinks, and a billowing cravat which displays a pattern of moons and stars. Because his head is forwardly inclined, the dummy's only feature of note is the black sheen of its painted hair.

Cheev approaches the booth a little cautiously. He fails to notice, or considers irrelevant, the inanimate character of the figure inside. Through a semi-circular opening in the glass, Cheev slides his hand into the booth, apparently with the intention of giving the dummy's arm a shake. But before his own arm creeps very far toward its goal, several things occur in succession: the dummy casually lifts its head and opens its eyes...it reaches out and places its wooden hand on Cheev's hand of flesh...and its jaw drops open to dispense a mechanical laugh-yah-ha-ha-ha-ha, yah-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Wresting his hand away from the lurid dummy, Cheev staggers backward a few chaotic steps. The dummy continues to give forth its mocking laughter, which flaps its way into every niche of the evil loft and flies back as peculiar echoes. The dummy's face is vacant and handsome; its eyes roll like mad marbles. Then, from out of the shadows behind the dummy's booth, steps a figure that is every bit as thin as Cheev, though much taller. His outfit is not unlike the dummy's, but the clothes hang on him, and what there is left of his sparse hair falls like old rags across his bone-white scalp.

"Did you ever wonder, Mr. Veech," Voke begins, parading slowly toward his guest while holding one side of his coat like the train of a gown, "did you ever wonder what it is that makes the animation of a wooden dummy so horrible to see, not to mention to hear. Listen to it, I mean really listen. Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha: a stupid series of sounds that becomes excruciatingly eloquent when uttered by the Ticket Man. They are a species of poetry that sings what should not be sung, that speaks what should not be spoken. But what in the world is it laughing about. Nothing, it would seem. No clear motives or impulses make the dummy laugh, and yet it does! Ya-ha-ha-ha-ha, just as pure and as evil as can be.

"'What is this laughter for?' you might be wondering, Mr. Veech. It seems to be for your ears alone, doesn't it? It seems to be directed at every nameless secret of your being. It seems...knowing. And it is knowing, but in another way from what you suppose, in another direction entirely. It is not you the dummy knows, it is only itself. The question is not: 'What is the laughter for,' not at all. The question is: 'Where does it come from?' This is the thing of real horror, in fact. The dummy terrorizes you, while he is really the one in terror.

"Think of it: wood waking up. I can't put it any clearer than that. And let's not forget the paint for the hair and lips, the glass for the eyes. These too are aroused from a sleep that should never have been broken; these too are now part of a tingling network of dummy-nerves, alive and aware in a way we cannot begin to imagine. This is something too painful for tears and so the dummy laughs in your face, trying to give vent to an evil that was no part of his old home of wood and paint and glass. But this evil is now the very essence of its new home-our world, Mr. Veech. This is what is so horrible about the laughing Ticket Man. Go to sleep now, dummy. There, he has his nice silence back. Be glad I didn't make one that screams, Mr. Veech. And be glad the dummy is, after all, just a device.

"Well, to what do I owe your presence here today. It is day, isn't it, or very close to it?"

"Yes, it is," replies Cheev.

"Good, I like to keep abreast of things. What's your latest?" Voke inquires, proceeding to saunter slowly about and admiring the clutter of his loft.

Cheev leans back against a vague mound of indefinable objects and stares at the floor. He sounds drowsy. "I wouldn't have come here, but I didn't know what else to do. How can I tell you? The past days and nights, especially the nights, like icy hells. I suppose I should say that there is someone..."

"Whom you have taken a liking to," Voke finishes.

"Yes, but then there is someone else..."

"Who is somehow an obstacle, someone whose existence helps to insure that your nights will be frosty ones. This seems very straightforward. Tell me, what is her name, the first someone?"

"Prena," answers Cheev after some hesitation.

"And his, the second."

"Lamm, but why do you need their names to help me?"

"Their names, like your name, and mine for that matter, are of no actual importance. I was just maintaining a polite interest in your predicament, nothing more. As for helping you, that assumes I have some control over this situation, which thankfully I don't."

"But I thought," stammers Cheev, "the loft, your devices, you seem to have a certain...knowledge."

"Like the dummy's knowledge? You shouldn't have depended on it. Now you just have one more disappointment to contend with. One more pain. But listen, can't you just stick it out? For one reason or another, you could end up forgetting all about this Prena, this Lamm; you might come to realize that they are merely two shadows sewn together by their own delirium. It's something to consider. Anything can happen in this world of ours."

"I can't wait any more, Doctor," says Cheev in a nervous, shadowy voice.

"Well, you know what they say: Something is no worse than something or other with your own shadow. I forget exactly how it goes."

"I am my own shadow," Cheev replies.

"Yes, I can see that. Listen now, let us speak hypothetically for a moment. Are you familiar with the Street of Wavering Peaks? I know it has a more common name, but I like to call it that because of all those tall, slanty houses."