A rushed Wizard makes an unusual acquaintance. Roads avail themselves of travelers.

My horse threw me on my way from the city of April. Wizards don't often fare well with horses or cities, wary beasts, loyal as they are to the patterns of simpler men. But I was young then. There was a woman I loved who lived in April, and that went as it often goes, so my poor heart had need of conveyance faster than my feet. I had availed myself of the first and fastest ways out of April, and consequently got thrown.

I lay where I'd fallen for a while, not dissatisfied, for now it seemed that the world had some balance to it; my bruised and twisted body now made a match with my heart, and the stolen horse was returning to wherever it more truly belonged. We wizards make our living, if we make it, and find our scraps of peace, if we find them, in a solidarity of circumstance. We are born to play a sort of matching game with the world around and within us, and to etend ourselves somewhat farther than other men to make things fit. This is a part of our magic, and you will see that I was not an extraordinary wizard so much as I was a lonely one, with my hand and head taken by extraordinarily dissonant times. At any rate, I didn't mind the awkward cartwheel through the air, the confusion of up and down, the jarred bones and the breathless bruised ache. My distress and haste had not been born so much by heartbreak as the vertiginous sway of a heart unmatched to circumstance. The dizziness of things not being as they ought. You may say that a broken heart is not as it ought to be, but given proper context, the truth is that it does not make even a ripple. With my new battered context, I found myself finally able to be calm and look clearly at the day.

Gingerly, I lifted my head to survey for any dangers mroe pertinent than my own impulsiveness. I had got far enough away that the road was no longer paved. The dirt line was narrow, little broader than an ox path, and brambles sprawled over onto it here and there, and I saw no other travlers. The sun was low and cast a red sheen on the dirt. I let my head fall back and thought perhaps I ought to take the moment as an opportunity to reconsider things from a safe perspective.

But I was interrupted.

"That was great!" said a high barking laugh of a voice. "You're just the soul of grace, there, brother."

We wizards often survive by paying attention to voices, especially the strange ones, so I made a concerted effort and awkwardly hauled myself over and up, to see a pretty fox sitting on the side of the road with its tongue hanging out in a brazen fox laugh.

"Good day," I said politely. No one in the history of the whole kingdom of Lesser Heart, except possibly the witches, ever got anywhere good by being rude to talking foxes. And wizards, much reviled, are wise to be especially courteous in general, and to avoid the trappings of pride, which we cannot afford and rarely find well-matched to circumstance. And finally, I was a little spun about, and had a small hope that this fox might have some advice or directions, such as they occasionally do and such as other men are less than likely to give in good faith to one of my breed. I smiled. "It was silly of me to try riding, but I'm glad it at least served to amuse."

The fox barked and grinned. "It's not all your fault. Horses are plain simple. why do you people even keep them?"

"Well," I shrugged, "for me, I can't even sit on a horse, much less keep them. For people, I think there must be some smart horses somewhere, but maybe people find it a little awkward to sit on the clever animals. They tend to remind us how ill-mannered we are to do so."

"Looks like that horse reminded you just fine."

"He did, but it doesn't take a lot of brains to remind a wizard that he's out of step."

"It's true!" barked the fox happily. "I could pull it off without even talking!"

I agreed readily. He was clearly, after all, a very clever fox. "So," I said, "you must have had another reason to talk to me. Perhaps you'd like me to introduce myself?"  Sometimes it was wise to ask. Sometimes talking creatures on the side of the road felt they'd already gone to enough trouble, and it was insulting to wait for them to introduce themselves first.

"Sure, brother." He dipped his triangle fox face like a Duke.

"Then, my name is Folly Valwollen, and it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister...?"

"Doctor," sniffed the fox.

"Mister Doctor?" I asked. It wasn't strange. Well, I suppose it was, but then so were foxes strange and so were talking foxes strange, so it fit, so it didn't feel strange.

"No, Fox. I'm Doctor Fox. Where'd you get a stupid name like Folly?"

"My mother was a little prescient, I suppose." Really my mother was stupid and ridiculous and had gotten herself into a situation, of which I was the result. So she'd named me Folly in honor of the stupid and ridiculous way I'd come about. I considered it a family name, and it suited me after all. It was a good name for a wizard. It warned people  right away, leaving me less distance to fall in their estimation later. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Doctor Fox."

Doctor Fox got up and trotted a little fox walk over to me, and gave me a rough lick on my hand. Then he made a face and sneezed, because I was still dusty. I pretended not to see, and presently he recovered his dignity and cleared his throat and proceeded to lecture me: "You should know up front that I'm a boy fox. I know you folks are usually too dull to smell boy or girl, and I don't want you getting curious, so I'm telling you right now. I'm a boy fox. Don't go checking."

"I wouldn't do that!" I was honestly a little appalled, though more over the thought that someone in Lesser Heart had apparently been foolhardy enough to make the fellow wary than in defense of his fox dignity.

"So you say. We don't have to worry about it now. I can smell that you're a boy, too, so you don't have to worry about getting checked either."

I spent a moment failing to imagine that, then asked, "Are there girl wizards? I haven't met any."

"Me either, and I get around. So maybe not? No girl wizards. Too bad. It might make you lot more likeable. No boy witches, though, so maybe it evens out."

I shivered a little and didn't say anything, but I could tell he saw me because his tongue lolled in a fox laugh again. I suspected he'd brought up witches only to discomfit me, for wizards are widely known to cower even at the mention of a witch.

This happened a few more times  - we'd go through a few small courtesies, he'd somehow bring it around to witches, I'd shiver, he'd laugh. Eventually he got tired of the game, just as I was trying to decide how to politely part company, and got around to satisfying his curiosity. Or possibly his humor; I was never sure what drew him to me.

"You looked crazier even than wizards usually look," he half-chirped, half-barked, "racing up here against nothing and no one. What was that about?"

I shifted, shy of the events in April, but unwilling to offend him and, as I mentioned, mostly free of pride. "Well. There was a clerk whose face I didn't like."

"Looked in a mirror lately, brother? You're no prize. Why rush out on some harmless clerk?"

"She... wasn't. Not harmless, and I don't think she  was a clerk either. When I was trying to get out I took a contract so I had money to travel. And, I suppose, something to travl towards. This... not-clerk at the Hall brought it to me. She troubled me. I ran."

Docto Fox stared at me patiently.

"Well," I appended, looking at the sky, "and there was a girl. You know."

"Do I ever!" he barked. "You mean the not-clerk?"

"No! No. That not-clerk was a not-girl. The girl was this pretty - I mean this beautiful - " I sighed. I did not recall the color of her eyes, and shut my own against a sky that would not remind me. "Her name is Praise and I followed her. To April. It was stupid. I'm in love. It's very confusing."

"I thought wizards didn't do that kind of thing. Love."

"We do it all the time. We just don't do it well. And that's why I was in a hurry."

Doctor Fox snorted. "What's the contract, then? Did you even look?"

"The - oh, the contract is to find some sheep. A shepherdess posted it."

"A shepherdess?" he barked. "Are you kidding?"

"No," I said. "I'm really not very funny. I try not to tell too many jokes."

"Does she know a wizard got her contract?"

"The contract asks for a wizard, so she probably suspects, but I don't know if anyone's communicated - "

"A shepherdess?" His bark was pitching higher and higher. "In Lesser Heart? Contracted a wizard to help her find her own sheep?"

I sighed, feeling his incredulity and everything behind it like a pressure in the air, holding me tight to the ground. I couldn't blame him for being surprised. The shepherdesses of Lesser Heart, pretty and furious and conscientious, preferred to ward off any disease, wizards included and perhaps especially. That one of them had lost her flock was almost impossible to imagine. Which, I supposed was why a wizard had to be brought in. "It is a little peculiar."

"Folly, you dope," said Doctor Fox, panting a bit, "that's more than a little peculiar. That stinks so bad even folk could smell it."

"Lots of things stink," I mumbled, miserable, pushing my face into my hands. "I don't mind shepherdesses, except when they set their dogs on me, or throw mud at me. Not even then, really. They're just being good shepherdesses. And I don't mind sheep. And everything was stupid, so I did something stupid to match. I have to go to the Red Meadows to talk to her and get started."

I sat like that for a bit, until I felt a narrow, warm little chin come to rest on my knee, and Doctor Fox's voice was soft and rumbly when he said, "That's halfway across a kingdom that can't be measured, Folly."

"I know," I said into my hands. "Still doesn't seem far enough."

"OK," he sighed. "OK. Then I have some good news."

"What," I muttered, biting the palm of my left hand.

"Look behind you, Folly." The delicate pressure of Doctor Fox's chin lifted from my knee, and when I looked up I saw him truly for the first time. I saw the sharpnss in his eyes, suffused with the road's red glow, focused over my shoulder in that strange fox way.

I tested my body, found it as functional as my heart, and stood carefully. The single narrow path I'd been following had become three paths, each with a different sky. One was guarded by a filthy little dwarf, one by a bear, and one by a low wall of thorny roses. The paths and even the skies gave the impression of being divided with rock and shrub, but I didn't look too closely - the nature of these things is the provenance of the witches who whispered them into being. We wizards were only meant to notice their lines, not to understand or alter.

"What," I half-heard Doctor Fox say from behind me, "did you do?"

"Nothing," I said, feeling my lips curl happily around the word. "I turned, and then I turned again."

He snorted softly as he trotted up in front of me to have a closer look. "Decisions, decisions. Looks like a tough one."

"Not really," I breathed. "They aren't riddles. They're signposts. I'm to go through the roses." Because I was in love. Because the road beyond the roses looked hot and bright, and I was in love. Because I thought I might be able to see clearly there, and I was in love. Because that was the road to my left, and I was in love. But there are only so many times one can explain this to talking animals without straying from the realm of courtesy and comfort, so I didn't tell him my because.

He didn't ask, either. Maybe he already knew, maybe he didn't care, maybe both, maybe more. Without glancing away from the roses, I grinned, and for the first time in a long time, it felt natural. "Care to join me?" I asked the fox.

He did a little fox dance. "Sure! Let me ride in your hood."

I knelt, helping him up to my shoulder, and he crawled into my hood. It surprised me then, not for the last time, how small and light he seemed; he was a fine creature whose presence outweighed him.

Folly's disappointed hopes. A review of the troubles of Lesser Heart. Doctor Fox tells a sheep story.

I walked through the roses, letting them pierce and rip at me, for no good will come of hacking at magical roses if one is not a Prince in Lesser Heart. Even then, it can be a mistake. We have not had Princes at the castle since  the day before I was born, when the Lost Prince got Lost as an infant,  but we have very many stories. 

After getting us through, Doctor Fox cinched safe and unmarred in my hood, I turned to look behind me, as one does. The roses were of course vanished, nd I set off down a broad empty road paved with white stone, with desert on either side. The sand was white and the sky itself was pale, all color gone helpless, carried off in such a tide of light and heat. As I walked, I thought of Praise, dancing or sewing somewhere in April, distracting one thirst with another and shading my head with sorrow.

Doctor Fox stayed in my hood after testing the ground and finding it too hot for comfort. Eventually he seemed to grow bored of cursing in words I hadn't heard before and making bitter complaint against the high sun and describing in wistful detail the various protective wonders he'd encountered in his travels, and he decided to make conversation with me instead.

"You're not still moping about that girl, are you, brother?"

It is not always the best policy to be completely honest with talking animals and the like, but they can often smell a complete lie. I swallowed a slithering embarrassment and choked on it a little as I admitted, "Yes. I was thinking about Praise, at a ball where they had a fountain whose bowl was made of ice. It was coming all apart and her slippers were getting wet. Her hairpins were coming all apart, too, and she was laughing --"

A fox groan interrupted me, for which I was grateful. I tried not to speak of her in those days, for she always overtook my tongue this way and that. "Let her go, brother. Forget her. There's plenty of fish in the sea."

I felt more in the desert than ever, farther from any sea real or fanciful than ever I had in my life.  "I don't know any other fish," I said. "I don't really want to. Knowing just one has lured me into a city and got me thrown from a horse and caused me to be hired by the most terrible person I've ever met to seek out unfindable sheep for people who will always mislike me."

"Unfindable? Did it say that in the contract, or what?"

"It didn't," I explained, "but if the shepherdesses can't find them, and have been driven by the extent of their sheep's disappearance to hire a wiard, it seems unreasonable to expect the sheep to be anything short of unfindable. Insulting to the sheep, you know -- they have small thoughts, but not that small. To say nothing of the shepherdesses."

"So you're saying you're not going to get paid?"

I shook my head. "I'm not saying that. I'm a wizard; finding the unfindable is an acceptable proposition."

"And throwing back one rich fish isn't?"

If Praise were a fish, I thought, her scales would be the colors of jeweled hairpins reflecting off melting ice.  "I wouldn't take that contract, no."

"Unlucky, brother. Sorry I brought it up." He rustled about in my hood, then resumed complaining about the weather, only now his litany was a little too thin, a little too gruff. 

"I can't get comfortable!" he said. "This kingdom has seriously gone to peat and pot since the last time I was here. Then it was all swans and harpists by rivers, or girls who were swans or dead girls with their hair wound into harps. Princes waking things up in sun-dappled glades. Virgins and unicorns chasing each other around giant trees. This desert business is unaccountable. And missing sheep on top of it all? Are we even still in Lesser Heart?"

"The paths between the chambers of Lesser Heart were all fashioned by witches," I muttered, my hands twitching a little at the thought, "and witches keep the kingdom in the kingdom these days. I'm sure there are some old roads to Greater Heart, but I'd know if we were there. I think."

"Yeah," sighed Doctor Fox. "You sure would. The ground is funny there. Like there's nothing under your  feet but rock."

Imagining a world like that, I stumbled as my feet tried to curl into themselves. There are a lot of reasons why wizards tend to be clever in all the wrong ways, and most of them have to do with fear. "As opposed to here," I murmured, "where there's nothing under your feet but trouble. Have you been to many other kingdoms, then?"

But Doctor Fox gave me to understand that he would not be questioned about his travels, however much he might mention them. (He was not the first creature I had met, magical or otherwise, who found no impropriety in sharing himself freely but treated the questions of others as something particularly uncouth spoken at a fine dinner table. Perhaps it was a matter of vanity for him, as so many things were -- quite naturally, by my thinking. Or perhaps he had been raised that way by some talking fox of a mother. I never could puzzle out why he behaved as he did. All I really ever learned was that I should not ask him too many questions, and that he had a fondness for women that I think overcame his sense of indecency.)

I assured the fox of my ignorance and of his superiority, which topics are the surest way to mollify something distressed and magical, sighing that I myself had never been out of Lesser Heart. It was even worse for wizards beyond those borders.

The little fellow snorted forgivingly. Seeing his feelings at least somewhat assuaged, I thought it useful to avoid saying anything else foolish by the expedient of saying nothing at all, and we went on in silence a ways. I let my thoughts turn in the discomforting jostle of my situation. Mystery and inaccessible truths do not appeal to wizards, exceptin the relief of their solutions, the soothing of mismatched awareness.

Doctor Fox was very right, from all that I knew. I was young then, and had never known the time that he described, but Lesser Heart has always had stories, and I have always had ears. Lesser Heart's populace had known dark times - the splintering War that had caused Greater Heart to fragment off from our kingdom,, or the time when the witches had taken to their towers and refused to talk to each other, or the time when a wizard turned all those shepherdesses into champagne glasses. In which stories the surpise and confusion of the populace of Lesser Heart was frequently noted, but only in a perfunctory way, as though everyone were just being polite enough to say they were surpised and confused, since someone had gone to all the trouble of creating a disaster. Trouble is braided into the very blood of Lesser Heart, along with no few other qualities, and folk usually know it before it meets them. 

But what I was hearing now, I had never heard before, and that was a deep uncertainty. The matter of these missing sheep was a fine example, a summary of the new confusion in my heart and in the land: There had always been sheep in Lesser Heart, tended to by the most diligent subjects on the Red Plains. Anything that might happen to a sheep or a flock through the tampering of a wizard or scientist happened, and the sheep was different or dead or a fractured champagne glass. The sheep didn't simply stop existing. One hoped, very dearly, that the sheep had somehow been hidden, that there was an enemy or curse to tend to that the shepherdesses could not manage themselves, not with all their diligence, not with all their powerful acquaintances. One wished the shepherdesses powerless, because otherwise, it was uncertain whether there had ever been sheep, or whether the very idea of sheep - the very idea of always - had been whispered into my dreams by some army of unkind ghosts. If the sheep were not real, then anything could be not real. And wishing powerlessness on the shepherdesses was not without its own implications. My world tilted, and I could see the edges of it.

So with Lesser Heart. The sheep disappeared. Clouds gathered over the Palace. The fires that had razed April in the War flickered back to life here and there. And it had been far too long since anyone had stumbled on the scenes that Doctor Fox described, with unicorns and harpists and the like. The people spoke of it often, especially to me, as folk enjoy telling wizards upsetting tales. They hoped there would be another War. Or they hoped the king was sick. Others thought the king had been healthy for far too long, and also found him generally objectionable as a stranger unconnected to the royal line we'd known before. Some said the Lost Prince, vanished scion of that ancient lineage, was dying somewhere, that her decay was reflected in the country. A few whispered that the great witches of Lesser Heart had somehow been insulted or distracted, that they were taking their favorite things from the land like baubles from a jewel case and abandoning us, that they were hollowing our the kingdom for use in their spells, that we were being punished, that we were being forgotten. They thought of the worst things they could think of to direct their shivers away from their real fear, the first real fear that had ever so swayed Lesser Heart: That our kingdom was ending, or had never existed, a story that had had completed now fading to silence.

Word did not come, from the witches or the king, and we did not have the gift to answer questions so large.

I wondered about the sheep as I might worry a scab. I wondered whether I had become an uncertain person to suit my context, like water poured into a vessel, or whether I had simply happened to be that way, like an accidental rhyme. I wondered what it was like to talk to a shepherdess without having her shoe thrown at me. I wondered if I were real. I wondered if Praise was well. They all seemed like strange and undignified things to think about, and perhaps this is why I thought of them -- because a wizard has the liberty of very little dignity. Perhaps I was the only one who could think of them, and perhaps that is why the shepherdesses found me as their intercessor.

I suppose I must have slumped my shoulders in this line of thought; Doctor Fox grunted and shifted in my hood. I expected to be scolded for not seeing properly to his comfort, but instead he waited a moment and then spoke in a most companionable tone:

"What are you thinking about now? You wizards are always fussing over something in those eggshell heads of yours."

"Sheep," I answered, with perhaps more brevity than honesty, though I did not lie. Truly, I wasn't even entirely certain te odd fellow was a native of Lesser Heart, and worried I might bore him with worries that concerned him even less than I would normally imagine. Though I had never met a talking animal who claimed any other citizenship. His talk of travel had me puzzled. Nor did I wish to tire him with matters of the heart, especially as talking about it would likely split and detail the sorrow of my thoughts still further, like light sent through a prism.

He was quiet again. Listening, I thought with some surprise, not expecting him to listen so closely to something not his own issue. I said, "Sheep," once more to find out why, catching the word as it left my lips and turning it over in my hands to study it. It was a sad word. Half sigh and half low bell. Only it wasn't the word all in itself, it was the way I was saying it. Once a mother had begged me to find a lost child in a land famous for wolves, begged me so many times and with such tears and gentleness that I submitted, though I knew what I would find. The way I wrote the spell-word to find that babe was the way the word "Sheep," had come out of my mouth.

Slipping the word in my pocket, I felt odd, inconvenienced and inconvenient for having said more than I meant to say. But Doctor Fox only kept up his amiable manner and said that he'd learned a lot about sheep in his day, and would I like to hear a story about sheep. I said I woud like to hear any story he was kind enough to share with me.

"Even if it has a witch in it?" he wondered.

"Maybe it's what I deserve," I answered, and this is what he told me:

The First Sheep Story of Doctor Fox: New Words for Poison

Once upon a time, back when there were many kingdoms in the realm of Heart, there was a little sheep with a ring of keys. For your average sheep, this would be frustrating on account of the lack of doors, locks, or opposable thumbs in the sheepish quotidiem. But this sheep was of a particularly patient or apathetic or stupid breed, and didn't care much about the purpose of the keys. And anyway, he liked the sparkle. His shepherdess, upon request, strung the ring on a blue ribbon that he wore around his neck like a necklace. 

We'll come back to the sheep.

At the same time, in a different part of the realm, there was a lovely witch visiting from a distant kingdom, and she didn't understand right from wrong. You know witches have dysfunctional mothers, all of them? Well, this witch's mother had raised her to appreciate lovely and unlovely only. It was easy because witches tend to function like the universe is a reflection of their natures anyway. The thing a witch understands best is more of herself.

This witch had lived for a long, long time because, in her youth, she'd hunted for something lovelier than she could understand and had sworn that she wouldn't age until she found it. In time, the search had faded into the back of her mind. But witches' promises have a way about them, and did even back then, so she never aged. Instead, she just grew more and more powerful, until the countries around her came up with new words for poison, and all those words mirrored her name.

One day, she was walking down the streets of an iron city, turning her footprints into glass and generally defeating infrastructure, when the King - a real King, back then, not a foreigner like our King Hel - came to her with his gaggle of court wizards. This was back when Kings and wizards still had dealings. Anyway, the King popped the question, asked her to marry him and rule at his side and all those things that Kings think are so terrific.

"Let's put aside the difference in our ages, and how little a child could entertain me," she told him. "What would I do with a kingdom or a queenship? I've been kicking the lines of your maps for longer than you've been making them. I've rung cursed bells that make men forget their language. I've scattered geographies by plucking the invisible harp-strings above borders. With a single whisper, I have drained the ink from your laws to dye my petticoats. You're madder than I if you think to bind me in such circles and patterns, and crueler.

The King, of course, had basically no imagination, so he got angry. He ordered his wizards to banish her to the realm of wind and glass, which no one could escape, and where every harm she did would echo in her ears till she was married to agony. But the wizard, upon seeing the lovely witch, had already fallen deeply in love with her himself. Wizards do that a lot more often than they like to admit. Or at least they did, back then. So he disobeyed his King. He made a house out of smallness and air, and trapped the witch in it, so she became really tiny and it looked like she'd disappeared. Then, with a little puff of air, he sent her to whatever fate would have her.

The witch had nothing in her house of air and smallness besides her own breath and the blue sky above, which poured in through tiny cracks in the house. Bored, she began to weave a ribbon out of blue sky. And one day, she gave this ribbon a tug, to see where it would lead her. 

The witch was surprised to find herself on a sheep's neck. As was the sheep, sort of, in a sheep way. Anyway, the witch saw the keys that also hung from the ribbon, rattling against her house. Witches, as you know, take possession over keys and looms, and if this ring of keys had not contained the key to free her before she knocked up against it, it certainly did now. She begged the sheep to set her free. The sheep explained about its thumb problem.

But it was a nice and helpful sheep, even if it was a little slow, and it went to the shepherdess to ask for her help. Of course, the shepherdess couldn't even see the witch's tiny house, let alone the witch's tiny lock. Fortunately, besides being a great weaver and having all the other great witch qualities, this witch was also about as clever as any wizard. So she used her breath to make a fog in the house. And in the heat of the day, of course, the fog melted into a mirror. Then, with a huge effort, the witch shook her little house back and forth so the sun bounced off of it and the shepherdess could see.

"Oh!" said the shepherdess. "The lock will be somewhere in the small light!" And she fumbled, like shepherdesses will, until she found just the right place to turn her key, like shepherdesses do.

The witch, now free, ran off to the nearest river and swam to the ocean that bordered the kingdom. Then she took huge bites out of the coast until all the King's lands fell into the sea. After this, the witch found that the sand had worn away her teeth, and she was no longer dangerous, and was so moved by her own docility that she decided to retire to her original quest.

As for the sheep, he was disappointed that the house of air and light no longer decorated his collar. He missed the mirroring fog more than he'd imagined, because he was a sheep, and sheep, like Kings, have lousy imaginations. He was never quite the same.

"A part of Old Heart fell into the sea?" I heard myself say. I didn't quite know what my voice was doing. "What? When was this? Where? Was it here? Are you saying some of us have drowned?"

"Shh. Honestly. It's just a story, Folly. You don't feel like we're all underwater, do you?"

I didn't know how to answer that. I didn't want to be rude, but there was too much answer and too much question. It scared me, and I kept thinking about that world with only stone under the dirt. I had to sit down. I could feel Doctor Fox put his paws on my lap, I could hear his voice, but I couldn't quite discern him, and I couldn't quite speak. 

I don't know what would have happened if this had gone unchecked. Fortunately, it was then that I met the ugliest person I'd ever seen.

Two confusing traveling companions. 

 
"Good sir!" I heard exclaimed in a voice as bright as cheap copper and paper flowers. I suppose it must have come upon us gradually, but I was still reeling from the potent combination of Doctor Fox's suggestive story, a baffled heart, an impossible quest, and possibly a head injury from falling off that horse. Therefore I didn't notice the creature till it was addressing me, standing over me and blocking the light, which seemed like a noteworthy task, since the light was everywhere on this road. Dunes and white road and white sky stretched and blended together without relief; one kept one's eyes at one's feet less out of boredom than the opposite - the sense that staring too long at that merged whiteness might take the mind on an adventure from which it would not return. And yet someone was standing over me, blocking it all. I felt some of my trouble blocked as well, but I still squinted out of habit as I looked up.

"Bells and buttons, what a damned likely sight tha' art, and right goodly of thee to stop for us. Why, we've been out here longer than a virgin's wishlist, we have, with nary a sprightly foot nor lively tongue to help fold the road. By way of which I mean to say it's a good day indeedily, and far the more for meeting thee, and I go by Snaggle." The Snaggle hunkered down and pumped my hand and grinned so widely. "Or The Snaggle. On account of the chompers."

A common misconception about wizards is that we react poorly to being startled. Admittedly, we react poorly to everything, in the end, if we're given a real chance. But what people mean when they say this is that if you surprise a wizard, he will jump in the air and accidentally turn you into a bird in the doing. Or that he will get so angry at being surprised that his face will turn red and he'll do something terrible, like set a river on fire or give faulty directions, being of delicate temperament. In truth, though, we wizards are more delicate still, and are consequently surprised by almost everything, and have learned not to let a little impossibility or terror alter our moods overmuch, lest our spells go badly awry or we fail to notice the right thing or the wrong time. What is more likely to happen if you startle a wizard is that he will not do the logical thing and get panicked or angry at you, but will instead hold onto whatever he was feeling or thinking before. Only now, instead of just feeling or thinking at nothing, he will have noticed you, and will direct his feeling and thinking at you. Hopefully through conversation, but it's possible that he will let his birdbrain or his hot head or his confusion fly at you like an arrow. 

So when this Snaggle creature surprised me by appearing to clatter at me and shake my hand, my misery spiraled out of my mouth before I could gulp down the truth. But it was not a feeling meant to go up; it came out as a heavy word and dropped off my lips to sink into the sand. And well it did, for otherwise it might have bounced off the Snaggle's terrible ugliness and hit me instead, or got caught in those terrible teeth, poor word.

For the set of teeth that appeared in that grin was a grave situation indeed, a terrible jumble. Some of the teeth were missing, some were gold, all seemed like they'd simply been thrown into their home with no consideration for where they might land. I peered at the face, could not decide if it were a girl's or a boy's, and then decided not to try to assign titles where none were due. It would have been as reasonable for me to decide whether it were more like a duke or more like a piano. Really it resembled nothing so much as an awful rat, with small black eyes and a narrow, hungry face.

"Wow," whispered Doctor Fox, finally, from where he waas otherwise frozen on my knees, staring up at the rat.

The Snaggle had drawn back somewhat, and didn't seem to notice the fox staring at it. Instead, it was frowning at me. At least I thought it was - it had rearranged its ugliness to look somehow even less pleasant, and even while I was irritated at myself for my lack of manners, I was also relieved because at least it had stopped grinning and I didn't have to look at its teeth.

"No call for a corkscrewed tongue, lackheart," it said. "We was just being friendly-like. Did thee then stop for us only as a likely target for thy tripsy wickedness?"

"I beg your pardon, I said, picking the word up off the sand and slipping it into my pocket. "It was an accident."

"The cussing or the stopping?"

"Well," I hummed, wondering that so reasonable a question could make out of so dire a mouth. "Both, I suppose. Though the stopping was an accident I meant, and so wants your pardon less."

"I'll wager I oughtta sit thankful your cussing don't want my pardon more. 'Twas an ugly word, should it have hit me, and thee can see I can bear little more ugliness afore my face cracks under the strain." And crack it did, the Snaggle's face, into a smile, while I tried to make up for my rudeness by keeping my eyes from wincing away.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I am Folly Valwollen," I gasped, "and this is Doctor Fox."

"Uh," said Doctor Fox. "Hey there."

"Larks!" cried the Snaggle, and Doctor Fox and I both winced as its grin widened. "I thought I'd heard someone else afore, but accounted it as wizardry! Though perhaps it is still? Either or, thy bonny little fellow's learnt quite the trick!"

"I don't think it's a trick," I said, at the same time that the fox bristled and yipped that he certainly wasn't my bonny fellow.

"Just 'cause it's common learnt don't make it untricky, wizard," answered the Snaggle, and it tugged its forelock at Doctor Fox. "Thy pardon for a hasty word, tiny sir. We meant no wickedness by it. Seems I've not got our common trick quite licked my own self."

Finding the sand too warm for his paws, my little companion had availed himself of my lap, and he looked up at the Snaggle after turning about a few times to get comfortable. "It's OK," he said. "I like how you talk."

It grinned wider, we winced again, and I thought of something that had wedged its way through those terrible teeth. "Well, Snaggle. Who is 'we'?"

"Bless me with a hazel switch!" it cried, and turned around, slipping the great burden off its back. Looking at the pack, we could see it was indeed as large as it had seemed, at least twice the size of our chattering companion, and was fashioned haphazardly out of an abundance of compartments and pockets, as through a new portion was added whenever the creature found something that wanted carrying. I wondered how the Snaggle was able to carry such a load, for its body was spindly and misshapen. Perhaps, I thought, it was a spell, or part of the deal by which the creature had lost all human beauty. Or perhaps the Snaggle was not quite human. Yet I did not know quite how to comport myself about it, what to do or say or how to behave; the urge to curious courtesy, which usually set upon me in encounters with the magical or inhuman, gave way to a feeling more like the unease that plagued me with humans - the feeling that every word, every gesture, counted towards some test for which no wizard could prepare. With the Snaggle, though, this feeling was more potent than usual, and the strength of the feeling reminded me of something.

Of what, I wasn't certain, for its ugliness distracted me, even though its face was hidden as it bent over the pack, untying and loosening and brushing away laces and veils. I was about to close my eyes to focus, when a gloved hand rose within the depths of a compartment.

The Snaggle reached in, grasped the hand, and gave it a solicitous tug. It turned out to belong to a Lady, whose bloodless face emerged blinking out at us as from an opera box. I had an impression of fine-lined woman, quite old, small and spare and as white as bleached bone. She was dressed in gray silk and folded up quite neatly into a space that seemed to offer very little room in the cavernous satchel.

"Good day," she said, shielding her eyes while the Snaggle busied itself half retrieving, half assembling a great black parasol, which it then held to shield the Lady. 

"Fellow desert-trippers," rattled the Snaggle, "this here's Ondel. Ondel, these smudges on the scenery are Folly Valwollen and Doctor Fox."

Whereupon Ondel murmured something drier than the sand I sat on and softer than Doctor Fox's whiskers, and extended her gloved hand to be kissed. When I stood and drew near (first allowing Doctor Fox to climb up into my hood), it became clear that the Lady was folded into a space quite smaller than even her little self could safely occupy.

I bowed over her hand and put my lips to fingers that seemed like dried, cured switches in my grasp. "Lady," I said, releasing her as soon as was decent and stepping back, back, back out of her shade. "In good faith I warn you I am a wizard."

"Ah," she coughed, making a little puff of dust pop out of her mouth. "It could hardly be imagined otherwise. You are well-named." At which she made a shrug, smooth and cold as these older ladies sometimes can, and I suppose right then I grew quite as fond of her as I had grown of Doctor Fox. We wizards have affections so easily secured, and so unpleasant in their outcome, it is little wonder we are treated so shabbily by so many. 

Doctor Fox had been busily putting his coat in its proper order and flicking his ears free of dust so that his whole face shone like a great soft butterfly, and now he danced up to Ondel on dainty paws. His fine bright tail curled just so, my little friend made a fox bow and quirked his little brow at the lady.

"Hi," he said, as though he'd swallowed a jar of honey. It was the first I saw him with an undisputable woman, so I was a little surprised at how he flirted. At the time, I thought perhaps it was that she looked like she was made of chicken bones, but I would learn eventually how well he fancied and preferred ladies. At any rate, Ondel hid a smile with one hand and touched the other to the tip of Doctor Fox's ear, so prettily that I almost didn't notice the Snaggle's unoiled chuckle. 

"Lalala, a prettisome manner's welcomer to weary wanderers than clean water, betimes," it ground out. "Does thee not so measure, Ondel?"

 "I do, I do, my Snaggle," breathed the Lady, puffing out some more coughs that I thought might be meant as laughter. "But a story might be even sweeter. I long to stretch my ears after such a journey in this silent land."

"Is it silent, Lady?" I asked. "We saw little and heard less till the Snaggle came upon us, but then we were not long on this road."

"No?" said Ondel, sounding a little bored, very polite, and not at all surprised, even though the road behind us stretched on until it blurred with the sand at the horizon. "Pray, how did you come to be here?"

The Snaggle had wrangled the parasol deep enough into the sand that it stuck, and now busied itself retrieving cookies and smoked meat and flagons of wine and flasks of water from various peculiar compartments within its great satchel. So we all shook the rocks and sand out of our boots and sat down. The Snaggle even found a little cushion so that Doctor Fox would not have to muss his fur going back into my hood or muss his dignity by sitting on my lap.

When my throat was wine-softened enough that the tale could pass comfortably through it, I told Ondel what I had told Doctor Fox, though I told it in a straighter line. She seemed past the age when ladies are expected to be nimble. April and Praise came up through my throat, taking on the velvety feel of the vintage that coated it, and wrapped themselves about my head until I settled into a soft, blind quiet that ended my story for me.

Ondel laughed her coughing laugh at me.

I closed my eyes, but could not shut out the brightness so at odds with my soft, black, swaddled thoughts. "So and well," I said faintly, "that is how we found ourselves on this road, though we don't know where it leads either way. Do you?"

"I do," the Lady answered, with a smile as fine as her fine, white hair.

"Will you tell us? What is beyond this dune?"

"I won't. Perhaps you should turn and turn again, and it will avail itself of you."

"Perhaps it will do the turning for me. I find myself overturned at present," I said.

And I may have sounded a little hurt, for she then spoke almost as kindly to me as to Doctor Fox. "Ah, there. It sounds as though you've already been told, in your fashion, and better than I could tell you."

I made an effort to open my eyes and rally, and Doctor Fox said, "You look pretty cozy, dolly," batting his lashes at her. "How'd you get yourself in there? Is it a trick you can teach me? I'm good company."

Ondel smiled widely, so that we could see her teeth, though quite small and white, were not the teeth of some monster or angel. "I would never doubt the benefits of your company, little sir. Only I have grown very light, and very white, though once I was round and rosy. It hasn't been the same with you, I think, and I could only teach you if we started from the beginning. But there, you do not strike me as the sort of fellow who should be trying to fit into things. Things should be trying to fit into you, am I not right?"

Doctor Fox laughed and groomed his ears. The brightness won out against my attempts at courtesy. My eyes fell heavily closed. No one said my name, and I fell asleep to the sound of the Snaggle telling a joke, and had nightmares. When I awoke, shivering in the desert night despite the rug that someone - presumably the Snaggle - had tucked around me, the others were asleep. Ondel was bundled back in her tiny compartment, and the Snaggle was curled up at its base around Doctor Fox, the two of them breathing the quick slumbering breaths of dreaming beasts. I stood, all thready and wide open with the effects of overmuch wine only half worn off, knowing that even sleep would prefer the company of others tonight.  Looking up, I saw a sky so starry, it seemed that all of Lesser Heart was silently tilting into something very deep and very precious.  

Eased by the context, I waited in restful thought until the others bestirred themselves, and we set off as companions.