Inside there was a silence so deep she almost feared to draw breath, and a darkness so profound it seemed to press against her face, like the hands of a blind man reading her flesh. She let it do so, fearing that she'd be removed if she rejected it, and after a few moments of scrutiny its touch became lighter, almost playful, and she felt the darkness coaxing her up from the ground and away from the wall. She was obliged to trust to it, but that was no great hardship. There was no peril here, of that she was certain, and as if in reward for her faith the darkness began to flower before her, bloom upon bloom opening as she approached. The darkness grew no lighter, but as she walked her eyes understood its subtleties better; saw forms and figures that she'd been blind to before. She was one of hundreds here, she realized, members of the families she'd seen in the snow outside, lucky or worthy enough to come into this sacred place. There were tears of bliss on some of their faces; smiles and reverence on others. A few even looked her way as she was led through the throng, but most were watching some sight the black blossoms had not yet shown her. Eager to know what wonder this was, she focused her attentions upon the mysterious air.

And now she began to see. There was a form appearing ahead of her, like the fruit of this blossoming darkness. It resembled nothing she could name, but it had the sinuousness of a serpent, or rather of many serpents, turned upon themselves over and over, a knot of sliding shapes in constant motion. It entered itself, this knot, and emerged remade.

it divided and sealed, opened like an eye and broke like water on a rock. Sometimes, in the midst of its cavortings, a spray of darkness would spurt between its surfaces. Oftentimes it would slough off a skin of shadows, which would instantly fly apart, the fragments rising like seeds from a field of dandelions, sowing themselves in the fertile gloom.

She was watching one such seeding when her gaze fell upon the figures sitting beneath this display. A man and a woman, face to face, hand to hand, their heads bowed as if in prayer. Seeing the two of them so close she thought of Abilene Welsh and Billy Baxter, though she did not entirely comprehend the reason. Surely those two had not frozen to death looking for a place to hold hands and bow heads, but to perform that labor she'd witnessed countless times among beasts. And yet, was the getting of children not the purpose of that labor? And did the form hovering above this couple not seem to come from their mingled essences, which rose from their lips like coiling smoke and intertwined between their brows?

"It's a baby," she said aloud.

Either the darkness was negligent, and failed to catch her words before they flew, or else the sound her tongue made was too slippery to @ seized. Whichever, she saw the words go from her lips like a turquoise and orange flame, the colors strident in such muted circumstances. they instantly flew towards the dark child, and were drawn into its workings, their brilliance streaking its every part.

The woman opened her eyes and raised her head with a look of pain upon her face, and her husband rose from his chair expelling a throatful of ether, then looked up at the creature he had fathered.

It was in turmoil now, its configurations changing even more rapidly, as if Maeve's colors had given it new fuel for its inventions. Too much, perhaps. In an ecstasy of change, its forms became even more erratic, feeding upon their own invention as they multiplied.

Maeve was in sudden terror. She retreated a couple of stumbling steps then turned and pelted away through the crowd. There was turmoil all around her, the darkness too traumatized to silence the voices of the throng, so that shouts of panic and alarm erupted on every side. She darted this way and that to keep anyone from catching hold of her, though it seemed few understood what had happened, much less recognized the culprit, and she reached the wall of the tent without a hand being laid upon her. As she stooped to duck under the fabric, she glanced back. The child was in decay, she saw, its forms ripened to bursting and rotting in the air. Its parents had separated, and lay in the arms of their respective families, stricken and sickened. Even as Maeve watched, the woman went into a fit so violent it was all her comforters could do to restrain her.

Clamping her hand over her mouth to subdue her sobs, Maeve dug under the tent wall and out into the snow. News of the calamity had already spread among those waiting outside and chaos had ensued. A fight had broken out towards the bottom of the slope, and someone was already sprawled on the ground with a spike in his heart. Elsewhere, people were running towards the tent, even as those within emerged, yelling at the tops of their voices.

Maeve sat down on the snow and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, which burned with all she'd seen, and with the tears that were about to come.

"Child."

She raised her head, and started to look around.

"What did you promise?"

She looked no further.

"It wasn't my fault," she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "I just said@'

"It was you?" the beast replied, cutting her short. "Oh Lord, oh Lord, what have I done?"

She felt the beast's hands on her body, and without warning she was spun around. She finally saw his features plainly-his long, patient face, his golden eyes, his fur, thickening to a mane in the middle of his skull, sleek as a beaver's pelt on his brow and cheek and chin. His teeth were chattering slightly.

"Are you cold?"

"No, damn you!"

She started to weep softly.

"All right, I'm cold," he said, "I'm cold."

"No you're not. You're afraid." The gold in his eyes flickered.

"What's your name?" he said.

"Maeve O'Connell."

"I should have killed you, Maeve O'Connell."

"I'm glad you didn't," she said. "Who are you?"

"Coker Ammiano. Soon to be infamous. If I'd killed you, you wouldn't have done this terrible thing."

"What was so terrible?"

"You spoke at the marriage. That was forbidden. Now there'll be war. The families'll blame each other. There'll be bloodshed, Then when they realize it wasn't them, they'll come looking for the culprit, and they'll kill us. You for what you did in there, me for bringing you here." Maeve pondered this chain of disaster for a moment. "they can't kill us if they can't find us," she said finally. She glanced back down the slope. Just as Coker had predicted, the fighting had indeed escalated. If it was not yet war it would be very soon. "Is there another way?" she said.

"One," he replied.

She scrabbled to her feet. "Take us there," she said.

Over the decades, Buddenbaum had assembled a comprehensive list of fictional works in which he appeared. to date he had knowledge of twenty-three characters he had directly inspired (that is to say a reader of the book in question, or a viewer of the play, if they knew him, instantly recognized the source), along with another ten or eleven characters that drew upon aspects of his nature for comic or tragic effect. It was testament to the many facets of his personality that he could step onto the stage as a judge in one piece and as a procurer in another and have both portraits judged accurate.

He took no offense at being exploited in this fashion, however scandalous the work or scurrilous the part. It was flattering to be a seed for so many creations, especially for one as certain to remain childless as he. And it amused him mightily that when these artists, in their cups, confessed to their homage, they invariably spoke of how much raw human truth they had discovered in him. He suspected otherwise.

Know it or not (and in his experience artists knew very little) they were inspired by the very opposite of what they claimed. He was not raw. He was not true. And one day, if he was cautious and wise, he would not even be human. He was a fake through and through, a man who had traveled the trails of America in a dozen different guises, and would wear another dozen before his business was done.