THREE BROTHERS ⋅ A NEW GOD ⋅ CITY OF SALT ⋅ LAKE OF DREAMS ⋅ SUSPENDED! ⋅ THE TWO STREETS ⋅ ON THE EDGE OF THE MARSHS ⋅ BLACKSUN ⋅ DEMON ⋅ GAZELLE ⋅ THE HARDRIIM ⋅ RIDER ⋅ THE FLYER ⋅ ARABIAN NIGHTS ⋅ THE EMPTY MIRROR ⋅ THE SOLDIER ⋅ THE BICYCLE ⋅ THE CROCODILE ⋅ THE THREE TRAVELERS ⋅ OCEANSONG ⋅ THE FLUTE ⋅ THE TREE ⋅ THE TOWER

He stood in his greatcoat, surrounded on all sides by a desert whose sands had yet to be warmed by the rays of the morning sun. How long had he wandered, how had he come to where he stood? He remembered a city of endless glittering white winding corridors, each leading to a blindingly bright courtyard resplendent with shimmering mosaics of a crystalline substance; a woman serving him brackish water from a dented copper kettle; a burning ache in his leg that would not go away (was that before the ever-present clanging?); a street, now empty of inhabitants save for a lone black bird, perhaps it might have been a mynah bird, he was not sure, he had gone over this too many times in his head to know whether he was summoning up the memory of a black bird or a real black bird, but whatever it was it seemed to say something to him; a boy of twelve following him throughout the alleyways, ever beckoning, “Tea, sweet mint tea, tea, sweet mint tea” a sudden, low buzzing screech, followed by a rumbling, which he had felt first in his bones, then in his guts, and which made the world silent thereafter; a metallic taste in the back of his throat that would not go away; a thick, choking cloud that brought tears to his eyes; crawling along the base of one of those endless walls, crawling with his face to the filth of the city street, until at last the winding dirt lane unfurled into the desert sands and fresher air; a quiet stumbling onto the sands, only his nose to lead him away from the salty stench of the burning city, the same nose (was it his own?) that led him to the rich musky stink of a mule or ass, he wasn’t sure which, he did not know how to tell the difference, he was sure one was the child of a horse and donkey and one was not (or was an ass the child of a donkey and a mule?), he kept running it through his head, he was sure he would remember which it was, but whether ass, mule, or donkey, it never answered his questions, so he stopped asking. The creature had been tethered to a post and seemed to have a goatskin waterflask and a sack of preserved dates tied to its back. It must have led him here, but where it was now he did not know; he had drifted into a half-dream where the dates and water were gone. A beggar had come to him across the barren wastes (he had given him the last of his dates, or had he eaten them himself?). The beggar had spoken into the emptiness, his words forming a harsh silence that rang in his ears, his eyes peering deep into the darkness behind the sky and beyond, into the endless night, the last of the dates dribbling from his ruined mouth: was he that beggar? - it scarcely mattered, as he was merely a cold and solitary star, lost in a distant constellation he could no longer see. -home-