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a constant evolution into new alignments like the agitated stars overhead. Drunkenly, the Yoalo stared at it, swaying, then fell on his back; he rolled over and up, and iridescent beams of fire spat from his hand toward a dark object on the bank. It burst into flames, showing itself to be a stack of bales, one of several such stacks dotting the shore.

The Yoalo shook his head at his own foolishness, chuckled, and folded the bright contraption; it shrank to a sparkle of sapphire light as he pocketed it, as if he had collapsed a small galaxy into a single sun. He touched his forehead, and the mask reappeared. Then he went staggering down the bank, his hand extended, firing at the stacked bales, setting every one of them ablaze. With each burst, he shouted, 'Ogoun!' and laughed. His laughter grew in volume, becoming ear-splitting, obviously amplified; it ricocheted off the waterfront buildings. The fires sent dervish shadows leaping up the street, casting gleams over the carved faces on the walls, and illuminated the ebony flow of the river and the thick vegetation of the far bank.

Amid a welter of spear-shaped leaves, Donnell saw the movements of low-slung bodies. But, he thought, the truly dangerous animal wore a suit of negative black and roamed the streets of Rumelya without challenge. A vandal, a coarse outlaw. Yet though he despised the man's abuse of privilege, he was captivated by the drama of the scene. This maniacal warrior with the face of a beast howling his laughter, taunting the lie-abed burghers and fishermen; the rush of dark water; the auroral veils billowing over the deep forest; the slinking animals. It was like a nerve of existence laid bare, a glistening circuit with the impact of a one line poem. He filed the scene away, thinking he might compose the poem during his next period of meditation. Half in salute, honoring the vitality of what he had witnessed, half a warning, he sent a burst of his own fire to scorch the earth at the Yoalo's feet. And then he lifted his hands to engage the fields and returned to Maravillosa.

The sky was graying, coming up dawn. One of the bushes near the veve was a blackened skeleton, wisps of smoke curling from the twig ends. He sat down cross-legged on, the ground. Within the fields, he thought, he was a far different person than the one who now doubted the validity of the experience. Not that he was capable of real doubt. The whole question was basically uninteresting.

'Hey, monkey!' The Baron waved from the hilltop.

The wind must have been bad. An avenue had been gouged through the undergrowth, and he could see a portion of the house between the hills. Gables, the top of his bedroom window. Jocundra would be asleep, her long legs drawn up, her hand trailing across his pillow.

'Man,' said the Baron, coming toward him. 'You got to control this shit!' He gestured at the battered foliage.

Donnell shrugged. 'What can I do?'

The Baron sat down on the veve. 'I don't know, man,' he said, sounding discouraged. 'Maybe the best thing can happen is for it to all blow away.' He spat. 'You got another nosebleed, man.'

Donnell wiped his upper lip. Blood smeared and settled into the lines of his palm, seeming to form a character, one which had much in common with a tangle of epiphytic stalks and blooms blown beside the veve: fleshy leaves, violet florets. More circuitry ripped up from beneath the skin of the world. Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every other object. There is no sure knowledge, only endless process.

'When you first come here, man,' said the Baron, 'I thought you was sleaze like Papa and them other uglies. But I got to admit you unusual.' He coughed and spat again. 'Things is gettin' pretty loose up in the attic. You and me should have a talk sometime 'bout what's happenin' 'round here.'

'Yeah,' said Donnell, suddenly alert to his weariness, to the fact that he was back in the world. 'Not now, though. I need some sleep.'

But a few days later Otille sent the Baron away on business, and by the time he returned things had gone beyond the talking stage.

Chapter 18

September 15 - September 19, 1987

Ordinarily they would have been asleep at three o'clock in the morning, but for some reason Jocundra's adrenaline was flowing and she just tossed and turned.

'Let's get something to eat,'