"what came first: the system or love?"

Once upon a time, you died.

When I caught up to the caravan again, I passed the green wagon. It was always the last of the train, I assumed as it was pulled by two huge men and therefore slower. The green’s place at the back meant I’d never approached it before. (Its being ever-locked and the two huge silent men was also off-putting.) At night the bright green paint was grey and the wagon faded into the tones of the dark landscape. It looked like a ghost wagon, and the great men pulling it turned from men into gnarled horses whose muzzles had been struck off with an axe to leave open panting holes, the darkened sockets of their eyes like the open sinuses, their panting mouths the wound with side-teeth and bloody mess between them.

“The architect never comes out clean. It takes a part with.” She shrugged. “Besides, they’re guilty. They’ve done nothing wrong, but that doesn’t stop them being guilty.”

I found these piercing truths everywhere I went, and I was always perplexed by other foreigners like me who bemoaned this recognition. For them there was no wonder in discovering there was the same as here. This insight was worthless to them. They wanted the ratchet of wonder to ever tighten. For myself, finding the here in the there was a joy. Wherever I went, I was always coming home. I did not expect the land over the border to be any different, yet after my time in the garden at night, I began to doubt that what I was experiencing would be revealed as human.

“We need the danger they represent to keep us true. The poison is necessary. It needs to be tapped regularly, but we can’t do without it. The architect is-and-is-not-welcome. It’s like oxygen. By its nature it corrodes but we can’t do without it.” She paused. “It is the game.” I let my hand fall to the table top. It made a louder sound than intended. “That’s no answer,” I said. Jarvey looked directly at me. “The spirit-architects are savage. They were once worshipped. To give elemental beings attention is terror, fear. To worship them, to pay them any mind at all, is not a way for a human to live. But to betray them? We’d lose someone we love. We cannot expose our own. Another must do it for us.”