The creature studied the assembled trio with unfathomable jewel-black eyes. It was almost as big as Thoralf, covered head to hoof in fur—a really astonishing amount of fur, golden white and luxuriantly soft looking, and so immaculately styled that not a strand seemed out of place. Wherever the creature had come from must have had a good salon, indeed a supernatural salon. Its creamy locks rippled majestically in the breeze… except no breeze was blowing. The autumn sun was shining, but the old sycamore tree, whose orange leaves had not yet fallen, cast its shade upon the gathering; and in that shade the creature clearly glowed… with moonlight. Its fuzzy ears stuck out like flags beneath its sickle horns, which, like its hooves, might have been chiseled from obsidian. “I see you’re all duly impressed,” it said.

“You…” Gramma sputtered, too angry for eloquence, “you… you…”

Thoralf wandered over and bumped noses with the creature. Then he wandered off again to eat more grass.

“You!” Gramma said furiously.

“And you,” the creature agreed, “and you and you,” it added, nodding to Ez and Wilburn, the latter of whom stared slack-jawed in amazement. There was something familiar about that rich, supercilious baritone… but Ez was too disoriented from the stoppage and restartage of time to recall where she had heard it before.

“You’ve got some nerve turning up now,” Gramma said, finding her tongue at last, “after you refused to lift a finger to help us last night!”

“My dear Nyreen, you speak a partial truth,” the creature said. “I have never once lifted a finger, on account of owning none. However, the suggestion that I refused to come to your aid last night is slanderous, and furthermore unfounded. I would have come, if the Path had led me to do so, as evidenced by the fact that it has led me to do so now, and here I am.”

These pompous words jogged Ez’s memory. Of course—the voice in the teacup! This must be the philosopher, Iddolorious Bungflower, who Gramma so reviled, but who happened to be the most powerful magician in the world. Ez hadn’t expected him to be… not human. When Gramma said he was a yak, Ez had supposed this meant some special kind of wizard or something. But apparently it meant a talking ox. Ah, I get it, Ez thought. They must be called yaks because they yak.

A clever inference, Ms. Totkins, although regrettably incorrect, for as it happens, I am the sole member of my species who is fluent in the languages of yours. The binomial nomenclature of yaks is, incidentally, Bos mutus, which means the mute or silent ox. I am, you see, an aberration.

It took a moment for Ez to piece this all together, and another moment for her to realize the yak had not said it aloud. His shaggy muzzle remained closed. Yet Ez had clearly heard his voice… and then she heard it again. Thought-speech, it told her. Nifty little trick, eh?

Ez supposed it was at that. So, you’re a psychovate too, Mr. Bungflower, she thought.

Meanwhile, Gramma was still hectoring Iddo: “There’s more than one path, you dolt. I would think you of all people ought to know. You have the power to do anything you want. They’re called choices, Iddo. Choices.”

“I do not deny the existence of choice,” Iddo said mildly. “For many lifetimes I strayed far from the true Path, believing, in my arrogance, that I could forge a better destiny for myself than what the universe assigned me. I made a great many choices, and reaped much unpleasant karma. One can’t help noticing the pattern eventually. Cause and effect, my dear, cause and effect. One may persist in bouncing off the wall, or one may try the door. There are worse and better ways to live, and then there is the best way, the Path of perfect harmony. The Path I now choose to follow… which, at present, is not leading me to continue justifying myself to you. I predict, however, that you are about to forgive me anyway.”

Gramma folded her arms. “Fat chance,” she said.

You catch on quickly, Ms. Totkins, Iddo replied in Ez’s mind. Jack often spoke of your intelligence. For once, it seems that he did not exaggerate.

You knew Jack?

Oh yes. Better, I think, than anyone, with the possible exception of yourself...

A vision suddenly filled Ez’s mind of Jack, seated across a small table from her, fingering the handle of a tankard of dark ale. A second tankard, significantly larger—more a bucket than a tankard, really—sat before her on the table. They were in some lofty windowed chamber full of sky. “I can’t stand it anymore,” Jack said. He looked haggard. “Ez thinks I’m a professional musician. Closest thing I could tell her to the truth. Musician sounds a bit like magician, see? I keep hoping she’ll piece the clues together. She’s a genius when it comes to numbers and machines and stuff...” He took a gulp of beer. ”Who am I kidding? There’s no loophole in the Secret. I tried everything. I guess it’s wedding bells or bust, just like you said. But I’ve asked Ez to marry me a dozen times—she isn’t ready. I can’t blame her, I suppose. She’s only nineteen. And a traveling flautist doesn’t exactly sound like the ideal husband, does it? I’ve got to show her I’m dependable. I can’t keep running off every few weeks.” He took a breath. “I’m planning to quit, after this next round of deliveries.”

“That,” Ez felt herself say, in a rich, supercilious baritone, “is a very dangerous idea.” Ez realized that she was Iddo in the vision, seeing Jack from his perspective. Oddly enough, it felt perfectly natural. She was still vaguely aware of her surroundings in Real Life; she simply seemed to be remembering—remembering a memory that was not her own.

“Damn it, I love her,” Jack said, his color rising. “The Agency will have to understand. It’s not as if I’m turning traitor.”

“I have never seen a man become so drunk after a single swallow of beer,” Iddo said. “Forget the Agency for a moment. What do you intend to do about the Apadagabla-va?”

Jack’s color drained as fast as it had risen. “They don’t know my true identity,” he muttered. “There’s no way… unless someone from the Agency blabbed… but then I’d already be dead, wouldn’t I?”

“Oh, not necessarily,” Iddo said. Jack briefly disappeared behind the rim of the bucket-size tankard as Iddo took a drink. “Ahh... No, I think Tirzah would be very reluctant to discard a tool as useful as yourself, regardless of where your true allegiance lies. In fact, a known double agent might be more valuable to him than a loyal henchman. Tirzah doesn’t view people as friends and enemies, remember, only assets and liabilities. So long as he believes he can control you, I suspect he will continue to regard you as an asset. But if that should ever change… if, say, you attempted to retire from the Apadagabla-va…”

“What, then?” Jack demanded. “I’m at my wits’ end, Iddo. This is tearing me apart. You know it’s been almost a year since Ez and I finished our cottage? And I doubt I’ve spent a hundred nights under its roof. The whole idea was for us to live together, but I still feel like a visitor… like a guest in my own home. You got me into this mess! How the hell do I get out of it?”

“Correction,” Iddo said. “You got yourself into the Apadagabla-va, and if there had been an easier way out, you would never have allowed me to recruit you to the Agency. Your mission is your way out. Stay the course.”

There was a pause.

“And if it can’t be done?” Jack asked quietly. “If it turns out to be impossible?”

There was a longer pause. Then Iddo said, “I see no profit in entertaining that potentiality, Jack.”

The expression on Jack’s face was haunted. He suddenly seized his tankard and guzzled the rest of its contents, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he tossed the empty tankard over his shoulder, and it flew away. Jack slumped back in his chair. “You know…” he said, “Ez has the greenest eyes… I really miss those eyes… I always forget how green they are… Whenever I go home, I’m like, Whoa, babe, you’re more beautiful than I remember! She thinks I’m being corny, but it’s true… memory can’t do her justice.” The romanticism of this was somewhat spoiled by the foam mustache clinging to Jack’s real mustache.

“Yes, that’s the simulacrum aesthetic degradation effect for you,” Iddo said. “Textbook example.”

“Must’ve been one of the textbooks you wrote,” Jack grumbled. “I never understood a word of those. It’s like when Ez starts talking math… all these asymptotes and integrals and things… makes my brain itch.”

“Mathematics,” Iddo said grandly, “the language in which God writes the universe, the poetry of logical ideas. This Ez of yours sounds an intriguing interlocutor. It beggars belief that a barbarian like you could seduce a woman of such evident refinement.”

Jack chuckled. “Someday, I’m going to introduce you two,” he said. Then he sighed. “Someday.”

“Given that I personally constitute incontrovertible proof-positive of magic,” Iddo said, “I’m afraid that day will have to be your wedding day.”

Jack nodded glumly. But he perked up as his tankard glided back to him, refilled. “Hell…” he said, taking a sip to reapply his foam mustache, “wouldn’t that be a way to break it to her? First thing after the ceremony, as we’re walking off the stage… you appear out of nowhere and start lecturing her about, like, retrocausality or something? She’ll think she’s hallucinating! And then I’ll tell her, Ez, this is my best friend and mentor, Iddo. We brought down the world’s oldest magical crime syndicate together.”

“Hnggrrnt hnggrrnt hnggrrnt…” For a moment, Ez thought Iddo was choking on his beer. Only when Jack joined in did she realize that the peculiar grunting-snorting sound must be the yak’s version of laughter. “Hnggrrnt hnggrrnt hnggrrnt...”

“Ha ha ha…”

“Hnggrrnt hnggrrnt hnggrrnt...”

“Ha ha ha ha ha…” Jack smacked the table. “We’ll do it,” he declared. “Poor Ez. I’ve had this whole speech planned out in my head for ages, all about the Secret, and how magic works, and how sorry I am that I couldn’t share it with her sooner… but you know what? Screw it. She’ll understand. This is a once-in-a-lifetime pranking opportunity. It would be crime to let it go to waste.”

“Far be it from Jack Fark to commit a crime,” Iddo said, with irony.

“Who, me?” Jack placed a saintly hand over his heart. The conversation seemed to have revived his spirits, or perhaps it was the beer. Either way, he grinned broadly at Ez—well, really at Iddo—but it was Ez who felt the aching pressure in her chest. It’s been almost a year since Ez and I finished our cottage… that was what Jack had said, which put the date of this scene, this memory, assuming it had really happened, within a few months of his murder. And here, Ez was almost certain, was the reason he’d been killed. It was a hazy picture, but a picture nonetheless… a picture of divided loyalties and shadowy organizations… the Agency… the Apadagabla-va… and a mission, a mission Jack had wanted to abandon—for her.

Jack ran both hands through his dark hair. He said, “All right, god damn it, I won’t quit. Tirzah was born a man. He’s got to have a weakness. We will bring down the Apadagabla-va. And then I’m going to marry Ez, and you’re going to be there, Iddo, at our wedding to reveal the Secret to her—it’ll be the funniest way the Secret’s ever been revealed. And then…” a distant look came into Jack’s eyes, “then, I’m going take Ez flying.”

“Amen to that,” Iddo said. A shaggy white arm extended toward Jack, at the end of which, the bucket-size tankard was somehow grasped in a cloven hoof.

“Amen,” Jack echoed. His jaw was set. Ale sloshed as he knocked his tankard firmly against Iddo’s.

Ez discovered that her cheeks were wet with tears. The vision was over, and although Iddo and Jack had spoken for several minutes, almost no time had elapsed in Real Life. Gramma Fark had just folded her arms and said, Fat chance, and now Iddo was telling her, “The remarkable thing about chance is that there’s really no such thing as it, fat or otherwise.”

Ez discreetly wiped her cheeks. Her fingers came away sticky with greenish goo. For a moment, she couldn’t for the life of her think why this should be. Ez stared at her fingers numbly. Oh. Right. The vexpids. She wished things would stop happening for a while. She needed time to process, time to come to grips with… with, well, everything. It seemed to her that since she’d first caught sight of Wilburn flying out the kitchen window, scarcely five minutes had passed without something astonishing, heartbreaking, or traumatizing occurring.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gramma said. “There’s no chance I’m going to forgive you. Cowardly, arrogant… Why, you haven’t even apologi—” Her eyes went huge.

The little leather pouch that Iddo wore around his neck—wait a minute, had he been wearing that all along?—sprang open, and a tiny purple mushroom about the size of Ez’s pinky toe popped out, followed by two more tiny purple mushrooms and the tantalizing aroma of cinnamon.

“Iddo…” Gramma said cautiously, “you know, you’re the one who’s always talking about karma...” Unfortunately for her, the hongos, for of course that was what the purple mushrooms were, floated lazily up to Iddo’s mouth level, and crunch, crunch, crunch, he ate them out of the air. Gramma’s face turned scarlet. But then her gaze darted hopefully back to the pouch, from which yet another hongo was emerging. The mushroom bobbed in her direction, then halted a few feet away from her and zipped back to Iddo—crunch.

“You jackass,” Gramma whispered, leveling a trembling finger at him. Ez had never seen her so enraged.

Iddo, by contrast, looked delighted. “Hnggrrnt hnggrrnt hnggrrnt…” He gave his tail a little swish—the sync—a very precise and delicate clock-tick of a sync. The leather pouch vanished from around his neck and reappeared in Gramma’s outstretched hand, its cord wound neatly around her finger. Gramma’s eyelids fluttered in surprise. She yanked the pouch open and peered inside. She gasped at what she saw. Then she plunged a hand in and withdrew a fistful of hongos, which she unceremoniously crammed into her mouth.

As she was crunching, Iddo said, “And this is for you, Ms. Totkins.” He lowered his head, tilting his horns and causing the silver ring that encircled the base of his left horn—surely that hadn’t been there earlier, had it?—to slide up the shaft to the pencil-sharp tip, where it hung perfectly balanced, a foot from Ez’s nose. Ez, who still sat with her back against the tree trunk, reached out carefully to take it. The glittering circle was as light as paper and as slender as a cherry stem, yet there was a surprising strength to it, she found, squeezing it gingerly at first, then with increasing firmness. The material was utterly unyielding.

“I suggest you wear that at all times,” Iddo said. “Starting now.”

Ez obediently slipped the hoop over her hand. It constricted to a comfortable snugness around her wrist, and a sensation, as of someone dragging their finger down all the piano keys in a row, shimmered through her body. “What is it?” she asked.

“Looks like an Astral bangle,” Gramma said energetically. Her color had returned and there was a keen spark in her eye. She squinted at the bracelet through the cracked lenses of her spectacles. “Darn things,” she muttered, whipping them off; then she muttered something else Ez didn’t catch. There was another gentle sync as the spectacles un-cracked themselves. Gramma replaced them on her nose. When she leaned in to take a closer look, Ez caught a powerful whiff of cinnamon. Gramma whistled. “Never seen one like this before.”

“Precious few exist,” Iddo said. “It is a class five Astral artifact of elvish fabrication, far more effective than the latest WizTech bangles. It would take an exceptionally skilled and exceedingly determined psychovate to penetrate its defenses. So long as you are wearing it, Ms. Totkins, your thoughts, and memories, and emotions shall remain your own, as will your dreams...”

“Wilburn should wear it,” Ez said quickly. “He’s the one who needs protection.” She began to remove the bangle.

“Other arrangements have been made concerning young Wilburn’s protection,” Iddo said. “Keep it, Ms. Totkins. That artifact is meant for you. Wear it. Always. Apparently, you need it to do your job.”

“What job?”

The yak shrugged. “Apparently, you don’t need to know what your job is in order to do it. I don’t know either. Those decisions are made well above my pay grade. My job was simply to requisition the artifact from the NEED —that’s the Nonstandard Existential Equipment Department—and deliver it to you, precisely as I have done. It would seem we all have many jobs to do in life, Ms. Totkins, and often the job we think we’re doing, the purpose for which we believe we are striving, is merely a pretense, a superficial incentive, as when the proverbial carrot is dangled before the proverbial ass. When no carrot is needed, none is dangled. That is the Path.”

“Who’s dangling carrots?” Ez asked in confusion.

Iddo arched a spectacularly shaggy eyebrow at her. “Upper Management,” he said.

“You mean… God?”

“Ehhh…” Iddo tipped his head back and forth. “More like the people that the people that the people that God put in charge of running the universe put in charge put in charge. Midlevel bureaucrats. Bunglers,” he added.

“When you say, other arrangements have been made for Wilburn’s safety…”

“Ah yes, I was referring to his newly forged apprenticeship.” Iddo grinned craftily. “Wilburn has generously agreed to take me on as his apprentice.”

“WHAT!” Gramma shouted, leaping to her feet with startling agility. Something about this struck Wilburn as so funny that he doubled over laughing, leaning heavily on the smoking weenie stick for support. His face reddened. He laughed so hard he made no sound.

Gramma’s head swiveled back and forth as she glared, first at the boy, then at the yak, then at the boy, then at the yak.

Iddo said, “I jest, of course. Hnggrrnt hnggrrnt hnggrrnt. Young Wilburn has taken me on as his master, and I he as my apprentice, in keeping with ancient tradition.”

“What ancient tradition?” Gramma demanded. “I never heard of no ancient tradition.”

“Perhaps you are not quite ancient enough.” Iddo chuckled to himself some more. “Again, I jest. It is remarkable to me, Nyreen, that in all your travels you have managed to remain ignorant of this foundational magical tradition; but then, I suppose you are generally too busy researching flora and fauna to be bothered with the trivialities of human society. Variations of the apprenticeship system are practiced to this very day in nearly every corner of the world—Argylon being the notable exception, and Wilburn and I now being the notable exception to that notable exception. In Isloria, the tradition is known as the zlatna vergia, or golden chain, symbolic of the unbroken transmission of knowledge from master to apprentice throughout the millennia. As my master taught me, so I shall teach Wilburn, and so, one day, Wilburn shall teach his own apprentice.”

“I don’t like it,” Gramma said stubbornly. “Everyone knows the Islorians follow the Left Hand Path.”

“Only most of them. But the zlatna vergia belongs to no nation; it is of neither the Right nor the Left Hand Path.”

“I suppose it’s part of your Path, is it? Your mystical Path of eternal mumbo jumbo?”

“Naturally.”

Gramma harrumphed.“Why Wilburn? Why don’t you pick someone else?”

“Does the key choose the lock? Does the lock choose the key? Of course not,” Iddo answered his own question. “It is the locksmith who decides. It is destiny. Destiny, my dear.”

Gramma began to argue, but Ez spoke over her. “Was Jack your apprentice too, Mr. Bungflower?” The accusation in her voice caught everyone off guard, including Ez herself. She hadn’t meant it to come out like that. Had she…? It was just that in the vision Jack had called Iddo his mentor, and accepted his advice about continuing his mission—whatever it was—and then Jack had been killed. Ez needed to know why, and she needed to know who to blame, and in the absence of these answers her emotions were leaping to conclusions—leaping, specifically, to the conclusion that Iddo was to blame… somehow. The yak didn’t exactly strike Ez as a murderer, but…

Iddo cleared his throat deliberately. “Jack was a student at Frogswallow’s College,” he said, “where I am a professor. I taught him, as I have taught hundreds of others. Later, he became my comrade in a great many adventures. He was as dear a friend as I have ever known. But he was never my apprentice. A master takes but one apprentice in a lifetime, Mrs. Totkins. That is the way of the zlatna vergia.”

“Oh,” Ez said. She felt slightly embarrassed. But why should she? Iddo knew how Jack had died; the vision he had shown her made that clear. Why show it to her at all if he didn’t intend to give her the full truth? Ez couldn’t force the information out of him, obviously. Perhaps he had a good reason for keeping it a secret. Or perhaps he really was insane, as Gramma Fark believed… Ez noticed Wilburn looking at her strangely. Are you still reading my mind? she thought-asked. The boy’s expression didn’t change. Good. The bangle must be working.

To quote myself, Iddo’s voice said in Ez’s mind, only the best, and most determined psychovates will be able to penetrate that artifact’s defenses. I, of course, am such a one. But not to worry; there are scarce others like me. I am, to once more quote myself, an aberration.

So... you heard what I was thinking just now? Ez thought with chagrin.

To quote myself a final time: you catch on quickly, Ms. Totkins. I take no offense. Your concerns are of the utmost relevance. Come by my hovel tomorrow evening after nineteenth chime. We shall have a drink together. And you shall have your answers, such as I can give. And then I’m afraid you shall have more questions... strange questions… the very questions that have troubled me for seven years. Perhaps, Ms. Totkins, if it is the Path, we shall be able to answer them together.

Nineteenth chime? How do I get to your, er, hovel, did you say?

The wind blows and the chimes chime at the top of every hour at Frogswallow’s College. Count the chimes to know the time. Nineteenth chime marks eight o’clock post meridian. I expect Nyreen will have you on campus by then. Ask her to point out my hovel. It is something of a landmark.

“Hey guys,” Wilburn said, “guess what! Weenies are ready!” He had roasted—no, let’s face it, burned to a crisp, four weenies: two for Gramma, one for Ez, and one, presumably, for himself. He’d only remembered to remove them from fire a minute ago, and coils of smoke were still whiskering off them and trailing up into the sycamore’s orange canopy.

“Ooooo!” Iddo smiled hugely at the sight of the four blackened ellipsoids. His smile opened, revealing rows of perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth. His teeth opened, revealing a tongue like a flamingo’s wing.

With a streak of smoke, the sausages—all four of them—shot off the stick and onto Iddo’s tongue, which curled around them and retracted into Iddo’s mouth, which closed. His shaggy beard twitched as he chewed. “Do you know,” he said, “you can see the far side of the universe from anywhere…?” He swallowed. “Well, ta ta.”

And with that, he walked straight out of existence.