As he walked the path to the stone cabin, Wes passed the row of houses, set back in a stand of trees, where he lived with his mother and the other employees of the sanitarium. He went higher up, water splashing and Hilrithra complaining the whole way. He stopped at the top of the hill, before the trail cut over the ridge and looked out over the valley where he lived.

The first thing he saw was the enormous smokestack that shot up from the furnace room. Billows of smoke poured out from its mouth, lingered, then evaporated. In the distance were all the small buildings where people did all the small things they did. Even though Wes could not properly imagine what went on in most of these buildings, he felt that much of it was of little interest to him.

But he liked watching the smoke churn out of the smokestack. He liked the formidable way it imposed its simple geometry against the curve of the landscape. Hilrithra was pecking at his check, "Let's get going. Come on."

Wes wasn't entirely sure why his mother was having someone stay in this cabin. It seemed like it would slide down the ridge at any moment. There was one window set in the back wall that afforded a hazy view of the valley. There were no comforts to speak of here either. The bed was little more than cot. There was a roughly hewn table and a wood stove in the corner. That was it. No sink, no running water, no anbaric lights, nothing.

Hilrithra settled back into her dog form and scratched away imaginary fleas with a lazy back leg. Meanwhile, Wes swept out the floor. He shook the cleanser out over the dark planks. The floor appeared to have grown some kind of ferocious mould. Finally, Wes took a rag, sopping with water, and scrubbed away at the floor.

As he scrubbed Wes could see a dim image of the furnace room and the warm fire. These were reflections of Hilrithra's thoughts, like shadows cast in the back of his mind. They were dim impressions of his thoughts too. Laid over these images, though, were images of riches, adventures, and zeppelins. These images flitted about, jumping from subject to subject. They had same kind of manic mutability that other children's daemons did. The images in his mind never settled on any particular shape, any particular storyline. Instead, they tried to be every storyline at the same time.

When he was done wiping everything down, the cabin still looked decrepit, dark, and dirty. Wes went outside and emptied the bucket by a tree. He took one last turn inside. There was an ancient pile of soot in the wood stove. Wes wanted to leave it behind, turn away, and go back down the mountain. But a grudging feeling of responsibility came over him. He carefully opened the furnace door and used the broom to scrap out the remains of a once cheerful little blaze.

The operation was imprecise to say the least. Wes had thick black streaks on his face. The palms of his hands were absolutely filthy. Most of the soot ended up in the bucket, but some of it on the floor. Wes dutifully bent down and picked up the rest of the mess in a rag.

He picked up the rags, the broom, and the cleanser and tossed everything into the bucket. He was feeling hungry and hoped that his mother would be off duty soon so they could eat dinner. The pang of hunger, though, didn't explain the anxious feeling he felt. He stepped outside and felt a chill race over him. Hilrithra was panicked, fearful. She was the mottled bird again, whispering into his ear, "We're not alone, Wes. Look."

Wes ran his hand absently across his face, faintly conscious of the black streaks of soot there. As he made this gesture, he stared up at seven figures surrounding him sitting tall on horses that seemed to glow like gold in the afternoon light. The figures exuded majesty and power. He held a rusty bucket and smelled like cleaning solvent.

At first, Wes thought that they were looking at him. Then he realized that they had hardly noticed him at all. One by one six of the riders dismounted, leaving one rider on his horse. As the other riders moved towards him, Wes stumbled to the side, watching the scene in awe. Hilrithra, meanwhile, fluttered around his head. Wes whispered, "Settle down. You're embarrassing me."

"I'm frightened. Very frightened."

Even though he knew that a human and a daemon should think and feel as one, Wes could hardly understand why Hilrithra found this scene so scary. The riders transfixed him. He literally could not take his eyes off of them. He studied everything about them as they made slow deliberate movements for some, as yet, undisclosed purpose.

He studied the light brown tone of their skin, the broad stretch of their cheekbones, and the angular dip of their noses. He took note of their long dark hair held together by intricate pieces of glass. He marveled at their clothing, which was motley but majestic at the same time. He wondered at the way they seemed to do everything with one hand, holding the other at waist level at all times.

Most of all perhaps, Wes studied the man still sitting atop his horse. The man sat very upright, dressed in a bright red plaid shirt covered by a long gown like piece of clothing. His head was crowned with a bowler hat decorated with bits of metal and feathers. He also held his hand up, his left hand specifically, at waist level. From where he stood, Wes couldn't tell why the man held his hand like this.

The man seemed to occupy some place of honor. One of the men was holding the reigns of his horse. A young woman unrolled an ornately woven blanket from his horse to the door of the cottage. Another man was unloading small chests strapped to back of the other horses. The remaining party, men and women, were chanting and making gestures to the air, the trees, the sun, and the earth. They made intricate symbols with their fingers. Even though Wes couldn't decipher them, the signs seemed old, arcane, and powerful.

When the man finally dismounted his horse, he took two steps forward, stopped, and looked right at Wes. Wes dropped the bucket right then and there and the rusty thing rattled down the hillside. One of the young men holding the horse's reigns seemed angry. Hilrithra became a small mouse and tried to burrow inside Wes's shirt. He swatted at her as she did and finally picked her up and cupped her his hand, which he kept behind his back.

Through all of this, Wes couldn't take his eyes off of the man. The man did not look away from him either. A strange, deep, otherworldly power seemed to course through the man. While his look didn't channel any of it to Wes, it certainly communicated it. Wes trembled.

The man raised his free hand up. For a split second Wes really believed that the man would draw out a dagger and cut his throat. He certainly had heard stories of men like this doing things like that to boys like him. This man, even though Wes thought that he looked old, seemed capable of slicing him in two. His look changed so rapidly between menace and amiability that Wes didn't know where he stood.

Instead of drawing a weapon upon him, the man raised his hand higher and made a sign with his fingers. As he continued on into the stone building, Wes realized that the sign had been directed at him. From that point on, Wes diverted every thought to recollecting, to deciphering, and to understanding everything he could about this new visitor.

For her part, Hilrithra was unimpressed. As they walked down the ridge back to the furnace room, she interrupted his thoughts about the man and said, "I thought they smelled badly."

"You're making that up. I didn't smell anything."

"I think they're dangerous."

"I don't think so at all."

"Do you even know who they are?"

"Well, they were all wearing different clothes. Most of them had on shirts out of calico, that you only get from the West. They all had those glass beads in their hair. That the man on the horse had a silver armband. And did you see his shawl. I think it had teeth and flattened bullets on it. The women had shells covering them."

"But those are just details Wes."

"Well, I'm still thinking it over. Quit bothering me."

They walked on a little further, "I bet they were part of the Legatee Nation. Remember, we learned about them in school last year."

"Before we left and came here."

"Anyway, I bet that's who they are."

"I guess so," Hilrithra replied, thoroughly unimpressed with Wes's skills of deduction.

They went a little further more. Suddenly, Wes came to a full stop. The bucket, which he had retrieved, clanked against his shins. He didn't feel it though. He didn't feel it because he realized something. His realization was on par with discovering that the world disappeared when you closed the door or something like that. It was the kind of realization that could make the world appear to be topsy-turvy, inverted.

Wes Freeman realized that the man on the horse and the others with him, the very people he had just stood no more that ten feet away from, did not have daemons.