Wes opened his eyes in the morning to the radiant outline of a face above him. He closed his eyes and waited for the light peck of a kiss his mother would give him on morning like this. He savored these tokens of affection his mother. The kiss, however, did not come. Wes opened his eyes and saw Marie standing over him. She darted over to the curtains and pulled them back.

"Time to get up. Mother's orders," Marie said. She moved efficiently around the room. The sanitarium only employed one servant to tend to all of the doctors and nurses who lived in the houses and cottages arranged around the house where Wes lived. His house, or rather his mother's house, was the largest because she was the sanitarium's director. Marie's efficiency allowed her to tend to all of the staff's needs, which could be legion when they were done putting on dutiful faces for the day.

"It's brisk out. Better slip on a sweater," she said. The sweater, as it were, was now being slipped over his head. "Fresh water there in the basin to wash up with. I left you something out on the table to eat." Marie was already moving out of the door. "Oh, and your mother left you a list of things to attend to." With that, Marie moved through the house and out of the front door attended by the scurrying feet of her small rodent daemon.

Wes, accompanied by Hilrithra, slid along the cold floor to the kitchen. The morning sun lit up a plate of toast and a lumpy fried egg. That corner of the kitchen was warm; one might say toasty. Though the toast was limp, the egg cold. Wes washed it down with dregs from the coffee pot and read over his mother's list. Mostly, the list gave a standard run down of daily chores. He had to help the groundskeeper with fall leaves, help with the laundresses with dirty diseased sheets, and distribute fresh linens to the orderlies. Wes' hand began to shake when he got the final items on the list. He was supposed to take water to the visitor and check up on him.

Not even Hilrithra's indolent whine could obscure Wes' palpable feeling of excitement, of importance over being given this task. This was a responsibility. Of course, Wes also realized this was an opportunity to delve deeper into the stranger's strange case.

In the furnace house, where the furnace fires, the large sanitizing vats, and the custodial offices were, a world existed apart from the world of nurses and orderlies and ever further apart from that of the doctors, culminating, of course with Wes's mother. For this reason, most of the washerwomen and mechanics who idled about in the furnace house put on haughty airs with Wes, ignoring him for the most part.

The only person who ever spoke to him was Mr. Tinglar who functioned as an intermediary between the sanitarium and the furnace house. He was, in truth, the supervisor of the furnace house. Power and authority must have sat very uneasily with the old man because his conversations with Wes, if they could be called that, consisted primarily of torrents of self-reproaches and self-abuse. In most cases, Mr. Tinglar's outpourings of recriminations were directed at Gelbing, his porcupine daemon. When, however, Gelbing was curled up and spiny, Wes's audience served Mr. Tinglar's purposes in a pinch.

When Wes entered into the heat and steam of the furnace house that morning, though, Mr. Tinglar was huddled up in a group with the other people of the furnace house. This struck Wes as strange because the old man usually kept himself very aloof from the others. Wes haltingly approached them. They acknowledged him with suspicious looks then the conversation stopped. One man, with a large scar on his cheek, whispered to Mr. Tinglar who gave Wes the oddest look, like a traitor or a coward might give someone before shooting them in the back.

The crowd was silent and Gelbing wobbled over to Hilrithra. Hilrithra stood defensively, leaning back on her haunches in the form of a dog. Hilrithra pawed at Gelbing then let out a high-pitched whine when a quill pricked her paw. With her submission secured, Gelbing began discoursing with Hilrithra. Wes sensed the tone of the conversation between the two daemons, but could only intuit its meaning. He realized when Gelbing wobbled back to the group and Mr. Tinglar turned his attention to the red lumpy faces assembled there that he was to be cast out. He could almost hear Mr. Tinglar through Gelbing, through Hilrithra say, "Don't you start blaming me boy! Nothing to be done about it."

Wes conceded to this thrice-removed voice and began gathering up buckets to fill with water for the hike up to the stranger's hut. While Wes kept himself at a safe distance from the chattering assembly, he managed to keep close enough to pick up pieces of the conversation. He heard things like:

"…Can't believe we've stooped to accommodating savages…"

"…cannibals…bloody cannibals…"

"…we could be murdered in our sleep…"

"…there was a strange presence in my dreams last night..."

"…I couldn't find my comb this morning…"

"…could be a spell all around us know…"

One woman wearing a floppy white cap pulled down over her ears, Mrs. Pierce by name, silenced the chatter when she said, "My youngest brother Charles fought those devils and told us the most horrendous thing in a letter."

"What horrendous thing?"

"What did he write?"

"Well, I've got it about me somewhere…" She reached down into her ample bosom and produced a thrice-folded letter. "I can't make it out. Mr. Tinglar, would you?"

Most of the washerwomen and mechanics couldn't' read. Normally they would have asked Wes to read their letters from sons and daughters or far away relatives. Mr. Tinglar cleared his throat, and raised a battered pince-nez to this nose, "The whole thing? It's a bit lengthy…"

"No, no. Just the last few lines there I think."

"And we crashed into their ranks with a roar. Shooting guns and thrusting our bayonets. I killed one of them Rosy. I've got blood on my hands now. But I've only got the blood of one, not of two. The thought. The thought chills me. I can barely write this." Mr. Tinglar removed the spectacles and returned the letter to Mrs. Pierce where it was secreted away to the bosom.

The prevailing question, of course, was what had her brother meant by "the blood of one?"

"No one knows to this day," Mrs. Pierce said with great authority, even gravitas. "We gave it to a traveling religious man to look at, a priest or a parson or something. He said it had something to do with the devils being uni-theo-logi-cal. Confounded me then and now."

"That makes no sense!" a younger man, Charles, dressed up in dirty overalls said. "They're all pagans! Worshipping stones and the like!"

And so, the group's conversation explored the intricacies of theology and ethnology in this manner as Wes left the furnace house, straining under the weight of two buckets of water.

As he made his way up to the stranger's hut, Wes could hardly concentrate both on Hilrithra's complaining and his thoughts about what he overheard in the furnace room. He couldn't entirely wrap his mind around what "the blood of one" could mean. Maybe his mother would know; she certainly had read enough books to have some idea. Then Wes was chilled by the idea that Dr. Bronner might know. He kept making pronouncements about "how they lived" and "the impossibility of reconciling our beliefs with theirs." Mostly it was gibberish to Wes. He realized though that the doctor put much faith in his knowledge of the savages.

Even though she didn't say so, Wes could sense that Hilrithra was caught up in the intrigue of it all as well. Images of dusky faced cannibals and battles, unrest of all kinds, kept popping into his head. He could hear a kind of subconscious rumble of worry emanating from Hilrithra; though, he didn't bother to ask her directly about it.

The skinny pines trees that littered the ridge cleared away as Wes approached the stone cabin. He could smell the smoke from a fire and could see the smoke that puffed from the small pipe of a chimney that had been installed there. Wes went up to the door, set down his buckets, and knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again.

No answer.

Hilrithra fluttered around to the side. The visitor was inside. Why wasn't he answering the door?

Wes knocked once more then decided to go inside. Hilrithra was a dog again, whimpering at his feet. "It's rude to go in Wes."

"But I must…"

They were already inside. They were looking at the visitor's brown wrinkled face. He was large, as tall as Wes even though he was perched on the edge of his cot. He was undressed to the shirtsleeves, a flowing flowery cotton shirt. Bright bands of gold pinched his upper arms.

The man's eyes were closed. He seemed to be meditating. He held his left hand out from his waist, perfectly level, palm up. His hand was partially closed around some kind of object.

Wes went over to the old wood stove and stoked the fire. He brought the water buckets in and made a lot of noise in the process. The man, however, did not move.

Wes stood on the opposite side of the cabin from the man and stared at him. Hilrithra was a squirrel now and was running in manic circles. Wes closed his eyes tightly, trying to block out the scramble of thoughts and images that were coursing through Hilrithra. He could hear the sound of her claws on the stone and feel the bristle of her fur. But there was something else too. Wes could feel something inside of him turn towards an abyss that was opening up within him. Not really within. No. It was between Hilrithra and himself. No. It was inside Hilrithra. The abyss was pulling him towards it. It felt as if a veil were being torn away. Wes wanted to go limp and let it pull him and yet he was afraid of it. He was afraid of it. Hilrithra wasn't.

Wes was being watched. He opened his eyes and stumbled towards the door where Hilrithra was already whimpering again as a dog. His feet hit the threshold then he stopped.

The man spoke to him in a queer voice, "You neede not goe."

Wes' hands ran over his face. "I… I… I'm sorry. I didn't know you were praying. Or whatever it was… I mean…"

"I was not praeying."

Then… Then what were you doing?" Wes was already taking small steps back towards the man.

"Concentrating."

"On what?"

"My daemon."

"But I don't…"

"You doe not see it?"

Wes's face was hot, "No."

The fingers of the man's left hand uncurled partially. Wes trained his eyes on the spot. What was he looking at? It seemed to Wes that he was looking at a hole, a void of some kind. A stain. The fingers uncurled more and light hit the dark spot. Wes realized it was some kind of object, like a small dark tortoise shell. It was impossibly dense, made out of some kind of dark material. It seemed to pull light towards it and reflect little of it back.

Hilrithra, unusually curious now, was squatting next to the man, sniffing at his hand. Wes asked, "What is it?" And yet as soon as he said it he knew. The dark, dense shell was the man's deamon!