You're a fool, my sweet boy. Those stern words were said so sweetly, as a rough, wrinkled thumb wiped away tears and a hand held an unstained hanky to his nose, the once-white linen soaking in a mucusy, rose-tinted mess.

Gran's hands were rough and strong—not an uncommon trait, considering the family profession and the old woman's habit of tanning the hides of disrespectful brats with abandon, thought Crispin as he manfully fought back tears of frustration.

The boy felt a slight pinch at the bridge of his nose. It pulled his attention back to Gran's words. "Lad," she said, "You're not much of a thinker. No, I'd say, like me, you're a feeler. So learn to listen well. Your brain will get muddled. But your heart," she said, poking that spot with a thick finger, "your heart is true and honest. There's no deception in it. So listen closely and let it set your direction, child."

Crispin wasn't sure he agreed with the appellation of 'fool' that his grandmother had placed on his shoulders, but that one piece of advice—to listen to his heart—had stayed with him through the years. Even now, closing in on a decade since that dim, golden memory, Crispin did not hesitate when his heart beat a staccato entreaty to bolt.

Some would say that Crispin's heart had led him astray far too often to trust, but he just didn't see it that way. Besides, any who doubted his grandmother's wisdom could take it up with the woman whose stern and fearsome love had shaped him into the man he was.

Putting the strange booth attendant and her eastern homunculi behind himself, Crispin pumped his limbs with a fervor as he sped into the mists. His heartbeat was strong and steady, almost martial, with renewed vigor. Crispin set his mind on finding his own way home.

As Crispin ran, he realized with some shock that his feet were unshod, and he had been sure that he had not had anything to drink. He once again considered that this might all be a fever dream born of a depressive bender in light of recent heartbreak.

Crispin's mundane thoughts came to a horrific halt as the voice of Miss Remoulade cut through the fog. "Winnie," she said, her tone as sharp as any constable he had ever heard, "get him." Crispin felt a particularly heavy jolt from his heart, almost as if it were screaming to duck, and so he did, just in time to avoid the blade-like talons of Remoulade's demon bird.

Still moving, scrabbling across the far-too-smooth firmament of the floor, Crispin rose quickly, a panicked sweat coating his form. She's a witch, or close enough, thought Crispin's fevered mind as he continued to race on. The mists no longer seemed benign and inviting; instead, they wrapped around his feet, rising to his shins like tendrils, as if to pull him into the gaping maw of an insatiable creature.

Feet slapping on the cold stones, each impact seemed to drive home that things were not as they should be. As Crispin ran, he thought he could see glimpses of the moon from between pillars, yet it was all wrong. Its hue and shape seemed to shift with each glance, going closer and then more distant.

Hearing the whistling, near-silent sound of wing beats once more, he rolled to the ground and barely avoided the gripping talons of Win-Gaytt, who whispers all your dirty secrets. What type of name was that, anyway? Demon or alchemical creation from some far-off land, Crispin didn't care. The bird's piercing stare unnerved him. Even as he put the foul thing behind him, he could feel its near-luminescent eyes bore into him and knew that the chase was far from over.

Spotting a nearby corridor, Crispin made a sharp turn for it, staying close to the nearby wall if only to make it harder for Win-Gaytt to grab him. The narrow passage provided Crispin a blessed moment to catch his breath. He realized that what he had taken for the high walls of a building were, in fact, shelves overflowing with parchment and filings—some paper, true, but others clearly vellum, their skin soft and shockingly supple, not dissimilar to his own.

Placing a hand against one such document, he felt its warmth. It seemed to move, almost, and then quieted, settling with a gentle murmur. He could almost hear the words printed upon that skin. Deep inside, at this moment, something tore. It was not his flesh, but still, it was a real injury all the same. World inverting, Crispin wished to retch, yet nothing came as he fell to his knees, perception spinning.

This was wrong, so very, very wrong, thought Crispin as he struggled to pull himself to his feet. Despite the protection of the narrow passage, Crispin decided he could not bear to stay here among the shelves of living paper. Following the passageway deeper, Crispin eventually came back out into the swirling mists. Whatever was concealed beneath them, he prayed it was better than what he now left.

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Walking now, careful and quiet, his heart still hammering, urging him to run, Crispin listened for the thin but notable flap of wings, but he heard nothing. It was silent—at least, that's what he thought at first, but as Crispin walked through the shifting mists, he realized that was not it at all. It wasn't silent—no, it was deafening; surrounding him was the sound of an infinite number of quills, scritch-scratch-scritching, somehow flattening all other sounds.

The now-discovered, ever-present sound of writing followed Crispin and deadened his footsteps. Soon, coming to an intersection and finding himself without any clear idea of what direction to take, Crispin settled upon a gamble. Pulling books from a nearby shelf, Crispin made himself handholds and began to climb its steep surface. As he had hoped, the quills—and to some extent, the mist—seemed to absorb the sound of tomes striking the floor. As he made his way up, layer by layer, of the giant bookshelf.

Even with his gamble seeming to break even, Crispin winced as each volume was gripped by gravity and slammed to the ground. At each book's impact, Crispin's body tensed, as if anticipating the thwack of his grandmother's cane. He could hear her voice, her tone and accent tight with outrage, for the way he was treating the doubtless painstaking work of an illuminator's life—knowledge carefully collected, a fortune often worth its weight in coin. If the old woman was here now, she'd surely cane him. Even Crispin's sweet and soft-spoken mother would have helped hold him down for the deserved beating.

Still, eventually, Crispin reached the top of the bookshelf. Winded, arms like noodles and legs trembling from the strenuous climb, he tried to stand. His first few steps were stumbling things that nearly sent him tumbling from his hard-won perch. Hands braced on his knees, Crispin drew in a deep, heaving breath as he once again could confirm his general distaste for physical exertion. Head clearing, Crispin stared out onto the vista that spread out before him and realized how truly screwed he was. Taking it in, Crispin felt disembodied, as if he were a ghost caught in some liminal space. He wondered if even now his body was lying in some filthy alleyway, unattended, his foolish luck having finally abandoned him. But no, his heart said it wasn't so. Crispin knew he was no ghost.

Letting the steady, if weary, beat of his heart calm his nerves, Crispin peered out into what could only be described as a library of sorts. What Crispin had at first taken for tight alleyways, criss-crossing large thoroughfares and walkways, turned out only to be outrageously large bookshelves, some seeming to be self-contained buildings, small palaces upon rolling hills, the mists still hiding the majority of the haunting landscape from his eyes. Even through the thick fog, Crispin could spy flickering lamplight.

Scanning his surroundings a little longer, eventually his eyes alighted upon a series of shelves that seemed to be organized in a sort of procession, almost like a staircase for a giant. His gaze following the shelves' progression, Crispin thought, you could see upon the highest shelf a door. With little better to do, he began walking along his own shelf in that direction. Perhaps, he thought, the greater vantage might allow him to make sense of where he was. There was some vain hope that somehow he had not strayed so far from his home.

Where Crispin was, it was little surprise that he did not hear the final outcry of his heart nor the beating of wings that signaled the return of Win-Gaytt. The bird came swooping down from the ephemeral mists that stretched high above, and this time, Crispin was too drained to dodge the creature's wicked claws. Struggling to pull himself free, Crispin overbalanced, his feet losing traction on the edge of the shelf, and much like the books he had cast down not long ago, gravity, with glee, claimed him. The man and bird went tumbling down.

A squawked protest, a sobbing cry, voices intermingling, feathers obscuring eyes—each possible sharp corner that could be hit seemed to strike and catch as the two plummeted into the misty depths, their bodies only arresting as their flesh met the ground and gravity relinquished them. Crispin had expected pain, yet its absence was almost worse. Without a doubt, he knew the stone beneath him was hard enough to shatter all his bones, crack his crown, and leave all the thoughts it contained to leak out onto the floor.

Seeing as this had not happened, Crispin tried instinctively to gain his feet, but he could not. A weight bore him down. Comfort only partially, he felt the slight prick of pain as sharp, blade-like claws were pressed against his throat, and a gimlet-bright eye, amused, stared into his own. Sensing his desire to struggle, Win-Gaytt spoke. "Now, now, boy," said the bird, "none of that, none of that. We're all friends here, or at least we could be, if you'd just be quiet." His heart beating, Crispin bit his tongue to hold back any hot words. He was captured at the mercy of the demon bird.

Eyes darting away from his captor's piercing regard, Crispin watched as the mist at the end of the row of shelves where he lay shifted and then began to part. First, he heard footfalls—weighty, implacable—approaching. Just behind them came a breathless panting. Unfortunate but not unexpected, what emerged at last was Remoulade, the witch—as Crispin had begun to think of her. Reasonably, what else could she be but some eldritch horror, or demon worshipper?

He wondered if she was bound in some dark compact or if it was simply her favored pastime to find young men on late-night crossroads and take their name and soul from them. No specific tale that Crispin could conjure up told him of a demon, witch, or fiend that went by the name of Remoulade. Pinned as he was, all Crispin could do was await his dark fate at the hands of Remoulade the Cruel.