Ben was so close to the tramp that the fact that he hadn't perceived him came as surprising. The stranger didn’t lift his eyes from the soup can, whose contents he continued to scrounge with enthusiasm. “Sir, did you see anything peculiar occur, by any chance?”

“Other than two witches almost skewerin’ you, lad?” the tramp answered as he scrutinized the content of his meal, shook it, and then downed its remaining contents in one gulp. A satisfied burp escaped him, punctuating his contentment. “Or that cursed thing you’re waving around as if it were some toy,” he nodded at the dagger Ben stole from Miss Wormwood. “Or how we jus’ jumped around town all sudden-like?”

Ben examined the rusty, unadorned knife in his hand. He’d completely forgotten about it, but he had been holding it so tight all this time that his entire arm throbbed. He loosened his grip, letting his wrist go slack. A dull ache spread from his palm to his wrist.

It was a rusty old knife, with no decorations and a dull blade. Yet it had cut Nut as if it possessed the sharpest of edges, Ben realized. He slid it into his pocket as he struggled to come up with a plausible explanation. Whoever this man before him was, he knew more than he was letting on.

His eyes were an inscrutable fog. He leaned in and lowered his voice, a conspiratorial gesture. “I didn’t see a thing,” the tramp said, followed by a wink as he extended his hand in greeting. “Benjamin Umber, I presume?”

Ben jumped as far from the tramp as the narrow alleyway permitted. “How do you know who I am?” He pointed the weapon at him. His mind swerved with questions. “How did you know they were witches?”

The tramp waved a hand at him in dismissal. “You might want to leave that knife safely tucked away, lest you cut yourself,” he said, and then added, “As for how I know what I know, why, let’s jus’ say one hears many things on the streets.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” Ben demanded.

Lost in thought, he absentmindedly scratched his chin. “Hmm. I’d wager that those crones from St. Dunsany’s will have you simmerin’ in their pot before sunrise. They’re Raven Coven, those two.” The tramp hurled the empty soup can into the dustbin beside him.

Holding an empty hand in front of him at eye level, he cleared his throat and spoke the following words: “From the keg, a toast we beg.”

A jolt coursed Ben’s body from head to toe. He felt the world hold its breath for a fleeting moment. He recognized the sensation, as he’d felt it twice before in the space of a few hours. Without so much as a pop, a tankard of ale materialized in the tramp’s hand out of thin air. The world breathed again. He tipped an imaginary hat at Ben and took a hearty chug.

He let out a satisfied sigh. Froth dripped from his upper lip. “Now that hit the spot. As I was saying—”

“How’d you do that?” Ben interjected, ignoring the tramp’s grisly prediction.

“What, this?” The tramp swung the tankard, spilling some of its contents. “A simple lowspell, this one. Your Nan could do it blindfolded, she could. If you had a Nan, that is. You being parentless and all,” he cleared his throat again, prudently changing the topic. “Jus’ some simple sorcery’s what I mean.”

Sorcery. Miss Toadwart had called Ben a sorcerer runt not an hour earlier. All his life he hadn’t heard the word outside folk tales and nursery rhymes, and now it was being thrown around as if a simple good morning.

“As I was sayin’,” the tramp repeated. “That bothersome pair of witches is currently combing Dunport-Salem to find you. And they will, too, eventually. Unless…”

“Unless?” Ben pleaded. Whatever it was, it probably beat heading to the port and ambling outside the pubs until the crack of dawn, which presented him with dangers of a more mundane kind.

“Unless you take this alley right here all the way to the other side. That’ll drop ‘em off your tail, it will. This ain’t no ordinary alleyway, y’see. That’s why I’m mindin’ it,” the tramp said proudly, puffing his chest.

Ben observed the murky passage. Full of dirt and grime, gross puddles formed beneath intermittent heaps of trash. On the other side, he could see Stoker Street, as empty as most of the city would be at this hour. There was nothing extraordinary about it. He turned to his eccentric new friend.

“I don’t see what’s so special.” Ben said.

The tramp was taking a swig of his ale, which he spit in disbelief. He gasped, moving his hand to his chest and clutching at imaginary pearls. “Such disrespect. I ought to not let you use it! Leave you to your ghastly fate at the hands of those she-devils. But let it not be said that I am a petty man. We’ll let bygones be bygones, hmm?”

He stood up with surprising fettle and placed one hand on Ben’s back. His other hand, occupied by his drink, did not spill a single drop. He leaned close in that sly manner of his.

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“Do you hear that, Benjamin Umber? Fate has come a-knockin’, and it won’t take no for an answer. Forget about Ratworth and Toadwart for a spell; other perils await you, lad. You wanted answers, be careful not to be crushed by them. Now, cross.”

The tramp pushed Ben with a strength incongruous with his elderly frame. Cross. That last word he had uttered lingered in Ben’s mind like an exhortation. An imperative. Before he processed what he was doing, he had already broken into a jog.

“Good luck, Benjamin Umber. You’ll certainly need it!”

Ben could hear the tramp’s laughter booming behind him. He cocked his head to the side to steal one last glance at the odd man, but there was no one there anymore. It was as if he had never been there to begin with.

People appearing and disappearing into thin air, cannibalistic witches, a magical homeless man. Truth was proving to be stranger than fiction, Ben mused. He tried to stop to gather his wits, but his legs downright disobeyed him. One step after the other, they moved with a will of their own.

Ben thundered across the alleyway. Some time passed; seconds became minutes. Something was off. No matter how much he ran, he didn’t seem to advance. A sickening wave of nausea overwhelmed him, but still, he would not stop running. He braced the mouth of his stomach, making an effort not to puke. He could feel the place elongating, leaving him effectively suspended in place.

I’m trapped here, Ben thought. Finally of one mind with his enchanted legs, he began to sprint with purpose. All manner of dismal scenarios flashed through his head when the alleyway promptly contracted.

He ran so fast that he could not stop. Ben shot out of the alleyway and into Stoker Street like a cannonball. Only that the street was not empty. He crashed into someone who was charging past as briskly as he was.

The air left Ben’s lungs as he crashed into the ground. Ben rolled and rolled; his legs interlocked with the other person’s. Finally, the world stopped spinning and grinded to a halt.

“Ouch, watch it!” It was the voice of a girl. She sounded roughly his age.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

Ben’s words trailed off. He recognized the girl’s attire. She was the small, hooded figure from Bierce Square, the one being pursued. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Ben thought with a resigned sigh.

“You didn’t what?” the girl asked as she quickly stood up. She turned her head left and right. They were the only ones in the area. She looked distressed.

Ben simply stared, at a loss for words. He noticed she was taller than him. A streak of ashen hair showed from beneath her cloak. She raised an eyebrow, eyeing him up and down. “I see the cat’s got your tongue,” she said, crossing her arms and tapping one foot repeatedly.

He snapped out of it and got on his feet. “No, it’s just… It’s been one baffling day is all,” he said, extending a hand to introduce himself. “I’m sorry about that. Didn’t see you there. The name’s Benjamin.”

She still regarded him in a distrustful way, but her brow relaxed. “Name’s Sybil,” she said, shaking his hand with a firm grip. As soon as her hand met his, Ben felt that jolt, that rush of vigor that had become all too familiar. It was the same sensation he had when the tramp summoned his tankard of ale, when he pushed Miss Wormwood away, when this girl before him, Sybil, had appeared out of thin air in Bierce Square.

Ben was not the only one to feel it, apparently. Sybil tightened their handshake until it hurt. She placed her other hand on his shoulder and squeezed. She leaned in so close that Ben could see her eyes, now slanted. Bright but tired amethysts. “You’re a sorcerer too,” she said. She wasn’t asking, but stating a truth.

“That’s what I’ve been told,” said Ben, irritated. He met one odd character after another, and they all seemed to know what he had spent years trying to learn. Not only that, but not one of them could be bothered to explain what that even meant.

Before he could utter another word, Sybil grabbed Ben by the arm and ran into the alley, pulling him in. “Hey, wait a minute.” As they entered the backstreet, he noticed it wasn’t the one he had sprung from, but a different one. The tramp did mention his alleyway was special somehow. I guess I’m somewhere else in town again, Ben thought.

Sybil interrupted his musings as she turned and pushed him against the corridor’s wall with a violent grunt. “You’re with them, aren’t you?” she asked. “I won’t be fooled by the lack of a mask, you villain. I don’t know how you brought me to this place, but you’ll all be done for once he gets here.”

Ben tried to push her away, but she wouldn’t budge. She was stronger than she looked. “Hey, cut it out! I don’t know what you’re even talking about. I’m just an orphan from St. Dunsany’s.” Ben stopped for a second. “Was an orphan from St. Dunsany’s, anyhow. Been from bad to worse ever since you showed up in the plaza, thank you very much.”

Sybil relaxed again. She let Ben go, but she still glared at him with apprehension. “Alright, let’s say you’re not lying and you saw me appear here. Tell me what happened.”

Ben remembered the scarlet light crackling like lightning. Its shape that of a roiling dragon biting its own tail. How it spun and shrunk until it collapsed unto itself. “I think someone did it. There was this red light; it looked like a snake. It started spinning really fast, and then... Well, I don’t know exactly what happened. But you popped out of thin air, followed by your two friends back there.”

“They’re not my friends.” Sybil said icily. She sighed; it appeared to Ben as if she had not slept properly in a while. She crossed her arms and looked around again. “They’re dangerous. I have a traveling companion, but we got separated. I don’t know what happened. One minute we were in the Blackwoods, and then—then I was here. Those two have been following us for days.”

“Why are they following you?” Ben asked. He could not help it. It seemed to him that he should be the one to be cautious about this girl, and not the other way around.

Sybil opened her mouth to answer, but now it was she who struggled with words.

Ben laughed drily. “I see the cat’s got your tongue,” he quipped.

She smiled at last. “It looks like it.”

And then her expression changed—her grin replaced with worry. “Watch out!” Sybil pushed Ben forcefully out of the way.

He stumbled back. Not a fraction of a second had passed when a ball of flames sped by, its trajectory where his head had been not a moment before. His gaze snapped to the opposite end of the alleyway, from whence the hooded assailants promptly materialized.

They were fast approaching. Now that they were closer, Ben noticed they wore masks that completely covered their faces. The masks were white, tricornered, and had a beak-like chin, giving them a spectral, faceless aspect.

They were silent as shadows. He had not heard them approach. No, it went beyond that, Ben realized—he hadn’t felt their presence at all. It was like with the tramp: one moment he hadn’t been there, and the next he sat beside him as if he had always been there. Into the fire indeed, Ben thought self-deprecatingly, a futile attempt to disarm his fear.

It did not work.