<em>"'I was once without water in a desert and heard a city speaking to me, but knew not whether it really spoke to me or not, for on that day I heard so many terrible things, and only some of them were true.'"</em><br/><br/>Lord Dunsany, "The Madness of Andelsprutz"<br/><br/><br/>The fairground at the edge of the city was alive with laughter on the evening that the actress walked the lanes between its entertainments. Greenmalkin's Carnival Company had pitched its tents in San Francisco again: from countless speakers tinned ditties blared into the October twilight above the bay, competing with yells and hoots from the rides in the air tinged with the reek of grease by overworked popcorn stands and hot dog carts. Flyers and pamphlets lay scattered in the dirt, whatever promises or warnings they might have once held now trampled into illegibility by the crowds of merrymakers. To the left, machinery whirled paying customers around ceaselessly and predictably, strapped to wheels or carried along undulating tracks. To the right, they waited impatiently for a shot at a stuffed bear or a fortune told, a fortune that could be relied upon to bode only well for all, and in the rare exceptions to the rule be safely dismissed as fraudulent and frivolous anyway. But although neither the happy throng nor the somewhat less happy girl in the midst of it all could have known about it at the time, something far stranger than those innocent amusements was about to make its own fortune, and it would not be denied by disbelief...