John needs to work out the right way to ask Black Jack to lead him to the right place. One thing he has learnt is that he cannot wait for Jack to stop speaking. He has to say what he wants to say regardless of Jack being in the midst of one of his countless stories.

‘Black Jack, earlier you said you were taking me somewhere to get the coin that I need to survive in the city? But we seem to be just walking around and going nowhere?’ John isn’t used to talking, let alone interrupting and it shows. He stops walking, feeling breathless, his hands fidgeting over one another.

The hobgoblin halts by his feet, hands on its hips, grinning wide enough to display both rows of pointed teeth.

The redheaded boy saunters on still chatting as if John is beside him.

John’s eyes dart between Black Jack and the hobgoblin. He itches to trot after Jack, but the hobgoblin wants him to stay here… Although, it seemed to like Jack well enough yesterday. How is John supposed to make sense of anything in this stinking hole, when even his dear familiar faerie friend is behaving so oddly?

He stamps his foot; a gesture so unlike the man that he wants to become that he immediately blushes.

Black Jack can’t have heard anything, but he turns and laughs. He calls, ‘What are you doing all the way back there, Fair One? Was I walking too fast? Come on now, I’ll wait for you.’ He taps his fingers against his thigh as if calling to an obedient dog.

John glances down.

The hobgoblin’s eyes shine. It pats its hands on its legs and makes a sound like the whistling of the wind through the thatch at home.

Black Jack draws his attention back with his loud laughter.

John frowns. The redhead is laughing so hard he’ll surely drop the bundle of Jetta’s clothing. His frown deepens recalling how Jack grabbed the bundle up in the room this morning, before John even thought about it.

Is Black Jack laughing at John’s foolishness? Has the kindness so far been some sort of jest even crueller than the things done to him at the Village?

John looks around and can see nothing to amuse anyone.

Near the hobgoblin, a woman with a skeletal face has dropped her basket and is scraping rotten fruit off the floor. A young boy hangs his head as a grizzled man cuffed him and curses him for being a milk-livered fool. A rat and a bird, both the same shimmering black, tug on either end of a grey rope of intestine.

John tears his eyes away and looks back at Black Jack.

He’s gone.

John’s mouth falls open. The stench of the city rushes in, coating his teeth and tongue with yellow-brown fur. John stares, motionless, at the space where he’s last seen Black Jack.