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and in three deep breaths I’m fast asleep.
    Â 
    When the old man wakes me, the sky is pale gray and so low you can almost reach out and touch it.
    â€œTime to go,” he says, nudging my shoulder. “The Bangers are looking for you.”
    That startles me wide awake.
    â€œHow do you know?” I ask.
    He shrugs. “I told you before, bad news travels fast out here near the Edge. Have you recovered? Are you ready?”
    He’s got a ragged old sack strapped to his back, and a long, crooked stick to help him walking.
    â€œYou can’t come with me,” I tell him.
    â€œAnd why is that?”
    â€œYou’ll slow me down. I have to move fast.”
    Ryter raises his walking stick and pokes me in my stomach hard enough to get my attention. “Listen, young fool. We haven’t much time, so I won’t waste any of it being polite. I already saved your life once. That little mob would have torn you apart if I hadn’t intervened. So what happens the next time you have a seizure and no one’s there to keep you safe?”
    I shove the stick away. “I’ll take care of myself.”
    His tone softens. “Think about it, son. You can’t do this thing alone. Cross three latches without a guide? You’ll be dead before sundown, or wish you were.”
    I’m shrugging on my carrybag, edging to the door of his miserable little stackbox. “What do you care? Why do you want to help me?”
    The old man raises his stick and bars the door, like he’s buying time while he thinks about his answer. “Two reasons,” he says after a pause. “First, I want to know how your story ends. And second, this will be my last opportunity for great adventure. A mission to save the life of a beloved young woman — what more could an old man want? I shall accompany you, and then write our tale of courage in my book.”
    â€œYou’re crazy,” I warn him. “You might be killed.”
    â€œCrazy?” He laughs and shakes his head. “They said Don Quixote was crazy, too.”
    â€œWho’s Don Keehote?” I ask.
    â€œA man who believed in doing the right thing, even if it cost him his life,” Ryter says. He shoves me out the door. “Come on, boy. Let me show you the way.”
    And he marches into the daylight with his puny walking stick raised like a mighty sword.

 
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    L ITTLE F ACE TRIES TO FOLLOW us. He’s running along, leaping from one junk pile to the next, making a game of it. “Chox!” he sings out. “Chox!”
    He knows I haven’t got any more. It’s like he gets as much pleasure out of saying the word as eating the actual choxbar.
    â€œYou made a friend,” Ryter says, grinning at me.
    But he knows the little boy can’t come with us, that it’s much too dangerous. He signals to Little Face and the kid dances up to him. Ryter has a word in his ear. A moment later the kid sings, “Chox!” one last time and then runs back in the direction of the stacks.
    It’s a relief but at the same time I’m already sort of missing the little pest.
    â€œThere are thousands like him,” Ryter comments as we pick up our pace. “Orphaned or abandoned, fending for themselves. Very few live to be as old as you, let alone as ancient as me. A great writer once wrote of a very similar situation, in a city called London. His name was Charles Dickens, and he, too, was an epileptic.”
    That’s it. I stop in my tracks. Ryter looks at me with concern. “Something wrong?” he asks.
    â€œShut up about the spaz, okay? I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œAnd you don’t want to think about it,” Ryter adds. “Fine. Agreed. I shall not speak of the innumerable famous and successful human beings who shared your condition. I shall not speak of Julius Caesar, Napoléon Bonaparte, Leonardo da Vinci, Agatha