. . .

He scours the graveyard. He takes the felt. He takes the fruit. But most of all he catches hold of the hat cemetery’s soul. He drags it in all its fierce reluctant unholiness towards incarnation. He bends it down, and he makes an enemy of it; or, well, more of a hat, really.

A . . . a something.

A lump of awkward black felt, covered all in the mucilage of dead hats; a rotten, filthy head-lump, to go atop his peak, to make squeamish those who look at him and slick up his lanky hair.

But around it, though —

Around it, spiraling, twining, pressing in against the darkness of it: a flicker of argent flame.

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