. . .

He cannot stop.

Tom cannot stop.

The better the hats he has made, the better the hats he can make. The better the hats he can make, the better the hats he must.

Soon he is something more than human.

Now the dream is always with him, it is always possessing him, it is running through him like the storm.

The seventeenth hat is visibly magic.

It is still a corpse-hat. It is still cold and still and pieces of the dead — but there is more to it than that. There is something in it that would attract the notice of Hans, were Hans alive. There is something that makes crowds part when the orphan Tom walks by.

It is not just the stench.

It is the power.

<< . . .

. . . >>