The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

to the ticket counter, but found the window shuttered. He knocked on it and called out. There was no answer. At the end of the counter was a door. He knocked on it as well, again received no answer, and then tried the handle, which was locked. If Miss Temple had been here, which he doubted, she was not here now.
    On the wall was a blackboard with a painted grid of train departures and arrivals. The next return train was, he was exasperated to read, at eight o’clock the next morning. Svenson sighed with annoyance. He would be wasting hours and hours of time—who knew where she was, and what help he might have offered to Chang had he stayed with him. He looked around the room, as if by remaining there he might find some reprieve, but Doctor Svenson had to accept that his only real recourse was to walk into the Village and find a room for the night. Perhaps he should catch up to Elöise and her mysterious party, all with their black books. Were they Bibles? He had no idea what else they could be, especially with the hectoring specter of redemption and sin, but who could take such a thing seriously? He felt sure the answer was more insidious and complicated…or did he merely prefer to associate Elöise with villains rather than with fanatics?
    He walked from the station onto the road. By now, the others were gone from his view. The road was lined on either side with an overgrown tangle of black briar, the hard thorns casting wicked shadows onto the road. Shadows? There was a rising moon, and Svenson looked up at it with pleasure. Above the briars, in the distance, he could see the thatched rooftops of Tarr Village. He walked toward them with a brisk purpose, and it was only another minute before the road opened up onto a small square with a common green in the center and a cobbled lane running around it. On the far side was a church with a white steeple, but—happily—the building nearest to him announced itself by a hanging wooden sign, painted with a picture of a crow wearing a silver crown. Svenson stopped at the door, one foot on the step, and looked around the square. There were lights here and there in the buildings he could see, but no people in the street, nor any sound in the air. If there had been visible sentries, Tarr Village would have reminded him of nothing more than a military camp after nightfall. He went into the tavern.

    As a foreigner, Doctor Svenson knew he was no knowledgeable judge, but the King Crow struck him as a decidedly odd village pub, adding—with the excessively orderly nature of the town itself and the apocalyptic halo of the party from the train—to his growing suspicion that Tarr Village might in fact be one of those
communities,
purposely organized around religious or moral principles (but what was the doctrine, and who its charismatic—or stern—leader?). For one, the King Crow did not smell like a tavern at all, of beer and smoke and the sour pungence of sweat and human grease. Indeed, the air was all soap and vinegar and wax, and the main room scrubbed and sparse as the bare, clean insides of a ship, with the walls whitewashed and a fire in its modest hearth. For another, the only two occupants were wearing crisp black suits with high white shirt collars and black traveling cloaks. Each man stood near the fire with a glass of red wine, not even, or no longer, speaking to each other, but obviously waiting for some word, or someone. Both turned swiftly at his entrance.
    One cleared his throat and spoke. “Excuse me. Are you just arrived…on the 3:02 train?”
    Svenson nodded politely, his face impassive. “I am.”
    They were examining him, or waiting for him to speak…so, he did not.
    “That is a Macklenburg uniform coat, if I am not mistaken?” asked the other man.
    “It is.”
    One whispered into the other’s ear. The listener nodded. They continued to look at him, as if they could not come to a decision. Svenson turned his gaze to the bar, behind which a porcine fellow in a spotless white shirt stood silently.
    “I require a room for the night,” Svenson told him. “Do you have any?”
    The man looked at his two customers—whether to receive instruction or to simply see if they needed anything before he left, Svenson could not say—and then walked out around the bar, wiping his hands. He continued past Svenson, muttering, “This way…”
    Svenson looked once more to the two men by the fire, and turned to follow the innkeeper’s heavy steps up the