I cry out because the need to blink is incredible and my eyes refuse to shut, even though the room is dimly lit. This is my first need. The second is to escape; unable, I begin to panic. I cannot move, I'm strapped to a table. I realize soon enough that it's not the straps restricting me, it's my body's inability to assert any kind of motor function.

I'm paralyzed.

It was over lunch at the old Warburton Hotel that Scott told me his story. The Warburton is an antiquated jumble of brown stone and striped canvas on New York's upper west side, a particularly suitable setting for that sort of tale. It is steeped in its own peculiar amalgam of gloomy history and faded nostalgia, so the cosmopolite who finds himself on the premises had better be a resident, a chance traveller with a penchant for the bizarre, or simply (like myself) a fellow with a taste for Claude Benoit's odd blend of French and American cooking.

Jacob looked back towards the sea and his eyes filled with tears. He knew the burn would happen soon. When he held the chart to the evening sky the moon almost filled the hole at the center. He kept adjusting the longitude and latitude slides, hoping to find an error. Each time his calculations were confirmed. The burn would come in the next day or two. He trudged up the steep trails. His supply of sweet bread and wine from the seaside village was now gone. Once again he was eating the hard blackberries of his homeland and trying to catch the greasy rats that ran among the rocks.

"Here's how we'll do it," my mistress said.

She trapped light dancing in through her window, traced the patterns of exotic blossoms onto thin parchment, a dash of cerulean blue - silver shadow tipped the wing. White feathers floated in through the casement - she caught and pressed them onto the page