Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds’ eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas-abstract, invisible, gone once they’ve been spoken-and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.

And while I do not believe that any of the stories in this volume will do that, it’s nice to collect them together, to find a home for them where they can be read, and remembered. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Neil Gaiman

On the first day of Spring 2006

I. The New Friend

F RESH FROM THEIR STUPENDOUS EUROPEAN TOUR, WHERE THEY PERFORMED BEFORE SEVERAL OF THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE, GARNERING THEIR PLAUDITS AND PRAISE WITH MAGNIFICENT DRAMATIC PERFORMANCES, COMBINING BOTH COMEDY AND TRAGEDY, THE STRAND PLAYERS WISH TO MAKE IT KNOWN THAT THEY SHALL BE APPEARING AT THE ROYAL COURT THEATRE, DRURY LANE, FOR A LIMITED ENGAGEMENT IN APRIL, AT WHICH THEY WILL PRESENT MY LOOK-ALIKE BROTHER TOM!, THE LITTLEST VIOLET-SELLER AND THE GREAT OLD ONES COME (THIS LAST AN HISTORICAL EPIC OF PAGEANTRY AND DELIGHT); EACH AN ENTIRE PLAY IN ONE ACT! TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE NOW FROM THE BOX OFFICE.

It is the immensity, I believe. The hugeness of things below. The darkness of dreams.