Most of the senior officials of the company earned far more than $5,000 a month, but that was the Dutchman's stipulation: $5,000, in exchange for never having to be bothered about the Soubise Harbor Transportation Corporation under any circumstances. It was a strange setup, but they could live with it in considerable comfort. And anyway, everyone knew the Dutchman was mad as a hatter, sitting up in his castle year after year, not seeing anyone but that deaf-mute servant of his and those French whores he was always flying in from Paris. They said in the village that the Dutchman didn't eat meat and didn't even have electricity in the castle. They speculated that even. the big oil-burning furnace he'd had towed to the place wasn't large enough to heat the medieval fortress on the hill. He'd probably had it installed just for the girls. It didn't take more than $5,000 a month to take care of a crazy young man who didn't even have electricity.

And he waited. Twilight became night, and the workers left the shipyard. The bright lights above the harbor compound went on, illuminating the palm trees outside the shipyard's fence and the calm ocean beyond. The warm trade winds blew stronger now. They smelled of sea and magic. The Dutchman closed his eyes and remembered.

The Dutchman. Who had ever given him that name? Jeremiah Purcell was about as Dutch as a corn fritter...

Corn. It had all begun with corn! The Master had told him that many wondrous things come from strange beginnings, but even the Master himself would have been surprised that Jeremiah's extraordinary talent was brought to light by a tub of field corn.

He was eight or nine years old when it happened. The Incident. The First Time. The Beginning. He had come to call It by a variety of names, that afternoon in Kentucky when the wheels of his rare and horrifying destiny began to turn.