Everybody stared at me like they expected me to do something clever. I did not have my cane nor my tap shoes, so I couldn't go into my dance routine. Those words that escaped my mouth still had no discernible meaning, so I could not sing. I reached deep into my trick bag for the last thing left.

I tried to stand up.

I made it! But to stay standing up I had to hang on to one of the ugly guys. This particular one lacked a forehead and had a mouth like a lamprey. I bet all the girls wanted to tongue-kiss him. His eyes were fish eyes, too, yellow and shadowy and covered by that milky membrane.

That popped up and down a couple of times, but otherwise he ignored me. I managed to croak, "Who are you people? What are you?"

Two of these characters could pass for giants and one for human, but the rest were not like anything I had ever seen on the streets of TunFaire. You spend any time at all out there, you will see members or virtually every sentient species, from pixies the size of your thumb to giants twenty feet tall. You will even see some horrors like the ratmen, who were created by sorcery run amok.

Maybe that was what we had here, fugitives from some cellar way up at the pinnacle of the Hill, where our magician masters live. Trouble was, for the last four generations most of them people had spent their lives in the Cantard, managing the war. None of them would have messed up this much.

Some things you could be sure of just by experience.

I sagged. My ugly buddy did not help. I hung on like a drowning man, gradually pulling myself back into our world. I had had practice climbing lampposts on nights when the weather had turned incredibly alcoholic. "I know you people can talk."