Depicted on one side m gaudy colors was a man, caught by one heel in a rope snare and dangling upside down. Wizard was fascinated. Slowly he turned the card over. In ornate letters of dark red was printed A WARNING. That was all. Estrella wouldn’t meet his eyes, and Sylvester gave a hollow groan.

Even the pickled piglet in its glass Jar squirmed uncomfortably.

Wizard tucked me card into his shirt pocket and gave a farewell nod to Sylvester. The wind hit him as he emerged from the shop, pushing him boisterously as it rushed past him.

He strode down the street, letting, the exercise warm him. A tiny pang reminded him that he had not yet eaten today. Time to take care of that. He heard the approaching nimble of a bus.

Tucking his shopping bag firmly under one arm, he sprinted to the stop just ahead of it-

The bus gusted up to the stop and flung its door open before him. Wizard ascended the steps and smiled at the bus driver who stared straight ahead. He found a seat halfway down the aisle and sat looking out the window. “… Cannot rival for one hour October’s bright blue weather,‘” he quoted softly to himself with satisfaction. He stared out the window.

The bus nudged into its next stop and five passengers boarded.

The four women took seats together at the back, but the old man worked his slow way down the aisle to stop beside Wizard’s seat. Wizard felt his presence and turned to look at him.

The old man nodded gravely and arranged himself carefully in the seat as the bus jerked away from the curb. The old man nodded to the sway of the bus, but didn’t speak until Wizard had turned to stare out the window again.

“My boy isn’t coming home from college for Thanksgiving this year. Says be can’t afford it, and when we said we’d pay, he said he needed the time to study. Can you beat that? So I asked him, ‘What are Mother and I supposed to do, eat a whole turkey by ourselves?’ So he said, ‘Why don’t you have chicken instead?’ No understanding. He’s our youngest, you see. The others are all long moved away.”