Hikaru smiled--that same Mad Hatter/Cheshire Cat smile touched with the click of a
shamisen�s strings he had welcomed Roman with that first day. His laugh was not so
thunderous today, but soft like the warning of a spring rain.
	Roman smiled;  nodded. With a final look at the Arcana and his friends, he began
his walk towards the hole.
	The bells on his motley jingled as he slid down the gravelly entrance of the hole. 
The back of his motley ripped slightly, shedding bells.  At the bottom, he peered up at the
entrance--one final look at the light.  Then the stone moved into the hole, bathing him in
promising darkness.
	He stared at the stone for a moment, then sat in the sand.  With the handle of his
bundle which Asta had made him he began to trace lines in the tunnel floor--slicing the dirt
into hard, cutting V-shapes. And he waited for the Dark to come.
	When it came, it was not angry;  it did not bear down on him as it had on Jay,
whose body still littered the tunnel.  Instead, it crept like a mewling, lamenting fog.  Gray
faces encircled Roman like a pride of hungry lions.
	Roman looked into hollow eyes and smiled.
	�I will not fear you,� he whispered.
	The Dark howled--a windy sound encased in a crackling rain of falling dirt and
snow.  Then it bore down on him, lifting him up and into the blackness.
	Roman forced back his fear;  forcing himself to be still.
	Fear tickled his face, pleading with him; seducing him.  But he donned a foolish
smile and pulled away.  Prejudice tugged at his skin, and Hypocrisy whispered dark words. 
But he resisted, fighting their lies.  Greed pricked his bells with hungry fingers, pulling
them from his coxcomb with relish.  He protected his bundle--unsure of why.
Self-Importance ripped open his motley, piercing him with an already bloody spear.  It
lifted him to a cross, and hung him there--coxcomb, motley and all.  Then Industry pulled
him down from his cross, putting him through her, nailing and tugging: remaking him in
her own image.  The pain was unbearable.  Roman wavered on the edge of consciousness,
trying not to fade into the darkness.
	And then came the stillness and the Void.
	He entered the holy stillness, letting his mind wander through the misty blackness.
He remembered where he had been--the tunnels;  the Carnavale.  Lines of poetry ran
across his brain.  The V�s he had carved in the sand lashed his body, ripping his motley.
	Suddenly, he remembered his bundle.  For all he knew, it was empty, but suddenly
he knew it wasn�t.  He tugged it open.  A small sheet of paper fell into his hands.  The
writing on it, to his surprise, was in his own handwriting:

	�Toward what ends?�

	He pondered these words in the stillness, wondering when he had written them and
what they meant.  Then he remembered.  It was what he had been searching for when it all
began.  What he had scattered his desk to the winds for when Jay had come to tell him
about the phone call.  The words on the paper were a fragment from one of his own
poems.
	And he knew that the words of that poem--his poem--were the key to the Void. 
So he began to whisper them, over and over, again and again. Then:
	�The end is the beginning!� he shouted into the darkness of the Void; �The
stillness is the dance!�
	And he smiled, a huge and joyous smile that illuminated the Void.  All around him,
the Dark dissipated, leaving only the blank stillness of the Void, the light of his smile, and
the greater light--the light of all that is good in the world; the light of initiation.  He
danced into the Light.

	
	If Roman had survived, he would be finished by now.  At Hikaru�s feet, Amber sat,
green eyes gleaming, and stared into the tunnel below.  Then she scurried down the
gravelly entrance and into the darkness.
	Asta came to Hikaru�s side and listened as Amber meowed in the blackened tunnel. 
There was no other sound.
	Marty�s face was tear-stained and darkened from exhaustion and worry.  Jay
floated beside her, whispering comforting words, but she feared the worst.
	Then there was a different voice in the darkness.  Hikaru, Rannoch, Animula, and
Asta surged towards the tunnel entrance.  Amber loped up into the cavern/cathedral,
purring. And Roman shouted after her:
	�I�m coming up, Sister Cat!�
	Roman was no longer human.  He was covered with thick, black fur like Animula. 
His eyes were huge, orange orbs, slitted with black pupils. Small, triangular ears peeped
from beneath his coxcomb.  His chin and neck were white fur.  He smiled--a fanged
kitten�s smile--and wiggled his whiskers.
	�The Dark has gone,� Roman said.  �It is safe.�
	Hikaru patted Roman on the back; smiled. Then he turned to Marty: �You�ve
begun to tell the tale, Martina?� he asked.  She nodded.
	�Bring it to me when you have finished.�
	She smiled and ran to Rannoch�s hut.



	Hikaru carried the books out of the house and into the autumn sunlight.  For the
first time in many years, the sun beat on his proud brow.  His ebony hair collected the
heat;  warmed his skull.  Behind him, the others stepped outside, crunching dried leaves
beneath paws, claws, and feet.
	Roman watched his old friend spin like a child, thrilling in the sunlight.  He spun
and laughed like rolling thunder, treading on the leaves as he opened Marty�s book to the
sun, that it might read the tale.