The train pulled into the next station, St. Patrick. People shuffled off, jostling with those getting on. The train pulled out again. The Dancer stared at the passengers. So did King. A different crowd now, but with the same air of futility.
“Do you hear it now?” she asked again. “The song?”
Still King didn’t reply. He had no answers for this odd creature. He had hoped that she would provide him with answers—that, in all her strangeness, she was the answer.
Finally, he replied with a question, the only question that seemed to matter.
“Can you help me?” he asked, embarrassed by the desperation in his voice.
In reply, she raised a hand, palm toward her face. King stared at the mark on the back of her hand, the same mark the old man had carried—a blood-red rectangle within a larger black
