It was like slipping into a medieval oil painting: virtual reality without the virtual: a living, breathing, shimmering alternate world in full and pungent blossom. The hard-packed street in the foreground, lined with timber-framed buildings of various shapes and heights, braided by the paths of its hundreds of inhabitants, from merchants hawking goods from behind hastily-constructed stalls to children running loose between them, grabbing apples and artifacts (“Hey, you! Stop right there!”) to figures walking seriously in hooded cloaks—to the thunderous passing—the crowd making way—of knights in full regalia astride tall white horses, standards rippling, polished plates reflecting midday sunlight so harshly you can’t help but close your eyes. But in seconds they have passed, and the crowd reconverges like cascading waters into one of the city’s great tributaries. Life is chaos, but there is a rhythm to it, a predictable rising and falling of its sounds, of beating hooves, of shouted slogans, of conversations, of laughter and of cursing. The bustle is an incantation played by an orchestra of footfalls, coughs and counted coins. Somewhere a pot breaks. Elsewhere, a dog barks. A drunkard staggers into the street—narrowly avoiding a horse-drawn carriage! A few passers-by stop. The drunkard staggers on undeterred. A young pickpocket takes advantage to detach a gawker’s money pouch. And everything happens in harmony. More: there is an undercurrent, carried seemingly on the breeze, which descends twirling like ribbons from the looming mountains, carrying with it the warmth of the summer sky (Does this place even have seasons?) and the royal authority of the castle, rising monumentally from within the city, its flags unfurled triumphantly, and around whose towers the undercurrent must wind near-infinitely before continuing to the lower urban depths, where it exudes a metaphysical sense of what can only be described as interconnectedness. The city doesn’t happen around you. It permeates you. It is you. It is music and it is liquid, and you are both floating in it and filled by it.

Lem was part of it now too, and the experience almost choked him.

“What is this place?” he asked Oakley.

The box didn’t answer.

“Oakley?”

Silence, which finally caused Lem to break free of the spellbinding experience in front of him and check if his magical adventurer’s box was still with him.

It was. It just wasn’t answering.

But when Lem took a step further into the street, Oakley dutifully followed.

“That’s OK. You don’t have to talk if you don't want to,” Lem said.

The city recaptured his attention. Although he'd been to New York before, and this was similar in its sheer overflowing sense of individualized vitality, there was no escaping the fact—the overwhelmingly fantastic fact!—that it was also otherworldly. Sure, there was a sun in the sky and the people looked like normal people, but it couldn’t be the same sun and they couldn’t be the same kind of people. Wherever Lem was, it wasn’t Earth. Not even past Earth. I’m somewhere impossible, Lem found himself thinking, before looking both ways for incoming carriages and crossing the street.

What a rush it was!

“Leather goods. Premium quality leather goods sold here!” a merchant barked.

Kids ran by—

Their giggling receding into:

Another merchant: “Rations! Get your rations!”

Lem brushed shoulders with a man wearing an exotic emerald-coloured shirt. He walked past a woman in a long crimson dress and oddly-shaped white hat. Both gave him looks of disapproval. He remembered he was dressed in a sack.

But not everyone looked rich.

Men, women and children in patched and dirty clothes also shuffled by, some with their heads down, others with heads up, meeting him eye-to-eye.

A bald man, late fifties, nodded what appeared to be a greeting.

Lem nodded back.

Behind him, a woman pushed her way down the street, shoulders square and elbows out (“Victuals! Sweet and salty victuals!”) holding a tray stacked with food that threatened to spill over the edge with every precarious swerve of her body. “Victuals for the execution!” She passed Lem with a smile and a wink. “Tis bad luck to witness a killing on an empty stomach.”

That’s when Lem noticed that everyone seemed to be going in the same direction.

It was the direction he had naturally assumed too.

It was toward the castle.

Then he noticed the woman wasn’t the only one talking about an execution. Indeed, for sale along the route were trinkets of the beheading, various memorabilia mori, small carvings of executioners, bandits and headless corpses, and various other grimly inspired goods: violent medallions, decapitated cookies, bloody weavings.

“Come on, get a move on it! It’s almost bloody noon!” a man complained.

The crowd had physically compressed.

Lem felt cramped.

A wall of human backs in front. Hands and arms pressing from behind. The occasional leather boot to his exposed foot. Ouch! He started keeping his elbows out too. And glancing back he saw Oakley barely keeping up, doing his boxing best not to get trampled, so without stopping he contorted himself and scooped his box up. Although Oakley didn’t say a word, his wooden joints certainly felt relieved as Lem carried them. “Where’s everyone going?” Lem asked.

Oakley didn’t respond, but—

“To the square for the execution,” said a woman shoulder-to-shoulder with Lem.

“Who’s being executed?” he asked.

The woman was gone, having weaved her way further ahead, but the man who’d taken her place beside Lem said, “Blackmoth, of course.”

“Who’s Blackmoth?”

But the question fell on deaf ears because the street had opened onto a square, and the crowd began separating into lines—people rushing forward now, pushing and arguing, and Lem lost sight of the man he’d been speaking to.

He fell in eventually behind a finely-dressed couple.

"Who's Blackmoth?” he asked them, but after taking one look at him they made it emphatically clear there would be no conversation.

Soon, Lem saw soldiers making their way down each line of people.

He felt a pang of fear.

When the soldiers got closer, he heard they were asking people for their tickets. He, of course, had no ticket. When one of the soldiers got to the couple in front of him (“Tickets, please!”) Lem saw them show him two, and he directed them to something called the Noblemen’s Gallery.

The soldier’s gaze now fell on Lem.

“Ticket!”

There was a blunt annoyance in his voice.

“I don’t have—”

“Then to The Poors with ya!” the soldier barked, pointing at the very edge of the square, where a throng of people were already gathered.

“Thank you,” Lem said, but the soldier had already moved down the line.

The Poors lived up to its name. Among its massed bodies there was not a single shred of fine cloth or decoration to be found, and the people gave off a most foul and unpleasant odour, but at least Lem didn’t feel as out of place here. Almost no one paid him any mind. No one let him through, but as long as he stayed on the outskirts of the viewing area he was left alone. There were a few other stragglers here and there, some leaning against the buildings marking the literal edge of the square, and Lem positioned himself beside one of these, a red-haired man in a hooded cloak. The hood was not currently on the man’s head, which perhaps is what gave Lem the courage to say: “I don’t mean to bother you, but I’m not from around here, and I’d really like to find out what’s going on. I’ve heard there’s going to be an execution, someone named Blackmoth, but I don’t know who that is.”

“A stranger’s question is never a bother, my friend,” the man said with unexpected courtesy, “but, tell me, have you truly never heard of Blackmoth?”

“Only on the way here.”

“So why have you come to see the execution of a man of whom you’ve never heard?”

“I guess I was swept up in the commotion. Like I said, it’s my first day in the city and I don’t know my way around.” There was something about the red-haired man that made it easy to talk to him. Something that made you feel you should talk to him. “I mean, I’ve never seen an execution before. But more than anything I want to know where I am and how to get back home."

Even as he said this, a part of Lem still believed that any second he might wake up. The man smiled. “You didn’t say it was your first day in the city.”

“Oh, all I—”

“I know," said the man. "I was merely pointing out your imprecision. Consider it bad habit of mine. I can understand a stranger’s curiosity for executions. They are often quite dramatic, although I do believe this one shall be extraordinary.”

Lem looked toward the centre of the square, where events were beginning to unfold, but he could barely see above the heads of the tightly packed spectators in front of him.

“Perhaps if you stand on your box,” said the man.

Lem hesitated, but decided Oakley likely wouldn’t mind, and the box still wasn’t speaking, so he placed Oakley on the ground and stepped on top of him.

The view from here was much better. Over the spectators' heads, Lem saw that an intricate wooden platform had been erected in the square, on which several people were presently visible. One of these was the executioner, two of whose helpers were theatrically sharpening his giant killing sword. Another was the condemned man: a passive and forlorn figure clad in black.

“Everyone is waiting for the arrival of the King,” said the red-haired man.

The view was morbid but captivating. Lem had never seen a person die, and he could feel the anticipation growing around him. He remembered that there likely were no movies in this world, no Netflix and no internet. What he was seeing was justice mixed with entertainment: a performance of authority, tradition and death.

"That man in black," said Lem.

"Aye, that is Blackmoth," said the red-haired man, anticipating Lem's question.

"What's his crime?"

"Crime?" The red-haired man laughed. "Crime is always a temporary concept. Suffice it to say that Blackmoth is the greatest thief to ever live."

He doesn't look the greatest anything, thought Lem. He's been caught and soon he'll be dead, while the world moves on without him. My mother. My sister. Are they also moving on without me? The most that could be said about Blackmoth was that he was stoically immobile. If he ever had any fight in him, it was gone. All that remained was a shell. Watching that shell, Lem vowed never to give up, even in the most trying times and in the most hopeless situations. I will get back home. I will see my family again!

"By the way," Lem asked, "who would you say is the wisest person in this city?"

"Ain't you," someone answered.

But it wasn't the red-haired man, and when Lem looked back, he saw that the red-haired man was gone. Another voice said: "Think you're so smart 'cause you got a box to stand on. If you was so smart, you would've growed taller instead, eh?"

If any further wise cracks were forthcoming, they were preempted by the sound of trumpets.

The King had arrived.