The purplish-blue shadows of things seemed to swirl around him, as if a crazed moon were spinning about the sky. Or maybe what had changed was his own body, inhabited now by somebody else. Down the shining cobblestone street came a skeletal black calash driver with chiseled cheekbones, at this hour already dressed in his vest and bowler hat. He stepped lightly, almost weightlessly, practically floating over the paving stones. With his right arm he pushed a loose cartwheel; in his free hand he carried a whip. The wheel bounced on the stones, wobbled, continued downhill. When the coachman passed Firefly, he gave him a surprised look, as if he recognized him and wondered what he was doing out there at that time of day. Cautiously, at a distance, like an affectionate and obliging mother, someone was following the driver. Firefly first recognized the starched white housedress, which ruffled open in the humid morning breeze like an immense day lily; then, shining just as white, the necklaces, small friendly sea-shells whose rattling he thought he could discern; and finally, the bright silk turban: the black Santeria priestess had found him again.
