"When the cattle driver comes from plowing,

He plants his cattle prod.

A, e, i o, u!

He plants his cattle prod.

He finds his wife at the foot of the fire,

Sad and so disconsolate.

If you are sad, then tell me.

I’ll make you a stew,

With a turnip, and a cabbage,

A skinny lark.

When I am dead bury me

In the deepest part of the cave.

Feet turned towards the wall,

Head by the channel for water.

The pilgrims that will pass by,

Will take of the holy water.

And they will say, 'Who died here?'

Here is the poor Joanne.

She went to paradise,

To heaven with her goats."

"Well, what do you want? I'm a genius, not a choirboy!"

A cackle followed.

The sound of boiling water.

Then the footsteps of his off-key, eccentric host.

Melcher Fitz awoke and stared up at a stone ceiling in a dimly-lit room.

His neck stung and throbbed, and his body felt cold.

"Where am I?" he meant to say, but the words came out as a mumble.

He couldn't open his lips. He tried to raise his hand to his face to figure out why, but found that his wrists were strapped down against the strange bed where he lay.

"Aha!" the strange host cried out from outside Melcher's view. "It worked! And you said my flights of fancy were rubbish, Daddy... pah! You who filled my boyish head with much worse nonsense..."

Melcher Fitz mumbled again, now realizing that threads held his lips together. Whoever this stranger was, he'd sown his mouth shut.

The stranger leaned over Melcher, revealing his face to him. The man was in his mid-fifties. What little hair remaining on his head had turned white and resembled thorny weeds. His beard was long and gray, tangled like a bird's nest. The acid-burn scars on his forehead and nose, combined with the sour smells in the air, told Melcher this was some manner of alchemist.

"Just as I thought!" the stranger remarked, staring into Melcher's eyes. "All I had to do was reattach the head, then pump a little alkahest into you, and now you live again! Well... as much as you were really 'alive' before." The stranger looked up, scratching his chin with a gauntleted hand. "What does it mean to be 'alive?' Is that when one's heart is beating, when one can still think, or when one can still move autonomously? Hmm... seems ill-defined these days, doesn't it? Much more so now that a man who'd lost his head has come back from the grave."

Melcher struggled against the straps holding his body down. When he pulled against them, he discovered that he was bound at his wrists, ankles, around his waist, across his throat, across his chest, his knees, his thighs... it seemed far more than anyone really needed to keep an ordinary man restrained.

The stranger must have known he was no ordinary man.

"I'm sure you have many questions," said the stranger. "Let me try to answer them. No... don't try to speak, my friend." The stranger reached out and stroked Melcher Fitz's hair with the back of his hand. "Oh, my precious friend... your vocal chords were torn when you lost your head. I'll try to help, but I'm not sure you'll ever be able to speak again."

Fitz grunted and pulled against the restraints again, hoping the strength he'd found before would grant him escape. He had to know if Giradin was still alive, if he still had work to do to slay the Anti-Christ and prevent the Apocalypse.

The stranger pressed down on Fitz's chest with his hand. "You'll find that even the strongest man who ever lived could never tear through those straps. Anyway, I've not introduced myself. I am Dr. Yves, the most brilliant alchemist who ever lived. And you... you are my latest and greatest experiment!"

Dr. Yves turned his head away from Fitz and bellowed, "Garbage!"

A high-pitched voice called from the opposite end of the room. "Yes, master?" The voice was not that of a child, neither of a woman. Fitz supposed it was some manner of dwarf.

"Tell Refuse to ride to Levanna's house bearing news of this fortuitous day. We have conquered death, Garbage! It is time for celebration!"