Clever (looks up to a sun-filled sky): How do stars cast their influence by daylight?
Owl-Chymist (ignores her): Question A, addressed to my Patchwork Creature, “Who owns that man's body on whom the Dog-Head is fixed?”
Clever: And how did he lose his head? Foul play? Wicked magic? Ornery meanness?
Owl-Chymist: That Man, while endowed with his own Head, was a Wretch of lowest regard, a Fool born under failed Stars. Of no Matter. I threw away the Human Head and Repurposed the Body.
Clever: Poor fellow! Did his horoscope predict a headless resurrection?
nativity chart for a generic Fool
Owl-Chymist: You, little Girl, knew him. You watched him hang on the Gallows for a Grievous Crime. He was a drunken Tailor of no value.
Clever (her breath stills … her heart falters, then quickens):
Owl-Chymist: Today his ragged Children go as Beggars. No one buried the Corpse. I removed it to my Laboratory. He was a drunken Tailor of no use.
Clever: Of no use at all? Beloved by not a single person in the wide world?
Owl-Chymist (ignores her question): To think my Hound believes in absurdity — in the nonsense that you and I and he could be pulled at random into the same Story. You, a Beggar. Me, a learned Philosopher. He, a Chymical Experiment. How could such disparate Particles link into one improbable Sequence unless it had been Predetermined, Orchestrated, Tightly Plotted.
Clever (stoutly): Your hanged man cannot be my hanged man. My father was dearly beloved by his old mother.
Owl-Chymist: Mother-Love is incidental to Philosophy. Of no significance. You are here in this Covert Place to act your minor but necessary role in the Great Conspiracy.