Every night begins with a story. This is how it ought to be in every house in all the world. The moon is not allowed to rise unless a story is told, to call the darkness and the dreams from behind the wind and clouds. This ought to be true all over the city in the valley, and true high up on the peaks of the mountains above the city, and in the ships of the air that anchored over the city like fat clouds, casting shadows on the rooftops. It was true on a mountaintop overlooking a canyon with an old, wide river, where an airship mountain ferrymaster named Rudolf Anaya lived with his pregnant wife, Drew Anaya, and eldest daughter, Joy Anaya. By day, he lashed the airships to a cable and ran the engine that pulled them past the worst of the winds rising up off the canyons, where airships untethered would be cast wildly about, perhaps landing in the sea, perhaps crashing on a mountain. In this mountain pass, the airships hauled up from the city below loaded with the famous moving dolls and clocks that were made in the factories of the peninsula. They returned to the city with supplies from over the mountains, from the north countries and the eastern kingdoms, food and drink and fine furniture and anything else that could be imagined from far away places. Rudolf came home slow, exhausted, but happy. He wore thick workmen’s clothes, and they were spattered in oil and coal dust, and he had to wash his hands three times before he could touch his fork. The family waited for him. After supper, it was time for young Joy to go to bed. That meant, of course, that it was time for a story.
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