Stories always promise: with arrival at The End, a transformation to overcome the odds— great insight, love; recovery, reunion. But The End is also unpredictable, even when it appears to have sorted everything into reward, punishment, conclusion. The child turns out to be a changeling or orphan, then grows up believing he is heir to nothing but a singular ordinariness. Under the trees, goats go to work cropping the grass. A horse head swings from a bridge, ragged mane rippling. The heir to prophecy looks up, recognizes something of himself in that tableau of anonymous suffering. When the water ripples, he hears his name.
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