A pair of hands gently cradle shards of wood, fresh from a carving knife, still covered in sawdust and droplets of sweat. The wood has been cut to exacting standards, and then weighed on delicate, antique scales. Each time a stick or a bundle of sticks is weighed, the hands record, in a book, their weight on a table. On the facing page, a rough charcoal sketch of the Thing is seen, lines marked with letters, ghostly shapes, cruciform and parallel, a dream waiting to be made.

***

A pair of hands roughly gather bundles of wood, rough-hewn sticks with plenty of space between them, but bound with string. Each bundle weighs a pound or two. These will go near the bottom. A pot is presented, filled with aromatic, viscous oil, and the faggot is dunked twice, once on either side, into the pot and then laid on a linen cloth which quickly soaks up the excess oil. The hands are joined by other hands which are splitting larger logs now into shards of pale-yellow wood, their rough flesh open to the sun for the first time. These bundles, this linen, and then the logs waiting outside in the courtyard... they will all be burned.

***

In the great hall, courtiers mill about. Today the married men have brought brides and children, who infrequently are allowed to see this magnificent hall, so tall and long that centuries ago, armored knights jousted from one end to the other. The husbands tell their wives and children these tales of long ago, as the bachelor courtiers watch from the eaves. They speak of other legends and rumors: the subject of today's demonstration was made from a recipe found in a book by the Italian inventor and playright, and in turn taken from a secret purloined from far-away Cathay. Yes, these inventions were used by their reclusive Emperors as spies, as the Emperor's eyes so that he might view an entire city in one glance, and keep his people safe. The hollow, wry chuckles that follow the tales of the reclusive Emperors of the East needed eyes to keep him safe are kept low so that the other courtiers cannot hear.

***

In the great hall, the clerics mill about: priests, tonsured monks, and the occasional red-coated cardinal. Today is an important day, and among their number all must witness, mourn, and understand. At the Field of Flowers they and the lay faithful will witness the power and glory and preeminence of His Holiness in this world. The man they will see once was one of them! Yes, he was a good and faithful Dominican friar and priest. But when in community he read banned works, hurling a tome of Erasmus, the hated "humanist," into the privy rather than be discovered with it. And then he was a fugitive, tarrying among the Northern heretics, learning from them Satanic arts of necromancy, alchemy, forbidden books of witchcraft. When he was caught out, he was brought here, tried justly, and condemned by His Holiness. The secular authorities held him now, in advance of this wonderful clear February morning. Look, said one of the young Loyolans, here come the men with the wood! And indeed, men from the workshops bore bundles and tapers to ready for the prisoner.

***

The cold day reminded the courtiers and their families of the Emperor's love for Prague; its gloomy skies, its cold winters and hot, rainy summers. The Vltava in this centenary winter was frozen solid for many months, and on this cold morning, the sun a weak yellow in the East, the children hopped to and fro to keep warm, the ladies gathering near bonfires on the shore to speak and gossip amongst themselves. The boys from the workshop came forth then, with the bundles wrapped in black cloth so no one could see the secret the Emperor had vouchsafed to his loyal courtiers before the unveiling. Along with these square, flat bundles came many spindles of thin rope – string, really – which were placed on the shore, the spindles capped at either end with what looked like comfortably carved wooden handles, like one would see on the reins of a fancy wagon. The children now were bouncing with excitement more than cold.

The bachelors looked to the High Tower. The curtains were still closed.

***

The prisoner was brought forth, his tongue in a wooden cage, the fleshy organ which had uttered heresy after heresy trapped between two planes of wood, so he could not speak the lies of the Deceiver or pronounce the syllables of his necromantic spells. Tied well to the stake, the Cardinal pronounced sentence in Latin. Most of the laymen in the crowd nodded dumbly, and the Dominicans and Jesuits and Cardinals muttered prayers to God for this proud man to be brought low. Incredibly, the rumor went, he'd not shown fear or pain in his final interviews two days ago; in fact, some said, eyes wide and mouths wagging, he'd been sophistically defiant even as the Pope's refusal to pardon him had reached his ears. He'd said to his jailers and the Cardinals present to give him the Papal sentence: "Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it."

His tongue trapped, he uttered no such remarks now. The smoke billowed around him as the heat rose to meet the chilled faces of the crowd. Given no help in burning faster, he would choke and die before he would burn, and it would happen slowly. And when his body was consumed, his ashes, along with the ashes of his books, would be dumped in the Tiber.

Giordano Bruno was dying. But as he began to burn, his atoms mixed with those of the dust and ash raised from the sticks piled beneath him, and wisps of Bruno rose into the slate-grey sky, the west wind catching them and rushing them over Italia, across the Adriatic, and onward.

***

The workmen allowed the children to help them open the packages. Black cloth strewn at riverside, the contents were revealed. Bright, colorful, lozenge-shaped cloths, bound tightly over crosses of light wood! Dyed by the Emperor's artisans every color of the rainbow, marked with fanciful dragons (Oriental ones, the bachelor courtiers remarked upon, sagely), high-flying falcons, hawks and owls, a pegasus here and a griffon there, and some merely painted in solid tones. The workmen and now a couple of the courtiers walked over to the children, and their mothers, and began to instruct them on how to hold the spindle of string. As soon as the west wind, called by the Greek gentle Zephyrus, which the court's aeromancers said would come up at 9 of the clock this morning, caught them, the kites would fly high into the sky and hang there, in defiance of the Earth's elemental heaviness. They would be infused with the lightness of air. The children understood not the science, but all that mattered was that the figures would take flight.

And as they began to achieve their heights, borne by the west wind which had flown from the Balkans, from the Adriatic, from Italia, the curtain on the High Tower opened, and the bachelor courtiers were pleased to see, standing there, the inquisitive face of their patron, the Holy Roman Emperor, the father of all the arts and scientists, the ruler of Praga Mystica, a smile on his face as sunny as any child's.