He was being told of the presence of malevolent furies throughout the bazaar that was spread out over the four corners of the intersection between two dirt roads.  Some folk were already seeing these fiery spirits bouncing off the bodies of people.  Trouble was brewing.  There was no escape for him, and, considering he was from elsewhere, he did not want to become an easy mark.  He followed his instinct: he looked people in the eye and asked a “Why”: Why are the spirits stirred?  At a sudden, the one he was asking got struck by one.  He saw it only in the man’s impulsed reaction: eyes popping in their sockets, tongue hanging to chin, the back arched rearward near to parallel with the ground.  He noticed other patrons had huddled into bundles.  This fury was a potent force, and he was close enough to be in its sphere.  He looked for help, but all eyes hung in frozen stares.  And then he felt it, the spirit, creep into him, take over his arms and face, make him thump his feet, growl in roars.  He resisted it, but that only made his movements more spastic.  He never could later forget how he had then tried to jump out of his body, to escape the fury within, but the possessed man in front of him suddenly stood back up and reached out for him.  Others followed in kind.  There were smiles, there was laughter, hands grasping at him, as at a seeming savior.  That’s how he told the story for the first few times, till, years later, he met a woman from that very land.  He told her the story.  She knew how to listen — and, because she did, there came to him, upon the telling, a memory of what had in fact happened next.  Yes, there had been laughter back then, and groping, but at him.  He recalled being told that a rumor would be deliberately unleashed in the bazaar at every full moon.  The folk listened for it, and then communally acted it out.  He had dropped into the midst of this and been snapped up in the prankish aspect of the ritual: he took the rumor literally.  He recalled as well that he had felt mocked by them when they had all reached out to him with full-throated laughter.  In answer, the woman burst into that very same full-throated laughter, and reached for his hand.  It is good you have spoken with me, she said.  They were laughing, they were reaching to you, but it was in celebration — for you being the one who could still prove to them the strong and sustaining power of an old and seemingly useless tale from the times of our ancestors.  We don’t mock our angels, she said, we celebrate them.