The Tortoise and the Jester told one another stories.

When the Tortoise told the Jester a story, the Jester would laugh, but the Tortoise would not, because the Tortoise's stories were never funny. When the Jester told the Tortoise a story, the Jester would laugh and the Tortoise would not, because the Jester's stories were horrifying beyond belief. The Tortoise and the Jester went on telling one another stories, and nothing ever changed.

One day, beneath a warm, ceaseless sun, the Tortoise was walking down a dirt road. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the Tortoise would lift one great, scaly foot, shift, and then plop it back down again, leaving a footprint in the dust. On and on this went, until the Tortoise's footprints stretched far further back than the Tortoise could see. Of course, this was irrelevant. The Tortoise never looked back.

Suddenly, out of the aether cartwheeled the Jester. Garishly dressed in vibrant colors of red, green, and yellow in a ludicrous patchwork, the Jester sang gaily as he tumbled around the Tortoise, who walked ever onward. Eventually, the brightly adorned Jester grew bored of his tumbling, and moved to walk alongside the Tortoise, although he was forced to slow his usual gait considerably to avoid pulling ahead.

"Shall I tell you a story?" The Jester asked.

The Tortoise said nothing, which the Jester took as an invitation to fill the silence.

"Very well!" The Jester said, laughing to himself, as was his habit. "I shall tell you the story of a road, the story of a road which stretches, and the story of a very old tortoise who walks this road, and..."

"I know this story," the Tortoise said as it plopped down another foot into the dirt. "I know its beginning, and I know its middle."

The Jester jumped in front of the Tortoise then and, as he spoke, bent over and thrust his backside toward the Tortoise. "Do you wish to hear the end?"

"No," the Tortoise said, and the Jester tumbled forward as though he had been kicked in the rear. He rolled forward and turned, walking backward and facing the Tortoise as the Tortoise continued. "I wish to come to the end at my own pace. Besides, this story has no end."

"At your pace, old friend, I would wish to come to the end, as well." The Jester grinned and cartwheeled backwards. "And all stories have an ending. In fact, they all have the same ending." The Jester laughed mightily at this.

"Tell me a story, friend," the Tortoise said, "of a jester who has never been funny."

"Once there was a jester who was never really funny, the courts, they wouldn't have him so he never earned his money, his stories made the people weep and all but one would scatter, and none but he would laugh, for this was no laughing matter." As he finished, the Jester laughed.

"And how does this story end?" The Tortoise asked.

"The same as all the others, Tortoise. The same as yours, the same as mine."

"Was that not your story?"

"It was my story," the Jester said with a grin, "but I have given it to you, and I know that you will not give it back again, because you have kept every story you have ever heard. You horde them in the vault of your memory where not a thief could steal them, you keep them from the doctors who might have a hope to heal them, you butcher them and hack them up and hold them up to see, and in their mangled state, some day, you tell them back to me." The Jester laughed.

"In that case, have I not returned them to you?" The Tortoise asked.

"Can a gift be given and not received?" The Jester riddled.

"I will tell you a story of gifts," the Tortoise said. "Once there was a mother who gave her children a gift. Some of her children had asked for this gift, but most did not."

"She must have been a very generous mother to have given a gift to so many children."

"You know more of the story than I will tell," the Tortoise said. "But no, this mother was not generous, nor did she give her gift for love of her children. In fact, so greatly did she hate her children, and so cunning was her hatred, that she gave her gift unevenly to them. And thus, did her children come to know jealousy and fear, and thus did they know the intoxication of power and its use on those without it. And thus was discord sown in that great family, where gifts were given, but no gift was received."

The Jester erupted in laughter. The Tortoise merely continued walking. When the Jester finally stopped chuckling, there was silence between the two for a time. Eventually, the Tortoise spoke again.

"Where have you come from, Jester?"

"Ho, ho! I come from there and beyond, and yon and on, and ever further from!" The Jester tumbled through the grass at the side of the road and came up again on his feet.

"And have you found her?" The Tortoise asked.

"What? We know well where She is."

The Tortoise shook its head. "No, not...Her." There was a sudden rumble of thunder in the distance which shook the cloudless sky. "Have you found her?"

"Oh, you mean her, oh, her, its her? Yes, her, the one for whom I seek, the one whose weakness gave her strength, and strength has made her weak."

The Tortoise nodded and said nothing.

The Jester bent over and hooked his arms under his knees and walked that way for a time. "No, I have not found her. Like the greedy farmer who denies water to a thirsty traveler, she hides well."

"It seems that she has set for us a puzzle. I wonder where lies the key to unlocking its secrets."

"Tell me a story, Tortoise," the Jester said, contorting his body until he was standing on his hands. "Tell me a story about keys and locks." The Jester walked on his hands backwards in front of the Tortoise as they moved down the dirt road.

"Once there were children who were hated by their mother. She was cruel, and she was powerful, and she gave them all keys to doors with no locks, and her children went mad with the jangling of the keys." As the Tortoise said this, the Jester, walking upside down, shook his body to jangle the bells affixed to his colorful garb. The Tortoise continued, "And so, though it was very dangerous and very difficult, some of the children set for their mother a trap, and they locked her away in a cell with no door, and a lock that could not be picked."

"Ah, but the lock was already picked, friend Tortoise, for the children must have picked it, else it would not have been chosen."

"The children chose the lock. They did not pick it."

The Jester flipped himself upright again. "Choose and pick and pick and choose, and mother, she was tricked, for lose and win and win and lose, all locks, they can be picked." The Jester doubled over laughing at this, and fell to the ground and rolled in the grass beside the road. He laughed for so long that, even at the Tortoise's pace, the Jester was forced to jog to catch up.

"Why do you laugh at such a thought?" The Tortoise asked. "'All locks can be picked,'" the Tortoise repeated, then seemed almost to shudder. "A horrifying thought."

The Jester laughed. "It is a thought that demands a response," the Jester said. "And so I laugh, because the alternative is maddening."

"As are you, friend Jester," the Tortoise said. "As are you."

They walked in silence for a time then, apart from occasional outbursts of laughter from the Jester as he told himself jokes which would make others weep.

"Tell me a story, Jester," said the Tortoise. "Tell me a story of endings and beginnings."

"No," laughed the Jester. "I will tell you a story with neither. Once, there was a road. And this road began nowhere, and in the same place, it ended. This road," the Jester paused and looked expectantly at the Tortoise, but this time, the Tortoise did not interrupt the story of the road. The Jester shrugged, and told his story. "This road stretched on forever, a thread that would not slip, no shear must ever sever, that great Möbius strip. One turn deserves another, an endless, ageless race, the lock that holds the mother, a tumbler locked in place."

The Jester laughed and tumbled beside the Tortoise as the Tortoise walked on, leaving footprints in the dirt. Footprints beside footprints, left there long ago, when last the Tortoise had been here. And beside and beneath those footprints were others, countless others that had never been washed away by rain or scattered by wind, for this was a windless, stormless world, that had only a sun to see by and a road to walk.

And one very ancient Tortoise.

And the occasional, laughing visitor.

"Tell me a story," the Jester said. "Tell me a story of heroes, and monsters."

"I would tell you a story of heroes," said the Tortoise, "but there are no heroes, and there never have been. Monsters, though? I can tell you of monsters. For monsters are the mothers of the heroes never born." The Tortoise paused, but the Jester did not laugh. The Tortoise continued. "Once there was a monster. This monster was cruel, and powerful."

"I know how this story ends," the Jester said.

"This story has no ending," the Tortoise said. "For this monster did as monsters do. And the heroes, the heroes which do not and did not exist, they did as heroes do. They fought the monster."

"In the stories," the Jester said, "the heroes defeat the monster."

"Heroes are for stories and for children."

"This is a story, and we are children," the Jester said.

The Tortoise nodded. "But there are no heroes in this story, and there are no heroes for us. There is only a monster, a monster trapped behind a lock that even now she works to pick."

"There is time yet," the Jester said.

"There is nothing but time," the Tortoise replied. "No heroes, no havens, no hope."

The Jester rolled forward, and began a tumbling act next to the road. "The tumblers are still in place."

"Even tumblers can be moved," the Tortoise said. "All locks can be picked."

The Jester laughed as hard as he had ever laughed. Even the Tortoise chuckled. Eventually, they both stopped laughing, and the Jester looked up into the sky. The sun had not moved. It was still directly above the Tortoise, as it always was.

"I had best be off, friend Tortoise," the Jester said.

The Tortoise nodded. "Remember, if you find her, let me know."

"I assure you, if I find her, you will be the third to know."

"If I am the third to know," the Tortoise warned, "then I will never know."

The Jester shook his head. "If you are the third to know, then I must be the first, for if I am the second, then events have turned out worst, but if you are the second, for I came to tell you then, she will be gone and I'll have to begin my search again."

The Jester laughed. The Tortoise didn't. "If she finds you before you find her, our lock will lose a tumbler."

"But if I find her before she finds Her," there was another clap of thunder, "then perhaps a tumbler will remove a lock pick."

The Jester laughed.

The Tortoise shook its head.

The Jester grinned, and somersaulted out of the world.

The Tortoise continued ever onward down an endless dirt road beneath the sun.