You’ve been busy these last few days, running around with your face red and puffing like a steamboat.

Teddy Teddy, I rather like you, you know. What was wrong with my gift? I saved a rich man’s life and let you take the credit. You would deny that to hide your shame? I’ll confess to having read some of your letters; you should be proud to be loved by such a man.

I am a man of my word though. If that was a trial rather than a blessing, I will give you another. You’ve been curious about me - because I made you curious. You’ve been obsessing over me - because I made you obsessed, me, the man with no name. You’ve let me have my fun; I’ll help you out a bit.

You are not the first to call me Reynard. It’s a solid name of good standing, with silky red fur, though Isengrim would be a poor duelist in the realm of the mind. Better than some others. Sun Wukong makes my joints hurt like an old man; I have no taste for all that tumbling and leaping through all of heaven. Loki makes my feet drag, heavy with snow and the blood of Ragnarok. Lugh stinks of dog hair and I have no place to carry a damn spear. I even wore the name of your old ancestor once, for a short while. Only small parts in a larger role - can you imagine me as a father of nations? Still, what an honor, to upend the fate of an entire bloodline over a bowl of stew!

I suppose my favorite is Anansi, and that is who I play these days. It tickles as it skitters over my face. I take heart in the eggs it lays in my hair. But I am not he. I am not any of them.

I’ve done research on it. That’s not part of my role; I was surprised it was something I could even do; I suppose a trickster fares better the more they know than their mark. The same tricks that bring proud men to ruin let me slip into academias and disappear with tomes. I’ve had the chance to learn a little bit of everything, devouring every new edge on the world I could get. Do you know what I learned? There were rumors of things like me. A warrior who had to be killed thrice before he would die - a blade to the heel and a poisoned arrow before fighting him to exhaustion. And there was a girl in Romania who seemed to constantly stumble into stories where tiny folk and woodland creatures would do her chores. They found what was left of her in an oven in a rotting house. I’m not sure if I’d recognize someone like me if I met them; they’d have their own story to play, and I mine.

Education changed me. For a while I earned the name Hermes Trismegistus. Then King Solomon, then Menilek, then every son in the Ethopian line after that. Titles of learning and power. I was no longer a trickster but a trickster scholar. I’d pretend to drink hemlock and slip it into a nearby potted plant. I’d dance to the applause of thousands of one hands clapping. I found the rings I lost inside in the light of the outdoors.

I am a tall tale you heard from the rabbi. I am a rumor unfounded in the newspaper. I am a nameless trickster, one and many, everything and nothing, and I sign with a name I stole from heaven and a name I stole from the Devil, and I’m not sure either of those exist anymore. Reality is so fragile, Theo Theo. I’ve seen people burn and die over one script out of many, and I’ve skimmed the whole anthology. It’s a long way down.

Let me stay a while here, would you? You’re a man of the earth, a creature of the scalpel; you’re the calmness of a boulder jutting out of the rapids, and I’d like to rest my raft here. I am a thing of my word; ask of me and see what I can do.