Erik left the church and walked back out through the streets. The people coursing through them did not frighten him any more because he realized their movements and the sound of their thousand voices were notes in a vast piece of music, a story made of sounds, sometimes dissonant - like the shouts of men trying to sell bits of meat, or old, rusty tools - and at others sweet and pure, like mothers fondly calling their children, or greeting their neighbours. What he'd heard in the church, along with the realization that these things did not just come out of the mind of God, but could be born in the fingers of men, changed him forever.