Plate Seven: ERROR

Headlights split the dark night in half. In the light, the foreground and middle ground of the plate, we see a woman in a luxurious white fur coat and hat, standing in the snow. She wears clothing plainly of the highest possible quality, warm and in many places conical; this contrasts with Jack’s much lighter and more tattered coat. Too, the light illuminate her clearly and completely, for she stands directly in the beams, while Jack is half-hidden by the woman’s own shadow. As is also true for Jack himself, her age is unclear; she is probably under thirty and possibly over forty. Much of her is hidden behind the warm fur coat and its matching hat and muff, and what of her is visible can be seen only in one-quarter view, for she is turned away and towards Jack.

To the woman’s left, her automobile peeks into frame. While the car itself is no more visible here than in the previous plate (CHOICE), its headlights have been activated and positioned to illuminate both the woman who is plainly their owner, and the object of her interest – Jack and his magical horn of plenty. The snow between the woman and the automobile is disturbed, suggesting that she has only just now leaped from the driver’s seat and strode out to confront Jack.

Whether this plate displays precisely the same location as CHOICE, or whether it is merely a startlingly similar snowy pasture night, cannot be conclusively determined. However, close examination of the horizon behind Jack reveals that the smudge of dark woods, seen everywhere distant in CHOICE, ends just before reaching the right edge of the plate. Barely in frame, but unmistakable once noticed, the ash-gray fields of Jack’s farm stretch back behind him, and gray-on-gray the outline of Jack’s cottage leans against the edge of the only slightly brightened sky. The ragged outline suggests part of the building has collapsed, but this may be a trick of the predawn light.

Jack stands in the snowfield, separated from the woman and from the plane of the plate’s surface by a waist-high fence. He bends his back before the woman, but whether he bows or slouches cannot be ascertained. He smiles, or does he leer? Certainly his teeth catch the light and shine; in the semidark his teeth what we, and presumably she, can see and recognize most easily. In his right hand he still holds his shovel, now rimmed with frost, and with his left he points to the mellophone next to him.

The magical mellophone hovers in the air over a large heap of glimmering cut flowers. Tiny sparkling drops of dew, or oil, glisten on the blossoms, which have come in every color of an especially cold palette. The flowers, hundreds of them, pile up beneath the mellophone, which shines its light upon them, and upon Jack.