Cubbins’s small jaw dropped. “News!” he remembered. “News of the Northern Bears.” But he was young: nothing in the life of the Bears had changed since he could remember.

Brrr wanted to say, Lie to them, tell them anything! But he didn’t dare. The Ozmists were everywhere and could apprehend the faintest whisper.

“News,” said the Lion, trying by his tone to communicate an instruction to fabricate-another first-“Cubbins, give them, you know, the news. The newest news!”

Cubbins looked wildly about as if trying to see modern history in the making among the jeweled rash of phantoms. His eye fell on the stack of books that Brrr carried, and he grabbed the top one. “I have-to hand-the latest news-here!” He read the title: “Ozma Initiata: The Birth of the Throne Line.”

But even Brrr could tell this was history, not current events.

“Or…or…” Cubbins tore through a second book. “Animal Magic, or, The Secret Spell of Language.” He whipped pages filled with charts. “A grammar textbook. You know, language is always changing, they say: ever new. Refreshing itself-”

As if a compression of thunderclap had been unpacked, a low sound began from the center of the wheel. The Ozmists swayed their rotating mass laterally across the marshy ground, passing over and (it seemed) through the Lion and Cubbins until the Animals were in the center of the swarm and the noise became deafening.

Bear, if you don’t believe in keeping your bargain, we thrust you out before we make you one of us!

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said the Lion, trying to stand before the small cub-but the Ozmists were everywhere, and there was not enough Lion to encircle Cubbins. The sound of the Ozmists raked through them both, but Cubbins held his paws over his ears. Then the Ozmists disappeared into the rising vapors from a visible marshland. In their place rose curtains of brainless flies and midges, deterred for a moment by the honey but ready, Brrr guessed, to turn and attack them.

Cubbins was already scrabbling up the slope, which now seemed to permit it. With flummoxing of limb and tail, the Lion followed. Soon he’d overtaken the young Bear.

This is what it feels like to be a piece of shit, thought Brrr; being pummeled on all sides by the world, forced forward, outward, into naked stink and light. But he and Cubbins danced as they ran, a sense of relief and escape energizing them. They avoided the steam of salt geysers that were sprouting up through invisible fissures, but they couldn’t avoid the hot rain that pelted down.

His eyes closed against the sting, Brrr smacked into boulders and tree trunks and clawed his way through brambly growth. By the time they emerged from Cloud Swamp, day was dawning in the teeth of an ordinary rainstorm.

“What did we get from that exercise?” he asked Cubbins, once he felt able to speak without his voice breaking.

“Wet,” said Cubbins.

“Well, yes. But from the Ozmists?”