I hardened my mind, ready for town. I settled on a day, made no room for changes, and when the morning came I even combed my hair, although I could not see the result, before I walked down the lane to the car. I wore jeans and a pullover sweater, loose and practical. I was clean but hardly, I guessed, attractive.

The car felt strange. It started after a few tries, and I sat for a moment, the motor running, looking it over, feeling the steering wheel, touching the gear shift, disoriented, but I could not put it off for there was much to be done. I backed out onto the road; it was awkward, but not impossible, and enough of it came back to me.

The gravel road I’d driven on so many months before, lined with heavy dark trees, was now all colour, a set of flames running along each side, like driving through a forest fire, and it seemed to crackle with brilliance. On the main road into town it became more barren; there were fields here and wire fences, and fewer trees; it was cultivated, used — a civilization here. Already I felt far away from the cabin. There were other cars here too, with people in them that I could just glimpse, and then I reached the town and the cabin no longer existed.

There were people on the sidewalks, multitudes it seemed to me, although it was a small town and there could not really have been so many, and through the windows of the car, driving slowly, watching, I could see their mouths in conversation, their bodies moving in progress, and I was remote and unrelated. They had nothing to do with me. What was my body like? Was it similar to theirs? When their mouths moved, what happened? What came out? Could I make myself understood to them? Could I speak to them?

I tried, sitting enclosed in the car, making the sounds, practising, and the voice was strange, hoarse, and as if it came from somewhere else. But I was remembering and I knew the words. I read the lists I’d made aloud and was able to make them out, and that was all I needed. But I could not, right away, get out of the car.

I watched. It was like seeing a new species of animal, being hesitant to move and startle them, except that there was something senseless about these and, too, something sinister. I think I was frightened because they were like me and yet not my own kind any more. They moved innocently, walking and talking and stopping to look into store windows, there was no danger to me except that I wasn’t part of them, couldn’t remember them.