At noon the storm was stronger; all afternoon it shook the tower, pulling the slates from the roof; it came from the sea and the earth, from the sea beds and the roots of the forests. I could hear nothing but the voice of the thunder that drowned the two stricken voices; I saw the lightning stride up the hill, a bright, forked man blinding me through the tower windows. And still they danced, into the early evening, the storm increasing, and still the half-naked virgins danced to the doors. This was the dance of the celebration of death in the interior world.

I heard a voice say over the thunder, The dead shall be buried. This was not everlasting death, but a death of days; this was a sleep with no heart. We bury the dead, said the voice that heard my heart, the brief and the everlasting. The storm up the wind measured off the distances of the voice, but a lull in the rain let the two struggling voices at my side recall me to the hand and the acid. I dragged up the stiffening hand, unlocked the fingers, and raised the beaker to my mouth. As the glass burned me, there came a knocking at the door and a cry from the people of the house. They who were seeking the body of the new dead worried the door. Swiftly I glanced towards the table where a lemon lay on a plate. I punctured the skin of the lemon and poured in the acid. Then down came the storm of the dark voices and the knocks, and the tower door broke on its hinges. The dead was found. I fought between the shoulders of the entering strangers, and, leaving them to their picking, spiralled down, sped through the corridors, the lemon at my breast.

Nant and I were brothers in this wild world far from the border villages, from the sea that has England in its hand, from the spires of God and the uneaten graves beneath them. As one, one headed, two footed, we ran through the passages and halls, seeing no shadow, hearing none of the wicked intimacies of the house. We looked for a devil in the corners, but their secrets were ours. So we ran on, afraid of our footfalls, exulting in the knocking of the blood, for death was at our breast, a sharp fruit, a full and yellow turmour shaped to the skin.

Nant was a lonely runner in the house; I parted from him, leaving a half ache and a half terror, going my own way, the way of light breaking over Cathmarw hill and the Black Valley. And, going his own way, he climbed alone up a stone stairs to the last tower. He put his mouth to her cheek and touched her nipple. The storm died as she touched him.

He cut the lemon in half with the scissors dangling from the rope of her skirt.