On a forest path at dawn we meet an Afghan man with two Somali companions. He is walking to Paris, his friends to Calais. They fear the farmers and their dogs, the police, for those left behind, the coming winter. One has a laugh rich as August sunshine.

Oh, I have ta’en

Too little care of this!

Deep play. I love you. I love you. Of course, it is a game.

The bulls are waiting under the earth in total darkness. In my sleep, I hear them stamping, their hot breath.

We buy torches, rope, begin startling bats among the rocky overhangs. In the caves, there is often the smell of water, pooled and stagnant.

Sometimes, there are dark mouths high up on the cliffs. I climb up but most of the caves are shallow. In many there are places where the walls are blackened by smoke. I crumble the soft ash of a fire between my fingertips. Who were you, traveler? It blows away on the wind.

“Come down from there.”

“You come up.”

It pays to have something to hunt, something outside ourselves.

“What if it caves in, the cave? What if we’re buried down there with the aurochs?”

It pays to have something to fear, something outside ourselves.

This one is deep. We dare each other, a little further, a little further again. We whisper for no reason. David swings the torch and the light jerks wildly, and for a moment we’re on a boat and the deck is pitching under our feet.

A little further, just a little further. Laughter, fear and laughter.

“Turn off the torch.”

David turns off the torch and the darkness is complete. I cannot tell my eyelid from my eye. At my side, David smells like river water and campfire smoke. It is cold here, the heat of his body is like a beacon.

Now the whole world is a dream: the houses and offices, the supermarkets and IKEAs, Selfridges, the Savoy, the churches and chapels, the manor. The commuters gazing at their phones are dreaming, the climbers ascending the cliff walls. The cities are dreaming, and the Downs, the gorges and forests, the sea gripped in a pulsating, churning dream. The world dreaming all of it back.

I feel the millions of tons of rock pressing down. The ancient darkness. And yes, the aurochs!

So still, so quiet, I think I can hear David’s racing heart. His mouth swims against my ear.

“So, can you see it yet?”

“What?”

“A future.”

Fragile, the vision. Wet and trembling in the mind’s eye, yet to unfurl. I cannot look at it directly, but it is there and it is mine.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I think I can.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To be frank, the journey to this page has been long and plentiful in orcs (but oh, the views!) and I’d need another book to name everyone who helped along the way.