Memories fail him now. Banners and bombards, the screaming of wounded men, the reek of sulfur, the deaths of Moonlight and Tree—sometimes his recollections of the siege on the city seem no more than the residue of bad dreams, lifting into consciousness for a moment before dissipating. Forgetting, he is learning, is how the world heals itself.

He has heard that the new sultan (bless and keep him forever) takes his trees from forests even farther away, and that the Christians have sailed ships to new lands at the farthest edge of the ocean where there are entire cities made of gold, but he has little use for such stories anymore. Sometimes as he stares into his fire, the tale Anna used to tell comes back to him, of a man transformed into a donkey, then a fish, then a crow, journeying across earth, ocean, and stars to find a land without suffering, only to choose to return home in the end, and live a last few years among his animals.

One day in early spring, long after he has lost all track of his age, a series of storms sweeps over the mountain. The river turns brown, and mudslides block the road, and the rumble of falling rocks echoes through the gorges. The worst night finds Omeir huddled atop his table with the dog beside him listening to a sloshing fill the cottage: not the usual dripping and trickling, but a flood.

Water flows beneath the door in sheets and streams trickle down the walls and Clover stands blinking up to her hocks in the rising water. At dawn he wades through dung and bark and debris and checks on the hens and leads Clover up to the highest terrace to nibble what grasses she can find and finally he looks up at the limestone bluff overlooking the ravine and panic lurches through him.

The old half-hollow yew has fallen in the night. He claws his way up the trail, sliding in mud. Moss-decked branches splay everywhere and the huge root network lies unearthed like a second tree ripped out of the earth. The smell is of sap and shattered wood and things long buried lifted into the light.

It takes him a long time to locate Anna’s bundle in the wreckage. The oxhide is soaked. Little jangles of alarm ride through him as he carries the sodden bundle down to the cottage. He shovels mud out of the hearth and manages to start a smoky fire and hangs his sleeping rugs in the byre to dry and finally unwraps the book.

It is wringing wet. Leaves separate from the binding as he teases them apart, and the dense strings of symbols upon them—all those little sooty bird-tracks crammed together—seem more faded than he remembers.