He can still hear Anna’s shriek when he first touched the sack. The way the book protected them as they left the city; the way it summoned a flock of stone-curlews to his snares; the way it brought their son back from fever. The quick humor in Anna’s eyes as she bent over the lines, translating as she went.

He banks up the fire and strings webs of cording around the cottage and hangs bifolios over the lines to dry as if he were smoking game birds, and all this time his heart races, as though the codex were a living thing left to his trust and he has endangered it—as though he were charged with a single, simple responsibility, to keep this one thing alive, and has bungled it.

When the leaves are dry, he reassembles the book, uncertain that he is putting the folios back in the correct order, and wraps it in a new square of waxed leather. He waits for the first migrating storks to come over the ravine, a lopsided chevron of them following their ancient directive, leaving whatever distant place in the south where they have spent the winter and heading to whatever distant place in the north where they will spend the summer. Then he takes his best blanket, two skins of water, several dozen pots of honey, the book, and Anna’s snuffbox, and pulls shut the door of the cottage. He calls to Clover and she comes trotting, ears up, and the dog rises from the splash of sunlight where it drowses beside the byre.

First to the house of his son, where he gives his daughter-in-law the three hens and half his silver and tries to give away the dog too, though the dog will have none of it. His granddaughter loops a wreath of spring roses around Clover’s neck, and he starts northwest around the mountain, Omeir on foot and Clover, half-blind, climbing steadily beside, the dog at their heels.

He avoids inns, markets, crowds. When he passes through hamlets he generally keeps the dog close and his face hidden beneath the drooping brim of his hat. He sleeps outdoors, and chews the blue starflowers Grandfather used to chew to soothe aches in his back, and takes heart from Clover and her levelheaded gait. The few people they pass are charmed, and ask him where he found such a bright and pretty little donkey, and he feels blessed.