Tofi and the men likely were awake with all the commotion, but they were pretending otherwise. The au’it certainly had waked, and wrote, silent in her preoccupation.

Hati lay with one arm beneath her head, gazing at the sun through the canvas as he lay down beside her.

“Luz has her all the time,” he said. “I don’t know which I dealt with. I tried to help. I don’t think I did.”

“Norit knows what you do,” Hati said. “Norit wants help.”

“I think she does. But she can’t push Luz out.”

“Norit can’t say no to anyone, least of all to Luz. But she wants you. She wants you more than anything.”

“What can I do? What cure is there for her?”

“None,” Hati said, “until Norit says no to Luz.” Hati rolled over and opened her arms to him, and drew him in despite the heat.

At that small move, Norit moved, and leapt up, and shoved the au’it out of the way and sent the au’it’s pen into the sand in her rush out of the tent.

Marak leapt up, and Hati did, dodging the au’it, half-stumbling over Tofi and his helpers, hurrying to stop her as she raced out of the shade of the tent.

Norit ran past the resting beasts, wasting strength and sweat in the heat, and Marak ran foremost after her. Hati ran behind him. There was a rock shelf beyond, where a careless foot might slip, and Norit sent herself straight for it, maybe knowing what was there, maybe forgetting that hazard.

Before she could reach that edge Marak caught her, and barely so. They fell down on the stony ground, full length.

Her clothing had saved her skin, except her hands bled. His arm bled. But the madness was in possession of her. She struck at him as he got up and dragged her to her feet, struck him hard, and then only halfheartedly. “I want to die,” Norit cried, as he held her, but Luz said, in the next breath, trying to stand erect: “She won’t succeed. I won’t let her come to harm.”

He still had possession of Norit’s wrist. Hati arrived at a walk, now, ahead of Tofi and his two men. To their appalled looks, he shook his head and walked toward the camp, leading Norit by a firm grip.

Norit said not a thing, nor objected when he set her down on her mat and harshly told her to stay there. The blood on her hands was still fresh, but the wounds were already dry as if hours old.

The au’it had not ventured far from the tent. She had watched their return. She sat and wrote, now, a dry, persistent scratching, recording Norit’s desperate rush toward death.