I kept falling. I got up but then I tumbled down again soon enough. I told myself there was strong rope behind me and that at the end of that rope, hard by the wall, was my anchor and all the other anchors, holding on, keeping us connected.

For a little while we stumbled beneath the shadow of the house. There was protection there, but out from the shadow, well out of it, you were naked, weren’t you, more alone. Only I didn’t feel so alone, not at first, because there were all those other heap Iremongers ploughing along beside me. I wasn’t alone then. Look down. Don’t look down. Look down.

There I was.

I was in the heaps. They stretched before me, into the distance. The heaps were shallow by the wall, you felt you were on hard ground there, and for those first couple of yards the heaps weren’t very deep at all, you waded a bit, and I thought, I’ll be all right, you’ll be all right, but then those shallows were left further behind, and you had to keep moving, you had to keep walking or you’d sink, you’d sink down, each stop sank you a bit, you had to keep climbing up afterwards and keep moving. And still then we weren’t very deep at all, and if I stopped for a moment then I sank up to my shins, and must scramble up, try to find something to step onto, a bit of wood or metal, some brick, to get my boots out again. Keep moving. Keep moving. Don’t look down. Look down.

It was like walking upon a creature, that’s what I thought. Only the creature, whatever it was, wasn’t living, it had died some time ago and we were out picking upon its great rotten body, it was hard in one place, soft in another, you slipped about, and sometimes just plunged a bit. But still the wall was behind us then and I wasn’t alone.

The heap Iremongers swung themselves about, picking stuff up in their big mittens or stabbing at it with their sticks, leaping from spot to spot as if they knew all the stepping stones, as if there was nothing random in this ground, as if it were solid and trustworthy and well mapped. With each small timid step I slipped and slid. I saw two of the heap Iremongers lugging some beam, already heaving it back to the wall, another had an old engine of some sort, and one held nothing more than an old soap dish. And he seemed quite happy with that. Keep moving. Keep moving. Don’t look down. Look down.