Moving closer, Hacquelebacq saw the ocean of ants covered some fat man whose heart had been skewered by the wind vane poking out of him. His face was invisible under the thick clusters of ants, and by his side was a sack of wind vanes, and some few broken jars, dripping unguents, which, exposed, had hardened into a thick slime. Hacquelebacq examined the sack, and, seeing nothing could be salvaged, left quickly, wondering if the woods were functioning as some kind of graveyard, but now, on his knees, he realises the whole earth is a graveyard.

He takes the bed of leaves off his little finger, discards it, rises and urinates plentifully against a tree, watching the bark darken as his steaming fluids slap off it. It is very damp, and his hair has taken on a life of its own. A bleating comes from behind him, and he is no longer lost. He follows the sound, touching off the trees he passes with the flat of his hand.

The trees become thinner, and he comes into paler shade. Through the lattice of trunks he sees the two lambs, the waddling goose with its broken wing and the two calves, all their heads surrounded by little halos of incessant flies. He had abandoned them in his great hurry, and he sees that, through sheer luck, in their movements their ropes got caught underneath some stone and they were left stranded, waiting for him.

The badger has slipped its noose and vanished. To add to this, his goose is dying, swishing its arced neck back and forth in a trance. His ark continues to diminish rather than grow. Still, his sack of ropes is near. His livelihood remains to him; and he has his new boots.

A small distance from him a young woman is conversing loudly with the structure that impeded his entry to Nobber. She is waving her hands in the air, but the sun is too bright for him to maintain his gaze. He cannot make out her figure, or even the figure of that demonic structure behind her.

If a little woman is not afraid of that thing, he thinks, then neither am I, taking the ropes from under the stone, and twining them together into one large knot. He leads the animals towards her, and they follow, nodding their heads back and forward in time to their steps.

As he gets closer, he realises the young woman is gabbling insensibly and with great emotion at this structure. Perhaps, he thinks, she is in grief.

‘Ahoy,’ he cries.

The young woman spins round, and drops to her haunches. Hacquelebacq halts. The ropes slacken, and one of the calves walks gently into his back, nuzzles the cloth of his tunic.

‘What are you?’ the woman says.

She is blond, quite young. He sees her face is covered in a thin layer of dried blood, broken into cracks by the rivulets of sweat that course down her forehead.