The snow went on forever, and then a new season came, a dark, false season. It was the Paradise thaw, the last phase of winter, though how could we have known? The sun barely shone. The snow melted, for a while. The grass grew white and yellow, but it did grow, and in a biter’s house we had found a store of corn. The taste was poisonous, but I was glad to be alive, because the world was strangely beautiful during the thaw. The trees never recovered their leaves. In the valleys, in the white grass, they stood up dead with naked arms. And it was always dark, for at this time the sun crept blood-red along the horizon all day, rising and setting between the jagged peaks, the colored clouds like sunset all the morning and midday, the shadows long and heavy. At night it was almost brighter—you could ride all night, because during the thaw a new planet appeared, Paradise, you call it, another world, and it burned with a dead light above our heads. That first night it took up half the sky. The dogs howled and cried out. Barbarians worship Paradise, but I knew nothing of that yet. At first I was afraid.

The air was still. There was not a breath of wind. There was no rain, although the ground was wet with stagnant water everywhere. No dogs gave birth. Plants grew, yes, but the stalks had lost their stiffness—they grew flat and tangled on the ground like the hair on a man’s head. The air seemed hard to breathe and full of queasy echoing. There was no nourishment in it. Noises close at hand seemed far away. And in the high pastures our ears buzzed and rang; we walked our horses and held onto their manes. It was a different kind of living. People slept all day, and even awake they were part asleep.

It is easy to describe these things as if the world had died overnight. But soon we remembered nothing different. These changes, though they sound tremendous, came subtly and gradually. I thought I was growing up. My body had changed more than the air. And though every day I was filled with sleepy awe, though in everything I saw the promise of my death—the stark trees, the plants twisting along the ground—I was more concerned with hunger, and more concerned with sleeping next to that girl every night. I wanted there to be a way of touching her, but it was impossible. I would sit awake, looking at the heap of blankets next to me. Perhaps she would have responded to my touch. Yet I was afraid I was not capable. I had seen it often enough. And barbarians can copulate like animals, but I thought I was not yet quite enough of a barbarian for that. There were physical differences, I had heard. Besides, what should I do? Should I say . . . something, should I reach out my hand? Men and women drank to frenzy before they could surrender to desire. They drank a wine we had, and then they dreamed a numb, erotic dream.