“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

Osan let go of my shoulders. “Apology accepted. So long as I never have to hear about ‘the patterns’ again.”

I sat up. I still felt groggy, but the sensation was no worse than a bad hangover. “I, uh … Was I saying all of that out loud?”

Millie offered me her canteen again. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Have some water.”

I drank, and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“How much do we have left?” I asked.

“Three canteens,” said Osan. “But the vegetation is getting greener. Hopefully we’ll find fresh water before nightfall.”

I shut my eyes for a few seconds, then nodded. “Let’s carry on, then.”

We moved slower than before. I was frustrated by my weakness, and the thin layer of delirium that still coated my brain. Millie and Osan were patient with me and relentlessly positive, but we had lost a lot of time; it was long past midday. If Celane was still pursuing us, she would be closing the distance fast.

The path meandered downhill, and the earth became softer and damp as we passed into a fecund wetland. White lilies burst from the peat, and water pooled in shallow, stagnant puddles. The rich smell of decay hovered in the air.

And yet there were no frogs, no fish, no insects. The silence seemed deeper here; it pressed up against my eardrums like I was moving underwater. The further we walked, the more the water rose, and the path began to give underfoot. In places it crumbled away entirely, leaving gaps where we were forced to wade through black silt. The broken stretches never extended more than ten feet, but my sense of vulnerability always increased as we stepped off the path. We were being watched.

Osan abruptly turned to the left, away from the curve of the path. Mud sluiced up to his knees.

“Hey,” I called. “Where are you going?”

He stopped.

“Osan?”

“Sorry.” He was quiet for a while, not moving. “I must have been confused.”

He returned to the path, and we continued. After that incident his behaviour seemed normal, but the moment stayed with me.

Step after step, one foot in front of the other. I tied my shoes to my bag and went barefoot. The wetland seemed endless; mud sucked at my ankles hungrily, dragging me down. Time blurred into a haze of shambling exhaustion as the sun gradually slunk toward the western horizon. We could not stop here. The sky was clear; once night fell, the temperature would plummet. So we continued through the indeterminable expanse of swollen grasses and sedge, the fat reeds bobbing as we trudged past, the deceptive softness of the soil that abruptly gave way to water, sinking us knee-deep in sludge.

The idea of navigating the maze of pools in the dark scared me. It would be all too easy to lose our way. And it would only take one misstep, one error—