I sat up over Isaac, knocked his hand away—I felt desperate to explain myself to him, to make him understand. I thought frantically. “You might think you love me,” I said, “but there’s no such thing as a definite self, you see.” I stared down at his face, wan in the fake lantern light. “It’s very important that you understand this. The self is an illusion. We’re all just shifting groups of memory and personality, but you can’t hammer down a self in all of that.”

“Shhhh,” he said. I tried again.

“Listen. If I took all my memories out, and put them in, I don’t know, a tree, and put my personality in the tree, would the tree be me?”

“It wouldn’t, Berie.”

“Yes,” I said helplessly. It all made more sense when Dice was saying it. “So you may love your memories of me, the unity that you perceive, but there is no fixed point. I’m not really here at all. Neither are you.” I believed it in my bones but Isaac’s face was blank, uncomprehending.

“I know who you are,” Isaac said. “I’ve always wanted you. Even now,” he added.

“We can’t be together.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is my home.”

“It won’t always be.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. There had been a question open since Pear died—the question of whether I should leave, now that I saw how unyielding Dice was in his rules. A question since Queen left—since Queen lost her baby—since Queen got pregnant—and now I had answered it. There had been a question open since I let my suitcase ride to Durham without me. I couldn’t comprehend what forever meant but I had the feeling that forever was the kind of thing that steals across you slowly, like the Trembling Giant in Utah; only when you zoom out beyond the human level can you see that it’s all one tree after all. I was going to stay there forever. I never had a choice. Well, that was that.

I stood.

My lantern animated the monstrous hay shadows again. The cows were boulders in the dark, snoring and gently clanking their chains. I walked back to the long house, looking at my feet, not at the stars. I thought I heard Isaac say my name—my old name—and I stopped. Dice was looking out from his lit-up window, still as a tree. I couldn’t see his shadowed face, whether his eyes were closed or open.

CHAPTER 22

It was Isaac’s third day. Gray diamond frost sparkled on the yard, and it was hard to get out of bed. I dumped out my boot but the plastic piglet had vanished. I laid my cheek on the dirty floorboards and gazed at the space below the beds. The piglet was gone.

“What are you looking for?” said Sara.