Across a wall, over a fast river children were juggling with black and white cones. My mouth was open and I was sure I had called to them, but they seemed to take no notice, carrying on with their game, silently and intently performing its mysterious moves. Somewhere in the wall was a glass door with a big silver lock. From some part of my body I conjured a key, but its metal was weak and it bent as I tried it in the lock. Then the keyhole was so large I found I could get what I took to be my fingers inside to flick over the tumblers. With a will I forced open the door to find the scene changed: where there had been a river and children playing I saw only a black ditch skirting a grassy expanse. I had the sensation of running over great areas of hillside but, in my dreaming eye, I saw only the image of my head, chest, shoulders and arms, floating, going nowhere. I contrived that the children should somehow reappear, but the figures which ghosted up before me were not children; indeed, I had become the child in their midst. They were resting, dark shapes, fatigued as if by the rigours of battle. All about them were severed limbs and other pieces of human matter. In a piece of madness I believed this offal to be the parts needed for an adult version of the game I had seen the children playing. I tried juggling the meat, but the various bits and pieces would not behave in my hands, sticking to my fingers, soiling my own apparently healthy skin. I wanted to go back, but there was nowhere to go back to. The earth fell from beneath me and I woke with a powerful headache.

We were turning from a main road on to a black side road which snaked its way before us through white fields. Anna leaned forward again to look at me, but this time she did not smile. I got the impression that she had gone on talking to me for some time before she realized I was asleep. She seemed uncomfortable; perhaps we had been travelling too long, I had no idea. The sun was no longer so apparent, being shaded by ivory clouds which diffused its light and made its whereabouts vague. Anna remained silent as she turned the car into an area of woodland. Then I was struck by an amusing thought: Was all this simply an elaborate charade? Were we to meet accomplices of hers who would drag me from the car, cover me with leaves and soil that I might be claimed by the earth, weathered and eaten by insects, acids, moonlight? Was I about to die? No one on this planet would know, certainly no one could be that bothered. If there had been muscles in my face I might have smiled at that thought. I wondered if I really cared myself.