More hours pass. Jericho loses all sense of time, until there is nothing of him but the rhythm of his feet. The dance takes him over, and in so far as he remains capable of thought, he thinks it is not they who are dancing the mountain, it is the mountain dancing them. Hector’s back shines with sweat. It is the force of his will that is holding him to the dance. Jericho can feel the sweat on his own back. His bare feet ache, they feel swollen, the size of serving plates, and still he dances on, through another barrier of exhaustion, through the long, dark hours when he is no longer sure if he’s himself or has become another, until at last the sky begins to lighten. Napo comes towards him with his plumes. The kundus hasten their beat now, led by Hector’s drum, and still they dance. There can’t be more than ten left in the amorire, though Jericho is in no state to count. People coming down from the platforms are singing, children who have been asleep are woken, and when the first rays of sun come round the edge of the peaks, there is shouting of thanks, the dance ground fills again with dancers and the crescendo of drums. Hector and Jericho dance out, over to the platform where the men from their village have hung their headdresses. No drug, no night awake has done to Jericho what this night has done – removing all thought, all mind, until he is pure rhythm, the beat of his feet on the ground. The kundus have stopped, the dancing has ended, but still he feels the pulse in his feet that continues in another sphere of existence.

All that day he and Hector lie on the platform. Food is brought. Girls come with fresh water from the spring, yam and baked banana are laid out on large leaves. A pineapple; Jericho eats chunk after chunk, its sweet juice a balm, and as the sun rises into the sky, he begins to return to some sense of himself, whatever it is that he now is, and falls asleep.

When he wakes, Lilla is beside him. ‘Ancestor gift,’ she says. The word she uses for gift is soft, different from the word Obi uses; more like spirit, he thinks, listening to this language that comes back to him and eludes him all at the same time ‘Ancestor gift,’ Lilla says again, and Jericho shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says, ‘not an ancestor gift. Just a man, that’s all. Look. A man who can get sick.’ He puts his hands on the hollow of his stomach.

Lilla smiles. ‘Dance spirit,’ she says, and he drifts back to sleep.

When he next wakes, she is still there, a strong, calm presence. Like the mountain.

‘Janape and Leonard,’ he says, and she makes a soft cooing sound, letting her fingers twine around each other. ‘Obi says they did not lie together. Maybe not.’