Makemin calls to Nikhinoch, who goes and comes with a rifle. Makemin takes it, gives it to me, I give it to her. Her fingers brush mine lightly as she takes it, her eyes invariably on the gun. As we return to the column with our gratitude still hanging in the air her gaze remains with us like mist resting on the water.

“Do you believe her?” I am asked.

“Of course I do. They always use a particular inflection when they lie.”

“I can’t say I see the use of that.”

“Oh,” I sigh, “it’s conventional. You use it when you want to seem to be lying, and so then you can tell the truth.”

The men abandon their resting postures and though they are tired I can see they are very interested in getting to safety, like Makemin. Descending with the path away from the house on the slope I feel oddly clearheaded as though my mind were a wiped-clean glass. We pass between two hills and into an exposed place. Its openness eyes us unnervingly. The grey ground is dimpled over with puddles that reflect the sky’s moving seams like a mirror pelt of milky spots. As we venture out onto it, like spirits answering an incantation the first buildings appear opposite us, looking silver and blue as pink radiance percolates down through the fog. As I walk, my eyes on these foggy buildings, I find I cannot make myself step in a puddle—no one can. I hear no splashes. To my right, ahead, I see an arch standing alone, two slender columns and a delicate span. There are many, maybe too many, lined up here in rows, as though someone wanted to make tunnels through the air. They are too attentive to us to use for cover.

House coming up ahead. I feel a knock against my boot and there’s a twang of metal fleeing me on the ground—as I look down to see the rusted can I’ve kicked the house turns and disappears into the fog—I stop. There is no house in sight. Was it an animal? There are no animals as big as houses, not on land. Fog magnifies things.

These structures are gathered here in isolation. We do not draw near to them but march instead between huge mounds of displaced earth. The light, or the air, is soft, grey shining through grey. Icing the odor of damp stone and the breath of the clay, a smell like onions. No nothing like onions—a chemical smell, like waterproofing chemicals or bookbinder’s glue, musty as old hair, but with something reeking in it that puckers my nose.

Thrushchurl points. “The mines,” he says faintly.