The first soldier storms out with only a glance at his companion by the flap, who has not moved nor shifted her eyes from me. Naturally, they will have their own narrators. Soldiers come in and out for blankets or rain gear, as the water begins to fall hard again. They are not hostile, and pay me no more attention than seems necessary. Drawn anxious features stretched over their skulls is all I see. I’m a nuisance to them.

Relentless dripping, tapping on top of the tent.

Now I am compelled to rise and taken to another, half-collapsed tent, close to the rim. There is not much space in this tent, only enough for me to sit on the low stool that occupies it. The irregular flap has a view of the town below. The soldier walks away; I can see the others before me, huddled in among the rocks, scanning the town.

With nothing to do I have a harder time keeping the fear from gnawing—I’ve already begun to shiver, my uniform is plastered to my skin with sweat and icy rain. A wave of sharper cold blisters over me from behind ... out of the drumming of the rain comes a whispered roar, like the hooning sound of breath being blown into a bottle. It approaches the tent with steady deliberation—I can’t turn to look. It’s high up ... Nothing I could see anyway, without leaving the tent.

The roaring stops as something thuds on the canvas right above my head—two puckers where talons clutch the fabric.

I hear its respiration, regular, painful out of water, a protracted lowing, like a stricken animal moaning out its life in a deep cave. I look forward out the flap, my hands beginning to tremble on my knees. The presence soaks into my back. I can guess what it is—Wacagan have Predicanten.

The tent creaks. The thing lows just on top of me like a harbinger of doom.

The rain falls harder still. Though it is louder, it does not overwhelm that other sound ... As it eases again, my eye is drawn to a sprawling activity before me. The grey slopes to my right flap turbid with mud, I see the fumbling, cream-fringed edges of water tumbling over each other in layers as they grapple over rocks, down to the levels. Motion on lower ground now—the water climbs the walls of the houses in Cuttquisqui’s streets—all that landscape we explored and found swept clean of litter and this is why—the mounds of earth at the town’s edges were dykes, abandoned half-built.

The Predicate’s presence drops down out of it, enveloping me in a pillar of sway and suddenly every muscle in my body strains against itself, my jaw trembles and I am rigid. My spirit leaps against my frozen body—