Cinnamon ground, the powdery earth here is saturated with rust. The passage takes us high into the mountains, the time goes with the passage and we are threading along a rocky course. Glance back and I can make out the remote, crumpled form of the dog where he died on the path behind us. The sounds we make, our voices, are muffled. Makemin stops us and sends a man up a shingled incline toward a house standing alone there against the rock. It seems to suck the breath out of my lungs; the house seems to stand outside time. It is plainly as it always was, an octagonal brick house with small-paned windows. The man comes loping back down to the column breathing hard. He explains that the house is on the far side of a chasm that runs down out of sight, hidden behind this mound of shingle. He saw signs there was a stone span there once, but the house is now completely inaccessible. He called to it, but there was no answer. A light burned in the window. Makemin strides up the slope to see for himself, and returns quickly, his face pale. With a terse order we are set in motion again.

As the sun sets, we come to a rise and get our first clear look at the interior. The land below us is flooded with dark purple dusk, while the pink and orange light of the setting sun still shines around us up here. Above the duskline the sun shines between me and the ground, sheeting it, so that the light hides the ground on its far side. Makemin’s face is coated with a shock of sunset light, like a transparent, hot mask of glowing red gelatin. The sun is setting closer than the horizon, looks like a dome protruding from the clouds; the cloudline to the north is a long grey sabre blade with its keen side to the indigo of the upper sky.

We camp along the path, before dimming blue dome and a cloud floor. No moon rises. We crouch in the fluttering air, wind thrashing soundlessly in our clothes, and eat sullenly. The stars come out. The clouds below erupt in a distant flash that brings Makemin to his feet not far from me. There is no noise of thunder and so it takes a while to realize we are seeing lightning below the stars. Makemin stalks back to his letters, weighted down by rocks on his portable writing desk. His little fume light burns behind me, projecting his shadow past me and out into the air over the valley below. I fall asleep with white violet and blue spots flickering in the grey in front of me.

*