The noise of the forest is almost the sound of chewing teeth in a closed mouth. I imagine disembodied voices speaking flat, factual words in Lashlache. The idea is so vivid, I seem to hear them, saying nothing, speaking at random, in fragments of ancient conversations still hanging in the air like unmelting breaths. My balance sways a little in me, and I veer a step or two; I imagine the influence of the ruins had something to do with this.

I am inspired. I exaggerate. I let myself stumble, and pretend that I’ve suddenly gone woozy. Silichieh steps up to me and I feel his arm clamped across my back, his flat hand gripping my upper arm. Rolling my head forward I sag and stagger, mumble a little. I don’t want to overdo it.

“What is it?” Silichieh asks in a bewildered voice. He’s been watching me ever since I first warned of the glass storm. I hate to play with him, but that hate ranks low on the list of things I hate just now.

I pretend a little recovery. I want them to believe I have a special sensitivity to this place, that spirits are meddling with my finely-tuned nerves, so they will listen when I tell them which way to go, and not ask too many questions how I know. It’s not so hard. I’ve always been the sort of person who would sink under the weight of an ordinary day.

“I’m all right,” I insist again and again. I must act irritated, and give the impression that I want to avoid attention rather than attract it.

Silichieh looks hastily in the direction of the ruins. A few others saw me falter as well. Did I imagine I was pretending? Did something make me pretend?

I breathe out through my mouth, feeling less and less a master of myself. This pretending has brought up such a heavy sadness in my chest, and sudden misery. Death ... death, waste ... violation of every single precious, horrifyingly vulnerable, precious thing. All at once, it seems to me there is nothing in the world but terrifying frailty and the nothingness that waits for it, that will always inevitably overwhelm and violate it. The whole world is untasted ripeness rotting.

My breath keeps catching on my throat on its way out my mouth, I feel as though boiling water were streaking down my face in searing lines, and I taste salt.

In my mind, she sits in the brilliant day, in the regal gloom of her veiled trees, only a memory and that not even so clear a memory. Can I remember what she looked like? Looks like? I’m exhausted, and I’m going soft—my own young hands, the trees, this soft eerie air and light, Silichieh’s worried eyes, Thrushchurl looking at me too with a weird knowing concern because he’s seen through me but won’t betray me, the kindness of my friends, all too beautiful.