A colossal Predicate’s head, hairless, half shapeless, boneless, and partially transparent with a grey hue, hangs in the sky, wreathed in clouds. The bulging eyes are dark balls visible through the tissue, crossed by the slender edge of closed eyelids. The mouth is a lipless arch. It is a dreaming head, sinking toward the forest.

As I stand, still as I can, where I am, I can hear noises begin to fill the woods. I hear flapping wings and vocal noises, soft cries, a rustling and mutter, first here, now there, all around me and gathering, but no sound is distinct enough to name. They are only noises, some punctual and some continuous, and they seem to call to one another. I imagine a ring of those sounds forming around me, and then closing, but I don’t budge from my spot—only crouch down on my haunches to help myself keep still.

I hear the regular beating of feet on the leaves—it rushes up swiftly, and passes me. I never saw anything.

More feet, slapping now. For a moment I see, flickering into the cover of the trees from the bank of a paltry stream, a vast sea lung, clear as glass, borne along on many naked human legs. Its sides are trickling, and white foam oozes down the legs—are they attached to the thing, or are there many men carrying its mass?

Rapid, singular steps, distinct from the sound of bare feet on clay and purposefully marching through the leaves toward me. I pick my way as quickly and silently as I can toward a defile of stones that tumbles from a low rise down to the stream. Hiding among the rocks, I try to pick out the source of the steps, but I can’t see anything and the steps have stopped.

Faint groan of metal. Two shapes travel up the bank of the stream, on my side. They come near enough for me to recognize the man from the road, sitting in a two-wheeled cart, snowy head softly glowing against the mounded wrap he’s bundled in. A pair of huge cats draws the cart; one is grey and haggard, with a pelt like unshorn wool, and the other is a buttery golden-ash color with dark rings around its eyes, a swaying, bloated gut, and scrawny legs. Both are slobbering with effort, lashed between two poles. They stop, and the man alights, raising his arms to the huge sea lung, fingers still rigidly outstretched. The lung flutters like billowing glass, all but invisible on the opposite bank, hidden among the trees.

I’m certain he’s a Predicate. I leave my hiding place and stalk up to him. Never in my life have I missed my footing on rocks, so I dare to stay on the defile until I’m within a few paces of him.