Low looks wildly all around. He rushes to one side of the small open space among the trees, dragging Jil Punkinflake with him. The limp legs draw grooves on the ground.

He rushes to the other side. First one way, then the other, where there’s no way, as though he wants to catch the escaped life before it gets too far, throw the body down onto it and trap it there like throwing a blanket on a fire. Low’s face has a searching, escaping look on it.

Now Low bends his neck slowly, and stares down at drooping Jil Punkinflake. His face bunches and swells. His chest heaves. Sighs burst from his wrenched mouth, and weak fluting from his throat. His eyes and cheeks drip down onto dead cheeks and eyes. The droplets trickle on a bent back neck.

With a loud sound, he swings the body of his friend onto his back and carries it in the direction of the hill, his reversed steps erasing Jil Punkinflake’s last footprints. His sobs hasten to take their places, to stand forever among the trees.

*

“Doooon’t!”

Talk, gestures, expressions.

“No!” A warning note.

The commotion settles. A deep voice sadness makes deeper speaks calmly, repeating a name, with variable combinations of “low.” Lulom Lousce Lousche Lulom Low Loom, Low Loom Column, is me—meaning me is listening to a request of me to do something that needs to be done, that won’t get done as long as I don’t do it. Silichieh is the one who talks through to me.

They are gathered round me, or around the body of Jil Punkinflake that hangs from my shoulders. Appearing again in my mind, his name knocks the wind back out of me, weakness overtakes me, and I fall down with his weight on top of me.

I can only tell them he ran into a patrol. Why not tell the whole truth? Because I haven’t the strength. Not to keep the secret nor to tell it. So I push my weeping face against the ground.

Thrushchurl and Silichieh have been gathering brush. I numbly rise and help him build the pile. If anyone else has anything to say to me, I don’t hear it. I’m going to burn his body. We build the pile together, and burn Jil Punkinflake on it. I kiss him, right through the fire. There are shouts as they yank me back thumping my uniform where it smoulders.

Makemin’s faceless face appears above me, black eyes through the smoke from Jil Punkinflake’s burning body.

I tell him the road is clear ahead. We can make our way back to it now we’re above the road block. The cemetery is two miles away. My voice is frail and orphaned and shaken. Stumbling blindly, weak in body my sinews are as limp as old rags, and every sensation jabs at my nerves. Makemin’s fist jerks my uniform—

“Which way?” he barks.

I barely notice him.