I’m shaken nearly off my feet, only a doll on wire, “Which way damn you?! We’ve been going in circles again!”

They’re counting.

Now there’s one more, every time.

*

Did I point the way?

We are marching again.

I see feet matching pace with mine, just to my right.

Marching alongside me and in step, but his head is turned toward me, his eyes stare right into mine as the trees and white land flash by behind his head, his lower jaw swaying gently against the dangling tongue.

*

The cemetery appears like a buckle in a belt of trees, all buried hoops of walls with a staggered series of gaps leading through them into the place, big as a city. From it sprouts an hourglass-shaped tower all glistening with pearly mosaic walls, hanging a hundred feet over us, its head brushed by the clouds, its foundation still nowhere near us. Another tower stands further back on the other side, and another further back, still vague in the black mist.

Drawing closer to the outer wall, and this is where the road leads us, a sound rises out of the boom of the wind. The clattering of some cold fire like a halo around us, as if the flames were solid and hard, knocking together. Now it’s also a trickling of dry gravel, each piece scraping another. The outermost ring wall is low and broad, made of what seems to be a single solid piece of pale grey metal, not much higher than a man, but yards thick. At the gap in the ring, the walls are sheared back at an angle, scored over with hairlike lines. The gap is not a complete break—the two ends are linked together with a single, slender, shining silver band that marks the line of the curved threshold of the cemetery. Makemin is the first to cross it.

It’s only in looking back that I realize I stepped over the threshold as well. The rustling sound receded the moment I did it, but it’s still there, more metallic, more focussed. The second wall is tall and lean, made of enamelled metal without a chip or crack. The third wall is like a hedge of woven brass. The spacious expanses between the walls are lined with evenly-spread white pebbles.

The fourth, innermost wall, is made of thin, dark grey metal with a low arch set into it. A boulevard runs into the cemetery, plumb to the mound at the center. We look ahead to the mound, which is topped by an isolated building, and on sight I know that is where we are going. The fire sound is joined by a regular choughing sound, like thick metal pier cables knocking together.