The trees come up around us again. The rain stops quickly, like a faucet shut it off, and the white ground dries, the pale grey mud that clings to us dries. Marching, the air space and silence staring at us as we grind ourselves down past nothing. We camp in three tight groups in line of sight around the base of some bigger trees, with more open space under their branches. I almost falling on my face, roll over and sleep, the last respite. It isn’t rest. Makemin and Saskia seem to have endless endurance—I can hear them still, from time to time, behind me. I’ve never known fatigue like this before, and I’m far hardier than the others. I gaze indifferently at the trees and their wonders ... and then I sleep, despite the rapping of the boughs.

I awake in darkness with a heavy weight on my chest. I can’t see what it is—I take it in my hands, a weird, irregular, cold, thing, gritty, too—it moves, loathsome to feel under my hands like a slug. As I struggle, and breathe out, its weight keeps my chest from expanding. It’s crushing the breath out of me—I struggle—I foam, snarl madly and push off the ground with my feet and as I turn myself sideways I feel it topple from me at last.

I pitch back gasping for breath, and two black pinions spread in the air with a glassy scream. The wings whip through the air and clash together—a blast of oily-smelling wind and I get a brief glimpse of flapping against the light between the trees.

It’s gone. I sink down against the roots, shaking.

*

Crusts of blue mortar thrown up in waves show where outskirts of the city once were. The unnatural white soil is part of the ruins. We are already within the city limits, although the trees are just as thick. Between them, I see the shape of a black hare, ears up, motionless as a statue. From far off in the distance a ripple comes waving through the trees, though there is no wind.

The branches clatter together. The black hare is gone.

Men in Wacagan uniform hang from the trees here. We’ve wandered right in among them. They dangle in space, chins on their breasts. I see some tangled in the boughs high overhead, as though they had dropped into them from a great height. Far ahead, I see a shape perched on one’s shoulder, picking fiercely at its head. The bird stops and stares at us. From its head rise two long leaf-shaped ears, and it flies straight up through the canopy of dead branches, disappearing into iridescent sky.