Later, I join the veiled woman who waits for me beneath the veiled branches, in a small paved spot by an airy pavilion. The thick crepe folded down from her great hat is impermeable to my sight, and the waxy light lances in between us, making her even harder to see. There is little said, and less meant maybe, before it is suggested to me that I might go. But, I am also tersely instructed to come again tomorrow. She sounds different. I agree to go, but for the moment I am a little faint, and wait a little to collect myself. I rub my brow, and my face is tickled by three long grey hairs, tangled round the fingers of the hand that rubs my brow, fluttering in the wind.

I peer at her, who sits there under the trees, and then up at the cupola window. In a spell, I wander out through the house. Of all the doors I see, I pass only one that stands open. The room beyond is black, but fragrance, and the sound of breathing, comes from it. I pause to look. Teeth glint in the dark. I go on toward the front door. Bare feet pat the floor behind me. I feel two firm hands on my shoulders.

On my way back to the college, the swift-coming rain catches me, and I have to hurry along the sloughing path with my lapels turned up. The trees here are bare, it takes me a while to find one with enough leaves to offer me any shelter. I stand there shaking the rain from my hair. Already the trunks around me are soaked, glistening and brown like hard turds planted upright in the ground. I put my hand in my pocket and with a shock I feel it close on the whirring bottle. I forgot to give it to her.

*

I am drinking with Jil Punkinflake when the word comes, just within the one vast hour. Separating the glass from my lip to which it had lightly adhered makes it ring, and I pick up the envelope from the rough boards of the table. From a nest of shredded newspaper comes a small card with Makemin’s name embossed in what I know at once to be real gold near the top: my orders. We move out tomorrow. I look up at Jil Punkinflake, and in my mind I see her, walking high above me against the horizon, her arms at her sides, her veiled head lowered, rolling a little wearily with each step and her long skirts undulating lazily against red and orange sky, like waves on the sea. Orders brought me to these people that I learned to love the moment I saw them, now orders from the same source will take me from them.