By late afternoon it was already growing dark. Again the wind began rising. A low moon appeared on the horizon. Ma-ah and Rampa finished eating some particularly bitter roots that they’d gathered during the day. The remainder they strapped about their waists with a rope made of tough weeds. Looking through Ma-ah’s eyes, Seven realized that they were too far away from the cave to make it back by nightfall, and the cliffs here rose straight and smooth-faced, offering no chance of shelter. The body was very cold. The hides rubbed against the skin with irritating regularity, and the hide moccasins were badly worn. The feet, Seven realized, were losing all feeling.

So far the body sensations had taken all of Seven’s attention. He’d never handled such a barrage of constantly applied stimuli without being able to shut it off at will. He heard what Ma-ah said to Rampa, but he was so engrossed in the tongue’s feelings and the sensations involved in speech—the rush of air through the throat—that he ignored the conversation itself.

Didn’t she know the feet were near-frozen? Didn’t she know that the body needed help?

Then, as if in answer to his questions, Ma-ah’s emotions avalanched upon his consciousness, only they snuffed his out. He could feel his own awareness disappear beneath sudden fear, anger—the words and feelings instantly translated. “It’s Rampa’s fault. I shouldn’t have listened to him. I knew we went too far. My feet! and he’s limping.”

The emotions immediately transformed the body. The shoulders slumped, the mouth drooped. The blood was called to too many places at once. The belly swelled; gas collected. Seven felt himself crushed, threatened to extinction. (“Scared silly,” Cyprus would say, later.)

But he roused himself, pulled himself up from the maze of Ma-ahness. He knew something important. What was it? Desperately he tried to make a small point of silence, a framework to hold him above all that tumult. He knew what to do and where to go, if only he could make himself remember. The confusion of body noises, activity, and emotions was still there. But Seven hung his consciousness above it all somewhere, like a spider in the rafters of a high ceiling, and brooded.

Ma-ah trudged on. Seven distinguished her voice now from the other jungles of vowels, syllables, gurgles, and body sounds, keeping track of what activity was happening inside her, and what originated from without. Rampa’s voice, coming from the outside, definitely affected the inside of Ma-ah’s body, though. Whenever Rampa spoke, a variety of mixed responses were aroused in Ma-ah’s consciousness, and each of these had instant physical repercussions. Her emotions rose and fell in such staggered rhythm that for a moment Seven confused it with the rise and fall the thighs made in walking.