“Don’t move,” he says, and Noni’s screaming, Don’t go down there, don’t touch her, don’t go down there, and as I’m scrabbling to up and leave, I feel a fleshy hand take hold of my shoulder from above, and I’m ripping myself away, and picking myself up to scramble up the roots, but I’m tripping on one—my foot’s trapped—and I dislodge some great network of knotted threads beneath the surface of the soil, as if a mass of rotted flesh had been torn aside from a wound and collapsed on itself. I hear a massive sigh as if the forest itself is giving up and then something happens that I can only describe as.

An.

Earthquake.

The ground judders and breaks, and the rush swells into a chorus of screams—mine or Noni’s? Mine or hers or a man’s? All of those—as I fall into this great flat of foliage like it’s quicksand and the sponginess is giving and the gravity is taking over and I slide

down,

down,

down,

down,

down, branches ripping into my face, a paunchy mass hitting my side, and I’m still falling down into the black, the great walls of dirt swallowing me whole—I’m breathing dirt, I’ve got particles of dirt everywhere, my skin is raw and numb from being scratched, I feel wet and slick—until … I … stop.

The first thing I think is: I can’t breathe. Then: Am I alive?

I blow some dirt from my nose and mouth with a tremendous groan, and the next thing I hear is a crack coupled with feeling another earthshaking slam right next to me, rattling my bones.