Page 10, Paragraphs 5 and 6; Page 11, Paragraphs 1 and 2; Notes

This passage is a good example of what Neil Gaiman refers to in the introduction as the narrator's "inability to tell dreams from reality".

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Page 10, Paragraph 5:

Now for a time no thoughts come, and then everything becomes strange. I am no longer in the briar cave. I'm beneath some trees, and all is dark except where the white-wood stands bright. I don't understand how it got dark so quickly or how I got here. I'm frightened as I look around and see a shape standing in between the trees. It's my mother. She moves lazily, putting one hand on a tree, and looks at me. [It is that good*] I walk closer to her, and I can now see her leg. It ends in a bloody string with nothing below her ankle. I look from the stump to Mother's face. She looks vexed, as if she's unhappy with me. "Where'd my foot go?", she says.

Paragraph 6:

At this, I scream so big and loud that it throws me up in the sky and out of the dark, and I fall back in the briar-cave, where it's light already. This happens instantly, and I don't understand how. I don't hear the rain as it's gone a ways off, and I stand up stooped over the [entry] hole; that's how I come out of the bush.

Page 11, Paragraph 1:

It's wet everywhere, and there are puddles all around on the ground. The water brings up the smell of the earth and the grass, and it's a good smell, strong and fresh.**

Paragraph 2:

I can't smell my shit. The rain has washed away my shit and I can't smell it. My shit where the tree is; where the foot is.

*I have no idea what this means in this context.

**I liked this so much in the original that I almost hated to change it: Wet rise up sniff of dirt and grass, and sniff of they is good, and strong, and is not old.

Page 10, Paragraphs 2 - 4

Moving along.


Page 10, Paragraph 2:


Sunrise comes and my belly's empty. I say, "Foot, stay here. I'm going away to forage , after which I'll come back with food for us." Now the foot is quiet, as if to say she's heard this before, but she's never seen it happen. I walk slowly away from her, and many times I come to a tree and stop and look back, and there's the foot. I lift my arm and make the sign for "all's well", and walk on.

Paragraph 3:

The trees are getting closer together and the briars are getting thicker. I follow a path around the briar, where I look back and don't see the foot, but I can still find it by smelling for my shit, and I'm not afraid. I walk on through the trees and briars and so forth.

Paragraph 4:

The way I remember it now, it was when I came upon the red berries that the rain began to fall; it fell hard like all the sky-beasts were taking a piss. I quickly stoop down into a hole in the berry bush where there's a cave formed by the briars. There I sit and eat a lot of the red berries. Outside my cave the rain falls hard, yet in it it is quiet and dark, and my belly feels good. Now I rub berry juice off my chin. I shut my eyes, lick my hand, and listen to the rain.

Page 9, Paragraphs 6 and 7; Page 10, Paragraph 1

I read ahead a little bit again last night, this time to about page 19. It's actually getting easier to understand all the time.

Page 9, Paragraph 6:

All alone I sit by my mother's foot. My people aren't around - they've gone far away, beneath the trees and across the hill; they're gone, and they're not coming back here anymore. The grey dirt on my hands and feet is dry and hard; because of this, I can scratch it off in little bits. The dirt that I pushed around my mother's foot is likewise hard now, and bits of it are coming off. I see her toes, and now in the dirt that falls from them I see an imprint of her toes. Mother.

Paragraph 7 (ends on the top of page 10):

Now I have another thought, in which night comes and I sit by Mother's foot with nowhere to go. I've been with my mother the whole time and I don't want to go away from her now, and yet the hurt in my belly is telling me differently. [?] I sit there a while and don't know if I should stay or go.

Page 10, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

I stand up, then walk away and come back, then sit, then stand up and walk some more. I jump on the ground, and hit a tree and tear up grass, and say many things to Mother's foot. I sit and don't move, and off in the dark is the noise of a fox in the grass and of the sheperd dogs* across the hills. I'm afraid and even hungier than I was before. I take a shit by a tree, between the roots - it's watery.

*which for some reason I picture as English Shepherds