Page 16, Paragraphs 3 - 5; Page 17, Paragraph 1 and 2; Note

Page 16, Paragraph 3:

I walk slowly through the reeds and the mud. My belly hurts. It's so empty that it makes everything seem strange to me, and I'm afraid my head will float off, as it did with the sky-beast. The dirt sucks on my foot. Old Dirt, he thinks I'm not giving Mother's foot to him and wants his due, for there's one foot due to him yet and he's taking my foot to make good my debt to him. This thought makes me very afraid, so I pull my leg up high like a flamingo and I go as quick as I can to the trees, which are on drier ground.

Paragraph 4:

I'm by the trees now. I can walked and not get sucked down in the dirt, but I don't have the strength for it. The trees stand in a little thicket, and I can't think about anything except going to the bridge[?]. I walk beneath the trees, and put my hand on them to hold myself up, and keep falling as I'm walking. My leg hurts and burns with infection.* I fall down. I stand up. I fall down. I stand up, and now I'm through the thicket of trees, at the other edge of it looking out. I think I'm going to be okay now, and feel my strength coming back. I fall down.

Paragraph 5:

I can't get up. I'm flat on my back in the grass, with my head laying against a tree root. There's nothing above me, just a bunch of tree branches (that's where the leaves fall from). I look across my belly, legs, and feet, and I see trees in front of the river [?], where the noise of the water is loud. I don't see the bridge. It's not where I thought it was. Maybe I can't find a way to the bridge through the thicket of trees. Now the flies fly around the scab on my knee (which has turned black), and they sit on my leg where I don't have the strength to hit them off.

Page 17, Paragraph 1:

I look toward the river, which is better to look at than my leg. Between the river and where I'm at in the thicket of trees I see a rise of dirt, with reeds all around it. On the rise...







[you didn't think I was gonna end it there, didja? ]

Paragraph 2:

On the rise, there's a thing standing that's all white, taller than two men, on top of which hair flies out in the wind, all black and long. It's a woman, all in white, but she's frighteningly big - bigger than any woman in the world. I close my eyes so she can't see me.


*Obviously, our guy doesn't understand infection the way we do, but the word that he uses ("sick-fire") shows that he knows something is wrong besides the wound itself.

Page 15, Paragraphs 6 and 7; Page 16, Paragraphs 1 and 2; Note

Page 15, Paragraph 6:

My leg hurts where the other settlers hit it with a stone - I don't want more of the same. I see that I can walk by the hill with the building on it, cross at the other side opposite of the pointy-topped huts, and, by taking that route, come to the river bridge so I can journey on.

Paragraph 7:

I stand up, and now I walk down the hill, between many stumps. They're all sharp on top like the valley's a mouth and the stumps are its teeth. I don't like all this open space, where the trees are put to the ax. There's no good in it.

Page 16, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

Now I come to the bottom of the little hill, which is where the hill becomes bigger [?], and I hear the lowing [i.e., mooing] of the aurochs now, from the top [of the hill]. The hill is between me and where the sun sets, and I walk the other way, toward where the sun rises.* The dirt becomes softer in the lower part of the valley, and the lower I go, the muddier it becomes, so that it comes up to my knees and makes me walk slowly. There aren't as many tree stumps now - the ones that are here are rotten, black, mossy, and filled with stagnant water. There are a lot of mosquitoes here.

Paragraph 2:

Far behind me an auroch lows at its mate. I pull my foot out of the mud-hole and walk on. I can't see the river bridge like I could when I was up high because it's behind a thicket of trees that stand in front of me, but I head for where I think it crosses the river.


*In other words, the hill's to the west and he's walking east