Page 33, Paragraphs 5 - 7; Page 34, Paragraph 1; Note

Page 33, Paragraph 5:

I don't move for so long that my bones start to hurt, so I crawl out of the branch-hut now to stand. I walk forwards and back to make my leg better, and look out across the wall of the pigpen and, likewise, across the world.

Paragraph 6:

I see Hob a ways off, and I stoop behind the wall so he doesn't see me. I peek out above the top of the wall now. He crosses the reeds to the thicket of trees opposite the river. The edge of the world behind him has become blood and smoke. Hob stands with the light behind him so that he becomes all black, like a shadow.* The antlers around his head are like thin black hands, scratching at the sky to catch all his thoughts so they don't fly away.

Paragraph 7:

He bends over, then stands up to walk, and then bends over again. I figure he's foraging wood, because now I see branches underneath his arm. Maybe they're for the mound of branches that stands before the aurochs hut. He walks like one who's putting actions to his thoughts and thought to his actions, which is something my mother used to say all the time, but not about me. He bends down here and then there, gathering more and more branches under his arm.

Page 34, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

He turns around now, so that one edge of his frightening face is all lit up, and the sunlight is like wet blood on his antlers. I think that Hob is not of the earth, as I and my nomadic kind are, born of the earth and living by the earth and put to the earth. He is of fire. The fire's charcoal is around his eyes. The fire's blood is on his horns.

*I.e., our narrator is seeing Hob in silhouette

***

I'm now 30 pages into the chapter. I don't believe it.

Page 33, Paragraphs 1 - 4

Page 33, Paragraph 1 (first full paragraph):

I think since my leg is healed I can journey on. If I stay much longer in the pigpen, why, Hob can't help but find me; it's better that I go away from here. But now I think that I can forage little if I go all alone, and I'll be hungry. I think about the girl now, about how little her feet are, and the thinness of her ankles and legs below her clothes. I think about her hair, all bright and wrapped around with white aurochs hide. I want to pull this wrap from her so that her bright hair falls down about her arms, and now I realize that to go away from her is to see her no more.

Paragraph 2:

In my belly my thoughts are all vexed, and they fall now to hit and bite one another like cats. There's no peace in me. I hear a noise by the hut, like a man speaking to a girl - I think Hob's come back here. I don't like Hob at all - all my thoughts are alike in this. They become quiet in my belly, where they lie and all think darkly about Hob.

Paragraph 3:

I chew on the soft, grey bread, and the sun goes down in the sky. My shadow, no longer afraid, rests his long black head against the pen, and puts his ear by the aurochs skin, as if to better hear what's being said [outside] there.

Paragraph 4:

Across the river, I can see that the sun is hurt as it sets. I think the sky-beasts have caught and tore at him, because his blood has fallen on them, so that the whole sky has become bloody. It's hard for me to hear, for I hear the cry of pain of the sun even though he's too far off to make noise.