Flies buzzed around us as we wandered through the cedar forest north of the mountain. This part of the swamp was called the Winter Sluice, thirty or so square miles of soft earth, broken up by the delta that formed where Windshriek’s streams joined and mixed at the base of the mountain. Traveling through it was a constant alternation between walking and wading, always either up to our hips in swamp water or shivering with the night air gusting over our wet clothes.

The water at least washed the mud out from between our toes, though I didn’t like imagining what might be swimming into our clothes at the same time.

It was about two hours past sunset, and we only had torch light to guide us. Sometimes the light didn’t reach all the way across the water, and we had to start wading out on faith that we were heading in the right direction. Leeches were a constant concern, as were the small carnivorous fish that lived in these waters. The flies were just the seasoning on the experience.

They were bothering Tom Carrot worst of all, crawling on his clothes and hair. He’d wave them off every so often, but even the ones that bothered to move to avoid his clumsy swings came back a second later, secure in their untouchability. I was getting a little of them, though the mosquitos were more of a problem for me. Adrian seemed to be going untouched by both.

I’d have preferred to be back in the library with an oat cake and fully charged lantern. It had only been a day since I’d found the interview with Lan Beanstringer and I felt like there might still be more to learn, but Tom’s assignment was due tomorrow. He had to collect the flesh of a ‘Northwind Moonrise Bear’ spirit, and we all implicitly understood he’d probably die if he tried to do it on his own.

Our first plan had included bringing Sal Merchamp along with us. She was a good fighter, and knew two offensive maja aspects, but she’d been turned back at the gate, by the gate. When Sal had tried to pass, her skin had broken open like she’d tried to push through a wall of broken glass. Maybe she was marked in some way, or maybe the gate somehow knew she was planning on running.

Me, Tom, and Adrian had passed through with nothing worse than a harsh prickling across our skin. I just hoped that we could handle the task without her.

The Moonrise Bear was supposed to be a kind of spirit found in the swamp around Windshriek. A lot of spirits were unique individuals that grew according to a specific image or concept, but I knew that some were more like species of animal, where one spirit kindled others like it.

We needed one that had flesh to harvest. That meant finding one that had passed what the Reeves called the First Peak. It was the first hurdle in a spirit’s development, when it condensed enough maja to create a solid body for itself, or found a way to join with an existing plant or animal.

Wild Century had been at least of the First Peak. So was the vulture spirit that’d been haunting me since my journey to Fort Msiesetr.

I hadn’t seen the vulture yet on this trip. It only seemed to appear to me when I was alone.

As we approached the next neck of water, Tom let out a cry behind us.

I turned to look, then followed his wide-eyed gaze to a distant patch of trees.

One of the incorporeal shrimp spirits that lived in the swamp floated in a copse of cypress abourt forty feet away. This was another species of spirit that lived here. As far as I could tell, they barely seemed to interact with the material world.

This one seemed relaxed, not paying us any attention, mindlessly probing at the soft ground below it with more legs than even a normal shrimp would have.

“It’s harmless,” I told him.

“It’s got about a hundred legs!” Tom said. He said it like anything with that many legs had to be a mortal threat.

“It can’t touch you with them,” Adrian said. “Look, you can see right through it.”

“I’ve seen them before,” I added. “They always just ignored me.”

Tom wasn’t convinced. He stood stock still, staring at it for another half minute. Eventually Adrian had to grab his shoulder to pull him forward.

We started wading out into the murky water of the delta, torches held above our head, walking along the silty, rocky, occasionally moving riverbed in what we hoped was the right direction.

“Why did it have to be here,” Tom said. “There’s a nice dry stretch back where we started.”

“That was the road,” I said.

“I heard that Reeves can walk on water,” Adrian said. “You wouldn’t have found a book on that, have you Dorian?”

“No. I don’t even know how that would work.”

“Obviously they just put magic in their feet,” Adrian said.

I wasn’t completely sure if he was being serious or not. He didn’t have much grounding in magical theory. I sometimes felt like I was the source of everything he knew about aspects and structured magic.

“That wouldn’t do anything,” I said. As I spoke, I pulled maja from my core and let it flood my legs. As expected, it did nothing useful.

“I bet they use Waterproof aspect,” Adrian went on.

“I’d be surprised if there was a Waterproof aspect,” I said calmly. “There isn’t just an aspect for everything.”

“Yes, but there has to be an aspect for Waterproofness, doesn’t there? Think of an oilcloth cloak, Tom. Think of it so hard you can taste it, then put it into your maja.”

Despite the fact that I was now sure Adrian was deliberately trying to annoy me, I felt Tom’s maja stir behind me. His maja felt light and feathery, like the touch of a single hair on skin.

“It doesn’t work like that,” I said.

“It’s not working,” Tom said.

“It would probably be the Lightness aspect, internally manipulated,” I said.

“And how do you learn Lightness?” Adrian asked.

“I’ve read some past student’s ideas that they left in the library,” I offered. “Jumping from a cliff. Tying a leg to a rock and throwing yourself into deep water. Balancing on the point of a spear. I’m not sure if they’re serious guesses or if they were just trying to get other students killed.”

That sufficiently killed Adrian’s mood that he stopped trying to annoy me.

“Sorry,” I said into the silence.

“I was just trying to take our minds of this,” Adrian said.

“Well…” I started, then paused.

There was a new smell in the air. It was a charred smell, like the black wood left behind a forest fire, full of carbon and smoke. It tingled in my nose, unmistakably infused with maja.

I looked around. The surface of the water was constantly alive, so thick with insects that the ripples looked like raindrops, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Beyond the little circle of torch light, the swamp was dark, but normally a maja smell meant something was close.

“Does anyone sense that?” I said.

“What?” Adrian said.

“Some kind of spirit.”

Adrian held his torch up behind his head so he could look into the darkness without blinding himself. He leaned forward to peer into the fragmented black ahead of us.

The water to our right exploded upwards. A dark form flew out, dripping and steaming, heading straight for Adrian.

In the torchlight it looked like a man festooned with writhing worms, so thick they looked like thick hair. It passed by me and collided with Adrian, taking both of them underwater.

Tom was screaming. Adrian was gone, but the water where he’d been was churning.

I drew my sword and threw myself towards where I’d last seen him.

The water made moving quickly hard. Weeds seemed to swirl up out of nowhere to catch my ankles. Something squirmed around my toes, and this time I didn’t have time to shake it off.

The water was black where Adrian disappeared. The thrashing had slowed, now only a slight rippling from movement deep under the water. I stopped at the spot and reached down with my sword hand. I spread my fingers, trying not to let go of my sword, feeling for cloth or Adrian’s hair.

There was nothing. He couldn’t have drowned already.

A hand caught mine. Strong fingers wrapped around my fist, pinching my hand against the sword hilt.

I pulled. Adrian came up. Not spluttering, not out of breath. He looked more angry than alarmed. He’d lost his torch, but he still held his quarterstaff in one hand. He held it out like a spear as he looked around at the dark water.

“You know I think I do sense something,” he said.

The water to our left rippled. Adrian plunged his hands into it. He pulled back, and the humanoid creature came with him, struggling in his grip.

I could see it, now. It had something like a face, a pair of small black eyes like coal, and a bump in the center where a nose might have been on a human. There were no nostrils, and no mouth.

“That’s it!” Tom called.

“The bear?” I asked.

“This thing doesn’t look much like a bear,” Adrian shouted.

A writhing arm hit Adrian with the speed of a falling branch. There was a cracking sound, and he fell back.

I pulled another ball of maja from my core and pushed it down my arms, tinting it with the memory of Force, and let it loose on the creature. The spell hit it full in the body and knocked it away, sending it skidding over the water. The rolled to a stop then willingly sank under the surface.

I needed the fight to be over soon. I didn’t have the maja to do that too many times.

“We need to get to dry ground,” I said, already wading toward the bank.

Adrian apparently agreed, sloshing past me at a jog, while Tom stumbled through the reed-choked water behind me.

Adrian’s staff was in two pieces, now, a casualty of blocking the hit meant for his shoulder. He kept hold of one end, wielding it like a club. He threw the other half to Tom.

It took us a couple of minutes to reach solid ground. First we had to find it, then we had to make it there. Running through the deep water was exhausting, but swimming would have brought my mouth too close to the water for comfort. I didn’t need a book to tell me that letting stagnant water into my mouth was a bad idea.

Eventually we reached the far bank. I pulled myself out of the water, my body aching and feeling unnaturally heavy as I clambered out into the cold air. I wedged my torch into the soft ground to free up my hands and turned, looking around us in a circle.

Adrian’s torch had gone out when he’d been pulled underwater, but Tom was still carrying his. We needed at least one still lit, or we wouldn’t even be able to find our way home, never mind win a fight with the spirit.

Adrian had got here ahead of me and waded back into the water to grab Tom’s arm and help him out. The two of them came up to me, the three of us forming a ring around the wedged torch. As defensive positions went, it was terrible.

We each took a direction, staring out into the dark. I took my eyes off the forest for a second to peel a leech off my foot, tossing it back into the water. I was going to need a long session in the washhouse, if I survived this.

After a minute of watching, there was still no sign of it. Either it had stayed underwater, or it had doubled back and was creeping up on us over the ground.

“What if it just runs away?” Tom asked, looking out over the gently rippling water.

“It won’t,” I said. “It isn’t an animal. It won’t run just because its attack failed the first time. If its nature is to hunt us, that won’t change. Did your scroll tell you anything about them?”

“Only what they looked like,” Tom said. “There was a picture.”

“I wonder if it’s aquatic,” I said.

I turned just in time to see the Moonrise Bear flying at Tom out of a tree.

“Tom!”

Adrian turned at my shout and jumped to intercept it. He was too late to help. The spirit collided with Tom, sending them both to the ground. Adrian hit the pair a second later. He grabbed the spirit’s crawling hair and kept going, flying past with enough force that he pulled the spirit with him.

Adrian skidded to a stop. The spirit rose to its feet and swung at an arm at his head. He ducked and swung his club back at it.

The squirming tendrils on the thing’s body caught the stick and seemed to swallow it, tearing it out of Adrian’s hand before sucking it down into the depths of its body.

“Not very bear-like at all,” Adrian shouted, sounding annoyed.

I ran up behind it, trying to put it between me and Adrian. I skidded to a stop on the mud, dropped into a low stance, and stabbed at it with a thrust straight out of the Forsecare manual.

The blade pierced the spirit’s skin easily, sliding through the curling tendrils like they were no more solid than mud. I felt the blade shudder and change angle as it glanced off a bone, then it was in up to its hilt.

The spirit shuddered, then swung an arm back at me.

I almost managed to get out of the way. The arm clipped me, hitting my head with the force of a falling sack of grain.

I blacked out for a second. When I came back to, Adrian was boxing with the thing at the center of a small muddy clearing. He dodged two swipes, then retaliated with a trio of rapid punches to its head and chest.

I couldn’t tell if the hits were doing anything to it. It’d noticed my sword stab, barely, but it hadn’t seemed to slow it down at all.

Some corporeal spirits had their own versions of organs and bodily processes that an attack could damage, others were just undifferentiated flesh that would need to be just destroyed or cut away from its main body. I was starting to worry this was going to be the latter.

As I got to my feet I grabbed my torch.

The spirit swung at Adrian again. Instead of dodging, he blocked the limb with his hands and twisted it.

Adrian did not look like a particularly strong person. He had solid working muscle, I could believe he’d trained to fight at the Abbey, be didn’t look strong enough to snap an arm in half with his bare hands. But that’s exactly what he did. The spirit’s arm cracked, breaking with a sound like dry wood.

Adrian dodged backwards as the spirit’s arm flopped around uselessly. Not that it seemed like it had deterred it.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“We only need its flesh,” I shouted, reminding him.

Adrian reached out and grabbed the thing’s limp forearm then spun around, delivering a kick to its shoulder that knocked it back. There was a sickening ripping sound as its arm came free, like tearing a leg from a roast chicken, and both the spirit and Adrian fell away in opposite directions.

I ran forward, pulling up another ball of Maja. I held out my free hand and blasted the spirit with Force, sweeping it off the ground and sending it tumbling away through the trees. It disappeared into the dark undergrowth.

“Should we run now?” Tom asked.

“You two go, I’ll stay and make sure it doesn’t chase us,” Adrian said.

“Adrian, don’t be stupid,” I called back.

He turned and tossed me the severed arm at me.

I didn’t particularly want to touch it, and while I was deciding whether to try and catch it, it hit the ground at my feet. I crouched over, holding the torch up to get a better look at it.

The black tendrils covering its skin had receded at the fingertips. Underneath the outer coating, it looked like the partially decayed fingers of a person. I confirmed it by scraping some more of the coating away, exposing the rest of its hand. It was a rotting human arm.

“Tom, are you sure about what this thing is called?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Adrian was staring off into the darkness trying to see where the spirit went. Tom was backing up to the water, getting ready for some sign that he could leave.

I looked into the woods for a minute, then turned away. The spirit had ambushed us twice. It wasn’t going to come from the direction we were expected.

I looked out over the lake. I wasn’t surprised when I saw a v-shaped ripple coming towards us.

“It’s in the water,” I said.

“What?” Tom said, spinning around.

I pulled a jagged stone out of my pouch, fitted it into the palm of my hand, and held up my palm to face the oncoming ripple. With a pulse of Force maja, I launched it.

The surface of the water exploded upwards in a black spray. My aim hadn’t been good, but the disturbance forced the spirit to reveal itself early. It rose above the water with a splash and started thrashing its way towards the bank. It couldn’t move much more easily in the water than we could.

Adrian stepped up to meet it as it climbed onto the bank. His club caught it across the head with a sickening crunch that left a dent behind it.

I circled around to its side and slashed at its ankles. I hoped that if there was a dead body in there I might be able to slow it down. My sword cut something at the bottom of its calf and it stumbled. There was something under there that could be hurt.

Something strange was happening to Adrian as we fought. It was almost as if he was starting to glow. Beneath the sweat and the glinting torchlight, it was as if a sun-golden light was shining on his skin. It was subtle, not bright enough to light up his surroundings, not bright enough that I could even be sure it wasn’t my imagination, but it caught my attention.

I briefly allowed myself to step back from the battle, feeling for my spiritual senses.

There was a new sensation coming from Adrian. Not the hot-stone feeling of his maja, not the smell of an unfamiliar spirit, but a sensation that was almost a sound, a rattling, like hailstones on a window, or a fast, frenetic drumming.

“Dorian, look out!” Adrian shouted.

The spirit had turned away from Adrian while I’d been distracted and had limped all the way up to me.

Its hands reached out for my throat. In response I pushed out the end of my torch, burying the burning pinecone into the writing flesh of its chest.

There was a hiss, then the spirit staggered back, slapping at its chest. There was no fire, and my torch had gone out, but it obviously hadn’t liked it. Maybe having Fire Aspect would be worth the pain of getting it.

Adrian was waiting behind the spirit. He ran up and swept the thing’s legs with his foot, sending it spinning through the air. He waited for it to hit the ground then lashed out with the club, each strike hitting hard enough to move it an inch across the floor. His club broke again on the fourth or fifth strike. He threw it away and grabbed the spirit by its writhing skin. Showing more strength than I’d ever expected from him, he lifted the spirit by its legs and spun around, hurling at a nearby tree.

It flicked through the air before crashing against the trunk, shaking the branches and crumbling to the ground.

Adrian stood there panting. The glow slowly faded from his skin. I turned from him to the spirit and approached slowly, holding my sword out in front of me.

It wasn’t in good shape. It’s body looked broken. Its skin was sloughing off, spreading out across the marsh floor in a way that seemed too directed to be natural. The skin was the spirit.

I ran to Tom, grabbed the torch from his hands, and sprinted at the crawling pool.

I thrust the fire toward the ground, holding the flames against the still-writing mass that had been the creature’s skin.

The tendrils hissed and crumpled where the fire touched them. I circled around to where the crawling slime was trying to spread away into the trees, burning along its edge until the entire pool of it was shrinking into a crispy motionless layer of scab on the muddy ground.

When it was all dead I stood up, panting.

I looked at Adrian, then checked on Tom.

Adrian was staring at me, breathing heavily himself. If he had been glowing before, then he wasn’t anymore, and I wasn’t convinced it hadn’t just been the firelight and my imagination.

“Good thinking,” Adrian said, looking at where the slime had been trying to crawl away. He turned back to the body that’d been left behind.

The corpse had been a student. I could still see the remains of its gray robe. I didn’t know if the writing skin had been something that colonized and controlled the corpse, or whether it was a spirit that had infected the student when he was still alive. If I found time, I’d like to research exactly what the thing had been.

I was still holding the severed arm. I held it up, examining it in the torch light. The black mass covering it was still moving sluggishly, lazily trying to form tendrils but not really getting anywhere. We had what we needed for Tom’s assignment, I was sure.

“It was just a dead body the entire time?” Adrian said, looking at the corpse.

“I really don’t think it was a bear spirit,” I said. “Tom, can I see your scroll?”

“Yeah! It’s back in my room though.”

“Later, then.”

Adrian went to the water’s edge and started washing his hands. I thought that was a questionable prospect given the quality of the water.

I approached the corpse and crouched next to it. Its skin was purple-black, bloated in places, shriveled in others. Its eyes were closed. After a few seconds I tentatively identified it as the remains of a man. I wasn’t sure how long he’d been dead. I was sure I hadn’t seen him before.

The body was wearing a small canvas pouch tied around its belt, which I cut away with the tip of my sword.

Adrian heard me. He looked over, and his eyes turned hard when he saw what I was doing.

I tried to ignore him. Whatever was in the pouch, this student certainly didn’t need it any more. I tied it at my own waist and sheathed my sword.

Both my torch and Adrian’s were dark. His was too wet to relight, and mine was covered in the crusted black substance of the spirit.

Tom still had his. I watched him warily as we waded back into the water, heading back towards the road. It would only take one stumble on his part to strand us out here.

“Maybe Adrian should carry the torch,” I said.

“Dorian! Tom can carry a torch, for saints’ sake.”

“I don’t know. Do you want it, Adrian?” Tom said.

He sloshed up to Adrian’s side and handed it over. Adrian took it with a sigh.

When we reached the road, Adrian hung back. When I turned to look, he was staring back the other way, down the road, away from the academy.

“It feels like we could just go,” he said.

The wind above us was picking up, shaking the trees. The storm I’d felt approaching was finally starting to break. Being out here was about to get even less fun, but technically, he was right.

“We could run and never look back,” he said. “We could live off the land, I think, then work or steal our way back to Losiris. You speak Antorxian, don’t you Dorian?”

“Antorxians speaks Irisian like we do,” I said, coming up to stand next to him.

“Oh. Yes. That makes sense.”

I followed his gaze down the road. From here, it really did look like we could run. The academy might send someone after us, but it was the day before deadline day. We’d have two full days before the assignment to hunt us would go out.

A two day head start seemed insurmountable.

There were probably dangerous spirits out in the swamp, but we could handle ourselves. At least, I could convince myself that we could handle ourselves.

I looked down at what would have been the first step leading away from the academy. I tried to imagine taking it. I couldn’t.

It wasn’t the open road stretching out in front of me that I saw. It was Master Sectus. Standing on the terraces. Working in the infirmary. Standing in the barracks. Instead of the freedom ahead, I saw the monster behind me. Now that it was there, I couldn’t put his face out of my mind.

The amount of hatred that welled up shocked me. Deep and sharp. Corrosive, even to me. Like an acid I couldn’t stop drinking. It was such an alien feeling, and suddenly I was drowning in it.

It didn’t demand action, like anger could. Instead it demanded attention. I couldn’t bear to leave the academy, and in a way I didn’t understand, the hatred was the reason. I couldn’t leave Sectus behind, any more than I could stop picturing his bland face, wearing the same mild expression as when he’d frozen me in the wreckage of my worst mistake.

“I can’t go out there,” Tom said, sounding panicked.

I finally tore my thoughts free, looking up at him.

Adrian stared for another few seconds, then agreed.

“Yeah, maybe it’s not the time. Yet.”

He turned around and started heading back towards the academy.

Tom at least seemed to be relieved to be going back.

I stared down the road for a few seconds, then turned and followed after them.

My first stop back at the academy was the washhouse, accompanied by Tom and Adrian. Adrian took the cell next to me, connected only by narrow openings in the top and bottom of the stone wall. I listened to him pull the chain to open the sluice on his side, then mirrored him on mine.

Mortifyingly, Adrian sang.

“How can you sing in a place like this,” I said quietly.

I hadn’t expected him to hear me, but he let go of his chain and the water sloshed to a stop.

“I don’t know. We’re alive. We’re trapped, but not forever? It’s hard to imagine, but there is still light out there in the world.”

“I guess,” I said. It was hard to see any light beyond the swamp.

The storm broke while I was still washing. The rain started up, thrashing against the stone walls, filling the cistern on the roof even as I drew water from it. Some of the water I bathed in was probably coming from the storm. I let myself imagine that the water on my skin had come from far away, beyond the mountain, beyond the swamp, brought by the storm from a place like the one I'd grown up in. It felt clean.

Adrian left before me. I felt like I had mud in every pore, and it took what felt like half an hour just to get my hair clean. As I was scraping myself dry, I paused, passing my hand over the scar on my leg. It was where the vulture spirit had bitten me, back on one of my early assignments. The dark blotch had never gone away. Lately it seemed to be growing. Even in the dark, I could feel the texture of it, a raised welt.

I finished up and left, running through the rain to get back to the barracks.

I tracked Tom down straight away, and finally got a look at his scroll.

Bring the flesh of a Northwind Moonrise Behr to Master Origanus.

Behr. Not bear.

The spirit’s name was written in Old Irisian. It wasn’t a bear in any respect but phonetically. Behr was the Old Irisian word for a corpse. And the word it used for moonrise had the connotation of an unnatural rising, such as a person who wakes up at moonrise instead of sunrise.

“Who translated the spirit name for you?” I asked Tom.

“Jason helped me read it,” Tom said.

“Of course,” I muttered. I handed the scroll back to him. I’d only crumpled it a little.

Jason had learned Old Irisian because knowing the language was a sign of sophistication in cities, but he obviously hadn’t studied it in any depth.

I left Tom in his room.

My cell was cold when I got to it. Dim light spilled across the room from my lantern in the corner, but the air was no warmer than it was outside, despite the canto work all over the walls.

As I stepped in, I saw that the little spider spirit was back. It was perched at the edge of one of the Winter’s Heart cantos, sipping the maja from it.

It’d been a problem ever since Jason had brought it to me. It left when we chased it, but it never went far, always creeping back in to feed on the cantograms.

Adrian looked up from his bed when I came in, then followed my gaze to the spider spirit.

“Hey!” he shouted. He jumped, smacking the wall next to it with a stick.

The spider was gone before he even reached it. It flickered up the wall, then out of the window. We’d probably be seeing it again as soon as it got hungry.

Adrian sighed and slumped back onto his bed. He held his hand over the drained canto, misting maja back into it. The dim light in the room dimmed further, and faint warmth started radiating from it.

I sat on my bed and pulled up the damp pouch I’d taken from the Behr. Inside, I found six silver ducs, a tarnished signet ring, a charcoal pencil, and a stack loose papers. The papers were all different sizes and stocks, most torn and stained, and all covered in the same dense handwriting. I read a few lines. They were mostly just the musings of the the former student who’d been at the heart of the Behr. Together, the notes formed the kind of personal codex so many of the students here seemed to keep — journals written in imitation of the Reeves whose works were so common in the library.

I transferred the contents to my pouch and set it aside. I needed to sleep, but I needed a lot of things. It was more important now that I accumulated.

I closed my eyes, reaching out for the Fold. It was as close as ever, as close as it’d been at home back in Kirkswill. In a way, reaching out to it always felt like going home.

An hour later when I opened my eyes, the spider spirit was back.

It sat on my bed, its two large front-facing eyes staring at me, its forelegs crossed in front of it.

As soon as it realized I could see it, its forelimbs went up, waving in the air in a warding gesture. Not that it could have stopped me. It wasn’t even corporeal.

I glanced over at the canto, and realized with a sigh that it was drained again.

“You’re insatiable aren’t you,” I said to it.

Adrian snored once, loudly, on the other side of the room.

I reached out my hand towards the spider. It darted back a few inches, waggling its legs.

I slowly started to mist a thread of maja into the air in front of it, wincing at the pain.

The spider hesitated for a second, then hopped forward. It waggled its legs through the air. It was as if it was bundling up a net. After a few seconds, it brought its legs to its mouth, mandibles flickering.

I fed it like that for less than a minute before the spirit’s fear of me overbalanced its hunger, and it darted up and out of the window.

I pulled a thread of my dwindling maja and recharged the Winter’s Hearth on my side of the cell, then settled down onto my bed, watching the door.

I thought back to the swamp, the Behr, the road. I tried to summon the hate I’d felt down there. I wanted to examine the feeling, now that I was alone and safe, but it wouldn’t come. Like anger, hate couldn’t be told when to come and go, it seemed.

Sleep was just as elusive. After another hour of lying in the dark, I got up, grabbed my lantern, and left for the library.