It’s full of whispers and half-glimpsed things. He’s quite sure at one point that he passes a big-nosed man no taller than his shins who’s hacking away at a rhododendron bush with a tiny golden axe and stops to mop his brow as Rory looks on. But Rory doesn’t look for long. He has to keep a careful eye on the owl. It’s very easy to lose sight of it in the tawny autumn trees. They come to a tiny stream, really just a trickle in the mud. He lies flat to drink and discovers he’s too exhausted to get up again. At least the water gets the taste of sick out of his throat. Throwing up’s stopped him feeling hungry, which is something too. The owl watches him from a bough while he lies there in the leaf mold. It looks annoyed with him but it doesn’t say anything. Perhaps if it did start talking it would be in Italian anyway. He’d like to get moving but it’s actually strangely peaceful here, wherever he is. “Sorry,” he says to the owl. He tries to decide whether it really is Lino or not, and discovers something quite interesting.
