He hadn’t wanted to return at all, but where else could he go? Alive, he kept telling himself. You’re alive. But he didn’t feel very good. Trembling, his joints felt as if they might snap apart, his muscle and sinew pulpy. His stomach gulped. He tried to concentrate. He needed a plan. “Okay, how’s this,” he muttered to himself. “You take a little rest, then fly back up to the stone sky and keep looking for the crack. That’s a plan. Pretty big sky, though, and I can only stay up there ten, fifteen minutes at a time before I get sucked back. I could keep going up for years and not find it, and, anyway, I wouldn’t have the energy to keep going back because there’s nothing for me to eat down here. I’d just get more and more worn out and—” He stopped himself. Sometimes the words didn’t do what they were supposed to. They were supposed to make him think more clearly. Right now they were just scaring his fur out by the roots. He decided to try once more. “Forget the crack in the sky.
