No one, and yet … No wild leap back to the others: Here I am! No one is freed, and yet it is as if woodwind players have arrived. Like the water drop and the twig in the daytime. The naked, wet twig, the sodden snow caving in below, and the clear water drop down in the snow. The snow drift trickles away – and it has a black stripe inside it, a stripe of black creatures that undulates with the layer of snow over hill and dale and trickles away. A strange memory: a hurrying of black creatures in the darkness, league upon league in a mild night between the cold spells. Now everything is trickling away as yellow water or standing still in yellow puddles. ‘Hi, Siss!’ A distant shout. A call from the other world. You feel like the water drop and the twig. You are uncertain. You are anything but dead. The promise has been lifted off, but you are not freed because of that. There is an unmoving weight all the same. You know too little. Things happened as quick as flame. Mother, revived, ‘Siss, can you run an errand for me after school today?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ Why is it different now?
