For a minute, I just hang there and wonder where I am. Like being under the reservoir in winter, I realize. Hanging far beneath the ice, while above it is a bleak day and the leaves are on the ground and the waters are dead and the trees are just streaks of brown scraped on the plain white sky. Down here, there is nothing to see; no motion anywhere. No light at all. But this, if it were a lake, and not a world, would be a lake with no bottom, and no surface, and there is no life within it. I can feel that. I can still feel the vertigo in my toes, as they hang in nothing, and I know that this murky world spreads out dark and dead into infinity. Though I am hanging in what feels like water, it must not be water. It feels thicker for one thing, as if I were dunked in embalming fluid. For another thing, I do not choke when I breathe it. This infinite lake is empty, has never known life, except that somewhere Tch’muchgar must be lying, waiting for his release. I can hear a distant noise, or perhaps it is in my head, the static from his thoughts, like the far-off hum of a highway when you’re snorkeling deep in the coldest part of the lake.
