Chapter 13 - The Man of Wind and Moss

—near some trees.

“I’m going back down,” Pansy said. She turned and approached Marco and moved past him down the hill, this time careful of her steps and her pacing.

“Let’s just keep going,” Dean said. “This way.” He extended a long arm uphill. The muscles of his forearms took on an odd, visceral shadow.

“Fuck that,” Pansy replied. “I’m not going to get further away from my sister just to be more lost. I’m going back to them. Come on, Marco.”

Marco realized he was between the two. It was an easy choice. The easiest one he had to make, but Dean’s face was intimidating. Slowly, Marco moved to follow Pansy and Dean spat on a fern.

“Okay, but then don’t move from that spot,” Dean said. “I’m going to keep climbing but I’ll come back.”

“How are you going to find us?” Pansy asked.

Dean looked around. He grabbed an arrow from his quiver and plunged it into the ground. The blue fletching wobbled like an antenna. “I’ll leave these as I go. Take some your way.” He handed Pansy half of them.

“Wait. I don’t like this. I think I want you to stay with us,” Pansy said. “This is too messed up.”

“No, you should go to Doll. I can do this. It’ll be okay,” Dean said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Dean. I’m like actually really scared.”

“Hey. It’s okay. That crazy guy is dead. Everything will be alright. If I run out of arrows, I’ll follow them back.”

Pansy got emotional and Dean pulled her in. Marco, embarrassed, looked away. He heard them mutter about the baby, about dying, about being scared, but Dean convinced her. When it was over, he kissed her and hugged her and gave Marco a look that was somehow both reassuring and also menacing. Take care of her. But know your place. And then they parted.

A few minutes back down the hill, Pansy hollered for Sasha and Doll and the girls hollered back. Pansy sighed with relief. The feeling was at least they’d be lost together. She moved further through the trees and plunged an arrow down every several yards, and Marco stayed close behind her. He could smell her sweat and see the mud on her clothes start to harden. He imagined stripping them off and bathing her in a river. Living like bush people. Coaching her through labor as she gave birth along a riverbank, the baby writhing and slopping in glit. He’d see Dean’s eyes in the newborn and when Pansy was asleep, he’d dash its skull on a rock.

Whoa.

He didn’t like that his mind went there. He shouldn’t have been thinking of Pansy that way. Not while Doll was injured. Not while Keith was dead. But her smell turned him on. He focused on something else.

“I think they’re over here,” she said, and she hollered again. Doll and Sasha returned it, and Pansy picked up her pace.

“I think we should talk,” Marco heard himself say.

“Is it about getting out of here?”

“No.”

“Then maybe later, yeah?”

“I don’t like the way he grabbed your arm like that.”

“Yeah, me neither, it sucked.”

“Does he do that a lot?”

“Marco, now is really not the best time.”

“I’m just saying.”

She stopped and turned. “What are you saying? That you don’t like Dean? Because I know that. That you don’t like how we fight? Because I don’t either. That you think he’s dangerous? Because he is. But all of that can hold off for a bit, right? Because of everything else going on right now? Right? Would you agree?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

They kept walking.

“What did Doll whisper to you?” he asked. “Why didn’t she let you stay?”

“It doesn’t matter, Marco,” she said, plugging another arrow into the hillside.

“C’mon, just tell me.”

“She said she didn’t want you and Dean alone and that if he freaked out on you, I’d be able to stop him better than Sasha could. That’s what she said.”

Instead of feeling emasculated, he felt incredulous. Did they really live in fear of such a brute, that they had to strategize chaperones?

Pansy kept walking.

When they found the clearing again, she plunged the last of the arrows into the ground. The sun was at its zenith, and the forest was getting hot and the girls were right where they had left them. They entered the clearing, and Doll was still by the tree. Sasha smacked at mosquitoes and scratched at her arms. Her skin was red and irritated and she was digging her nails in deep. “Where’s Dean?” she asked.

“We were getting nervous, so we came back, and he kept going,” Pansy said.

“We left markers though. He can find us.” Markerth though. Find uth.

Pansy approached Doll. “How are you doing?”

“I think it’s infected,” Doll said, shrugging.

“Already?”

“If it’s not yet, it will be. I think I want to take it out.”

“Doll, I don’t know.”

“It’ll be fine,” Doll said. “Make a bandage out of Keith’s shirt. Grab the booze from his backpack, whatever isn’t smashed. Is there something we can make a fire out of?”

“I think he packed some weed too, so there might be a lighter in there,” Sasha said.

“Okay so we’re gonna do this,” Doll said. “Take this arrow and pull it all the way through. Then cauterize it. Then bandage it.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Pansy said.

“Look at me. Look at where we are. If we don’t act on this thing now, it’s going to get necrotic and black and gross and then probably poison me. Do you want that?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you?” She looked at Marco.

“No. Obviously.”

“What about you, Sash, do you want that?”

“Let’s just get it over with,” Sasha said. She started to dig through Keith’s stuff. She looked at Marco and he took the hint to go over and help her. He pulled Keith forward by the shoulders, and darkish blood came out of the hole in his neck and poured out along his chest and then Sasha shimmied off his bag. Without making eye contact she started talking. She didn’t want the Doerr sisters to overhear.

“I know who the hunter was talking about.”

“He was a crazy person,” Marco said. He reached into the bag. “Shit!” He quickly pulled his hand back out. A thin piece of glass was in the meat beneath his thumb. Marco plucked it out and tossed it aside. Re-strategizing, he flipped the bag over and dumped out the contents. The bottles that Keith packed were all broken. The bag was almost soaked through with bourbon and tequila and the remaining liquid poured out onto the grass. Among the mess fell a BIC lighter, the bag of shrooms, and two pre-rolled joints. “The liquor is gone,” Marco said.

“He wasn’t crazy,” Sasha remarked, continuing the line of thought she had started. “I mean he was, but he wasn’t.”

“What are you talking about? Just say it.”

Sasha looked beyond Marco to Doll and Pansy by the large tree. She looked back at Marco. “It’s the Man of Wind and Moss.”

“What are you talking about?” Marco shot a look over his shoulder as if someone were there. Like he was expecting to see someone.

“The poem.”

“The limerick?”

“It’s real.”

It took a second for Marco to understand what she was saying. He understood the words, sure, but the message was insane. Finally, he got annoyed. “I think you hit your head.”

“‘He comes when you are lost-a-come,’” she said, sing-songy.

“Sasha, what the hell are you talking about?”

“‘The Man of Wind and Moss has come, he comes when you are lost-a-come, he’s here to protect, he’s here to direct, and tally up the cost to come!’ He’s here! It’s happening!”

“Okay,” was all Marco said. He picked up the lighter and the joints and tucked them into the same bag as the shrooms.

“I’m serious,” she said.

“I know you are. That’s the problem.”

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“To be honest, I don’t have the brain-processing power to deal with that right at this moment. We need to think about now. How to keep Doll from losing her leg. How to get out of here in case Dean doesn’t come back.”

“Dean’s not coming back.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s lost. We all are. This guy was too,” she said, gesturing with her chin to the dead hunter.

“What are you saying to me?”

“Here,” Sasha dug into her back pocket. “This was the map the hunter was using. I pulled it out of his vest when you were gone. Try to make sense of this. Go on.”

She handed it to Marco. Carefully, he unfolded it. What he saw made his eyes hurt. It felt like a migraine coming on. When he was looking at the map on the hill, he thought his inability to read it clearly was a result of exhaustion and dehydration. It was because he wasn’t standing still and focusing. But he slowly realized that those reasons had nothing to do with it. Now he was crouched, stationary, his heart rate lowered, and he was trying to read the map Sasha proffered. But it didn’t make sense. It just didn’t.

When he focused on one part, the rest of the map changed and warped, right under his nose, right in the blur of his vision. The legend in the corner seemed to scramble itself. It was subtle. It was slow. He felt a needle in his brain, poking at the back of his eye. He kept turning the map around trying to make sense of the N on the compass but every right angle he turned it, the rose bloomed and twirled and put the N elsewhere.

“This doesn’t make sense,” Marco said. He handed it back to Sasha. He rubbed his eyes. He took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with his shirt, quietly impressed that his glasses weren’t obliterated from his faceplant earlier. Small blessings.

“I was trying too hard, and it gave me a nosebleed,” Sasha said.

“No, this isn’t right.”

“You don’t have to process it. It’s still happening.”

Marco and Sasha held each other’s stare. She had cuts along her cheeks and her forehead, little ones, thin lines from the tumble down. Her arms were red and sore and mosquito bites grew like a tiny mountain range. She lifted her hands and gently felt his face. Her thumb grazed his nose, and he winced.

“Do you want me to crack it back in place?” she asked.

“Do you know how?”

“Not really.”

“Then why don’t we leave it alone.”

“Okay,” she said. She lowered her hands but kept staring at him. She frowned. “You have black eyes.”

“Guys! Come on!” Pansy shouted. She was giving them a What the fuck is taking so long?

“Don’t show them the map yet. I don’t want to scare them,” Sasha said. She moved from Marco and rejoined the girls. Marco thought about what she had said. I don’t want to scare them. He couldn’t picture Doll panicking or being scared of a confusing map. He couldn’t picture Pansy holding it and looking up at Sasha and automatically knowing whatever deep horror Sasha thought was so easily implied. I don’t want to scare them. What was the scary part if not already everything that was happening? What was the scary part that Sasha understood that was wrapped up like a present for the others? Marco stood up and joined the girls by the tree.

They stood over Doll like Civil War surgeons. She leaned against the tree trunk and dug her fingers into the soil, her right hand gripping a root.

“He didn’t have anything you could drink, but here’s a joint if you want.”

“Fuck it, gimme.”

Marco handed the bag to Doll. She put a joint to her lips and lit it. She took a large breath and coughed and the smell of dried-out, shit marijuana wafted up. “Nice, Keith. Stuff from the Mesozoic era.” She took another drag and offered it around. Marco passed. Pansy reached over and took a hit.

“Sorry. I needed that.”

“Okay,” Doll said. “Does anybody have a knife so I can cut off these stupid things?” She fingered the vanes on the back of the arrow. “No? Okay fuck it. Just pull this through as fast and steady as you can. When it’s out, clean off the metal arrow part, get it really hot with the lighter, sear the wound, then tie the shirt around it. Got it?”

“I’m really nervous,” Pansy said.

“Me too. I’m probably going to scream and beg you to stop but, you know, don’t.”

Doll looked up at the three of them. Her cheeks were caked in soil and her brown hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat. Her shirt was ripped, and the veins around her neck seemed blue. Somehow, though, her eyes held life. Like she had faith this plan would work.

“Ready?” Doll asked.

“Ready,” Pansy said.

“One. Two. Three.”

* * *

When Miss Grabinski first laughed in Doll’s face, she took it pretty hard. The group was at Crenshaw Lanes and Doll came in fuming. She plunged her hand into the bucket of beer and sat down with her arms crossed. Everyone was afraid of Doll when she got angry. When Dean got angry, you couldn’t really tell. You just got a broken nose and were expected to apologize to someone. When Marco got angry, he whined and complained and talked shit for days. But when Doll got angry, it was like finding a pulled grenade rattling on the pavement. Everyone just waited for her to blow up.

“She doesn’t know shit, don’t listen to her,” Keith had said. He rolled a purple bowling ball right into the gutter. It didn’t faze him though. He was in one of his advice-giving moods, and he decided to hold court. Marco listened with a grin, wrists deep in some nachos he was sharing with Sasha. Keith kept going. “These types of counselors are hired to direct their students into certain, secure fields. They do not care about your dreams and aspirations. Sure, we have creative majors and stuff but all of that is expected to be abandoned outside the walls of this school. It’s Florida State, Doll, look around you. We’re not pumping out art conservators. Our quarterback stole crab legs from Publix.”

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Sasha fought. “What about the film school?”

“What about it?” Keith asked. “Cool, a bunch of twenty-­year-olds are learning how to make short films about anxiety. Who gives a shit?”

“Didn’t you apply for the film school?” Marco asked.

“You’re missing the point!” Keith said. “The people here who will ‘push you to the next step’ do not give a shit about you or the next step. When your tuition is done, bye-bye, see ya later, thanks for the pass rate.”

“Look, I’m pretty practical,” Doll said. “I wasn’t expecting to walk out of here and straight into some Venetian church. I wasn’t even expecting relevant employment. But she’s a guidance counselor. I wanted guidance. She told me to screw off and, you know, okay, fine, despite her advice being reasonable, it’s just the way she said it.”

Doll took a long pause. Marco hadn’t ever seen it done before, but the grenade on the pavement was swallowed whole and the damage was internal. Her face sank like every harsh truth she had ever heard was being retold to her in a montage of greatest hits. Or maybe it was the first time she believed them. “She was literally smiling when she said it,” Doll said. “She thought it was funny.”

Keith looked at Sasha. Sasha made a look at Marco. Marco just shrugged. Down the alley Pansy and Dean were coming back with pizza and more beer. Doll inhaled sharply and tried to shake it off.

The rest of the evening, they drank and bowled, and Doll never got out of her slump. The friends moved around her, fully aware of their inability to help. Short of going back in time and throttling the old lady, there was nothing to be done. Doll sat there on the plastic chair for the rest of the night and just marinated in the truth that the older, guiding echelon of adults did not care about her. There was always make pretend that they did, but when it actually mattered your “counselors” were either too busy or it flatly wasn’t their problem. And what a racket it was, because the institutions around you made it so you couldn’t be independent. Between the housing market, the job market, and degree inflation, the runway of dependence stretched on and on until it abruptly ended and you careened off a cliff.

The big concern, the one that grew bigger and nastier the further she settled into The Lib, was that maybe Doll (read: everyone) could’ve gotten further if they just never asked that stupid old lady in the first place. What if Doll just marched out of Tallahassee and caught a flight to Italy? What if Doll never once shared her ambitions with Miss Grabinski? What if you were never meant to seek guidance and the truest, purest form of living was to strive forward untainted by anybody with a clipboard? Where would she have ended up? Would she still be on the forest floor about to get her leg hacked off?

* * *

Okay, maybe not hacked off, but the ordeal was an unfettered nightmare. It was a debacle. In no universe would leaving the arrow in her leg not have been better. Pansy rested Doll’s ankle in her lap and extended her knee as much as Doll would allow. Already she was screaming in pain. When the knee flexed, the arrow wobbled. When the arrow wobbled, Doll gasped and started crying. Sasha bunched together Keith’s shirt and fed it to her to stop her from grinding her teeth. Pansy screamed for Marco to do it already, and Marco gripped the back of the arrow like a plunger. In as steady a motion as he could, he pushed the two remaining feet of carbon rod through the wound. Blood spurted out from both sides of the wound and when the broadhead was further out, the arrow stopped moving forward. Without realizing it, Marco was indeed pushing the arrow through Doll’s leg, but beneath her leg, he was digging the broadhead deeper into the dirt.

It was Sasha who realized—“It’s stuck!” And so, they turned Doll on her side. Doing this, they lost the leverage they had when her leg was straight. Now Doll screamed and begged for clemency, but something clicked in Marco that if they stopped now, she’d be immobile at the base of the tree for eternity.

“Hold her leg straight!” he yelled. Pansy scrambled to the side and held the back of Doll’s leg. Marco pushed the arrow through to the fletching—blue plastic vanes in a helix spiral. But the vanes wouldn’t budge through. They bumped into her open wound, holding on to the sides of her tender, discolored skin. They couldn’t get through the denim.

“We gotta take off her pants,” Sasha said. She was trying to calm down Doll who had gone from shades of green to pale to gray. The energy in her eyes had vanished quickly. Now they were glassy and bloodshot.

“We can’t get them off over this,” Pansy snarled. “Just push!”

Marco’s grip was slipping. His hands were clammy, and clutching such a narrow rod was making his knuckles hurt. For leverage, he used his palm. In one lunge, Marco shoved down and the fletching went into the wound. A wet thwick sound happened and dark blood came from the hole and poured out of the top of her knee. Doll started throwing up—choking on the shirt tucked into her mouth. Her gagging was soft, but Sasha saw vomit come from her nostrils and she lunged to pull the gag out of her mouth. Vomit poured onto the dirt. Doll was barely conscious now, delusional, blabbering for help.

“Now pull it through,” Marco commanded. Pansy gripped the arrow, the broadhead behind her fist, and she pulled it out. A thick popping sound came out and the fletching emerged from the exit wound with meat and blood and a squirt of fluid. Beneath Doll’s jeans, her knee had swelled to the size of a melon. Stringy pus came out, thick strands of it twirling down like dog slobber. The crotch of her pants darkened with urine.

But the worst of it was over.

Doll passed out and Sasha kept her head straight in case she puked again. Pansy cleaned the broadhead on her shirt, the serrated edges of it cutting at the fabric. “Gimme the lighter,” she said. Marco tossed her the BIC and Pansy lit the broadhead like a heroin spoon.

“That’s not gonna get hot enough,” Sasha said.

“Shut up,” Pansy replied. She was trying to focus, but the BIC was a dinky plastic thing. It was getting too hot; she kept burning herself.

“I’m just saying that lighter isn’t strong enough, we need like a torch—”

“Sasha! Shut the fuck up! Ow!” The spark wheel burnt her thumb again and she shook her hand out.

“Forget the lighter, let’s just bandage her up before she bleeds out,” Marco implored.

“She said to cauterize. I’m doing what she said.” She put the flame back under the broadhead. The skinny flame wavered beneath the metal. The spark wheel burned Pansy’s thumb, but she held it fast, letting out a painful growl as Doll mumbled to herself in and out of consciousness.

It was an arbitrary decision when Pansy said the broadhead was hot enough. She pressed the metal triangle to the back of Doll’s leg. It sizzled weakly and died. Doll didn’t wake up—the pain was too much for her. Her body had turned off. Pansy pressed the hot metal to the other side of the wound expecting to see something happen. Like for the wound to close, the swelling to go down, the blood to clean itself up, reverse dripping and rejoin the rest of Doll’s circulation. But there was just the smell of burnt flesh.

Marco took over from there. In one gesture he stepped in front of Pansy and brushed her away. Pansy sat on her butt, speechless that all of this had gone down the way it did, and Marco took the vomit-covered T-shirt, wiped it off on his jeans, and tied it above Doll’s knee as tight as he could.

The three stood back and watched Doll lay there. She was on her side, drooling and sputtering along the grass. But she was breathing. She was alive.

Pansy burst out crying. She walked away. Couldn’t be around the smell anymore, Marco figured. Couldn’t be around the look of her sister crumbled in on herself. She moved to the edge of the clearing and put her hands on her knees and sobbed. She screamed out and cried some more. Marco wiped the sweat from his brow. He could feel the contents of his stomach trying to displace themselves. He looked up at the sky and took big, gulping breaths. But looking upwards, the trees invaded his periphery. It was kind of ironic. There was no room to think out in those woods. No room to get a grip on things. He looked at Sasha. She was looking beat herself. Some strands of hair had come loose from her ponytail and the bug bites on her arm had seemed to get worse in the frenzy. They looked like big red streaks, flared up and sore, the tips of them moist with openings. In her eyes, though, was the secret of the map she had shown him. It permeated everything now. Why the map looked like that. It was likely the same reason his compass was obliterated. The reason the hunter was terrified. All of it shadows among the trees, forming something—an outline. Something not quite defined. Not yet at least.

* * *

They decided to bury Keith the best way they could. Marco and Sasha used rocks, sharp branches, and anything they could to dig out a trough-like grave. The result was pitiful. They rolled Keith into it, and they took care that he didn’t land face down, and then quickly he was covered with a thin layer of dirt and rocks. Marco pulled some branches loose from a bush and laid it on him like a blanket. It was Pansy’s idea that they mark the grave with something so they could retrieve his body later. “Once we’re out of here,” she said. Marco didn’t like the bolt of doubt he had when she said those words, so to suppress it he did as she said. Marco grabbed the arrow that pierced Keith’s neck and dug it into the ground. Then he took the hunter’s bright orange cap and placed it on top of the arrow.

“That feels wrong,” Sasha said.

“Don’t think about it,” Marco replied.

“And what about him?” She gestured to the hunter. His face had lost all rigidity. The skin and skull around the bullet hole seemed to fracture and sag. “We should bury him too.”

“There’s a good title for you,” Marco said. “Bury Him Too.”

Sasha shook her head. But then a small, pathetic smile formed, and she laughed despite herself. Forced herself to laugh, really. “A book of essays on, uh, cutting people out of your life. Like toxic exes and stuff. ‘Bury him too.’ Hey that is pretty good.”

They grabbed the hunter and dragged him further away from Keith, but Marco noticed there was friction. Like the blades of grass were clinging onto the corpse. He noticed it with Keith too but didn’t think much of it. He thought the blood had gone sticky. He had also noticed that when Keith landed in his plot, the soil of the ground was immediately upon him, like it was enthusiastic to consume him. In the end, for the hunter, the same thing happened. They dug a worse hole and rolled him in. He fell face first and landed with a soft smack and Marco, beyond creeped out, noticed the soil was very quick to cover him up.

“How are we gonna tell Pansy that we can’t wait for Dean?” Sasha asked. Behind them, out of earshot, Pansy brushed at Doll’s hair and helped her regain strength. She held her Nalgene to Doll’s lips and Doll drank from it slowly. There was a distorted image of Pansy as a mother there. Bottle to her daughter. It felt wrong to watch, like seeing it too soon was some sort of bad omen. Marco looked back at Sasha.

“How are you so sure he’s not coming back?” To be clear, Marco didn’t want Dean to come back, but that was different than needing Dean to come back. They needed everyone together. They needed all the help they could get.

“If his map looks anything like ours,” Sasha said, eyes wide and knowing. “Think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about our map. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Marco,” she said. “Look at me.” She held him by the shoulders just like she did back at Black Arms. Her skinny hands gripped him tight. The bites on her arm were big and unruly. Her neck was breaking out in splotches of red. “We don’t have to think about the map. Fuck the map. We can still find running water. We can still move and not just sit here and rot. Yeah?”

“But what if Dean comes back and we’re gone?”

She looked at him like he was crazy. Her eyes demanded to know when did you start giving a shit about Dean? Marco looked inward. Maybe he wanted Dean because he didn’t want to be the only guy present. Someone like Dean took charge and when someone took charge, there was a person to blame when things went wrong. Someone to hate and judge and unload on. Thanks for the career advice, Keith. Thanks for getting us killed, Dean. But without Dean, who was it?

“I think we should go,” Pansy said from behind them. “We’ve already been sitting here for a few hours. I want to find water where I can clean her up,” she said, thumbing to Doll.

“I can hear you, by the way,” Doll said without opening her eyes. “But yes please.”

“Can you move okay?” Marco asked.

“No,” Doll said, “but I’m sitting in my own piss and would rather not. If there’s water nearby, I want it.”

“Look, you said there was a water hole up ahead anyway. There’s probably a stream or something. I want to find shelter,” Pansy continued. “Maybe there’s another cabin somewhere. I can’t stay here. Dean will find us. He has a map. He’ll be okay.”

Marco looked at Sasha when the word map was said. Yeah. Some map.

“Then that’s the majority vote,” Sasha said. “Let’s get a move on. I say we go downhill. It’ll be easier on us.”

* * *

Going downhill was slow and steady and Pansy took point. Thinking he was clever, Marco found a long and sturdy branch for Doll to use as a crutch, but the way the crutch landed and braced against her armpit proved more painful and cumbersome than going without it. They tossed the thing to the side and Doll held onto Marco’s shoulder and he supported her like that.

The sun moved a bit more west and came down on them through the high trees and if the situation were considerably different, it would’ve been a gorgeous day. They ate out of their trail mix bags and each of them had plenty of water in their Nalgenes. Food wasn’t the problem yet. They were lost. They would always be lost. The thought pervaded every word, every movement, every exhale of breath.

Marco knew what Sasha was thinking about. She was thinking about the Man of Wind and Moss. It was mentioned in the car ride, mentioned in that book, mentioned while digging through Keith’s bag, and before that, it was loosely corroborated by the hunter before Dean blew his brains out. But Marco refused to let the thought take hold. How could he? It was too weird. Too far out. And if he did give it credence, then what? Hey, Sasha, the folklore you read about is real and we’re fucked.

He started to think about Paula. What she must be doing back in Brooklyn. He started to consider the idea that all of this was her fault. She did this on purpose. She wanted to take her young friend and throw him to the wolves. She wanted to see them suffer and die, getting in her final kicks.

No, no, no, no, no. That’s not true.

His brain was turning to mush. He was sweating. He was weak. Doll was heavy on his shoulder, and she smelled like puke and blood and dry piss. The Man of Wind and Moss. He comes when you are lost. Well, they were lost now so where the hell was he? What did he look like? No, that line of questioning started to scare him quicker than he realized. Now was not the time to start imagining a ghost or a spirit or whatever it was.

Short. He’s probably short.

He needed to keep his mind clear.

But he hovers in the branches.

He tried to focus on the tangibles.

Black arms.

One foot before the next.

Yellow eyes.

Anyway, Sasha was cracked. Totally and irrevocably cracked. And moreover, she was so convincing in her crackedness she was going to bring everyone down with her.

The Man of Wind and Moss.

Come on. Get a grip.