was happening, he watched from start to finish. It ook from dawn to dusk; it was a regular holiday. Belief finally came to him in a dream. He woke from nightmares, screaming, and knew that he had to flee. Immediately.
In fact, it was three days before he departed. He left at twilight, stealing a punt and pooling it away through the swamps. He had no certain idea of where he was going. He had hoped to be helped by the moon, which should have been almost full, but he had no such luck. The stars were soon bedimmed by clouds; by the time moonrise was due, the clouds had ceiled the sky. The night was warm, but black.
He went on through a darkness that was alive with singing insects. Progress became difficult; the punt was slowed, delayed and then halted by a shoal of water lilies. He was not surprised to find that he was lost. Maybe it would have been better to run away in the daytime. But, somehow, he doubted that he would have had the nerve to slip away in broad daylight.
He curled up as best he could on the bottom of the punt and tried to sleep. He was not very successful. Inquisitive insects tasted him, and, finding his flesh acceptable, they spread the word. Something bumped into the punt from underneath, spent some time gnawing at it, then, disheartened, left. An animal went flipperty-flopperty through the blacked-out swamps with a blood-curdling chuckling scream.
Togura several times considered punting on, but, knowing that he would only succeed in getting himself more lost than he was, he stayed put. Dreams claimed him briefly, then nightmares woke him; he found it was early morning.
Sunlight slouched through the swamp. A dawdling insect lumbered through the air amidst nearby osiers, lulling him with its dull, lethargic drone. Though it was still the cool of the early morning, his limbs were heavy with a siesta-sun weariness. He wanted to lie down and sleep. Now that it was daylight, he thought he would sleep quite well.
Resisting temptation, Togura poled his way through the waters, habitat of eel and ewt. Slowly, he negotiated the hazards of the swamp. Occasionally, bubbles stirring on the surface hinted at the direction of a current which might lead him to an outlet from the swamp. He followed one hint after another, only to find that the current dispersed and disappeared, or that the way ahead was an impossible acreage of sedge, or a morass of oozing mud where his punting pole could not find the bottom.
Often the punt ran aground on a slop, a stinking mudflat riddled with wormholes. Then he had to back it off and try some other avenue. He wished – though there was no use wishing – that he had tried to escape in spring, when the water level would have been higher. He was now more tired than ever. He passed a low-hanging tree, the largest he had ever seen in the swamp; he was sorely tempted to make camp, and let one of its ergonomically- designed branches nurse him to sleep.
He forced himself onward, driving the punt over a splodge-shaped fresh-water nettle-fish. The day was now alive with the steady hum and blur of insects. The sun had ascended to the heights. High, willowy swamp-trees arched overhead; sunlight, warm and heavy, settled down through a fantasia of branches and foliage. Little scraps of blue sky were mixed into that dense green soup of bough and leaf. In the wake of the punt, which left scarcely a ripple on the waters, tipsy reflections wavered momentarily, then composed themselves. It was now a long time since Togura had seen any hint of a current.
He blinked against the heavy lull of the sun. He tried to convince himself that he was a hunted fugitive, running for his life. But it was impossible. Everything was slow, heavy, lazy. The leisurely rhythms of punting refused to support his claims to urgency.
As he eased the punt down hidden channels between overhanging trees, he slapped away an overhanging branch. Irritated, it retreated: it was a snake. He felt no sense of alarm. Everything was too lazy to consider hurting him. Violence was impossible.
He halted, for water weed and water lilies barred the way ahead. He could go no further. The gnarled voices of frogs, in concord with the droning insects, were persuading him toward sleep. Then, excited, he saw signs of a current in the water. Looking closer, he saw it was a rat swimming, nosing its way between intolerably bright sun- dapple reflections. The waters congealed behind it.
A gaudy dragonfly, child of the sun's pleroma, hovered above the humid waters. As Togura watched, a free- floating rainbow cascaded away from its colours. He blinked, and the hallucination was gone. He decided he had better rest, at least for a few moments. There were trees around him and branches overhead; he was well concealed. A little sleep would do no harm. He curled up in the bottom of the punt, heedless of its discomforts, and was soon lost in slumber.
Togura slept, dreaming of Day Suet asleep in a bed of turquoise, jacinth and ligure. She woke, a sultry melon- light glimmering in her eyes. Giff-gaff, said an insect, eating her nose. He tested her jymolds. She was hot. He was swollen. A sheep pushed him to one side. He plucked mint and ate it, gnawning the sheep. He watched his mother, now perissodactyl, walk across the water lilies. I raped her, said Cromarty. Not so, said Togura, you're just saying that because this is a dream. He closed with Cromarty. His swelling spat. Hot. As birdsong sang.
Togura woke and heard the birdsong. There was something wrong with it. True birdsong should not be like that. He was hearing people talking. They were hunting him. Hunting me, said Togura. His words took flight, becoming shovels of goldleaf; with relief, he realised he was still dreaming. Sleep on, said Togura to Togura. He did, but his dream soon became a nightmare.
Togura Poulaan dreamt of the gaping mouth of a child, which sweated blood. He heard the heavyweight thud of a waterlogged club. White bone splintered through ruptured skin. A woman pulled out a tooth, licked the bloody stump, then swallowed it. The sun licked down, licking his face, stripping away the skin as it did so.
Then something shaded out the sun.
Togura woke for real, and opened his eyes.
In the trees above him, something lurched and giggled. And moved. Sunlight stabbed downwards. He flinched, blinked, and shaded his eyes. He saw bright eyes staring down at him. He leapt to his feet, almost strangling himself. Clawing at his throat, he fell back to the floor of the punt. Someone had looped a noose round his throat as he slept.
They attacked him then, swarming down out of the trees. It was the young women who had hunted him and found him. They beat him, punched him, pinched him, scratched him. The punt, of course, got swamped in the process. They ducked him, forced him underwater and held him there until he almost drowned.
He cried out, his words gashing the air with incoherent fear. The noose was still round his neck. As he floundered in the water, the other end of it was passed up to someone in the trees, who held it while the punt was bailed out.
Then they started off for the city.
Some of the women waded through the swamp on long, high stilts, which he had never seen before. Others rode in punts. Togura was dragged the whole distance behind one of the punts. As his clothes caught on underwater obstacles, the bark was slowly torn to pieces; he left a train of waterlogged moss and lichen behind him. He had already lost his clogs. By the end of their journey, he was cold, muddy, exhausted and entirely naked.
They imprisoned him in a wickerwork cage hung in a half-submerged hall on the outskirts of the inhabited area of the city. They left him there overnight, without food or water. In his misery, he thought they were going to starve him to death, so he was most relieved when a woman came early in the morning, opened a hatch which was too small for him to escape through, and passed him a gourd filled with potable water, and a wooden bowl with a steaming potpourri of turtle meat, snake meat, bird meat, boiled vegetables, steamed herbs and caterpillars.
She watched while he ate the lot, then she took back the bowl, gestured for him to drink, took back the gourd, and then, to his surprise, slipped him a tiny ornamental knife. She slashed a finger across the side of her neck in a swift, emphatic gesture. He understood. She was counselling him to commit suicide. That was what the knife was for.
She left.
He contemplated the knife, which was scarcely the length of his little finger. The diminutive handle was of nacreous mother-of-pearl; the blade, catching a gleam of light in that gloomy place, was of a kind of steel which was brittle yet would take a keen edge.
'I will not die,' said Togura, slowly.
He refused to kill himself. There were so many things he had to do! He heard voices; people were coming into the hall. He had to hide the knife. But how? He had no clothes and no clogs. The blade was razor sharp – he could hardly secrete it in a body orifice. Deciding swiftly, he knotted it into his thick, straggling hair, which had not been
