“What am I, your personal prophet?” the voice in the woods asked. “I don’t know everything, you know. Don’t you at least suspect that there are places where gods go for their afterlives which differ from that of mortals?”
“I—” Isme said, but broke off. She was going to wail, But I don’t want to be alone! And yet she knew that there would be no way for the voice in the woods to answer.
“If it’s any consolation,” said the voice, “All the skills your father taught you are as relevant as ever. I’m sure he’d be pleased to know you know how to survive.”
“I do,” said Isme, and she realized that she did indeed have everything she needed on this island. There were her chores, set right in front of her; the weeding, and a bucket to fetch spring water, and besides, it was dark, so she needed to—
Set the night fire.
Heaving a hot breath from her insides, Isme crouched and placed her hands flat on the ground, trying to stabilize herself, to stop trembling. In her mind’s eye she could see herself like this, only a few moons before, humming and singing little ditties as she did her chores, imagining herself having an adventure on the mainland, or surviving the end of the world, and knowing her father would return and never leave her.
You fool, she wanted to shout to that other, younger Isme, Don’t you know the world is dangerous! Hasn’t our father tried to impress that on you every day, with every lesson on survival, with every awful story and its awful ending! You’re going to break his rules on a whim, people will die, and then you’ll run in circles only to end up here—the very place where you should have stayed, should have belonged, if only you knew!
But there was no younger Isme. She was only shouting at herself.
Falling back into a sitting position, Isme calmed her breathing. This was the trap, she saw. When prophecies came true, everyone always asked, How could I have avoided them? Well, her most important prophecy—understanding the end of the world—had not yet come. She was now wise enough to not try to avoid it.
Even if that meant staying on this island, alone.
Beside her came something like a sigh, and a shift in the air. Isme realized then that the invisible voice in the woods indeed had something like a body, with which it moved around the worlds. And now it was sitting beside her. Perhaps it, too, faced the long wait and dreaded the passage of time on this island.
But it was still here with her.
And Isme said, “Are you going to leave me?”
“Why would I?” asked the voice. “You know what I am. I cannot leave you.”
Pulling her knees in, Isme said, low and trembling, “You are the blood guilt, aren’t you? That’s why you appeared that night after the men died, and you won’t leave.”
“How can you be so stupid,” said the voice in the woods. “Sometimes I wonder about myself, given how foolish you are, but I think I’m still somehow smarter.”
Isme responded with a snarl, “Yes, you’re smarter and more aggravating.”
“See,” said the voice. “You acknowledge me. You’re getting better.”
They sat in the silence for a while, and Isme almost swore that she could hear it breathing. This thought was, perhaps, somehow even more reassuring than the idea that it had a body, or that it would never leave. At last, she asked, “What are you?”
“I am knowledge,” said the voice in the woods.
Setting her knees on the ground, Isme asked, “But how?”
“I appeared when you began your journey,” said the voice, sounding as reasonable as it ever had. “When you committed your first real, important act, and then denied the consequences—or more accurately, denied me, the lesson that you were to learn. That you have great power and can use it for help or great ill—and there are consequences for actions taken even in honest and earnest. And you ran from me—from the understanding of your own wicked nature, the same way all men do.”
Isme turned these words over in her head, then said, “Then how is it that you seemed sometimes to know more than I did—where Kleto and Lycander were, or that I was dying in that cold stream, and other things like that?”
“People always know more than they realize,” it replied. “And I didn’t say that I was your knowledge, I said I was knowledge. I am a creature from here, down below.”
“Then why did you follow me?” said Isme. “Why me, and not other people?”
“Well,” said the voice, “for starters, I have followed other people. And as for you, why wouldn’t I follow you? After all, you have that whole prophecy about the end of the world. Seems the kind of thing I ought to know.”
“You mean,” said Isme, slowly, “that you know what the end of the world will be, the darkness and earthquake, and why the world will end—and so forth?”
“I don’t know everything,” said the voice. “Just because I’m knowledge, doesn’t mean I know literally everything. Even just a little of knowledge is still knowledge.”
“I see,” whispered Isme, though she did not entirely—except this time, when she realized that she did not know something, she felt herself grow quite eager to find out the answer. Perhaps this was what she had gained from the circle of her misadventure.
“Good,” said the voice in the woods, “because I suspect you and I will have a long time together, and I prefer us to only argue about superficial things. I don’t mind arguing, truth be told it’s an excellent way to grow, but too much is, well, too much.”
“I suppose we will argue,” said Isme, and left off saying, Over a lot of things, just to hear ourselves talk. And she said, “What should I do now, do you think?”
“Well,” said the voice, “It will be some time before sunrise. That’s one thing I know—this place,
