Nation

gorillas, no ferocious lizards from ancient times…in fact it wasn’t very interesting at all. But the thing about a forest that’s only a few square miles in area is that when it’s scrunched up into little crisscrossing valleys and every growing thing is fighting every other living thing for every ragged patch of sunlight, and you cannot see more than a few feet in any direction, and you can’t judge where you are by the sound of the sea because the sound of the sea is very faint and in any case all around you, then the forest not only seems very big but also appears to be growing all the time. That’s when you began to believe it hated you as much as you hated it.
    Following the track was no use, because it soon became a hundred tracks, splitting and rejoining all the time. Things rustled in the undergrowth, and sometimes creatures that sounded a lot bigger than pigs galloped away on paths she could not see. Insects went zing and zip all around her, but they weren’t as bad as the huge spiders that had woven their webs right across the paths and then hung in them, bigger than a hand and almost spitting with rage. Daphne had read in one of her books about the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean islands that “with a few regrettable examples, the larger and more fearsome the spider is, the less likely it is to be venomous.” She didn’t believe it. She could see Regrettable Examples everywhere, and she was sure that some of them were drooling.
    —And suddenly there was clear daylight ahead. She would have run toward it, but there was—by good fortune not apparent at the time—a Regrettable Example using its web as a trampoline and she had to ease her way past it with caution. This was just as well, because while the end of the path offered vast amounts of fresh air, there was a total insufficiency of anything to stand on. There was a little clearing, big enough for a couple of people to sit and watch the world, and then a drop all the way to the sea. It wasn’t a totally sheer drop; you’d bounce off rocks several times before you ever hit the water.
    She took the opportunity to take a few breaths that didn’t have flies in them. It would have been nice to see a sail on the horizon. In fact it would be narratively satisfying, she considered. But at least she could see that the day was getting on. She wasn’t scared of other people’s ghosts, much, but she did not fancy an evening walk through this forest.
    And getting back shouldn’t be too hard, should it? All she had to do was take a downward path every time she found one. Admittedly taking the upward path at every opportunity, or at least every up path not blocked by a particularly evil-looking Regrettable Example, had completely failed to work, but logic had to triumph in the end.
    In a way, it did. After a change of path she stepped out into a small valley, held in the arms of the mountain, and there, ahead of her, was the stone. It couldn’t be anything else.
    There were trees here and there in the valley, but they were sorry-looking things and half dead. The ground beneath them was covered with bird doo-dahs.
    A little way in front of the stone, a large bowl, also of some kind of stone, sat on a tripod made of three big rocks. Daphne peered into it with a kind of shameful curiosity because, to make no bones about it, it was, in this place, just the kind of big stone bowl that you’d expect to have a few skulls in it. There was something in the brain that said: Sinister-looking valley + half-dead trees + ominous doorway = skulls in a bowl, or possibly on a stick. But even by listening to it, she felt she was being unfair to Mau and Cahle and the rest of them. Human skulls never came up in day-to-day conversation. More importantly, they never came up at lunch.
    The sickly smell of sour, sticky Demon Drink rose from the bowl. It was stale, but couldn’t have been very good to start with. It was a terrible thing to admit, but she was getting really good at making beer. Everyone said so. It was just some kind of a knack, Cahle had said, or at least had partly said and partly gestured, and that being able to make beer so well meant she would be able to get a very fine husband. Her getting married still seemed to be the big topic of discussion in the Place. It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.
    It was windy up here, and colder than it was down below. It wasn’t a place where you’d want to be at night.
    Oh, well,