The Ritual

felt oddly comfortable. Here his
skin and head went warm and the pain in his head settled to a distant scream.
    He opened an eye and looked down the slope beyond the grubby toes of his hiking boots. The dawn was red. Or was that his vision? The sunrise blazed through the trees to his left, to the east. He
turned his head to see it with the only eye he could keep open. And beyond the scattering of trees down there in the rocky soil he could detect a great whitish space widening out forever, where
great black trunks and boughs did not suffocate the red light. He squinted his good eye at the ocean of space and scarlet light beyond the trees. And he wondered if this was the end of the terrible
forest, or the beginning of hell, or just the end of his mind. It mattered little because he would not move again. Could not. There was not one more shuffle or dragging lurch left inside him. There
was nothing left inside him but the dimming of his parts and the quietening of his wordless thoughts.
    But what was that thing standing upright with hell on fire behind its long body? As tall as three grown men standing on each other’s shoulders, at the edge of the black wood; what was it
that filled the gap between two epic trees? It was nothing. Because when he tried to see it more fully the blurry vision of the figure vanished, leaving only the scarlet sky and trees.
    But the bark he heard so close to where he was slumped was not a figment of his imagination. No, that was something he had heard before. That dog-bullock cough, from a thing no trespasser here
had ever seen and lived to tell of, was real enough. As real as the ridged bark pressing into his spine and the cold wind that curled around his damp face.
    Reaching out in front of his unmoving body, he extended a hand that gripped the knife. Pointed it at the misty tree-line with the crimson furnace of dawn burning through the branches and
shrubs.
    He must have passed out and stopped breathing because he suddenly awoke with the sound of his own shocked inhalation in his ears and wondered if he had just been dreaming. So what brought him
back out of that endless sinking into a darkness where he could not breathe? A voice. He had heard someone speak.
    But he could not care enough and could not stop his head from falling forward again. He felt his chin rest upon his breastbone and closed his useful eye. Still he held the knife, but could not
raise his arm at the voice that kept coming towards him. So close now. Calling. Calling. Softly. Calling in the way a loved one summons another, with music in their voice. But it was not coming
quickly enough to pull him out of this warm smothering darkness, so complete, into which he sank.

II
SOUTH OF HEAVEN

FORTY-SIX
    They were close.
    Voices.
    Footsteps.
    People.
    A muttering in Swedish or Norwegian outside the warm heavy darkness that engulfed him. A woman, youngish. And . . . two men, their tones deeper. He sensed their presence above him, over him. The
voices of the people then came together, near his feet.
    He was lying down; his limbs and back were stiff, but sunken into a soft surface. Under his shoulders and buttocks, his skin burned where it touched . . . bedding.
    Something was wrapped around his head; he could feel its touch, its pressure, could sense its size, covering his eyes as well as his skull like a big ill-fitting hat.
    When he tried to open his eyes there was resistance from his eyelids. They were gummed shut. One eyelid partially broke apart and a streak of white pain shot backwards through his pupil. He
closed the eye again. If he moved his head at all it would hurt, perhaps terribly, and not stop hurting. He knew this without putting it to the test.
    He gasped. Tried to speak. But there were no words inside the hot arid place that was his throat. A swishing rustle, as if from long heavy skirts sweeping a wooden floor, came out of the
darkness and closed about him. And then a small dry hand touched his cheek, to calm him, to bid him be still. An elderly voice made shushing sounds.
    Before he remembered anything from the time before his waking, his being there, he sank away, back into a healing darkness and its blessed warmth.

FORTY-SEVEN
    He awoke so thirsty he could not swallow and his lips would tear like rice paper if he forced them to part. It was later than before, much later. A great period of sleep had
left the back of his eyes feeling bruised.
    This was the same place as before, he assumed with