The Vorrh

to send her on her way quickly.
    ‘These are for you,’ she said, offering a richly embroidered silk bag containing an ornate box. ‘They are Chanteuse bonbons,’ she gushed, ‘all the way from Stuttgart.’
    He thanked her and began the consultation, probing and questioning the woman’s hypochondriac needs for almost an hour. When he finally got rid of her, he rushed back into the laboratory to pack the bundle. Late, and desperate to be on the road, he bustled about, his curiosity running in a lapse. The new voice in the Limboia meant that he could gauge his experiments. He hoped to see again the response of the lost ones, this time without fear clouding his perceptions.
    In his distracted panic, he mislaid the creature’s carrying bag and spent ten minutes crawling under the furniture, looking behind the books and spinning around like a giddy dog. Time was running out, and he knew Maclish would be chewing his claws and growing ill-tempered. Perhaps he had taken it next door when he’d gone to examine that dreary woman? He sprinted across the hall and scanned the examination room. The bag was not there, but her silk pouch was. He quickly threw the repulsive sweets in a bin. The bundle fitted perfectly in its elegant new conveyor.
    The keeper was standing outside the prison house, chafing and irritable. The doctor gave him a limp wave from the fence door while hurrying towards him.
    ‘Sorry to be so late, I had a patient.’
    Maclish said nothing, but stared at the bright, noisy sack which Hoffman pulled out of his Gladstone bag like a garish conjuror. With a slur of incongruity, he said, ‘Is that it?’ Hoffman nodded and they entered the anticipant building.
    Inside the stillness, the herald stood waiting at the table. ‘The one that looks back,’ he said, staring at the embroidered bag.
    Maclish and Hoffman said nothing, setting their prize down on the table.
    ‘You leave, we need lone this day.’
    ‘Now, wait a minute…’ bristled Maclish.
    ‘It’s alright, William,’ said the doctor, with a certainty which sounded believable, ‘let’s do it their way this time.’
    ‘One hour!’ barked the keeper. ‘One hour only, then we come back.’
    They did not turn around as they left the building, the hallway reverberating with the sound of the multitude descending the clanking stairs behind them.
    * * *

    There was something wrong with the food. He had tasted it in the second course. He was now on the ninth, and it was getting worse. The
crème de testicule
had a bitter tang, astringent and disconcerting. The kidneys had been swollen and leathery, and now the
foie gras
had a sulphurous aftertaste. He dined with one of his urchinous, casual companions. This alone was unheard of: he always had them removed before he bathed and dressed for a solitary dinner. The boy shovelled the food into his emaciation, washing it down with brimming glasses of the Frenchman’s favourite wine. He spat while talking, laughing out great gobfuls of exquisite cuisine, which now looked like chewed cud as they flew ungraciously across the shining tablecloth.
    The next course smelt like the crystals that the servants used to clean the water-chamber porcelain. He started to gag. The movement roused him and he awoke in the damp mulch of leaves and the naked surface roots of the tree that signified his despair. The glowing table and the gentle candles were gone; twilight had begun to exhale from the trees. Dread swamped him as he bolted into the understanding that this was not the dream.
    He stood up and tried to collect himself, tears filling his eyes and choking his swallowing breath. He walked aimlessly away, needing to escape this immediate place that had been the site of declaration, the horrible trees that had witnessed the realisation of his sentence; he had to rid himself of their mocking indifference.
    The aftertaste of the acrid food lingered as he pushed through the cool, wet leaves. He found a hollow in one of the long-dead oaks and crawled inside its stiff embrace, the hard fungi breaking off against his shoulders. He scrabbled around to face the outside, the Derringer in one hand and a small camping knife in the other. By the time night finally arrived, he had steeled himself for its attack.
    The forest grew dim as the shadows lengthened into one continuous form. The world outside of the tree was beyond dark, but constantly moving; blue blurs matted with the dense blackness of distance. Things slid and