that peculiar resignation appropriate enough, one supposes, for those who carry the weight of many winters in their bones, for there was little that was resigned in the bright, ancient spirit of Horemheb, but with a carelessness of, or insensitivity to, what might terrify or threaten another, sitting there with the insouciance of those who feel they have little left to protect of life, and little left to lose, rich only in rags and dust, and questions, and dreams, content in the security of this poverty, this unenvied affluence, vulnerable to the forest, to the darkness, and what might lurk within it, and partook of some of the meal from his small sack, no more than a handful, wetting it with his own saliva and, grain by grain, swallowing it. He did not eat all the grain, however, as it was in its way a fruit of the field, and was to be placed on the platform.
As he fed, and afterwards rested, Horemheb pondered again on a not uncommon theme of his meditations, the brethren. He was not, in his simple way, an untutored man, or unlearned man. Surely in his youth, long before he had found the platform, he had been no stranger to the parchments, those whose surfaces needed no irregularities to communicate their wisdom, or its counterfeits. Too, he had six times traveled from the village, not merely to the platform whence he had often gone, but on the legs of youth, even to the place, far off, beyond the forest, beyond the darkness, where there were steel ships that sailed vertically into the skies, with smoke and fire, then seeming to fade away, like stars in the morning. He had even in that place, far, far away, encountered those who were not of the brethren, men who came and went in such ships, and tended them, and fed them, rough, stormy folk, giants of foul aspect and voice who stank and thundered when they spoke. But even they would not come back into the forests, not even following the clearly marked trails of white stones, which glowed in the darkness, retaining the light of day almost until dawn. There was little in the forests that interested them, or intrigued them. And there were the stealthy ones, of diverse genera, whom they feared, even as the brethren themselves did. Horemheb thought that of interest, that the giants should fear the stealthy ones, in spite of their loud voices, and their bragging, in spite of their lights, and their wires, and the tubes which seemed to have envesseled lightning itself. Sometimes they turned these tubes on one another and Horemheb had once seen this, that the light, with its swift blaze dispelling darkness, had left behind little but ashes and body fluid, bubbling and smoking. Horemheb had fled from the place of the giants, and had returned to the forest. The brethren need not fear the giants in the forest. In the forest the giants, too, were small, and were afraid. The brethren did not have such tubes. They had little, and by their own choice, but sharpened sticks, and weighted cords, and the scarps, the tiny gouges, small, sharp, and hooklike, which served so many purposes, even, on one’s hands and knees, the cultivation of the soil. How was it then that the brethren had survived in the forest, Horemheb wondered. They had, it seemed, for generations and generations, Horemheb did not believe anyone knew how many, eked out their living in this difficult place, petitioning year in and year out the selfish, begrudging soil for an uncertain, meager harvest, and all the time there were, in the forest, and outside the fence, the stealthy, hungry ones. Horemheb knew of extinction and was of such a mind that he did not decide that his people, any more than thousands of other forms of life, or, indeed, more than many a larger, stronger, handsomer, finer people, was somehow immune to its twilight and unending night. But they had survived. They had continued to live in the forest. Perhaps some of the brethren understood this. Horemheb thought that might be possible. He himself, known from youth as different, had never been permitted in the secret places, or taught the oldest lore. Some of the brethren, and, indeed, many far younger than Horemheb, might know these things, but they had never told him, or many others. Gradually over the years Horemheb had begun to sense certain things, not really to