Chapter One
There is no light here, and it is not empty.
He has no body to stand in, but he is standing. He has no eyes, but he is looking, and what he looks at is nothing, and the nothing is full. Thought moves through it like weather moving down a valley, slow and heavy and going somewhere. None of it is his. All of it wants to be.
A grief comes through first, with no one attached to it. Then a longing so large it has no edges, pulling at him like a current pulls at a swimmer who has stopped paying attention, toward a woman he has never met and would know anywhere. He wants to let it take him. That is the danger. He holds on to himself instead, with both hands, as he would hold a ladder in a high wind.
Somewhere in the dark, someone strikes two stones together. He waits for the sound. There isn’t one.
And past the grief, past the longing, farther down than he wants to look, something is asleep. It is very large, and very patient, and it has been asleep a long time. He does not know what it is. He knows he must not wake it. He knows it in his hands and in his teeth.
