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meat and held it out.
    â€œWood,” I called. “Come, boy.”
    The instant the creature saw the meat, it bolted out of its meandering orbit and made straight for me. I had only a second to turn to the side as it leaped into the air to snatch the morsel and nearly two of my fingers. He took his prize a few feet away and began devouring it, making all manner of unnatural noises. I approached slowly, my hand out.
    â€œGood boy,” I said. “Wood, Wood, Wood,” I sang softly.
    The ungrateful wretch growled and lunged for me. At the last moment, I jumped back, and as it passed, I gave it a mighty kick in the rear end. It yelped and ran away into the undergrowth.
    By the time I was able to get onto the horse, which took a good measure of struggle, the sun had nearly set. There was still a mere wisp of red light on the western horizon above the treetops. It was going to be a beautiful night, warm enough but with a nice breeze beginning to blow. A few stars had already appeared in the sky directly overhead, and I prayed for a moon so it would not be too dark in the forest.
    I had been on a horse maybe once or twice before in my life, and that was as a boy when I lived along the Chottle River. Now it seemed a long way to the ground from where I sat. The poor thing buckled somewhat under my weight, and it stank like death had already taken up residence in its swollen belly.
    â€œGo,” I said, but it didn’t move.
    â€œCharge,” I said, and drove my heels into its flanks. It passed gas in a long, loud, gurgling stream and then lurched forward like a drunken man put off-balance by the planet’s rotation.
    My quest was begun. As we inched our way toward the tree line, the black dog came dashing out of the undergrowth in pursuit as if aware he was an allegory who could not be separated from his blind beggar. I did not consider my chances of success or the insidious ways I might die. Instead, I contemplated Below and his terrible need for control.

3
    I traveled all night on that lumbering nag, cowering at every dark form that rustled the fallen leaves or swooped low beneath the canopy overhead. Meanwhile, the black dog disappeared for a half-hour at a time and then, all of a sudden, broke from the undergrowth to my right or left and ran between the slow-moving legs of my mount. Quismal was confused by this and immediately halted in his tracks. I tried driving my heels into his sides to get him going again, but I might as well have been kicking myself. Finally, I discovered that a few kind words whispered into his ear did the job better than any violence. “Onward, noble steed,” I said, or some such nonsense, and sure enough he lurched forward.
    The voices of crickets in the breeze became conspiratorial whispers. Even the full moon, which I had been so happy at the start to have as a companion for the journey, began to take on a sinister aspect. We broke into a clearing, and I looked up to stare at its milky brilliance full in the face. The features of its physiognomy were exceptionally clear and struck me as closely resembling Below’s. I thought about the Master, standing atop a high tower, spinning on the heels of his boots to take in the entirety of the puny lives of Wenau. It would have been no surprise to see a giant thumb descending to squash me.
    I breathed deeply in an attempt to suppress my fugitive imagination, and it was then that the scents of the forest broke through to calm my fears. From that one inhalation, I was able to distill the aromas of trailing serpent vine, fantail blossom, and the oozing root of tarasthis fern. These were all familiar to me from my daily forays into the woods to search for medicines. Each of them, when dried and ground, was a cure for a different illness—gout, river blindness, acute melancholy—and now just their fragrances were enough to cure me.
    I kept to the trail that had been forged in recent years by merchants from Latrobia,