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By Root 980 0

of the last hut, where the great bough dipped and the safety nets ended, the raft picked up speed. Light of the moon was strong enough beyond the canopy that the shroud of leaves over the corpse seemed to glow with a light of its own. Despite his disappointment at the lack of opportunities here, and despite the sour sensations remaining from his reflections of the past, Pan Renik’s mood was briefly distracted, buoyed almost to amusement by the spectacle of the raft as it launched over the edge of the world, hanging there, suspended for a moment against a backdrop of night and endless clouds, small lemurs pinwheeling slowly out, shrieking into open air.

He grinned and bobbed his head and scratched at his scalp (which was and forever would be patchy, scarred and itchy).

Distant lights flickered under the clouds, illuminating the skeletal ghost of another treetop a great distance away, though Pan Renik saw this apparition as the fiery hand of a man who was trying to wake up before sinking under the poison for a third and final time.

He made a low hooting sound, like a little monkey he had once seen, as the death raft plummeted out of sight, lost forever—

But here came padres, walking the branch in two groups of three, chanting and swinging their braziers. Tiny red eyes glinted inside their cowls. They scrutinized the gathering. Maybe they were looking for him? Pan Renik sniffed the wind. Dawn approached. He lifted his eyes skyward, saw his lonesome nest.

Sun started to limn the clouds.

Reluctantly, Pan Renik clambered back up, empty-handed, his brief enjoyment gone, replaced now by the more familiar longings and sparse trappings of his solitary life.

In times of crisis such as this, the chatelaine found herself wondering about moments immediately before and after tragedy. Though her world had crumbled this morning, and she was distraught, she managed to cast her thoughts back to her waking moments, just before the discovery, to see if there had been a clue that the burgeoning day would soon take an awful turn. Had there been portentous dreams? The fecund, rambling about time and the city from her cell? No images lingered or stood out. Certainly nothing that would make the chatelaine reach bedside for any cotton wadding.

Regardless how much she reviewed the early part of her morning, it seemed there had been no hints, nothing amiss. Just aches and dull pain and the regrets of a regular hangover. Minor issues, quotidian and insignificant—no longer of any consequence—had nagged her when she opened her eyes at the door’s knock.

The day someone was to die in an accident, did they have premonitions? Seconds before a huge chunk of stone, say, fell from an archway overhead to crush a man where he stood, was he truly unsuspecting? Or had this man, for that second, given up, surrendered to his fate, knowing that inevitable destruction hurtled closer?

For the chatelaine, the idea that tragedy could strike without any indication, no matter how subtle, must be impossible.

But she’d had none she could recall.

She took a deep breath, thought for a second that she might cry. She did not.

Her morning, thus far:

A lifetime ago, she’d been awoken by knocking, both at the doors to her bedchambers and from within the confines of her own skull. Her muscles and nether regions throbbed. Her mouth was very dry, sinuses swimming with the fumes of her dirty room. Without opening her eyes or even moving, she had done a quick inventory of her body, as was her norm on mornings after such excesses, searching herself for injuries other than the usual, such as sprains or cuts, or ruptures and other sources of discomfort that might run even deeper.

Then she’d cracked one eye open, examining the bed for guests. Seeing none—nor any on the floor—she felt a moderate sense of relief.

Her chambers were a disaster.

Banging again at the door.

Memories of the previous night were incomplete, but physical evidence of her activities had left her with a strong need to remain alone for as long as possible. Yet she was never allowed to stay alone for long.