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And in the morning, Hadulph came for his monthly pamphlets, and nuzzled my shoulder, and asked what sucked my belly thin and turned my eyes red.

“My husband does not love his life,” I answered, and that was the first day Hadulph and I went into the pepper fields and I learned how his tangled mane bristled, and how rough his tongue could be, and that some coupling among Pentexoran goes easier than others. Ours was difficult, and brief, and earnest, and fierce. I did not care, I only knew that with the lion I was not alone, I did not have to coax him to love this world. I did not know how much I could come to love that old beast, and how far we would go, he and I. For it would not be the last time. I told Astolfo of it that night. He had no jealousy, only interest in how we managed to contort ourselves enough to accomplish it.

I have told you. An infinity of time crafts a much different soul than a few anxious years. I knew that Astolfo had at least once visited his old vineyards and seduced a panoti girl there among the grapes. He told me how her ears enclosed his whole body, and I marveled, even envied him. Envy and jealousy are sisters, but not twins. Anyway, the first years of a change are hard, and we soon had other griefs than fidelity—for in time my husband grew sick, and though we do not age much past thirty, sickness we do know, even if it is rare, and disease, and plague. His face lost all color, and I drained the ink from his gullet, for he could no longer hold it all in. His weakness sparked such fear in me; I trembled with it, as with a child, knowing that it must sooner or later come to term. He slept often and rarely woke, and my arms ached from the stretching of every parchment alone.

Finally, I lifted him from our bed and strapped him onto Hadulph’s broad crimson back. We walked thus, Astolfo as silent in his illness as in death, and the sun overhead dim and diffident. The tall banana trees let us pass, and the mukta flowers, clusters of pearls heavy as peas on their stalks, bent under our feet and shattered, the rain came and just as quickly went. More than once, I fell to the ground weeping, so tired and thirsty and afraid. It was a long road—but like the road to the Fountain, if it were not long it would be worth nothing, and I find it hard to speak of such a private thing as that journey.

As Imtithal said, weakness has always been a part of us, from the beginning. And so the world knows how to answer weakness. There are many secret places in Pentexore, many answers. I knew the place I sought, deep in the forest, a still white pool, like milk but not milk, where two old men stood knee-deep in the chalky water. Cattails of glass would bob and chime there, but no birds. The two old men, whose white mustaches had grown so long that they braided them in huge spirals like wheels of hay, hummed a single note, forever, unbroken unless a broken body came before them. I knew the place, so did Hadulph, though we had no name for it. He bore Astolfo’s body stoically, and never once complained.

In that pool, a mussel-shell taller than a camel rested, dark blue, crusted with barnacles like lace. The two men, so old their wrinkles pressed on their eyes until they could not see at all, guarded it and tested the patient. They wore identical gowns of long grass. I propped Astolfo up on his feet; he groaned, his head sagging under the weight of his jaw. I staggered beneath his heavy body, which stank of sickness, sickness I thought bloomed from his despair as a nut from a nut-tree. If he had not despaired he would not be sick now, I was sure.

“Do you wish to be healed?” said the first man. It would be their only question.

Astolfo moaned and struggled to open his eyes in the thin sunlight.

“Do you wish to be healed?” said the other.

If he lied, the water would turn black and nothing the mussel-shell could do would help him. Faced with the gaze of the ancient men, many say no. They realize they want death, rest, not to be well and go on with living. Not everyone