The Everlasting

WINTER SUNLIGHT, THIN and crosshatched. Air so fresh it burned in the lungs, like gunpowder. Branches circled all around, bowed low with frost.

I concluded—reluctantly, against all reason—that I was no longer in the office of Vivian Rolfe.

I was in the woods, with one hand pressed tight to the trunk of a tree so huge it seemed built rather than grown, a cathedral of bark and sap.

Despite my cowardly and flinchful nature, I’d never actually fainted, and I did not faint then. But I found that my thoughts were coming slowly and effortfully, as if they were climbing a steep hill.