trees, had been replaced a number of times. But it was, in a sense, you see, the same string; it was always the same string, as it always marked the same trail; it always traced the same journey. It is in that sense it was the same string. It always led to the platform. Why then did Horemheb return to the platform? We do not really know. I think it was because he suspected that in its vicinity was the secret, the memory, the truth. I think he came back to the platform because he wanted to know, because even in his age and pain, and his fear, and given the terror of what he suspected, he wanted to know, or perhaps because it was merely he had not yet been satisfied, or because he was insatiably restless, or because he was inveterately curious, that perhaps as a consequence of some ineradicable affliction inherited from some remote unknown ancestry, an ancestry he might in an earlier day have despised or found laughable had it suddenly, from a depth of bushes, peered out at him, or perhaps because he still hoped to unravel the riddles of his distant youth, that youth like an unfinished dream, so lost, yet so constantly present, so far away, yet so near. On the other hand, he may have come back to the platform because he had no choice really, because the journey called him. Perhaps the truth is as simple as that. Let those to whom journeys call speculate on the possibility of that. For myself I do not know, and I do not think others do either. Perhaps he was merely the sort who cannot refrain from digging with sticks into the sores on his own body. That is possible. The species are rare in the universe, but they exist, those which torture themselves.
Now Horemheb continued his journey. Then, after less than one of the twenty-five segments of a rotation, the divisions of a lightness from a lightness, he felt beneath his feet not the softness of the forest trail, the crushed leaves and the dust, that curious mixture of particles wounded to powder by long treading, but the flat stones. It was there that the string ended. With his staff Horemheb tapped ahead of himself, scratching now and then at the stones to determine their setting, and the directions of the cracks between them. It was still night. Had he been able to see them the stars were full and, behind, in the forest, the lantern fruits hung like lamps from the branches of the trees. He supposed the platform looked much the same as always. No one knew its age, but it was known that there had been an innumerable number of platforms before this one, built on this same spot. That was testified to by records as old as those the brethren possessed. No one, at least as far as Horemheb knew, knew why the first one had been built here, or what the point of the platform was.
In a little time, for the area of the flat stones was not really large, the tip of Horemheb’s staff, moving gently before him, inquisitive, like something alive, sniffing, groping, alert, an extension of his spirit, an emblem of his quest, touched the first stair. There were three of these, if one counts the level of the dais on which the platform had been erected. Horemheb climbed the steps and, because he conjectured he was early, he sat down, cross-legged, before the platform. The platform itself was not high, once one had ascended to the dais on which it was erected. Horemheb, who was not large, not even amongst the brethren, could have put out his hand, had he been standing, and placed his full palm upon it. But he did not stand before the platform, as he was surely early. Rather he sat there, cross-legged, before the platform, with the sack of meal and his staff beside him, took out the parchments, and, from the irregular surfaces, traced the sayings. He did not fear the stealthy ones in this place, for they did not come here.
After a division of a revolution Horemheb rolled the parchments and tied them shut.
He then rose slowly to his feet. He did not use his staff this time to help him rise. He did hold the sack of meal.
He had heard it ascend to the platform, with one movement, from the back. It had been quiet but