the earth, the occasional sounds above, but soon enough—it is impossible to say when—they became useless noise to me. The wall between sleep and the waking world dissipated, so that dreams were indistinguishable from the figments and illusions that now began to bedevil my mind. I saw so many things down there, so many people. And among those visions, one in particular assumed a special importance, because among all the visions that came over me, this one would soon reveal itself to be no device, but true memory.
We were young, and I was in my first year of service to my brother. It was a long summer Saturday and the masters of Lockless had become bored, which brought to their normal oppressions an element of novelty and whimsy. And so Maynard, who was then a child, had the perverse notion to gather all the Tasked up from out of the Warrens and have them assemble on the bowling green. He ordered me to spread the word. So I did this and within half an hour or so I had them all out on the green, where it was announced by Maynard that the gathered Tasked—old and young, some freshly exhausted from the field, others in the overcoats and polished shoes of the house—would race each other for his amusement. On the possible scales of humiliation and measured against all the troubles put upon us back then, this would not be the worst. But it was humiliation and what doubled it for me was that I had not yet understood my place among things, for as I watched Maynard organize them into packs to run against each other, he called to me, “What are you doing, Hi? Get down here.”
I looked for a moment, not comprehending.
“Get down here,” he said again. And it occurred to me what he meant. I was to run too. I had just that year been brought out of my lessons with Mr. Fields. I remember the eyes of everyone assembled directed toward me, and what I saw in them was both sympathy for me, perhaps unearned, and disgust for Maynard. So I was lined with three of the others and off we went in the August heat to the edge of the field. By the time we’d turned to run back, I was past them all, for while I cannot speak for them, I really was running, running so hard that when my foot caught itself in something hard protruding up from the ground, a rock, an old tree root, I flew off the ground and straight into the field. I hobbled my way back to the starting line, where I found Maynard laughing in a great mood, organizing the next group. For the next three weeks, I moved through the house discharging my duties limping, and every step I took, the sharp pain in my ankle was a constant reminder of my state.
This vision replayed itself for me as though on some sort of carousel, interspersed with others of Thena, Old Pete, Lem, and the woman dancing on the bridge, my mother. But mostly there was darkness, total darkness, until at some point, hours, days, weeks after I had been deposited there, I saw a slice of light cut its way through the ceiling of my dungeon. I scurried back almost ratlike into the farthest corner of my box. And then there was a sound: something dropping to the ground and a voice bellowing out to me.
“Come out,” said the voice above me. “Come out.”
I walked over and touched the rungs of the ladder. Looking up, I saw the light of dusk and against it the outline of that ordinary man who’d brought me there, my warden.
“Come out,” he said.
I climbed up. When I reached the top, I did not so much stand before this ordinary man as I hunched. We were in a small clearing in the woods. In the distance I saw the last orange breath of the dying sun pushing out over the dark fingers of the woods. In this clearing, my captor had arranged an absurd reception—two wooden chairs, a table between them. He motioned to one of the chairs, but I would not sit. The ordinary man turned, walked toward the other chair, turned back to me and tossed a package my way. I reached to catch it, felt it slip from my fingers, then scoured the ground to retrieve it. A piece of bread wrapped in paper.