gutterballs, Van explained, don't care who you are. They care what you think, what you think about what you're thinking, and the gap between those two things — which is where the interesting data lives. Plan accordingly, said Van, and then walked away, which was itself a kind of plan.

At the Wisewood boundary, the murk stops being a presence and becomes a texture — grainy in the way old wood is grainy, the accumulated record of repeated stress from inconsistent angles. Several path markers placed by the Wisewood Warden Authority have been turned ninety degrees or are simply absent; the Authority is formally aware of this and is addressing it pending a review of available resources, which I find either reassuring or alarming depending on which way I am facing.

Bradfield Dale after murkfall: no lights, walls that trap the murk at shoulder height, and an organic network running the old way — unfiltered, with its own opinions about what it observes. Courier work along that road pays more than it should, which is the first thing you notice. The second is that the envelope you're carrying will apparently find its own way from the Loxley junction — which means it knows where it's going, and you don't know what's in it.