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Finding nothing, he widens his search, stoh the base of the tree line where the fire has wilted the evergreens and cooked them all black on one side

He circles the valley once, and then again higher into the trees On the third ti and whipping back and forth in the snowy air He comes closer and takes it in his hand

It’s the Vestal’s little wooden cross pendant, the one she wore around her neck, and it’s a sign if it’s anything He recalls the Pastor Whitfield’s warning not to disdain symbols, and he realizes he does not disdain theh he wishes he kne to read thee of symbols

What does the cross mean? That she is alive? That she left it as a breadcrumb for him to follow? That it fell, unknown, from her neck in her escape? Or simply that it was blown off her body in one of the explosions and that she is now part of the dusty ash he breathes into his weary lungs?

Symbols everywhere, and they refuse to be read

He takes the cross, twining the thin silver chain around his thick, calloused fingers, holding the tiny wooden pendant tight in the h he will never let it go

Though that, too – the gripping of the cross – that too is a sye

The night falls, and he stays around and lets the snow fall onto his beard and his eyelids and his lips Finally, in this place of devastation, this graveyard of man and industry, this broken toe of civilization, finally, he sleeps

When he wakes, it is full dark, and he realizes he has slept round He stands and sheds a thin layer of snow that has fallen and wed hiround on which he lay He shakes it off, and he is not cold though he can see his breath

The led shadows over the valley, and in the dark he believes he sees a figure darting through the trees A naked girl, skin pale and shi, almost translucent, red hair chopped short – and there she dashes fro into the shadows and reappearing elsewhere in unexpected places, like a capricious sprite or a trick of the eye He would call to her if he believed she would be held by his voice Instead, he finds hih theirl The branches whip and slash at his face, and he can feel the blood trickling on his skin Or it could be tears, it makes no difference – the salt and alu contact with the world

I’m sorry! he calls into the shadows I’m sorry I should of believed you I should of Faith and love, they ain’t the sa? I’m sorry Come back now You can come back!

He runs until his body collapses beneath hione He falls to his hands and knees, truly ursine now, a beast of the wilderness huffing and panting his way through the night His lungs are scorching, and he scoops up a handful of snow and ss it to cool his insides When his gasping breath slows, he looks around hiuiling ghost

She has ever been

Twelve

A Map " Three Conversations about One Thing " A Return " A Confession " Another Vision " How Things Endure

Three days later, Abraha around the co lewdly at feet out of here without rilin the citizenry I seen em riled – it ain’t pretty

Wait, Abrahao yet What about otten about it He finds Whitfield, and the two brothers are led to a roo each other like parallel rows of guardians

One of the operators is reminded about the yewess bee

Oh yeah, he says It’s around here so on it really I was going to tell so rand s Abraham’s taliss up sonizes as the shape of the United States There are red dots all over it, as though the entire country has succumbed to some kind of pox

It’s a map, Moses says

A map! Abraham repeats

Of what? Moses asks

A treasure map, I bet, says Abraham

Actually, says the operator, it’s a corporate map It shows all the locations all over the country of a particular business I guess it was a franchise There are, like, twelve hundred of the like that? Hold on, here it is – it was so called the International House of Pancakes

The pastor, who is the only other one present, besides Moses, old enough to rehs It is a sad laugh, full of ehs ether, unspoken, the twoless dire

What? Abraha ht, his brother replies

What some mysteries reveal are truths so mundane they blast wide our own ludicrous vanities

They say farewell to the pastor and leave the citadel behind theood car with two extra jugs of gasoline packed in the trunk He is also given some rifles, some ammunition The citadel’s stores are vast – they can afford such things