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She thought of them as the Twelve, and the Twelve were everywhere, inside the world and behind the world and threaded into the darkness itself The Twelve were the blood running below the skin of all things in the world at that tih the years and years She remembered one day, the day of the field of bones, and another, the day of the bird and the not-talking This was in a place with trees, so tall There it was, just a s in the air before her face Her feet were bare on the grass in the sunshine that she had learned to walk in To and fro it s She looked and looked It see for ht the word for what it was, but when she tried to say it, she realized she had forgotten how Bird The as inside her but there was no door for it to coht of all the other words she knew and it was just the saht in the ht and after much time had passed, she was lonesoht: Come here

They came First one and then another and more and more

Come to me

They stepped froh places all around, and soon they were a company without number, as they had been in the barn, onlyfaces She touched them, caressed them, and did not feel alone She asked: Are we the all? For I have seen no one, no man or woman, in all the years and years Is there no I but I? But as long as she asked, they had no answer for her, only the question, fierce and burning

Go now, she thought, and closed her eyes; and when she opened theain she found she was alone

That was how she learned to do it

Then, through the seasons of nights and the years of nights, she caht of dusk she saw the reat uns, like other men that she recalled, in the time after the man and his wife and the boy and then the woht to fall What she would do then she did not know, but then the forgetful ones cah she told thereat coan to die and then did so, three of their number

She moved to where the bodies lay, the men and also their horses ere dead with no blood in thes that had died in this manner Three of the men were nowhere to be found but the soul of onefros as she bent to regard his face and the look written upon it It was the same look she had seen upon the face of the man and his wife and the boy and then the woo It came to her that the man’s name had been Willem And the ones who had done it to Willem were sorry, so sorry, and she rose and said to theain if you can help it, though she knew that they could not They could not help it because of the Twelve who filled their minds with their terrible dreams of blood and no answer to the question but this:

I am Babcock

I am Morrison

I aht-Martinez-Reinhardt-Carter

I am Babcock

Babcock

Babcock

She followed thehtness to her eyes and on some days she could not hide from it She wrapped herself in a cloth she had found and on her face she had the glasses The days were long, the sun in its arc cutting a swath in the sky above and plowing the earth beloith the long blade of its light At night the desert grew still with only the sound of herworld around

Then it was a day when there were ain She never had found those men on their horses or where they had come from that some of their number should have died in the buried city before her eyes The floor of the valley between the mountains was dotted with trees that turned with the wind, and that here she ca with the horses inside; and when she beheld theht, Perhaps these are the horses I saw The horses weren’t alive but they seeht a peacefulness to herof the Man and his cares for her that made her think she should stay in that place, that the ti was ended That this was the place where she had come to rest

But now that time had ended, too The men had returned at last on their horses and she had saved one of their company; she had covered his body with her own as her instincts had dictated in the o now and do not kill this one; and for a while these urgings had worked upon the and the hunger was strong also

In her space in the dark and dust below the horses she thought of the one she had saved, hoping he was not dead, and listened for the sounds of theAnd after a certain time of days, when she had detected no trace of them, she departed that place as she had departed all the others before it and stepped into the ht of which she was a part, one and indivisible

-Where are they? she asked the darkness Where are the o to theh all the years and years, no I but I

And a new voice caht, Amy