This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.

We wouldnt ever eat anybody, would we? No. Of course not. Even if we were starving? We're starving now. You said we werent. I said we werent dying. I didnt say we werent starving. But we wouldnt. No. We wouldnt. No matter what. No. No matter what. Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire. And we're carrying the fire. Yes. Okay.

The trouble with a liar is he can't remember what he said.

The blackness he woke to on those nights was sightless and impenetrable. A blackness to hurt your ears with listening. Often he had to get up. No sound but the wind in the trees. He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.

Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.