I put my hand out in the open space, trying to find it again, but it was no use whatsoever. It appeared to have melted into the walls. Now I didn’t have any guide at all. I assumed it would start pecking at the door above us when the time was right and I would know to come out of the hole, but now I was on my own.
I wondered if the crow was even real. Did I hallucinate it? If I did, then I must also have hallucinated the cut on my hand. It wasn’t bleeding a great deal, but there was some flow from it.
The wound was as real as anything else in the world. If I doubted my wound, then I would have to doubt Slothin, the hole, the fire, the smoke, and the glowing walls. That was too much doubt by a long shot.
I dragged myself along the floor—which appeared to be made of wooden planks laid sid
