You’ll have to forgive me, little one.

I returned from Salinas yesterday, riding Feltheart. David convinced me to go. He told me my true purpose lies with the diary, with the mission, and so here I am.

Mary is there with the Duvals, staying in a guest room we shared before my departure. It took little convincing to bring her there with me and less than that for her to believe me for all the rest. To feel her warmth again, after the dream, was worth it all. I realize now I never knew her, not truly, just the same as I hadn’t known David, Mauve, Ed and Harrison as we sat around the round table. But now, as with them, I do. I do know her. I know her well enough to see the pain in her eyes as she tried to convince herself I could stay, well enough to see the moment she changed her mind. We had so few days together.

We spent two days at the Duvals’ farm. David told me on the third day they had thought of a better plan the day after I left. If I killed Marcel myself I could hide the diary under my own supervision, all but guaranteeing our success.

I found him in the mill my first day in town, had him lead me to this building plot, and shot him with Coen’s gun. I’ll build it myself and with no chance of being tracked. The devil was an angel once.

I know enough about farming, hunting and building to be well on my way out here, and I’ll find a way to fell these trees soon enough. I brought a tent from Salinas, which I’d already been sleeping in along the roads, so I have shelter until the cabin is built. There’s enough blackberries and small game in these hills to survive on. I’ve taken Marcel’s ax for myself.

The Duvals gave me a small collection of books for the years to come. I’ll write about them as I read. All goes well I’ll have nothing else to write about.

I found a dog while briefly in town. He’s a Siberian husky, dark brown and grey coat, with a lean, friendly face. I haven’t named him yet. He sits at my feet in the tent as I write, Feltheart is on a post outside, sleeping noisily.

I cried over the body. I cried and as I cleared my nose with his handkerchief I was suddenly reminded of that familiarity, of the comfort of tears. The cloth against my nose and my own warmth was the same I’d felt many years before, as a child in my family’s house, up in my room stifling cries of suffering, air bursting from my gut through a throat tensed in a nameless pain. “Get rid of it,” I pleaded to the air. “Get rid of it all, the good and the bad. I don’t want to know anymore.” I don’t want to know anymore. The good isn’t worth the bad. Nothing is worth this, yet I have to find a way to convince myself that something might be. I have to hallucinate an answer.

I walk the old house in my mind, the house of gold, and it turns to stone before my eyes. I take the stairs up to my room, furnished with naught but air. The room is cold, enough to feel inside your bones. I sit at the sill like so many nights before, watching the rain fall on the fields as you walk along the hallways beneath, footsteps slow. Still it grows; the house, it grows, and keeps its bones warm. As we soar, myself soon to join, above the clouds, we can look back down but we don’t know how, in the kingdom of clouds. The air we breathe, it’s still the same, I’d like you to know. It remembers me, remembers how it feels to be warm. But now the air is cold. I remember it so. And the field is still burnt down.