Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgements
We burned the witches in 1256. It was the last time I really enjoyed a fire – not because of the witches, you understand, even though I was for burning them at the time – just for the pleasure of flames dancing in the night sky and filling the land with their orange glow.
I’ve never looked at fire in the same way since that night, nor witches for that matter, or anybody else who’s apart. Perhaps “apart” is the wrong word, for I was apart even then, in that I was above the people and below God and the King, born into greatness.
Had I not fallen sick, I would have become . . . But there is no use in talking about what I would have become because I did fall sick and my younger half-brother wrongfully inherited the Earldom, and now he and all his noble line across hundreds of years are long since reduced to dust, the line itself extinct.
“Apart” is definitely the wrong word – what I understand is the outcast, for that is surely what happened to me when the sickness struck. I was cast out. I was removed from the comfort of my family and friends, from my home, sentenced to a lifetime of darkness, existing between worlds.
If we had not returned from Marland Abbey where we had been in the days previously, my fate might have been avoided. But of course we did return, to see justice done, for the Earl to be seen to deliver his people from their suffering. We returned because that night was ours, our triumph over witchcraft and evil.
I do not remember being bitten. I wish I did, for then I would know the face of the creature who did this to me, and I would have a purpose, to track him down and repay him for the poisoned gift he gave me. But as much as I have tried, the memory of the attack has never returned and I have remained taunted by his absence.
Nor do I remember anything of what happened in the days following my infection, but the years have at least allowed me to piece together some fragment of those events, of the fear and panic that surely reigned in our household at that time.
They thought I was dead, that much is certain, cursed by some devilry. Perhaps they even blamed the witches who were still being reduced to tallow even as my body was found. Whatever fear possessed them, I was probably interred in haste in the crypt, but did not rest, and in the days or weeks following, I was placed in a casket and buried beneath the city walls.
And I was at peace there. The casket rotted around me, but my body remained unchanged. If my father at the end of his life, or my brother at the end of his, had troubled themselves to dig in that withered spot, they would have found my skin unblemished, my flesh untouched by time or worms.
In the year of 1256, the year of my sickness, I was sixteen years old, not as young in that time as it is now. I was tall too, enough that I was already being called Will Longshanks.
I’m tall even now for my age. I say “my age” because, for all the passing of nearly eight hundred years, I am still sixteen in my person, just as I will be sixteen when you who read this are old, then dead, then forgotten.
The more that’s known about the world, the more people seem determined to search for what is lost or hidden. There are archaeologists, treasure hunters and ghost hunters – the legions of the curious – searching for secrets and the places that hold them. They ignore the possibility that some secrets are best kept, some places better left untouched – this bare room, for example, with its one ancient artefact.
It was an open stone casket, buried up to the lip in compacted soil and filled with looser earth. An archaeologist, stumbling upon it, would first have excavated around its sides to reveal the intricate carvings with which it had been adorned. From this they’d have dated it and come to the conclusion that it had belonged to someone of high birth.
The same archaeologist, excited now and ignoring obvious questions – such as why this casket was buried so close to the surface in a hidden chamber deep beneath the city walls – would carefully begin to remove the looser earth, hoping to find the body of the nobleman who’d been interred there.
Regrettably, such an archaeologist wouldn’t live to tell the tale because the “nobleman” inside was not dead, but merely at rest.
In the darkness now, the soil inside the casket began to stir and, a moment later, a figure emerged as gracefully as someone might surface from the water in a bath, his face appearing first, then his upper body and arms. He placed his hands on the sides of the casket, as he had done many times over the previous eight centuries, and pushed himself clear of the earth, stepping out on to the firm surface of the chamber floor.
He stood for a second and felt the inside of his right forearm, instinctively searching for wounds that he knew had long disappeared. As he did this, he breathed in deeply through his nose, his acute sense of smell dissecting the air for any sign of life. His senses confirmed what he also already knew, that he was alone there, and he relaxed and walked along the short passageway to the neighbouring chamber.
He lit candles, preparing his eyes for the violent lights he knew he’d encounter in the world above. But even the dusty yellow flames seemed to burn his retinas, and he closed his eyelids against the stinging glare, opening them little by little until his vision adjusted.
So there he stood, naked and white-skinned, a boy of sixteen, but looking a little older, already tall and muscled. His hair, still dishevelled and dirty from the soil, was dark and wild and long enough to reach his shoulders. His fingernails and toenails were long too, as if they’d kept growing, albeit slowly, during his hibernation.
His name was Will, short for William, though he couldn’t easily remember the last time anyone had called him by that or any other name. Nor had he ever been addressed by his true title, for by rights, since his father’s death in the winter of 1263, the boy standing in the dull candlelight had been, and always would be, William, Earl of Mercia.
As soon as his eyes had adjusted, he picked up one of the candlesticks and carried it through into a third chamber, not because he needed it to see the way, but because he didn’t want to be reacquainted with the smarting pain of light every time he came back into the room. To be in the light was always a discomfort, but he was used to it now and so it was better to stay that way.
The third chamber was the least like a room. For the most part, it was a natural cave into which an opening had been made. On the far side, an underground spring trickled into a small pool, the water flowing away from there through a small crevice into some deeper channel.
Will settled the candlestick and stepped down into the pool. The water was winter cold, but its temperature hardly registered with him – it was water, nothing more, a liquid for washing away the dust that clung to his skin and hair. It took him only a few minutes and then he stepped out.
He picked up the candlestick and walked a fading trail of wet footprints back into the main chamber. He opened the chests on the far side of the room and stared at them, almost as if reminding himself of the contents. Yet, despite the years he’d lain dormant, it was all as familiar to him as after a day’s rest.
If he’d been pale before bathing, his skin was now bordering on translucent. Rather than dry himself, he took scissors and cut the nails on his fingers and toes. He trimmed a small amount from his hair too, leaving it long.
Finally he took a cloth and dried the remaining water from his skin. Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached into one of the chests and drew out a looking glass. He held it up and studied his own reflection.
Over the last two centuries, since stories about people like him had become popular, he’d read on many occasions that he would produce no reflection in a mirror. Perhaps others would see nothing of his reflection, but he’d never failed to see himself and, like so many of the myths that surrounded his kind, it amused him that people were so far from knowing the truth of his condition.
His features were fine, befitting a nobleman; his eyes were green, his skin soft and smooth. Though he was adult for his age in other regards, he’d produced not even the beginnings of a beard at the time of his sickness. It had troubled him for the first hundred years or more, showing him up for the youth he was, but he’d long since come to appreciate the convenience of not having to deal with shaving.
But Will wasn’t staring into the glass to admire his own face. He opened his mouth, revealing the long canines which had once again grown into fangs, the lower set smaller, the uppers long enough to puncture flesh.
He looked at them and felt a mild frustration that they had returned during the years he’d been at rest. As was often the case with corpses he’d seen unearthed, it was his hair and nails and teeth that continued to grow while the rest of him was frozen in time.
He took a file and carefully set to work on the four pronounced fangs, grinding them back down to something that resembled those of normal people. The file made a metallic grating sound against the enamel of his teeth, and the action vibrated through him and filled his mouth with powdery debris, but he felt no pain.
When he’d finished, he dropped the file back into the chest, went to the pool and washed the bone dust from his mouth. He dressed then, black boots and trousers, a black shirt, a long black coat – he had no way of knowing if it would look appropriate, but it had been plain enough for him to blend in from 1813 onwards and he had to assume it would still suffice. He took a handful of items from another chest and placed them in the pockets of his coat, and at last he was ready.
It had taken him the best part of an hour, not bad considering the sleep from which he’d recently woken, but he was becoming impatient. He could sense that night had fallen in the city far above, and he knew that before he did anything else, he needed to feed. It was unfortunate that it always had to start like this, that someone had to die for the benefit of his well-being, but that was the nature of his sickness. He needed blood.
Will picked up the large block of stone that sealed the entrance to his chamber and moved it to one side. He walked along the passageway, passing the partially collapsed chamber into which he’d first fallen centuries earlier. At first, the passage followed the line of the city wall, but then turned abruptly and he knew that he was now under the church and that the steps were only a short way ahead of him.
He reached them and ascended, absent-mindedly counting the forty steps, and as he neared the top, he reached up with his hands to touch the stone slab above his head. He crouched down under it and waited for a moment, his palms pressed against it.
Only when he sensed the absence of life in the room above did he push the heavy stone up and across the floor of the crypt. From his crouching position he leapt up, emerging between the tombs of his father and brother.
He eased the stone back into place and walked to the outer gate which was locked. The last time he’d emerged from hibernation had been in 1980, a period of activity that had lasted only nine years. It had been the first time in over seven hundred years that he’d found the crypt gate and the church door locked, and whatever year it was now, the times were clearly still lawless.
Will put his hand over the lock and closed his eyes, channelling his energy into the metal. He felt the mechanism slowly freeing itself before the gate opened in his hand. He closed it again behind him and climbed the steps into the church, but halted, sensing immediately that there were people ahead, even though he couldn’t see them.
A moment later, he heard some laughter, the wooden echo of a door closing and the ascent of steps. He stood still and waited, listening. He could hear papers being sorted, and then a few soft notes emerged from the organ.
As restless as he was, as mentally fatigued, it soothed Will to hear the haunting lull of music, but his pleasure didn’t last long. A woman appeared at the far end of the nave and stared in his direction. She walked towards him, an air of angry authority about her, and when she was still some way distant she said, “What do you think you’re doing in here?”
He’d sensed this the last time too, the assumption by adults that anyone of his apparent age would be about some criminal purpose. It was an odd view to take, he thought, and this woman’s tone was so unpleasant that he regretted she wouldn’t make a suitable feed.
If a woman like this was found murdered, the authorities would search for the killer and, sooner or later, one of those searches would find him. He never preyed on people who’d be missed, who mattered. It was easier to feed off the plentiful supply of people who mattered to no one.
Will watched as she approached. He imagined she was fifty – short grey hair, wide-hipped and full of figure in a tweed skirt and knitted cream sweater. Clearly she had nothing better to do than feel important in God’s house and carry out minor acts of tyranny.
She was almost upon him, determined to give him a telling-off for being there, but she looked into his eyes and he stared back and she ground abruptly to a halt. She didn’t seem to know what to say – here was a boy, she had probably thought, a boy who was up to no good, but now that she was locked into the hidden world of his eyes she was no longer sure of anything.
She offered a weak smile and said apologetically, “The cathedral’s closed, I’m afraid. From six o’clock on winter Tuesdays. I suppose you didn’t hear the announcement – easily done.” He still didn’t speak. “Er, yes, if you follow me, I’ll be happy to show you out.”
Will took a step towards her. She looked full of fear, but couldn’t move herself or speak. He took hold of her hand, his finger touching the underside of her wrist, the pulse of her blood sending a desperate hunger through him.
She moved her mouth, but no words came out, and with his free hand he reached up and put a finger on her lips. In the background, the organist started to play a louder, more uplifting piece, the notes reverberating through the air, and though his words would be drowned out, Will knew she would understand because, at this moment, she could hear and see only him. Everything else, the world she knew, had entirely fallen away.
“I will be visiting a great deal in the near future. I will become such a familiar sight that you won’t notice me at all. I will be invisible to you.”
The woman’s eyes flickered – it was as much of a response as she could manage. Will let go of her hand and left her standing there, knowing that by the time she came back to herself, she would remember him only like a broken dream.
He left by the side door, but was instantly blinded by floodlights and the piercing headlights of cars. For a minute or so, he could do nothing but stand still, trying not to scream out with the pain that burned through his eyes. He’d instinctively closed his eyelids against the glare, but there was no stopping all this light. He didn’t wait for his eyes to adjust this time, but as soon as he was able to open them even a sliver, he stumbled forwards and headed as quickly as possible for the darker backstreets.
It was a winter Tuesday and it was after six, the woman in the church had told him that much, but the city was still thronged with tourists, and even the backstreets were full of visual hazards. He hadn’t wanted to do this, but he reached into his overcoat pocket and took out a pair of dark glasses.
The city was brighter than it had been last time and his eyes would take longer to adjust, if they adjusted at all. But with the glasses on, the pain eased enough for him to open his eyes fully again and see clearly what lay around him.
The clothes of the people were not much different from the last time and, while he saw no one dressed exactly as he was, nobody stared at him, except for the occasional glance towards his dark glasses.
He was troubled though, because he could smell blood all around him, and he’d smell it that strongly until he satisfied his need. Until he fed, he wouldn’t be able to move easily among people.
Will made for the South Gate, and from there into the derelict area that led down to the river. The time before last, 1920 to 1938, this Victorian warehouse district had been thriving, even at night, but the last time it had fallen into decay and become home to vagrants and drug users – people who wouldn’t be missed.
It hadn’t changed. Will stopped outside the second gutted warehouse and breathed deeply, the scent of his victim immediately flaring in his nostrils. He put his glasses back in his pocket and pushed through the gap in the boarded-up doors.
It was a long, low building under a gently peaked roof, only one storey. The whole space was open and dark, but there was a small partially enclosed office at the far end, and through the openings where its windows had been, he could see the dim flickering of candlelight.
He walked quickly and stood in the office doorway. The little room was now a makeshift home, with charcoal pictures hanging on the walls, books stacked up on crates and shelves, an old mattress and various grubby clothes and blankets and sleeping bags.
There was a small stove in the corner, the one remaining part of the original office’s comfort, a black pipe rising from it and up through the roof. The stove was lit and two wiry black dogs lay dozing in front of it.
On the other side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the mattress, was a man with matted brown hair and a beard. He was barefoot, wearing khaki trousers and a thick top which had once been pale blue, but now appeared to have grime in every one of its fibres. There were beads and bangles round both of his wrists, and a leather bracelet round one of his ankles.
The man was writing in a notebook by the light of three large candles, but he stopped now and looked up. He was surprised but not alarmed to see Will standing there.
Will was surprised too, because the man’s face was young beneath his beard and scraggly hair. He was young and healthy and, judging by the many books, educated too, so Will found it hard to understand how his circumstances could have been so reduced.
The man spoke and his voice was soft and distracted, as if he had to keep calling himself back from some distant place. “Hey, man, I didn’t see you there.” He looked towards the stove and said, “Weird that the dogs didn’t hear you coming – they’re normally bang on.”
Will stepped inside without answering, avoiding a waist-high stack of magazines just inside the door. He picked one up and looked at it before saying, “What is this?”
“It’s The Big Issue, man. I’m a seller.” Will didn’t comprehend, even though he could see the name of the publication. “You must’ve heard of it. You must have seen people selling it in the street.” The man seemed intrigued now and put his notebook to one side, staring at Will. “You don’t seem like the usual kind of runaway – what’s your story?”
Will was still looking at the magazine and said, “Is this the date?”
“Yeah, it’s this week’s.”
It should have been obvious to him because he’d already come to the conclusion that he’d slept for at least ten years, but even so, Will was shocked at the realisation that this was the twenty-first century.
He’d found himself in new centuries many times before, but the thought of being adrift in a new millennium was troubling somehow. He imagined the next thousand years stretching out ahead of him, saw himself a prisoner to this half-life across ten more centuries, then another, and another. The only thing he couldn’t imagine was why, to what purpose?
“Look, man, whatever your problem is, it’s cool, you know.” Will dropped the magazine back on the pile and stared at him. “I’m Jex, and trust me, I’ve seen and heard everything, man, and it’s all cool.”
Will had never heard such a name before – Jex. Jex who thought he’d seen and heard everything.
He continued to stare and said, as a matter of fact, “I could tell you some things you haven’t heard before.”
Jex started to laugh, perhaps thinking it funny that this boy thought he knew more of the world than him, but then he made eye contact and stopped with the sound still unformed in his throat. Within a moment, he’d become mesmerised by the intensity of Will’s gaze.
Will took another step forwards and knelt down in front of him. He took the young man’s hand and pushed up the grubby blue sleeve of his top. Jex looked down at his own forearm and then back at Will, already totally within his power, no less than a fly paralysed by a spider’s venom.
Will held the wrist, just above the assorted bangles and bracelets, then took a small knife from the pocket of his overcoat and cut a short, neat line up the arm. As the blood started to flow, his instinct was to lap it up urgently, so great was his need, but just as he was about to lock his mouth around the wound, Jex spoke from deep within his trance.
“He’s calling.”
Despite his hunger for blood, Will sat back on his haunches and stared at Jex in shock. This didn’t happen: his victims did not speak once they were entranced. And Jex was still hypnotised, but he had definitely spoken, a fact that unnerved Will more than perhaps it should have done.
“Who?”
Jex’s eyes were fixed on the point in space where Will had stood, and he showed no signs of having heard him, but even so, he responded mechanically, saying, “Lorcan Labraid. He calls.”
“Who is Lorcan Labraid?”
Jex’s head shook with a fearful tremor, as if he didn’t want to hear what he could hear, as if he didn’t want to speak, but could not stop himself. “Lorcan Labraid? He is the evil of the world. And he calls you.” He slumped back a little, apparently exhausted, mumbling, “You need the girl, the girl needs you, you need the . . .”
Will stared at him for a second or two more, intrigued even as he tried to dismiss the words as those of a dying man, but he could wait no longer, distracted by the rich scent of the blood. He lowered his head to the wound and took the liquid as it pumped gently from the cut flesh.
He felt better almost instantly with the metallic warmth filling his mouth. He’d long understood that this wasn’t food – he didn’t need blood the way he’d once needed meat or bread. It was something else that he took from it, as if he was draining the life force itself from his victims.
He didn’t need blood all the time. He needed it most when he first emerged from hibernation. After that, he could go weeks or even months without the need for more, and the need wasn’t a bodily hunger, but a spiritual one.
He was never physically weak for want of blood, but sometimes before he fed, it felt as if every last fragment of his soul was floating away and dispersing into the void. Only blood brought it back.
Within forty minutes it was done. Jex lay on the mattress now, both arms exposed, two cuts on each, and the blood continued to seep weakly out of the wounds. Will hadn’t drained him and had stopped drinking as soon as the life had left him.
He stood and looked around the room. For a moment, he thought back to the strangeness of Jex talking through his trance and of the things he’d said – Lorcan Labraid, the evil of the world, something about a girl – but the room alone was enough to convince him that Jex had taken drugs aplenty in his time, that his mind had been unhinged even though his body had remained healthy.
The dogs were still sleeping, unaware that he was there or what fate had befallen their master. The stove was burning low and orange, and if Jex had been still alive, he might have put more wood on it.
Will looked at the charcoal pictures then. They were well drawn, some of the dogs, some of faces, including a girl who looked cross and unhappy, many of the city itself, some of the church. Again, it surprised and even saddened him that a young man of talents had come to live like this.
He felt a little saddened too, for having ended that life, but it was the nature of his sickness. Besides, millions of people had died during his long existence, and many of them had lost their lives far more pointlessly than the man in front of him now.
Will spotted the notebook that Jex had been writing in and picked it up, thumbing idly through the pages. He probably would have thrown it aside again, but as he looked through it, his forearm started to itch, on the exact spot where he’d once been bitten himself.
It was a sensation he’d never experienced before, the second new experience in one night, and once again, he started to think seriously about the things Jex had said. Could it be that Lorcan Labraid was the name of the creature who’d bitten him, and that through the flaring up of this ancient wound, he was indeed calling to Will?
He even wondered if the itching was somehow linked to the simple act of picking up the notebook. It was hard to believe this book could have any connection with the creature who’d infected him so long ago, but even the slightest promise of it was enough to pique Will’s interest.
Most of the pages were filled with dense script, but there were drawings too. Much of the writing was in a tight scrawl that was hard for him to read, and nonsensical where he could, but here and there notes were written in large capital letters.
As he flicked through the pages, his eyes fixed on one of these bold statements. Two words in particular had leapt out at him as they’d flashed past, words he couldn’t believe he’d seen. Surely his eyes had deceived him. He turned back, a page at a time, his heart lurching.
Then he reached it and read it again, one simple but shocking sentence, written bold, the words underlined. And there were the two words in particular that had caught his attention, words that could have no reason for being in this man’s notebook – William . . . Mercia.
He tried to take in the meaning of them appearing there and of the sentence that carried them, but felt a sudden sharp discomfort on his forearm, deep in the tissue – not itching now, but the sensation of two teeth sinking into his flesh. He had to be imagining it, or remembering it, dredging up a memory that he’d never knowingly possessed. It got worse – a needle-like pain tore through his flesh, a pain so alarming, so disturbing that Will dropped the book and stumbled, kicking one of the crates.
The dogs stirred and jumped up, starting to growl, but uncertain what to do. A candle toppled and rolled across the crate before dropping to the floor, the flame catching under the edge of the blanket that covered the mattress.
Will recoiled instantly from the fire, as small as it was. One of the dogs barked at him, then the other, maybe sensing his moment of weakness. He turned and glared at them and they quietened, looking hesitant, then sloped one after the other out of the door.
The blanket had started to burn properly by the time he turned back to it, smoke billowing upwards, the flames dancing against everything they touched, trying to take hold. Then he spotted the notebook lying on the mattress next to Jex, the edges of its pages already beginning to singe and crackle.
Will had never been burned, but just as some sicknesses could make their victims fear water, so he feared the flames, no less than if he was a wild animal. He’d learned to live with the careful, controlled fire of the candle, but this kind of flame, volatile and fast and greedy, made him almost as uneasy as the first glint of light at the edge of every morning.
But he knew what he’d seen in that book and the sensations it had stirred in him, and he couldn’t let it burn. He kicked it clear of the flames and stamped on it, making certain that it was no longer alight before daring to pick it up.
He slipped the book into the pocket of his coat and ran from the fire, out into the freshening night where he halted again. A wind had picked up, whipping through the old warehouses, carrying broken sounds from here and there in the city, tugging violently at his hair and coat.
The night seemed volatile and in fear of itself, as if something had just been unleashed into the darkness, perhaps by his killing of Jex, or by his discovery of the book, or both. Whatever had happened in there, Will could sense that something had shifted in his nocturnal world – things were not the same as they’d been an hour before.
He put his hand into his pocket, reassuring himself that the notebook was still there, but almost instantly the wind dropped and the crisp calmness of the night settled back on to the city. He could hear only the faint crackling of the flames now, and the distant traffic that would soon bring a fire engine.
Before finding the book, he’d wanted to walk and breathe air he hadn’t breathed for over a decade, to clear his thoughts. Now he wanted only to go back to his chamber so that he could read and decipher everything Jex had written, to understand something of what was happening and the things of which he’d spoken.
But Will hadn’t even started to walk again when he heard a noise from the direction of the river. He stared into the darkness and saw the two dogs, running at full speed. At first he thought they were running back to their master, but they sprinted past, determined, not even noticing Will. The look and the smell of them were unmistakable – they were running away from something in fear for their lives.
He looked back in the direction from which they’d come, and without giving it any further thought, he set off towards the river. If there was something down there that had scared the dogs, he wanted to see it, and as he walked, his heart was full of the nervous blood of hope.
He’d lived in ignorance for nearly eight hundred years, understanding little of his sickness, gathering fragments from the superstitions of others. Nor, in all that time, had he ever met another of his own kind, but finally in this notebook, in the words of a dead man, there was perhaps a sign.
At last, in this new millennium, he’d found a message in the most unlikely of places. And it promised something that he’d never dared hope, that there had been a reason for all of this, his sickness, the centuries of loneliness, that he had a destiny.
There was something else too, in the aching of his arm, in the way the darkness had become possessed, in the terror of the dogs, a tantalising suggestion that the book would lead him to the one who’d made him what he was. Will rested his hand on the book now, and was almost afraid to hope that their meeting might be imminent – for after all, the dogs had run from something, or someone.
All the way to the river, the dull ache remained in his arm, reminding Will that he had been cursed with this existence, born of wickedness, reminding him too that whatever had come back into his life in this last hour was also wicked. And with Jex’s words still in his mind, it was evil he expected to find at the river.
What he actually found there was a scene of confusion, a scene of dereliction lost. The first riverside warehouse he saw was surrounded by scaffolding and appeared to be undergoing some building work. The next one, a large four-storey block that stretched all the way to the road and the bridge, had been converted into living accommodation, as had the one on the opposite bank.
Will stared at the buildings, unable to take in what was happening here. He looked up at the lit windows, at the people moving about their domestic business. It was a strange choice of place to live, he thought. And if the creature who’d bitten him was anywhere here, it would not be among the living.
Instinctively, he turned and walked the other way along the river, away from the light and signs of life, further into the small island of desolation, which it seemed he was already on the verge of losing.