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tightening the cloth. He did not cry out. He recalled that he had a gift for
silence.
    She carefully lowered the injured limb and rested it in his lap. He couldn’t bear to look at it. Instead Arjun watched her walk across the room and tug with both her hands at a long thin rope that hung down the wall from a hole in the ceiling. Outside in the street a quiet bell sounded. The woman went and waited by the street-front door. She bit at her thumbnail and looked out through bottle-glass windows into the night.
    A rjun’s eyes were closed when the door opened, and cold air blew in—he’d not realized how warm the shop was until the cold air woke him. He’d been dreaming of a dark river, of being pursued …
    He tried to sit up and a woman gently pushed him down again. She leaned close over him and looked into his eyes as if inspecting them for hidden fractures.
    Arjun studied her, too. It was—was it?—a different woman. The same green eyes, the same olive skin, the same dark hair—but this woman wore her hair longer and tied back, and was thicker set. Where the woman he’d first met had been thin, slight, nervous, this woman was fleshy, and solid, and her two heavy breasts rose in front of his face as she stood; and then Arjun saw that the woman he’d first met was hovering a few feet away, chewing again on her thumbnail. The first woman wore a simple black skirt and shirt, and jewelry; the newcomer wore brown, and her hands were plain. Were they sisters?
    It was very important to not become confused among persons and reflections and echoes, Arjun recalled.
    The newcomer said, “I’m Marta. Marta Low.”
    The first woman chimed in, “I’m Ruth. Ruth Low. I should have said. Sorry. This is my shop.”
    “All right, Ruth,” Marta said. “I’m here now. I’ll take care of him. Go on, put the kettle on. Take this and crush it up. It’s all right, Ruth.” Marta squatted in front of Arjun again. “So who are you, then?”
    “My name is Arjun, Marta.”
    “You’re not from around here.”
    “No. Please.”
    “You were attacked.”
    “I think so,” he said. “It seems unlikely now.”
    “Anyone chasing you? Don’t get strange. I mean the police. I mean the Know-Nothings. I mean bosses’ men.
Real
things, real
people.
Anyone like that?”
    “There
were
some men. I was asleep in the alley outside for a long time and if they did not find me then, then I think they are not chasing me anymore.”
    “Did you give them cause?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Did you say anything to them? Anything strange, anything mad? Any of that I-Am-Come-Down-from-the-Mountain-to-Tell-You stuff?”
    “I said nothing. I found myself in a dark room and I ran away.”
    “Are you from the War?”
    “What War?”
    “I don’t know. A lot of you say that. I don’t know what War you mean. Where are you from?”
    “I do not know.”
    “What was it like?”
    “I do not recall.”
    “Did you find what you were looking for?”
    “I do not recall.”
    “Poor ghost. Thanks, Ruth, there’s a love.”
    Marta took a clay mug from Ruth’s hands. The black liquid in it smelled of aniseed, swirled thickly with broken leaves, gave off heavy fumes—she lifted it to Arjun’s mouth, and he let her, passively, thinking
sometimes I am passive, then
—fumes that numbed his head and darkened his vision.
    A rjun woke in the darkness of an attic full of moonlit clutter, under sagging rafters. He sat up simply to determine that he was not bound down. The experiment was a success; he lay back again, somewhat relieved.
    The Lows were apparently kind to stray cats, some of which had made their toilet in the attic’s musty corners.
    His numb left hand was bound in bandages that were grey and worn, but smelled freshly of soap and lye. It was extraordinary good fortune to have stumbled across any doctoring of any sortwhatsoever; on the other hand it was poor luck to have been maimed by a talking lizard, unless this was a
very
strange part of the