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catch a view they remembered, felt the first slipperiness of the slime and stood, rubbing their feet in it with a pleased smile.
    When the water had reached the Notch Of Excellent Eating—when the hamlets had been so long isolated that some of the younger children thought it a Now that never moved—the day of waking slid into place. It dawned like every other day, green, then red, then gold, then blue. But the people heard the shawms braying and looked at each other laughing, since the shawms and the Notch Of Excellent Eating had come together.
    “Today the Sleeper wakes into his Now and will send the waters back.”
    For this reason they kept watch from the roofs of their houses and explained the thing to their children. All morning the shawms brayed and the drums beat; and then at midday when the sun glared down at the flood which steamed back at him they saw the procession set out along the strip of dry land left between the cliff and the flooded earth. They saw how the Sleeper himself lay at the head of the procession. He lay on a litter carried by eight tall men. He was swaddled from head to foot and richly plumped with his hands crossed over his chest and the crook and flail in them. He was of many colours but mostly gold and blue; and even at a distance they could see how his beard jutted against the shivering of the cliffs. The long-haired women came dancing after him, crying out, some trying to wake him, each with a systrum in her hand, others wailing and cutting themselves with knives. After them came clean men and other people of his household; and then a group of men and women who walked sideways, hand in hand. It was a slow journey the Sleeper took. It was a long and slow procession that straggled behind him, or paced friezelike on the causeways by the water. Many of the villagers, drawn by love and curiosity, climbed down from their roofs and waded towards the procession. They stood, big-eyed as children in the water and watched it pass. They called out to the Sleeper, but he did not wake since the clean men still had work to do on him. So they stood, since wading, they could not keep up with even such a slow mover and they greeted the groups one after the other.
    There was one group they did not greet but watched in silent disbelief. At the tail end of the procession and separated from it by a gap, came a detail of soldiers with the Liar struggling among them. The collar of Great House was round his neck as were his collars round the necks of those who walked sideways and hand in hand. If the Liar—as he sometimes did—contrived to get a hand free, he would tear at the collar with it. Moreover, sometimes he shouted, and sometimes he screamed, and sometimes he moaned; but all the time he struggled with the soldiers so that they had a hard job not to spoil him. He was in a fair way to spoil himself for there was a scum of foam round his mouth. His noise penetrated most of the way up the procession.
    “I won’t, I tell you! I don’t want to live! I won’t!”
    The last man of the handholders looked back then turned again to the woman in front of him.
    “I could never understand what Great House sees in him.”
    The waders climbed on to the causeway and hurried after the procession and the Liar. When the land broadened and the procession stopped, breaking into separate groups, the waders became a crowd.
    The procession was grouped before that long, low building round which Great House and the Liar had run. There was a passage, now, that led down before them, between sloping sides of rubble and the farther end was in deep shadow, away from the sun. The opening into the building occupied only half the width of this passage; and to one side of the opening, there was a slot, at eyelevel. Those in the procession who were near the beginning of the passage, could see the slot; and even those too far off, or hindered from seeing by the crowd, knew the slot was there, and what would gaze out of it.
    The bearers