Where he was lying, by the support beam, more blood has dried, in the vague outline of himself.
Is he trapped here? At first he is afraid he will not be able to leave the attic. But he finds the exit easily. The doorknob, solid to his touch, turns, he opens the door and descends.
The attic stair leads him down to the second story. The adjacent service stair has been boarded shut, and he can descend no further in that direction. So he picks a path down the upstairs corridors. He finds rooms from the night before. He finds the doll's foot, clean and shining. He finds the chair facing the fireplace, the room flooded with fight, the stain on the fabric clearly outlined. Nathan descends in perfect silence along the grand staircase into the vaulted foyer with the water pooled at the bottom, the fallen floor sagging toward earth. The room seems very beautiful and sweetly perfumed. Nathan wanders along the walls, careful of where he steps. He slips through the parlor, the library, into the back of the house, the ballroom with its sealed windows, the adjacent service rooms. Daylight trickles through the shutters. Ivy crawls the inner walls.
He finds the place they must have hidden, he and Roy. The room is plain and ordinary, a bedroom or even a storeroom. Smaller than it seemed in the dark. Something about the place draws him to stay. He stands where he stood when Roy knelt in front of him.
He explores further, rooms they missed when they were wandering in the dark. The house is larger than it seems. He has the feeling he could wander here, for a long time, so he is very careful to keep his bearings. The empty house welcomes him, yields itself to him. He visits the service rooms in the rear, the wrecked dining room, rooms that seem to have no purpose at all. But the end of his wanderings find him where he meant to be, in the room on the second floor where the tree has fallen against the house.
He stands near the open window, taking deep breaths of fresh air. His head is clearing. There is only one way to find out if he can leave the house, he sticks his head through the window, pushes with his arms, crawls over the sill. Aside from the fact that his limbs are stiff and sore, he exits without hindrance. He stands on the porch breathing the brisk morning air, autumn in the woods.
He walks through the garden at the side of the house. Many more of the flowers are blooming in the yard than he remembers from the day before, the garden a mix of well tended and wild. There are evening primrose, senna, asters, verbena, elecampane, gay feather, spiderflower, goldenrod, cone flowers, bottle gentian, ironweed, queen of the meadow, boneset, yarrow, cornflowers, false foxglove, turtleheads, and sunflowers. Names learned from his mother, remembered vividly. For a time he wonders if he will find her wandering here, reciting these names to herself. This would be her place. But the garden is deserted. He meanders among the wild flowerbeds, searching for the gate.
Morning sun floods the front yard. Out there is the creek and the place where they camped.
He walks to the campsite. His progress is slow at first, his limbs resist every motion, as if cracking, breaking, with each step. But the sunlight helps, and so does the cool creek water, bathing his cracked lips. He soaks his hair but can only begin to get rid of the blood. The ache of cold water on the bone is unendurable. The campsite is deserted. It might have been used a hundred years ago. Yet the ashes in the circle are still warm.
He leaves the vicinity of the house. It is as if he has been walking for a century at least. Down the remnants of Poke's Road he passes the uprooted tree. Soon he leaves sight of the lane of sentinel oaks, retracing the path of the morning walk that seems so long ago.
He rests in the clearing where Burke took off his shirt and drank liquor. He walks near the creek there, haunting the place. He soaks more of the dried blood from his hair. Feeling almost presentable again.
This is the place where he will meet Burke. Never in the attic, only here. Confused, pacing up and down the bank of the dark creek, Burke will be watching the road. It will be his image, it will always linger. It will wait for Nathan, it will wish for Roy. It will take off its shirt, it will be a man.
At the place where the boys camped for the night during the storm, Nathan sits under the tree at the edge of the clearing where they cooked and told stories. The rock circle at the center of the clearing holds the ghost of the fire. The blue of the sky has begun to deepen with clouds, as if a storm is coming. In the tremulous wind he kneels at the creek to bathe again. With careful motion he cleans his swollen lips, his bruised face. His hair feels soft and supple in his fingertips.
