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reached the bottom of my list. Was I just a murderer in thrall
to the Murder God? Just another lateral curiosity, that.
I felt a bit like a fool, thinking as I had that this diversion
might be a crack in fate, allowing me the option of
abandoning the Game. This was just another calling from
the Shepherd to put something right. Even as I realized all of
this, I continued, almost mindlessly. There was a degree of
shame in that, given who I was, what I sought to accomplish.
It was the first cogent argument I’d been given in support of
Jack’s “Machine Hypothesis.”
I realized quickly that the cemetery was more rambling
than I’d assumed, unfolding deep into thick woods, almost
entirely joined with the forest, where grave-dust was reborn
as loam, old bones reached out of the soil as saplings—the
cycle of a corpse. At some point, across the hidden burying
grounds, old blood painted the woods, and scars of a battle
split trees and sundered headstones—a war between Wolves.
I retraced the carnage as one pursues a scar across flesh, to
where the blade first enters the skin. It wasn’t long before
I came across the loser of the conflict, remains scattered,
scraps of a kill list like yellow fungus curled up beneath the
overhang of a wilting weed, tips blackened by the kiss of
fire. Sadness gripped me. I’d left so many Wolves behind
like this one, all to waste. The aftermath of my sins were
laid out before me. I think I might have leaned into the
mindlessness of my purpose at that point, to dull the edge of
what I’d done—would do, one final time.
The footprints of the winner were slight, lithe—a female
Wolf. Her tracks were echoes of a dancer recorded in the
earth, replaying ever-slighter with each passing rain. There
was a lightness to her tread, free and wonderful. She would
have been a pleasure to know in life, I was sure. But she was
not alive. My standing in the contest cemented the fact. But
it was not a Wolf, I now knew, who stole her from the game.
The footpath was sporadic, like she had stopped to gather
as much wonder as possible along her way. But ultimately
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