The Zealots were returning to the pile of Ham corpses. They were cutting away ears and hands, perhaps as trophies. But their movements were characteristically sluggish, like pale worms moving in the dark.

Joshua:

Joshua lay on the filth-crusted floor of his cell.

He was left alone for days. It was worse than any beating. There was nobody to look at him.

The People of the Grey Earth were never alone by choice. They spent their entire lives in their tight-knit communities, surrounded day and night by the same faces, change coming only through the slow tide of birth and death. Some women spent their entire lives within a hundred paces of where they were born. Even parties of hunters who ranged farther in search of big game would not mix with other groups of hominids, even other Hams; strangers were like faces in a dream, remote, not real.

He tried to picture the hut, the people coming and going about their business. He tried to recall the faces of Abel and Saul and Mary and Ruth and the others. The life of the people was going on, even though he was not there to be looked at — just as it had continued after the death of Jacob, the endless round of days and nights, of eating and sleeping and fornicating, of birth and love and death.

Jacob was dead. Was Joshua dead?

Away from others, Joshua was not even fully conscious. As the light came and went, he felt himself crumble. He was the walls, the filthy floor, the patch of daylight in the roof.

…And yet he was not alone, for there were people in the walls.

Faint marks had been scratched there, perhaps by fingernails, or with bits of stone. Some of them were so ancient they were crusted with dirt, and could be detected only by the touch of his fingertips. Perhaps they were made by Skinny or Nutcracker-man or Elf or Runner. But not by Ham, for no Ham made marks like these.

Scratches on the wall. Patterns that pulled at his consciousness. Boxes and circles and lines that longed to speak to him.

He was in a cave. But it was not a cave, for its walls were made of rocks piled one on top of the other. Sometimes the people would build walls, lines of rubble loosely piled, to help keep out the small animals that foraged at night. Joshua knew what a wall was. But these walls went up, high above Joshua’s head, too high for him to reach.

And there was a roof made of rocks too, suspended over his head. On first waking here, he had cringed, thinking a sky full of rocks was descending on him. But the roof did not fall. He learned to uncurl, even to stand — though each time he woke from sleep he forgot about the roof, and whimpered in terror and curled in a corner of the cell.

The only light here came from a hole in the roof. He saw the days come and go through that hole, night succeeding day. He would lie on his back staring at the little circle of light. But when it rained, the water would pour through the hole, and he would huddle in a corner, shivering.

Sometimes a face would appear in the hole, the face of a Skinny. Stuff would be thrown down at him. Sometimes it would be food that he would scrabble to collect from the floor. The food was poor, scraps of cut-up vegetable or fruit peel or bits of gristle, some of it already chewed, sour with the saliva of Skinnies. But he devoured it all, for he was constantly hungry.

Sometimes they would hurl down water at him, usually brackish and stinking, enough to drench him. It would drain away out of a hole in the centre of the blackened, worn floor, taking much of his own shit and piss with it. When the water came he would stand with his mouth and hands open, catching as much as he could. And when it had finished he would scrape at the filth-blackened floor with his fingers, collecting as much of the water as he could, even lick the floor with his tongue.

But sometimes all the Skinnies would throw down was their own thin shit, or they would piss in the hole, trying to hit him as he scurried from side to side.

His memories of how he had come here were blurred.

He remembered the clearing. After Mary had escaped he had been picked up by many Skinnies, all grunting with the effort. With every jolt his shoulder had blazed with pain. They had thrown him onto a platform made of strips of cut-up wood. And then the platform had been dragged away, along broad trails burned into the woods.

He remembered entering the stockade. It was a great wall of sharpened tree trunks driven into the ground, many times higher than Joshua could have reached. Inside there were huts of sod and wood, dark hovels whose stink had struck him as he was dragged past. There were many animals, goats and rabbits and ducks. There were many, many Skinnies, with grimy skin and brown teeth.

And there were Hams. They dragged at ropes and pushed bits of wood and dug at the ground. Joshua had hooted to the Hams, seeking help. Though the Hams were few, they could surely overpower these Skinny folk easily. But they had not responded, not even looked up, and he had been silenced by a slamming blow to his mouth.

They had removed his skins, and he was naked. And he had been thrown into this darkened cell.

The punishment had started immediately.

There had been Skinnies around him. Some of them were grinning. One of them carried a stick whose tip glowed bright red. Joshua stared at the glowing stick; it was one of the most beautiful colours he had ever seen. For one brief instant he left his aching body, and was the fiery glow.

But then the Skinnies shoved him on his back, trapping his limbs. The man with the glowing stick held it before Joshua’s face — he could feel heat, like a fire — the man rammed it into the wound in his shoulder.

Only fragments after that, dark red fragments soaked with pain. Fragments, fading into dark.

But Joshua welcomed the presence of those who beat him. For at least, then, he was not alone.

One day he saw faces in the scratches on the wall. Faces that peered out at him, the faces of Skinnies.

No, not faces: one face, over and over.

The face of a man, thin, bearded, a circle over his head. The man looked at him, but did not look at him. Sometimes Joshua yelled at him, punched the face. But the wall would return, scraping his knuckles, and the man, not replying, would disappear into his web of scratches.

Joshua was dead. He was in a hole in the ground, like Jacob. But there were no worms here. There were only the faces, looking at him, not looking at him.

He screamed. He cowered in the corner, as he did when his captors pissed on him.

That was how the Skinnies found him one day, when they burst into his cell with their clubs and rocks and whips. They mocked him, kicking at his back and kidneys, and they pulled him out of the corner and stretched him.

A leering face hovered over him. “We’ll break you yet, boy, while there’s still some work left in that hulking body of yours.” He arched his back, trying to see the man in the wall.

There was laughter. “He’s looking for Jesus.”

Running footsteps. A boot launched at his face. He felt a tooth smash at the back of his mouth.

“Help!” he cried. “Help me, Cheesus!”

The gaolers staggered back, open-mouthed, staring.

A day and a night. His tooth was a pit of pain.

Skinnies were in the cell. Joshua scuttled to his corner, expecting the usual blows.

But a net was thrown over him. He did not resist. His hands and arms and feet and legs were tightly bound, and then his legs folded behind his back and tied up to his waist.

Wrapped in the net, he was dragged out of his cell.

Outside was a long, narrow cavern. There was no daylight, but fires burned in pits on the wall. He saw only the floor and walls, the lumping shadows of his gaolers as they dragged him, letting his bruised limbs and head rattle on the floor.