The state from which he was escaping was peppered with villages—in the hot marshy land people bred as readily as mosquitoes, but in the next state—in the north-west corner—there was hardly anything but blank white paper. You’re on that blank paper now, the ache told him. But there’s a path, he argued wearily. Oh, a path, the ache said, a path may take you fifty miles before it reaches anywhere at all: you know you won’t last that distance. There’s just white paper all around.
