Suddenly some orange trees towered up ahead. He stared at them.
They were unlike anything he’d ever seen – behemoths, with their limbs etched in soft twilight, sloping down like a witch’s cap.

His stomach was clamming up and he felt queasy, like he was below some horizon. It reminded him of the shallow nausea he sometimes felt in a mechanized car-wash, when he was stationary in his car but felt like he was moving forward.

He went through the stile and into the darkening grove. He could smell some moist decay. A piney orange peace descended on him.

He reached his yellow path, night-bordered in turquoise cat’s eyes, which he didn’t recall ever noticing. There was a comfort in being back in his cul-de-sac, his ‘cluddy-sac’. He didn’t know the people but he knew the contours. It warms the cockles of my feet, he thought, and was soon inside his cottage.

The girth of the trunk was massive, too big to hug, but it contained a hollow, large enough to hold a human. He peered inside. Was it fire-blackened? He couldn’t tell. It was empty. It was tempting.

He went through the revolving doors and down to Songs and Poetry, and peered into the room.

He walked steadily up the road, a riverbed alongside – more a shallow, silted-up waterway...

He walked out of his shelter, kicking aside rocks and broken twigs, and lay down on his back...  

              When Banno reached the lime trees straddling the long lane littered with their little lemon-coloured leaves, he knew he was home.