There was a sound that wasn’t a sound. A sensation like air rushing into a vacuum, emotional rather than physical. And it was over.
The dust.
The moth.
The caterpillars.
Gone.
Green sat scrutinizing the place the moth had been. Where there had been a swirl of motion in all directions, now shadowed stillness. He didn’t know how they had all departed, so he couldn’t predict how or if they might return.
He carefully ran his hands over his shoulders and upper back. Nothing.
He stood, feeling the buzz of adrenaline in his joints.
Looking back at the cot, he had a flash of himself mummified, white teeth gleaming in his unhinged jaw, empty eye sockets staring at the vacant table.
There was nothing on the cot.
Nothing on his legs.
Nothing on the floor.
He turned in a slow circle, pushing through the fear and reacclimating to motion.
As the seconds ticked by and his mouth began tasting less like a tomb and more like a laundry hamper, the tension drained from his shoulders. As a rule, the human body tries not to prolong states of panic.
“Okay, then,” he said.
The sound of his voice planted a flag of control in the room.
“Okay.”
He exhaled a plume of dust, then coughed long and hard to clear his lungs. He spat a dark glob on the dirt floor.
The coughs rattled his exhausted body, but it felt good to be loud, to set aside the tense quiet that had hung over his head like a pickax.
Following the train of that thought, he began walking around the cabin, casting his approval on the walls and corners with their sensible lack of giant caterpillars. He noticed that the parasites Valentina had plucked from the moth were also gone, vanished from their glass vial prisons.
“Okay, then,” he said again, louder this time.
He grabbed some water and stepped outside.
It was still there.
The world. The woods. The autumn chill and the moonlight that turned all the trees graphite gray.
He rinsed his mouth and spit again and again before drinking.
He breathed deep of the cool mountain freshness and imagined a gentle rain washing him clean of fear.
He laughed and pumped a fist in the air.
It felt ridiculous and he didn’t care.
Even his nose and the cut on his chin felt better.
Something had changed.
